By: Kousik Adhikari

After the October rain fades out
The sky begins blushing like a newly-wed damsel
Yet to be rotten in the game of water, the clouds sail out
To some nowhere land, I set aside my nets, angling cords for the rain is gone,
That knows so many youthful fishes and their rotten
Pursuing smiles so often!
Till the first blood makes that damned water-bed flowers!
What an angling! I shall think.
Pondering over the earth, water and flower
I put a ‘To-let’ board on the first floor of my house,
My father had closed after my mother’s death,
The news spread,
They came one after another
Promising so many things to this would be landlord,
I grinned, chuckled, pondered and with a sinking and smiling face
Rejected them all,
Somehow after some months I have chosen
A newly-wed couple, still with blooming hearts, still unhurt
From this rotten angling world,
Sitting on my ancient bed I shall now hear carefully
Their splashing, scuttling through the sea, I have leased them to swim.
The world shall stink after the dead fishes are dry by the wind borne from water,
Nobody would call me till the next rain,
Sitting on the top of the sea, dangling my legs unto water
I shall watch two finished fishes’ running mad
For a single drop of water after the brief hide and seek that this world permits,
Amidst this rotten salted sea,
And after the angling is done.