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Dumbing Days

by Priyanka
(West Bengal, India)

Birthdays

‘Is it your birthday today?’
My flat-neighbor asked me.
I was quite puzzled by the question.
Like ‘what she will do with my birthday?’
Then I recollected myself.
And asked her,
‘Is it 16th June today?’
She was puzzled. Like me.
‘Then yes’. I said.
‘Well there’s a card for you,
Wishing “Happy Birthday!”
That’s how I came to know. ’
She told. In a tone of apologizing.
As if knowing someone’s birthday is a crime.
‘Who can it be?’ I thought.
‘Unless any old friend?
Who else has to do anything with my birthday? ’
And so it was.
Shimera, a long childhood friend.
I thought of the old days,
When we used to celebrate birthdays
She would bring cakes and gifts
And numbering candles:
9, 10, 11. To remember ages.
How exciting those birthdays were!
How so lovely
And parcels of happiness!
Now my birthdays are like;
Descending another stair.
Experiencing new evils.
And new holocausts.
There were birthdays then,
Now, it is another horrible day.
**

Red Wall

I wrote my resignation on the last brick of the
Red wall.
Where blue birds were screeching and scuffing
Within themselves
For a piece of meat!
The audacity in their quarrelling
Hanging high on the
Red wall.
I saw my thin soul flying high over the
Red wall.
To outreach the clomping creature
To start a new imbroglio with the precarious stars.
I know the history of the Red wall
I know the history of the birds
I know the history of the precarious stars.
And I hope,
Soon,
I will know the history of my resignation.