Your body turns to a map of isopleths taut beneath your skin—
hungering for your Antarctic cold perhaps—
bodies of scars, bodies of nerves and veins,
freckled effluvia. Bodies of glaciers. Bodies I inhale.

Your voice hovers above the cascading chill, rising and falling: one mutilated, but silken, wing. Casket of silence— borrowed, buried— tides without a moon.

Around my dark iris there bobs a ringlet of flambé-blue. On my cheeks an arbor vitae of blood hungering for my sun. You have eyes the color of icebergs, the color of wind over lagoons, homesick stars.

I want to ask what part of you is brittle, what part snowfield, blizzard but my lips have forgotten how to move. I am swallowing your radiations

I am learning to burn to keep warm.

©Mohana Das

©Mohana Das

002: Butterflies have been molesting blossoms of dawn: an upright stalk of carrot fleur noted a day ago has turned to tuber. The scent of fertilization swamps the air.

Soon it will be mid-spring.

003: Dollops of shimul on stark, leaf-shorn boughs applique the afternoon sky. The land has been scavenged by breeding, poverty — where there were mounds of grass sloping tenderly to a jet-black pool, there are shanties and pig-excreta now. Children with mud caking their buttocks run amok through piles of dented utensils, goat offal. Young mothers chide and are chidden, their thin arms sticking like insect appendages on the sides. The fuchsia-fleshed shaapla is gone. The palash no more torches the eyes with its flame-coloured plumes.

Only packets of loose earth roam with bird-like candour.

004: Later as they trudge home behind the cattle, clouds of dust pottering like winged love letters at their cracked feet, they do not have a name. Someone talks of fleshing a katla fish. Someone talks of fever and gangrene, ek mutho chaal. Others whisper how their vaginas, now exhausted, hang like shrunken aparajita flowers within the anatomy — undesired and useless after seasons of chaffing. A wild-haired girl with almonds for eyes crosses her scraggly legs almost antiseptically, like an irreverent spasm.

005: Stars hang like clusters of fire-candy, dying in the orb-eyes of preternaturals who roam the khaalpaar all night. Their silver anklets chime in branches and boughs, in the geometric dyspraxia of bamboo groves, asking — the syllables heavy with pain — a few sprigs of tactile love.

©Mohana Das

The vineyards are so gnarled they bear no fruit. Wine is blood (only human now). Your homeland lies in splinters inside your throat. Not a bird is left. Everybody hews limbs off each other. You were tired, little head lolling side to side; she took you in. Beneath the damask sepals of your heart, hope had dehisced. You had no language. Childhood shrank under your favorite oak tree. Your old city had become all but a city.

Maybe a year or two later when your limbs gather masculinity, and the cells of your brain proliferate nebulae-like, you will know how a continent fell at your pink feet, begging mercy and peace and god knows what offal. They sold you. They ate your heart; fought on who ate more elegantly. Dear boy, someday you’ll exhume the fear off your marrow. Someday you will cut off the umbilical cord and fling it down at he remnant of men tearing themselves to chunks of bitter meat. The Mediterranean will be gutted in a gorgeous flash. Light will be salt.

Darwin awaits you. A scarab beetle lies face-down inside his goblet. The fittest have survived.

©Mohana Das

Kolkata has a unique location. The azure expanse of the Bay of Bengal, the hillocks at the edge of Chota Nagpur plateau, the luxuriant plains, the mangrove forests of Sundarban – all lie just a few hours away. Not only are travellers drawn by the natural beauty, but also by the rich architectural and religious history of the destinations.

Verdant paddy fields and blue-grey rivers add ecstatic beauty, a beauty that has moved many a poets and singers. The beaches of South Bengal and the tip of Orissa are relatively unknown and boast of pristine beauty. We have all this and more covered with this list, that you will be spoilt for choice!

Source: Day-Trips To Take From Kolkata

“Kolkata is a foodie’s paradise! The amalgamation of the distinct tastes of the Eastern & Western halves of Bengal coupled with motley of influences over history have created a gorgeous and lip-smacking melange of dishes. There are strong Mughlai, Punjabi, Chinese, Tibetan, and South Indian influences. The hint of Anglo-Indian and Armenian cuisine is subtle, but not non-existent. Globalization has introduced more exotic cuisines like Lebanese, South Asian, Greek, Italian, Mediterranean, and Japanese into the palette and niche restaurants catering to specific tastes are opening their doors to them. Bengalis love their fish, meat, and desserts – the ubiquitous mishti that is our pride.

Here are 11 places in Kolkata that you can visit for a gastronomic adventure. Welcome to the land of foodgasms!”

Read the rest of my article here.

a spoon clatters. the scarcity of rain pounds against the sole of your mojris. the tea is ripe. if the floor upends, we will be two pendant lights- you brighter, ofcourse- and the bookshelves will open their tongueless mouths and gobble us whole. “what do they call this place now?” from the window, a foreign summer wafts in.

in a parallel world, i am writing you a drawing of the city that died. the cotton interweaves, my fingertips pucker; your eyes are shards of amethyst. “little blue bird has a magic bead,” i see your lips form words. you empty your pockets of stories as i sit, milky-eyed, licking a cantankerous sun.

©Mohana Das

©Mohana Das

a gecko had perched itself on the ledge and watched with beady eyes as we lay spent, perspiring from every pore, the gold of daybreak pooled on our thighs. you had smiled as my fingers ran through your hair. my smile bloomed into a kiss. from over the rooftops, flocks of pigeon carried notes of riyaaz on their wings.

On the Road lies abandoned on your lap; pages turning wayward in the gusty fennel-breathing wind. in my tiny hands i hold unpredictability. sometimes i wonder how love slips from between fingers; how galaxies collide and birth fire balls; how the past resurrects itself and enchants us. the corner of your mouth curves into a tiny smile.

i watch till the rain dissolves the clarity of space and you become a watercolor without form, receding till your window becomes an outline only, a bulb-lit rectangle.

darling, must i ask her story? must i ask if the rain brings her dark eyes back to your mind?

©Mohana Das