Mandira Mitra Chakraborty
Mandira Mitra Chakraborty is a poet who engages with life in its different hues! She ruminates over nature’s moods in winter, taking lessons, learning to appreciate small things for the joy and brightness they bring to life! Using images that paint winter in its mists with the sun, magpie and sleeping dog, she travels inward where she finds warmth even in the flame of a candle! Mandira versifies death as a mirror that teaches how to live, comparing this profound knowledge to ‘October’ that arrived early on, as spring! The image of a dying animal is juxtaposed with the transient beauty of the shimmery wings of a dragonfly symbolising life!
- November
Now dusk comes swiftly
Like a long-tailed magpie
Sailing down a cedar
Raised to the evening sky.
A light chill sets in the air
At dawn, sparrows feed
On the first sun
Winter glides over the vast
City in a mist, dogs
Curl in sleep.
I have learnt to feed on the little–
Small mercies, small kindnesses
Small loves. Nothing worked
In my life till I gave up the
Grandeur of the vast–
Lofty dreams, sky scraping desires
The idea of one devastating love.
Now I sprinkle a pinch of salt
On my life, take small bites
My tongue yearns
My soul burns
I warm my hands on a candle flame
How small the fire
How bright the light.
- Lessons in October
My grandmother always said
You have never lived at all unless
You’ve watched an old animal die.
Breath skimming over the surface of life–
Green dragonfly skimming
Over a gurgling stream
Shimmery wings making rainbows
In the light.
Those caskets of flesh,
Your lungs
Sifting air
Working against time
A pair of bulls yoked together
Digging through the raw cathedral of desire.
Very early in my life
It was always October.
Always an old animal dying
And a young animal watching to learn
How to live.
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