First Prize	Second Prize	Third Prize

Salil Chaturvedi	Shloka Shankar	Garima Behal

Featured Writers

Debasish Mishra	Linda Ashok	Amit Shankar Saha

Nivedita Narsapuram	Manik Sharma	Lohithakshan Koichi Koran

Gayatri Chawla	Mansi Jikadara	Muniza Tariq

Debadrita Bose	Ami Mishra	Shobhana Kumar

Akila Gopalakrishnan	Yesha Shah	Namitha Varma Rajesh

Tuesday, 1 September 2015

Poetry 2015, FeaturedWriter Yesha Shah

Weaving Dreams (Pantoum)

I sit in a corner weaving dreams
picking up the stitch where I’d left unfinished,
the criss-cross knots give a soothing texture
little ups and downs in the fabric of life.

Picking up the stitch where I’d left unfinished
I never did let go of the hope to complete;
the little ups and downs in the fabric of life,
moulding grainy patches into a wholesome part.

I never did let go of the hope to complete.
Even as I was making a clay statuette
moulding the grainy patches into a wholesome part,
just then there was a heavy downpour.

Even then I was making clay statuette
it was meant to be me, carving my destiny,
just then there was a heavy downpour;

and it all flowed down to a muddy puddle.

It was meant to be me, carving my destiny.
I chastise myself for not shielding wispy wishes
and it all flowed down to a muddy puddle,
colours of life bleed through amber eyes.

I chastise myself for not shielding wispy wishes
A gust of wind floated them away
colours of life bleed through amber eyes
Rainbow streaks of a wistful dream.

A gust of wind floated them away,
I begin again to brighten my hues, vivid,
rainbow streaks of a wistful dream,
essence of its presence lingers long after its gone.

I begin again to brighten my hues, vivid,
the criss-cross knots give a soothing texture
essence of its presence lingers long after its gone
I sit in a corner weaving dreams!

Poetry 2015 SecondPrize Shloka Shankar

Stock Exchanges

What time is it?
Did you ever see my eyes?
Can you see me?
Time for love?
What does that mean?
You ask me what?
Why don't you kill me?
What was that?
Alive?
Well, half alive, shall we say?
What normal woman wants affection?
You feel normal?
What is it to be at home?
Don't we laugh?
No phone calls?
What have I done to deserve all this, what, what?
What did we do yesterday?
And is it Saturday?
Why this farce, day after day?
Have you not had enough?

Let's stop talking for a minute, do you mind?

(Note: A found poem composed entirely of questions from three plays by Samuel Beckett)

Sources: All That Fall, Endgame, Waiting for Godot

Poetry 2015, FirstPrize Salil Chaturvedi

The Way of Rain

1
A mother calls from a thousand miles
and tries to swallow her daughter whole through the earpiece of a phone.
Amidst the cacophony of frogs, her silence is borrowed
from the trees, as are the mauve flowers

that sprout regularly in her hair.

2
I have never seen moss growing on words.
Dead branches, too, are alive in this rain.
For three months the forest comes up all around you
and then it disappears under your
feet again. This is a good time to plant the Moringa: a woman’s best friend.
You dig a hole, put a branch in and let the darkness take over.

3
Trees may lie on the other side of language, but
there is nothing wrong in standing in the rain
and reciting a poem to a tree.

4
Childhood memories fall on your skin as silver drops
and in a short time you are completely soaked.
Ripples intersect each other all afternoon.
At night the rain falls at a slant
dragging you slowly to the memory of your first kiss
while the leaves nod knowingly outside the window. It’s slippery everywhere.
The world has turned into a mirror:
Anywhere I look I find myself thrown back at me.
There must be a way to talk to everything with faint outlines.
Some things survive only in the rain.

Poetry 2015, FeaturedWriter Muniza Tariq

When Time Bled

She heard his roar from last afternoon.
She saw his eyes, the two dark moons, swallowing her gaze, licking her face.
She felt his two hands like two hearts, beating all over her, inside and beyond.
He was right there, as was the mole on his nape, glistening like a misplaced crown.
There, she saw him blowing her a kiss.
With a lazy smile, she lifted her hand to catch it and rubbed it on her heart,
waiting for the dawn and him.

When the dawn did knock, it was all alone.
Crisp blank like a blind gaze, it brought no one along.
It bore nothing like a baby’s mind but for a butcher’s cleaver,
and struck her down.

A dagger scraped her bubbly throat, two nails were hammered in her eyes.
With every blow, they burst into white fireworks.
A scimitar freed her hands from her shoulders, her nails were twirled and pulled.
Her chest exploded like a fountain of raw shreds.
She could see her bits and pieces raining down on her.
Sloppy, sticky and slow, they dripped to the floor - a squishy mess like a vulture’s left overs.

Two knives flew into her ears, and clashed in the centre of her head.
She could hear her nerves twinging apart, cascading from her nose.
Soon, her breath smelled like a slaughter house as she lay butchered and spilled.
Slowly, life leaked out of her as time bled.

Poetry 2015, Featured Writer Mansi Jikadara

Spaces

I lie there spaced out— exhausted

between

those red creased sheets.

And it hurts to know that I only exist between the spaces

of your heartbeats.

Poetry 2015, FeaturedWriter Linda Ashok

a poem on ravage

We discussed
metastasis
discussed sanitization
in popular poetry

we discussed
the difference between
poets and poetry
running into each other
on heavy traffic

only to be
replenished the way
death in his milk jaws
chewed Jibananda
regurgitated
into cosmic cud

And swallowed again

We discussed roots

not tap
not fibrous
not any other kind
but a kind with the sense
Of ants

We arrived
after a night’s long talk
over Kyber and
the silk route
that runs between
the cliff of small and the big red toe

We realized
we had turned
bird bone hollow inside
thus floating
like two skeleton silences

on a plate
of blue, blue, blue ocean

in a while
like two Chinese
gypsy librarians
we earnestly asked each other

if the path ahead
leads to infinity, chaos
or stasis in our little radios

We discussed the map of emptiness
landfilling and eventually
disappearance

where the two of us
are islands exiled
in different current

Poetry 2015, FeaturedWriter Gayatri Chawla

Cocoon

Twin souls cycle together
fetuses in a silent mode
sondering, a winter waltz
twin peas in a pod.
Two steps away
dolls on the mantelpiece, mix-
matched matryoshka dolls
they look related
distant cousins,
cousins distant over a family feud.

That thermal coat is a mask
two layers of fair skin
under one of dark brown.
Now, chapped lips on the mother’s face
like an empty bench in a snow globe.
Twin eyes of the garden potato,
stare back.

Poetry 2015, Third Prize Garima Behal

Geometry

If thoughts had their geometry,

Would ours meet?

Like intersecting lines?

At some point

In a distant plane,

Mine abscissa, your ordinate,

And together, we

A bracket unto ourselves,

The definition of a full stop in eternity!

Or would they go parallel, still,

Even in those dimensions,

Like the asymptotes we are –

Never to meet, but to keep

Running together by each other’s side

Chasing infinity?

If thoughts had their geometry,

Would ours be confined between

Point A and point B

Like the two ends of one segment of a line?

Or would they grow exponentially,

Reaching out with wide, open arms

To embrace a forever that lasts;

And, extend, unhindered by

Distance, space, and time?

If thoughts had their geometry,

Could we build a circle out of ours?

A circle with no beginning or end,

But just an endless middle that melts

Unto its self…

If thoughts had their geometry,

Would this world be large enough?

A plane where we lay our thoughts down

Into words, characters, feelings, prayers, hopes –

Like plotting precision onto neat squares of graphs?

Or would we need a bigger area

To encompass them all?

An always up-surging curve

As thoughts tend to infinity?

If thoughts had their geometry,

Would Mathematics be richer, simpler?

Tell me, stranger, would it still

Not make sense to you?

Poetry 2015, FeaturedWriter Amit Shankar Saha

A Killing

The stork is a tall bird,
The pinkness of its neck
Is a hue on your cheeks.
The soft web between the
Thumb and the forefinger,
When cut, is also pink.
I have sighted a stork,
Cut the flesh of my palm.
The stork flies a distance,
Accruing migrant miles,
Like you across borders.
There are lines on my palms,
Intersecting like roads,
Where you do not travel.
I have captured a stork,
Merged the lines in a fist.

When hunting for its prey
The stork hangs its head like
The hair from your head hangs.
But the palms of my hands
Move to hunt its own prey,
Signing on death warrants.
I have murdered a stork,
Attained rigor mortis.

Poetry 2015, FeaturedWriter Ami Mishra

Melghat

On concrete roads between two states
deciduous trees whose ancestors thrived
in Gondwana land formed this particular forest.
This is the story of that forest, called Melghat.

Melghat roared of tigers plenty –
bears, sheep, and Mahua orchards.
Separating this valley from the city,
the river Sipna flowed sideward.

At night, fireflies lit up her shore and in daylight, flocks of bathing,
washing, defecating, swimming beings immersed themselves in.

Sipna: a name that it took from the Teak Tree (as it was locally known);
the two were inseparable, during the river’s meandering course,
the trees stood: a loyal cohort.

The Korku tribe, belonging here,
to this magnificent forest sanitary,
ate a staple diet of rare millets and,
shoots of Bamboo in the monsoon,
and mushrooms that grew upon
the alluvial mud, soggy with water.

The other clan came loitering here
with their goats grazing to a pasture.
It is greener on this side, they decided
and the Gwali community settled,
with kith, kin, and plenty of vessels.

The Korku tribe and Gwali clan
lived alongside each other
coexisting in this ecosystem,
until one day there came
an army of forest guards!

They were colored like the mud,
so the residents of Melghat
thought they could be trusted.

Melghat, which meant
“a place of confluence”
was now under the prudence
of the forest guards.

The guards told the the headman from the Korku tribe
that the Gwali clan to protect its cattle made a kill
of the few remaining tigers in this forest.
And they guards told the headman from the Gwali clan
that the Korku tribe poached
the few remaining tigers for profits.

Mistrust spread/ Hamlets were marked.
Claims were made/ Everyone was troubled,
The divide was evident!
And the guards’ wishes were granted.

Then walls were built
and fences engulfed
the forest of Melghat.
Nights were bright
with battery operated white light
that sparkled in the hands of guards.
Tigers were outnumbered
by tourists' cars
who came to see this national wildlife reserve.
The Mahua trees sighed
as their fruits dried
without turning into wine.
And mushrooms decayed
while the millets turned grey.

Shops were set up
and nutritious millets
were replaced by food in packets.

The empty food packets
of shiny crinkled plastic
joined the course

of the river Sipna
only to disrupt the flow and
clog roots of the Teak trees.
Fireflies no longer lit up her shore.

About the beings of Melghat,
they found new livelihood options like:
tour guide, shopkeeper, barber, driver and agent.
Some even aspired to be guards
foolishly bright despite the camouflage.
Many couldn't find odd jobs here
and their old food was denied
with no entry to the forest,
so they migrated in distress
and made bricks elsewhere
for survival.

Today, when Melghat was surveyed -
they found out that there were
many more tigers and guards
and tourists like us
than Korku/ Gwali peoples.

Poetry 2015, FeaturedWriter Akila Gopalakrishnan

The Ladies Compartment

We are a motley crowd
with handbags, laptops and lunch bags

sporting IDs of rings and toe rings,
buffering dark circles

for un-waxed conversations of etcetera
in food, fabric, finance, family.

We manicure safety and freedom
in lip-glossed songs, henna cones
and swipes of social network pages on the phone.

Nasal calls of peanut and samosa vendors
are flipped by in bookmarked pages
hoping that one day
a rainbow would find the puffed eyes
gazing vacant on the window

Our laughter
indulges in anonymous company
of dry sweat, an aura of our anatomy.

We waltz

with our Body Mass Index, pH of pimples,
dimples, wrinkles and the uneven tones of our skin
on pedicured sandals, cracked slippers,
stiff joints and a numb lower back.
.
The overhead bar syncs our pursuits

We are one in many;
many in one.

Soon we would slumber to cricket songs
leaving the lady in the welcome poster near the door
to rattle alone with empty shadows.

Tomorrow will be a new dawn,
sun- screened with another ticket
to this daily soap in the ladies compartment.