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Born in Agra and brought up in military camps all across
India, June is now settled with her family in Calcutta. She attributes
all her education to her wide and extensive travels to the remotest
interiors of India as well as farther known and unknown
regions of North America,Europe and parts of Asia.
June Nandy has received her double post-graduate degree in English
literature and Hindi and landed herself a job of
Translator/Interpreter; she never wanted to pursue an academic chair
that is confined within walls (she believes, academia ought to be free
of authority). She has received her B.Ed and PGD in Public Relations
(topper) and Translation Science (topper). Her alma-mater
includes Presidency College, Calcutta, Calcutta University, IGNOU, N.
Delhi and BILAMS, Calcutta.
She has been trained in Hindustani Classical Music from Triveni
Kala Sangam, New Delhi, Late Ustaad Sagiruddin Khan and Ghazal tutelage
under Ustaad Sabir Khan. She has been telecasted by Calcutta
Television Centre (DD-Kendra-I) and other semi-classical city soirees
number of times.
Her poetries and film & theatre reviews have been published by
reputed national and international literary journals and commercial
magazines. |
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| Finished, Reading A Book I’ve seen strong, sure hands of Men shutting books with a snap flicking it onto the desk after reading a book. Quarter of the dapper wrist watch peeping out of their cuff sleeves, despite the links; while they lunge for a cigarette or a cup of coffee.
1001 Nights You thrust the thermal-proof beaker into my mouth; its embossed scale-markings hurt; makes me sick. I might as well be one.
Recurringly, you read: acrid, now rancid; yes, the seeds of my mouth are are saline beads.. that I bite with my teeth.
I thought role Scheherazade lay in wait for me. It is but, the red-beaked parrot in your head that eats up my sun-flower.
In the dark of the dungeon the vaseline of the melted moon dabs itself on the chapped skin.
The 1001 nights keep repeating the orphan stories.
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The Minister's Wife They say—spices lose their flavours...esp. cinnamon; it has to be bottled up with a tight fitting lid... to be taken out— crushed and grounded. Nothing beats that fresh scent—for seasonings.
He says—“wife, though you are dull and dark... you have a scent of a cinnamon bark...I must not allow you to dry up in that kitchen rack.”
Elections are harrowing times; I hear— “ministers season their campaigns with compassionate issues.”
I wish— --it wasn’t all grey and bleak; but then, I can always picture myself dangling off the Ashoka tree...like it’s bright orange flowers. They say—it made buddha-a sorrow-less being.
--I was a Jackson Pollock drip painting spread on the floor; he transformed the canvas into modern day arena: with epic struggle in long continuous bloody lines.
--I could as well be a lone feather... a goose plume—out from a shuttle-cock; falling down, from the high above: limbs frayed...ruffled. Its thud... is always silent.
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Pyromaniac hands. The night pulp spreads out: recycled, cheap newsprint; a grey serum of a whey.
The pyromaniac hands of the tall lamp posts write the late version in comic sans.
Down below...from the footpath the grim-reaper looks up: beggarly; how dependent upon me.
The air has a fever; I cannot ride his back— I catch him in short breaths. The trachea compress, smiling slight; I bear... to send me to the morn; again.
On the window-sill, the carcass of the book sits without a character; it befits the meat hung in the shop of a butcher.
I rub my face in its page, it is full of cry: an ember left by the fire.
Translating Pain Pain has its own eyes; though I had been watching me for long—with blind pride.
I ride...its aching shaft; inside— an unsteady lance hangs down, keeping to the left, scraping the now frozen stained glass that once swallowed the sighs.
Underneath—is an afflictive set of archipelago: of one me, two me...more such reef of coral debris.
Housed in the heart, this pain has a mind; not the staccato bolt from the blues...that strikes for milli-months, to die young.
Life is brief; it’s meaning briefer. Search for the purport ends into this coronary pain...telling me: this is all there is to it.
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