Prof. Purushottam Lal

(Previously published with due permission from the author in Dhvani Sahitya Chakra’s journal DHVANI – Issue 2 – 2006)

A MIDWINTER FOG THAT COULD HAVE CONCERNED SHANKARA

People are swirled around like phantoms in a fog patterns of Maya moving in a vague pattern of formlessness: What Shankara said confounds more heads than is admitted.

If what I see, the shapes that all arise out of this mark, are figments of my eyes, then I have lived in a strange fairy land, and you were a mere apparition, my friend.

So all that I have felt, all that has crept to my subconscious, may be classed as what? Shankara was wise, we all admit. He tripped when he forgot the illusion of his own thought.

BOAT ON THE HOOGHLY

Vulture on carcass and floating this boat

Lifts sails like a swan’s neck on deck

Picnickers from Dakshineswar to Belur

On ferry singing and banana peels The boat keels

To the right: and in the water a flicker of sick.

Lamp light,

pale boat on the Hooghly tonight,

Tonight, two lovers sit on the prow and vow

Love; for the sinking sea rises to touch a star.