20.5x28.5 inches; Pen drawing on handmade paper with watercolour wash (Click on image to enlarge)
Those cards
Boxes of chocolate
Smell of your soap
On my birthday
The touch
Under the blanket
A strand of your hair
On my pillow
The movie ticket
Our hands
In the dark
Mouths
On the roof
Sultry afternoons
Rain drenched
Like the crows
Sound of
Punctured bicycle tyre
Of pleasure
Maybe guilt
Surely Pain
Caught under
The mosquito
Net
Of desire
To learn French
Do French
Seduction
Wine on our
Skin
Thin veil
Of modesty lost
Liberation
In a bathtub
Dancing
Naked and sticky
‘Baby skin’
Whispered
Tickling my ears
Leaving behind
A trail
Sorrow
Of holding
Hands
In public garden
Eyes flirting
Mouths watering
A shared cup
Of ‘Irani chai’
A bite
Of jealousy
On my nipple
Dripping
Honey words
Poetry
Of laughter and
Longing for
Despair
Heart break
Distrust
‘Dry your tears!’
Bitch
The world
Never ends
To the music
Of dance beats
Sweat
Circling
Measuring
Teasing
Pulling each other
Groin to groin
‘kambakht Ishq’
Old monk
In my vein
Passion
In our loin
Kissing
Till the faithful
Are summoned
Morning prayers
Warm embrace
Enchanted sleep
Deception of
Separation
Distance untraveled
Unwanted
Complications of being
Uncomfortably numb
With failure
Dejection
‘What went wrong?’
Nothing went right
Expectations
Stifled and buried
Dreams
In between
Right and wrong
Flows a river
Of longing
Infested with
Ghosts
Drowned possibilities
Piranhas
Of guilt
And a leaky boat of
Salvation is slowly
Ferried by despair.- Rudra Kishore Mandal
