Ananya Chatterjee’s Two Poems

Ananya Chatterjee is a poet who has carved a place for her art in the poetic world for some time. Her verses flow seamlessly like a gurgling spring into the arms of a river, steadily and surely. Her poems stir and celebrate deep seated human needs and emotions that are slowly eroding in a fast-paced mechanised world of instant gratification. She doesn’t crave fulfilment but is ready to connect to be ‘unhappy together’. In an almost Keatsean vein she says “It cannot be love if it’s complete”. This is the beauty of love the poet versifies, it doesn’t demand, it is happy to find!

1.
When they ask me to summarise
our love story,
I never have a perfect answer.
But I can say with certainty that
it all started with deafening noise.
Amid the bickering of rickshaw pullers,
and incessant tinkering
of bronzed temple bells…
our hearts collided.

It was then that the cacophony
retreated in reluctant steps
to a distant corner
of our floating minds
while a cloud of tender silence
burst above our bewildered heads.

We stood stupefied and drenched
in showers of priceless harmony.

The world beyond us kept revolving
like a reel from a silent film.
A beggar child nudged at your
chapped elbow skin,
reassuring me that
this could not be a dream.

Reassuring me that I could finally sleep
unwinding my muscles
in the temple courtyard,
resting my head
against earthen pillars-
copulating Gods grazing my hair…

They’re mostly disappointed
with my answer… its half done,
they complain… Like a lotus
that forgot to bloom at dawn

How do I make them believe…
It cannot be love if it’s complete.

2.

I find my answers
In your umbrella-less stride.
The showers haven’t been too kind.

Your hair reminds me
Of that wet,
moth-eaten broomstick
behind my pantry door.

Those dripping shoelaces,
pothole-brown legs…
are glaring contradictions
to every rain song video
I have watched till date.

Every rain song link
With a million hits.

You hop on oblivious to
sniggering passersby,
soaking in the downpour
with a tune in your head.

That’s how I know
you are the one.

I know then, we could be
unhappy together.

The world, you see,
Is pretty messed up today.
Being unhappy together
is a rare, rare find.

People I know
are resigned to
spending their lows
in solitude.

In such a world
Of disjoint
mushroom clouds
I have run into you
and your shameless stride.

This tells me perhaps
it wouldn’t be so bad
to share a
sorrow-life with you.

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