Autumn’s Alstonia

 

The rickety bus chugs along,

The clogged veins in the City of Joy,

Hazra, Rashbehari passes by,

While lost is a dreamy-eyed college boy

He yearns for the space, the skies and the seas

The cities in the books he roam,

But one deep breath of alstonia,

And he smiles of the land that is always home

 

October’s Chhatim, as Durga beckons,

Whenever else would you rather bloom?

That timeless scent of an autumn dusk

Rich enough to hide all gloom –

The flowers usurp in all their white

The city’s grime, the noise, the dirt

In the rhythm of the dhaaki’s beat

All you smell is the city’s mirth

 

That umbilical cord severs not

Matters not wherever you go,

Every autumn, the heartstrings tug

The chhatim blooms and time runs slow;

If you step there and smell that autumn’s dusk

You’ll find that dreamy boy even today,

A bit in you, and a bit in me –

Smiling in a flower’s whitened way…

 

18^th December, 2022