Hold Your Step Dear Traveler…–Michael Madhusudan Dutta
Everyone is celebrating to-day. The celebration had started when the news flashed on the National TV channels and web browsers. A moment of silence to get indulge into suddenness of the news and then a loud cheer and hurrah. Yes, the four rapists had been killed by the police. At last the soul of Doctor... Continue Reading →
The journey name National Novel Writing Month had ended few minutes back. I end up writing 28,529 words (including the headings). This one will be not much of a novel but big-story or novella. 30,000 words in average is needed to be consider it as the proper novella. My story is not completed one. There... Continue Reading →
Fifty or sixty years it would be. In these years the safe-house of the king had grown into a popular jail. The British used to send off the rebels here who are of high importance or might have some information. The village leader had grown old and his son had become renowned spy. He had... Continue Reading →
Chapter 4 Gather around all. Today I am going to tell you the story of a prison. This one you need to hear. Come on, come on. Who wants to hear a story? Young man you seem to be much older than other. But, you remind me of someone. This story doesn’t have that one... Continue Reading →
Chapter 3 The Curious Case of the Mr. Cannibal Concluded? Staff Reporter Kolkata, 14th February: For last few months the city has been stricken by an unknown killer. We already know few of the cases that he was in. He used to abduct the girls who had crossed sixteen, and then after killing them, method... Continue Reading →
That year it was raining a lot from the start of the onset of the monsoon. I can still hear the howling and whistling of the storms and hail that each wall of the prison was making. Sometimes deep into the night the prison used to come to life. The shouting, the wailing, the pleading... Continue Reading →
Time started flowing slowly and steadily. Most of the freedom fighters were released while few those remain were either murderer or burglar and there was this old gardener—Mehboob his name was. He had no-where to go; his family was killed by some British officers while trying to kill him by putting fire on his hut.... Continue Reading →
For the first few nights I could not sleep. I used to remain awake so that I do not dreamt of the tantrik or I do not hear the voice. Whole day I used to remain busy in the procession and speeches to ask the youth to stop the violence. But, as night used to... Continue Reading →
Chapter 1 My time is up as you all will say. These days the scenario has changed completely. Getting to the high is only climbing the stairs is a lie we all know. In this world you have to have the heart of the devil because ripping off the soul is not the work of... Continue Reading →
They are going to close the jail within the end of this year. They are thus disbursing me from the duty I was assigned. Now I have the choice to remain on the field or can take up a desk job in headquarter at Lal Bazar. I all need to let them know what I... Continue Reading →
I cannot keep that place out of mind. And I don’t recognize me when I think of that place. It is always someone who speaks instead of me when I think deeply of it. It feels that the palace comes in to life and speak through me. The darkness of that place pushes me to... Continue Reading →
16th May, Night I don’t know how this diary comes with me. I can recollect that I have left it locked inside the drawer of the table. Then how does it come with me I cannot understand. I am already feeling light at my heart. It just seems I was being living in some suffocating... Continue Reading →
The instruction now though stands on no-stand. The order that the letter carried was to kill the spy. The higher official ordered me to make the death look like it’s an accident not an intentional event. Now, I understand what they had said in the telegram on that day when they said—FOLLOW LETTER (STOP). I... Continue Reading →
12th April The whole surrounding seems to going out of mind and sense when a storm strikes. To-day is the second day the storm strikes here. The whole process starts with increasing darkness as the noon started to turn to early evening. The azure blue sky started colouring itself into grey. Then an hour or... Continue Reading →
20th March The jail seems to be a popular hideout for the government who when if wants to conceal one’s identity or presence. I had received this letter of a guest we are going to have in today two days back. He is a spy from one of our neighbouring countries. The letter that came... Continue Reading →
2nd March Mr. Sekhar Das Gupta handed me all the duties and responsibilities. Now I have to be the jailor of this god forsaken prison. I already hate this place for being so silent and nothing to do nature. But, at the same time I am liking this place. There was need for some to... Continue Reading →
Oh Prabhu, what do you want...why are you not taking me...take me with you...I cannot live like this, anymore...not a bit of meat...I cannot live without having flesh for so long...tell me what do you want...have I committed sin...do I need to penance...or you need atonement...say Prabhu what do you want to say...what do you... Continue Reading →
What a horrid dream I had last night. There’s this tantrik with big matted beard on face and peak of bun of his head. His eyes were closed and he had the voice like that of brontide. And he was chanting like spring breeze sounded when it pass through the leaves. And he was sitting... Continue Reading →
Day 3 Third day and no food or water. Mahatma Gandhi had survived surviving for 21 days. I cannot recollect the name of the freedom fighter who had survived over a month. Then there was a political leader during this period; he had starved without water and food for 31 days to stop the violence... Continue Reading →
vii Day 1 I’m now thirty years back from the time. That is it is 198-This diary was brought up by this cat—white and fluffy ball with two different colour eyeball, blue and hazelnut. It is the one who show the diary. He just banged his head on the girth underneath the bed drawing my... Continue Reading →
I tried to kill myself. Not once, but thrice. Every time I tried I fail. I had arranged this long rope by bribing the guard. I put on the rope through the hook of the fan and standing on stool I wore the noose and hanged myself what my feet was touching the ground after... Continue Reading →
vi This little book is such a beautiful thing. It had been hidden under the bed at the gap of the frame. They have freshly coated the wall so the smell of the paint is still there. They have clean the chamber and decorate it with a fan and a light. Though it’s October but... Continue Reading →
When the moon shines on the bed in the full moon night it made remind of my mother. It made me remind of a night when I was a boy, we—me, Ma and Chutki—used to sit down at the veranda. Chutki was then only two or three years old and me five or six. Ma... Continue Reading →
-- The cell is haunted I think. At certain nights someone kept on repeating a chant. And this happened when the moon is new. In the darkness the cell seems to be come to alive. There is one who roams around the cell. My mind says it was the breathing of the old cat getting... Continue Reading →
~~ [Here I am omitting most of this man’s entry. It seems he was a spy from a neighbouring country, and he had shared lots of sensitive information. Most of them should remain confidential for the safety of the country. I rather extracted his time in the Cell No 2811.] ~~ Last night I had... Continue Reading →
iv a This floor has two names—the Haunted Corridor and Solitary Confinement. The second name is the perfect name for this floor. The floor is completely deserted after the independence. Only this cell has been kept in working status because this is very much small and suffocating with the window being out of the reach.... Continue Reading →
6 This floor is the most vacant one of the building. There’s a cat—an old tomcat—roaming and now sleeping at the corner. He has a one eye while one eyes he had lost to a fight. He was once a white but now a dirtied white one. He shares the meals with me and other... Continue Reading →
... 4 (Red) I am not a good person. The habit of gamble has been injected by my father when I was at teen. Being paralysed from attack on the heart, I used to be his representative whenever there is a game. He used to whisper into my ears which card to throw and which... Continue Reading →
ii (Blue) Never realized silence can be such a blissful thing as well as a cursed one. How long I am here I do not know. After changing four to five cells I have been thrown into here. The others say there is a ghost that lives here. Ghost? Just think how a story gets... Continue Reading →
At first it just seems to be a dirty rotten cloth that was red in its own days as a rose should be. But now it’s just the dull orange one like a monsoon clouded setting sun. The rope that attached it once was a shoestring; knots at various points and chewed or slashed at... Continue Reading →
Last year after attempting two years in National Poem Writing Month (held in April annually), I thought why not give a chance to the National Novel Writing Month (held in November annually). So, I had participated in it. And my laptop breaks down after I crossed the 25,000 words limit. It was half of the... Continue Reading →
In the pool of blood lies the Finger—decapitated and snatched From its owner’s hand. Whose finger was that? Every one knew nothing of the man; Every one knows something of the man. Lonely and singular finger was thumb; The nail of whose has been uprooted And now there a fly flies Shading its hazed shadow... Continue Reading →
There was a time, when the sun used to peeped through the clouds in a monsoon morning or when the morning was late and lazy and study books closed, I used to lie down where the pencils of the rays used to draw their lines-- it might be the edge of the bed or the... Continue Reading →
How long I have not been here....you all have forgotten me...or has given up on me...this post is a bit of what I am up to... On the other side of the road the organizer is playing "তখন তোমার একুশ বছর..." (You might be twenty-one that time...) The song was composed by Bappi Lahiri and... Continue Reading →
Yeah, yeah. I know I have not been here after the April National Poem Writing Month. Many of you have already forgotten me or have stopped to follow this blog. Few days back though during an update few of my untitled incomplete Bengali poems had got posted making me realized sometimes incomplete is the complete.... Continue Reading →
DAMAGED MINTED HEART widow's dreams on sale hunters awake now [Take the Bold words and joined it with title, in the beginning or in the end--your choice, to get another line, and place it as per your choice in this poem.] ON Bread Ant [Put the ON as per your choice] Note: Title itself also... Continue Reading →
Deep in the north she stand tall, with a smirk on her lips. Short her stature but still she stand tall and smiling amongst the ashes. Standing short is easy, not the tall that too with courage. In the halls, she had danced with needle as her father watched. She had seen the pigeons fly... Continue Reading →
Somewhere the atom has been split opened. Somewhere the police chasing the thieve on foot. Somewhere the leaves are falling. What're are you looking at? These are the thoughts one of which is needed to pick to start. Like the leftovers from the noon and from the day before Need to be microwaved In other... Continue Reading →
Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel, Juliet says. She smiled to put off the mascara; eyes needs to be wrinkled. She let her hair rolled down; touching her hips; grey they are. Audry whispers now is the time that face should form another. She looked at the mirror; she smiled, softly at... Continue Reading →
Beginning with love, we journey to affection. The dreams we hold are scattered in the breeze. The dreams we hold are scattered in the breeze That brushes our naked body entwined in each other. Entwined in each other's arm we lie there in the pale darkness, The street-light yellow painting the wall golden. The street-light... Continue Reading →
Breathing together are the wind with the length of the day; The warmth of the past season is transpiring as the warm Of the evening, becoming lengthy by each passing eve. The skin fair has started to be tanned where the mid-day sun Touches; the naked unguarded portion of the body. Who is there to... Continue Reading →
Searching for the proper verb I was out there amongst the words in the thesaurus, Bengali to English it was. Randomly I opened a page near to the intended Bengali alphabet, and got struck at another Bengali word, not a verb it is; a homographs; it was both a noun and an adverb-- depends on... Continue Reading →
On the slab of my southern windows they sat and chirped Telling it's time, and we are here. They dance, they prance on the patterned grills-- grabbing the attention, you can say. They chirp, they dance letting the world know-- we are still here. Once, not long ago, they have disappeared just to return. They... Continue Reading →
Have you seen that. The painting with two women and a man. Yes. It's like a concert, that had been conducted once in a wealthy man chamber. Yes, it is call The Concert, some arts by a penniless painter named Vermeer. What are you doing? Taking a closer look? What do you see? That painting;... Continue Reading →
Asleep few are hiding in the shades of the bridge that had ruin their homes. The awakening ones there roaming like a lion looking not for the hunt, but to mate. The man you see is not the man you're seeing; it's actually a reflection that you wished to see; the peeling of the mask... Continue Reading →
With a cigarette on the mouth, you dreamed of the world to be under your feet. Hsuan-tsang, Magellan, Livingstone, Colonel Suresh Biswas used to be there in your mind. The world, the journey, the unknowns used to attract you more than the tender loves and the addictions that your friends used to be submerged in.... Continue Reading →
A can be one; it can be a lot; it can be again used to denote the singular. Like he; no one remembered his birth name; everyone of the few who knows him came up with some good ol'names. Good man he was, they'll say. Fact is though Jack of all trade he was, they... Continue Reading →
To My Dida (Gran'ma)... The plot is there but the house had been rebuilt. No one chant hundred and eight names of Krishna rounding the house anymore in the morning; and collect flowers for the morning puja. The plants are there maybe; last time I saw them, I touched them was two years ago. They... Continue Reading →
When I was kid at the school I saw, one day, a body wrapped in woolen rug Lying by the side of the road just down the bridge where I used to take turn to my home. There was a body we, me and my friends, know very well. But, we don't know what would... Continue Reading →
(In the bottom drawer,) The saucepan, burnt and without a handle, medium in size. The age old muffler, brown, belonging to my father, I never came to know. The winter clothes, sweaters and woolen shirts and t-shirts, those I'll never wear again. The kantha or baby-wrapping clothes made from an old sharee of Ma; belonging... Continue Reading →
