Friday, May 1, 2020

PRAVAT KUMAR PADHY


PRAVAT KUMAR PADHY

The Day Begins With

The day begins
With reading newspaper.
At breakfast hour
It highlights on the top:
Terrorist rocked the village
Innocent stabbed to death
The city remained darkened
Under murky clouds of curfew.
Dowry-death maintains its
Usual rising graph.

Riots, terrorism, and ragging
Rarely miss any page.
Half of the coverage,
With political bargaining,
All the way eats away.
News on hoarding, raids
Rape, strike, and unrest
Hardly fail to appear.
The rise in price and population
Faithfully ascend
On the graphic scale.

Communal fight
Maintains its publication
As a permanent column.
Every day the newspaper
Cries with morning tears.
Some look at it with the usual way
Others stare with anguish.

Cartoon honestly
Speaks a lot in silence.
Well that is how
The morning shows the day.







Grandpa Says

The poor fisherman
points the finger 
To the plane nosing up the sky.
 “I shall love to fly
But I am neither a bird
Nor I have wings of my own”,
The boy says in a tender voice.
The Grandpa replies,
“You will fly on your wings of passion,
Sweat of hard work and fuel of success”.
Pausing for a while, close to the receding wave
The boy silently picks up a handful of sand.
He draws his dream-sketch
With his tender fingers.
The rolling tears Grandpa humbly veils
Pretending something glued to his eyes.








The Confused Man

Carrying a sword in one hand
And a dove in other,
He is standing
On the slippery edge of time.
His one eye pines
For a new light
And the other,
With a spiteful look,
Stares at the blood-stained field.
His heart
Leaps for entering into a new self,
But the mind
Squabbles for making a beginning of death.
In the darkness of sleazy civilization,
The sword swallowed the hot blood
Of the innocent
And the confused man
Lost at last on the slippery edge of time.







I am a Woman

convenience
of conquering everything
through pages of time
woman slotted to stay
second in the human counting

****        ****      ****
rituals and myths
instill gender bias
wonder nature
never coins in evolution
defining a tree: male or female

****        ****      ****
she is asked
to stand like a tree
no voice, no complain
someone steals away her earth  
mercilessly sowing a sinful seed

****        ****      ****
in despair
she sprints to hold
the rising sun
to gather the warmth
for her forsaken womb

****        ****      ****
the sea
engulfs her hope
as if
the sun sleeps in advance
leaving her alone counting the sands

****    ****    ****
sun dips
behind the distant hill
twilight shadow
veils her lost youthful life
sinking hope in the early evening

****    ****    ****

deep burrows
and the oozing agonies…
like the moon
the cut marks of bravery
she never tries to veil

****   ****   ****
awaiting
the clouds to soothe
with drops of rain
the thick salty tears
fill the craters of her wound

****        ****      ****
wiping tears
gently from her face
with a needle of hope
she threads the pain in between
reading the life, like an anthology of poem

****        ****      ****
Note: The above five-line poems are excerpts
 from the manuscript, ‘I am a Woman”.


PRAVAT KUMAR PADHY

PRAVAT KUMAR PADHY has obtained his Masters of Science and Technology and Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology, ISM Dhanbad. He has a certification of the Executive Education Programme on “Advanced Management” from IIM-Bangalore. His literary work cited in Interviews with Indian Writing in English, Spectrum History of Indian Literature in English, Alienation in Contemporary Indian English Poetry, Cultural and Philosophical Reflections in Indian Poetry in English, History of Contemporary Indian English Poetry etc. His write ups have been published in leading English and Odia Newspapers including Indian Express, The Times of India, Dharitri, Nabalipi and others. His Japanese short form of poetry (Haiku, Tanka, Haibun, Haiga, Senryu, Tanka Prose) appeared in various international journals and anthologies.He guest-edited “Per Diem, The Haiku Foundation, November Issue, 2019,” (Monoku about ‘Celestial Bodies’).  His poems received many awards, honours and commendations including Writers Guild of India, Editors’ Choice Award at Asian American Poetry, Poetbay, Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival International Haiku Honourable Mention, UNESCO International Year Award of Water Co-operation, The Kloštar Ivanić International Haiku Award, IAFOR Vladimir Devide Haiku Award, 7th Setouchi Matsuyama International Photo Haiku Award, and others. He has a page in the American Haiku Registry, The Living Haiku Anthology and The Living Senryu Anthology. His haiku has been chosen for Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku. His work is showcased in the exhibition “Haiku Wall”, Historic Liberty Theatre Gallery in Bend, Oregon,USA and tanka, ‘I mingle’ is featured in the “Kudo Resource Guide”, University of California, Berkeley. The poem, “How Beautiful”, published in 1983 in the leading Newspaper, Indian Express, has been included in the Undergraduate English Curriculum at the university level. He has seven collections of verse to his credit. He holds a place of honour in the World Who’s Who (Europa Biographical Reference, Rutledge, London) and Who’s Who Emerging Writers 2020.

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