Preety Sengupta
Nationality: India
Email: deshnedisha@gmail.com
Nationality: India
Email: deshnedisha@gmail.com
Preety Sengupta
Preety Sengupta is originally from India, and lives in NewYorkCity. She has over 40 published books, mainly in her mother tongue Gujarati. She writes poems in English, Hindi and Gujarati.
The Missing World
While I consider the world my home,
A fool will I be not to know
That Home is a World.
Its walls may be imaginary,
And the roof transparent;
Yet, I breathe it in the air,
It throbs in my dreams.
Night brings in the fragrance
Through the barred windows
Of the “Night-Queen” buds
Thousands of miles away.
My consciousness is stretched
Like its shape. It fits me,
It lets me lean on its image –
The one that I carry around
Inside me,
Like a snapshot of a missing lover.
Fortunate
Standing on the shore
When I hear
The continual melody of the waves
I wonder,
Who is this musician?
Don’t his notes ever break up?
When I see
At the edge of dusk
The sky becoming resplendent
I wonder,
Who is this painter?
Don’t his colours ever run out?
Feet get tired,
And want to stop,
But I see the path
Continuing on,
And then I wonder,
Who could be such a wanderer?
What must be his destination?
When inside the heart
Suddenly flowers blossom,
When like a breeze or a drizzle
Feelings stir;
Whenever I become
Aware of being alive –
I know that
I am fortunate,
That I am
A witness to the miraculous.
Transcendence at MMA*
Flowers bloom,
With one stroke of a brush;
Eyes fill up with colours and fragrance
From all those paintings –
So many segments of places and moments.
What a surprise that
The blue skies and shimmering lagoons
Of some unknown land
Leave markings on one’s memory.
The seemingly inert shapes of sculptures
Are infused with the lilt
Of some ancient or immediate world.
Convergence here
Of beauty, imagination.
An instant of creativity
Becomes the very longing of love,
the impatience of a union,
An experience of life’s loveliness.
Miracles occur at every step,
Dispersing gloom,
Under this canopy.
* Metropolitan Museum of Art