Poems by Kalparshi Bandyopadhyay

Echo’s Lament

One day when he was out hunting deer, she secretly followed him through the woods.
She wanted to address him, but how could she! She was a beautiful woman after all. A
woman always is unable to speak first. When he finally heard footsteps and shouted
Who's there?” She answered Who's there? Confused, he looked around and upon
seeing no one, he asked Why do you run from me? which she in turn repeated to the hunter. Finally, he said Let us meet together. She, being more eager to reply, repeated
Let's meet. And she came out of the woods in order to wrap her hands around him in
longing. He ran away from her embrace and said, while running “May I die before
what’s mine is yours. She repeated only what's mine is yours. Heartbroken by him,
she spent the rest of her life in loneliness and crying for the love she never knew, crying
until only her voice and her bones remained, her bones turned into stone and her voice
still roaming forever to haunt the earth. God never forgave him also, as he was proud of
him, and disdained her love in vanity. God duped him to a beautiful lake, where he saw
his own reflection and fall in love. Oh, what an intense love it was. He forgot to eat. He
forgot to sleep. He fell sick and died.

Domestic Bliss

Waking up at dawn he saw two little birds from his balcony. Were they songbirds!
Sipping up from a tall coffee mug, he thought once. He saw the male bird putting in a
considerable amount of pre-copulation investment every time the female bird refused to
copulate. His investments were in terms of building up a nest for her. He saw him using
his own saliva mixed food to keep the nest firm and slicked with the tree.
Why the female hegemony forces male to invest heavily for their future offspring’s even
before they are born, when she herself is no less inferior to male counterpart!!
A male who waits for a coy female to have sex with him, isn’t he actually relinquishing
his chance to have sex with other females! So, by spending a huge amount of time in
courtship before the actual sex takes place, a male inescapably becomes committed to
her. He is then left with little desire to leave her. Because he knows for any female, he
approaches in future will put him in the same routine before she actually gets into sex.
Time is a huge investment one can make in others lives. They say time is money.
Time heals all wounds too but only when you presume the source of grief is finite.

She Who Is

She who is eternally young in your mind and whose thoughts never go out from the head
even for once, knowing well that you are not going to grow old together and yet her lilt
of laughter continues to drone between your ears till such time you die your death, is
anguish, sweetest of its kind.  
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