Poetry

Breathing through the Veins of Eternity…Darjeeling

I stood still among the rhododendrons…

Bursting with vivid red, yellow, orange and loosely-hung monochromatic tones,

Bound not for the distant traveller,

but for that little child sitting amidst the dense foliage of the tea-plantation…

Thurbo, Gopaldhara and Tindharia all serrated with fancies,

whims and Durga-puja wishes that disappear across the dust,

the tea leaves and their childhood wither away to ‘nothingness’.

Breathing through the veins of eternity has been exotic,

the charisma of the Buddhist saint drools,

and dribbles with the dreams dodging the rear-view of the hills…

The permanence of human form elongated into an understanding of the nothing and ‘the everything’…

Shapes, mirages, forms and art without sophistication

blending beautifully across the lullabies of church-bells and monasteries…

The vermillioned walls of the monastery assimilating into the whitewashed cloisters of the church on top…

Darjeeling beckons…as the bedazzled serpentine roads lead to a looped Batasia,

as the cobbled footpaths of Chowk Bazaar await the footfall of the next pedestrian….

as the Teesta keeps flowing on into the vestiges of eternity…

I breathe through the veins of eternity…Darjeeling!

                                                         ~Sreetanwi Chakraborty

                                                        Kolkata, India

3 Comments

  1. Awesome, I can relate my past which are passed through the toyteain, kaleidoscope of imagination, narrative landscape of hills and a lonely shadow on the mirror are beautifully painted by your ink.

  2. Aafsheen Al Islam

    Its a beautiful poem. ☀

  3. Literally I could feel the beauty of Darjeeling through the lines. An exact definition of charm and solitude. Loved it! ♡