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Best Poems Written by Sumit Majumdar

Below are the all-time best Sumit Majumdar poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

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The Pauper

THE PAUPER


Bent and frail, the old man stood
Seeking alms only when in need of food
Without any whining to gain sympathy
But an upturned palm and a silent plea

In the five odd years that I saw him on Lansdowne Road
To and from office with long strides as I strode
Merely a few times did he indicate his need
Which at first I ignored, as I did his creed

One afternoon, on my way back home
Engrossed in thought and walking alone
An upturned palm was thrust from the side
And I fished for change and my rancour died

After that, he ignored me a while
I felt he was testing me, as he would a child
A frugal life he lived, and his needs were few
To him it mattered little whence the ill wind blew

There is a temple off the road where he lived
Where the rich and powerful come to voice their need
And at the temple gate loiter a clutch of beggars
But never he; he sported different feathers

He shunned the spot where the pickings were fair
He had his dignity though his back was bare
A pungent odour still pervades the space he dwelt
Even a week after the morning of his death

Torso hanging forward between parted knees
His lips barely grazing mother earth for a farewell kiss
I saw him slouched thus, on that log that day
And distinctly recall it was morning, and the 14th of May

He died with dignity on his wooden throne
In death, as in life, he was all alone
I still don’t know what his story was
Nor how the dice of his fate was cast

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Princess

I recall it was just the other day
Featured in the daily for which we pay
Your blown-up photo splashed across
The front page for all to gloss
Your background and your virtues extolled
For your wedding bells were soon to toll
With a king-in-waiting as the groom
You would wilt or you would bloom
For marriage makes or marriage breaks
And happiness, it gives or takes.

Demure and with dimpled smile
With an innocent heart, free of guile
The press was exuberant, so were we
You were the most charming in the royal family.
Welcomed all across the globe
The royal couple widely roved
Ambassadors of all things good
Displaying virtues like royalty would
You touched hearts wherever you went
Concern and compassion were your strength.

You were blessed in due course
With two sons that God had chose
Then differences with the prince surfaced
And you lost face, where you once graced
And while your marriage began to flounder
Your man, the prince continued to blunder
On the treacherous rocks of marital infidelity
You were shattered – your happiness was the casualty.

You decided to go your separate ways
Those were also the wishes of the palace
The trauma of separation was sheer hell
The ways of royalty were beginning to tell.
Now, hordes of newsmen invaded your privacy
In your land and beyond, you became a refugee
The air was also rife with rumours
Of liaisons and friendships and misdemeanours
Your saddest day though, was the divorce
Of you, whose touch was like the kiss of a rose.

And alone, sweet Princess, you forged along
Your grace, in adversity, inspired many a song
Of worthy causes, you were still a crusader
And you remained ever, a loving mother.
It is said, you had found love at last
And the leech like lensmen went wild with thirst
For photos which augment tabloid sales
They chased you in cars and astride motorcycles.
For you, a Parisian tunnel was the end of the road
You didn’t reap in life, what you had sowed
And while your life ebbed within the wreck
The paparazzi zoomed in, to make hay off the break
Your blood-spattered close-ups drove them to frenzy
As you lay helpless, unattended and in agony.
And later in the night, mercifully all was darkness
The world woke to a tragedy caused by sheer madness

Details | Sumit Majumdar Poem

Lady of the Night - Ii

Dreaming of a pot of gold, you came to town
It was sprawling, this metropolis, you knew none around
Your earnings were scant and engagements, irregular
The overseer assured steady income in lieu of a favour
You succumbed to ward off uncertainties, and gradually sank deeper

You were born of impoverished stock, high up in the Himalayas
Your clean looks and youthful age were your kin’s panacea
Your home, the arid plains, where land is mostly barren
Starvation a reality, your innocent world was broken
When it comes to sacrifice, inevitably you are chosen

You were a country girl, pubescent and barely thirteen
Travelling to the big city with a distant kin
To serve an urban family with mop and pail
A drug laced cup of tea made you vulnerable to a cartel
You woke, imprisoned, in a dingy room of a highway brothel

Battered and beaten and raped to submission
You forgot the gods and your daily oblation
Your escort paid dearly for his betrayal and malice
Was it your homage to the gods or backstreet justice?
You languish now in jail, but the brothel still exists

You were in your second year, studying BA (Honours)
With a weakness for the life of the upper class
And the knowledge to achieve what you felt, you must
The initiation was debasing – no niceties, just frenzied lust
The payment was in cash –the first time wasn’t the last

You are not alone in your tainted existence
Women arriving at the metropolis in suburban trains
Working by day and exiting before the peak hour rush
Living in opulence, in times past – barely middle class
Very discreet, these devil women and financially flush

You conceived, a professional risk, and the baby you resolved to keep
Now nineteen and actively trafficking, his misdeeds make you weep
His latest catch, a tender ten year old, the same age you were shackled
Your flesh and blood, the son, you had mothered from the cradle!
Your agony was incomplete, now it had completed its cruel cycle

Hail lady of the night
With time, you’ve overcome both fear and fright 
And blended the distinction between wrong and right
You’ve lost your vision, though you retain your sight
In a world shrouded in darkness where the sun still shines bright

Details | Sumit Majumdar Poem

Lady of the Night - I

You were born in a war ravaged state
You lost your man to the caprices of fate
You fell prey to your wayward ways
Victims of betrayal, greed or circumstances
You were drowned in the tide of darkness

Depraved incidents of forced sex and perversions
Rooted in carnal desires and unsated frustrations
The fleshpots in town frowned upon as receptacles of sin
Wisdom of society’s views wearing very thin
Thwarting those in heat from living out their dream

Objects of titillation and subjected to derision
Unfortunately placed or forced in a profession
Reckoned as the world’s oldest
Harlots you are, courtesans at best
Buffers to man’s baser side without respite or rest

Mistress to royalty or a gangster’s moll
You’ve mastered the act of a defenceless doll
Apparently enjoying the bizarre and the extraordinary
But behind this masquerade is the quintessential mercenary
Pandering only to the philandering of the paying strata of humanity

You frequent raunchy night-clubs and sleazy bars
Walk the streets and lurk around dark corners
You are often just a number in the telephone directory
Or recommended for unusual skills, honed to a speciality
But you seldom blackmail, reflecting your innate nobility

Possibly you booze to drown your pain
And get your high on heroin and cocaine
You are accused of ruining marital ties
And of driving your lovers to a life of vice
Who squander fortunes, just affording your price

Hail lady of the night
Only death can release you from your sordid plight
You are the paramour without the strings of a wife
You are the reprieve from loneliness and strife
But alas, you suffer damnation in your earthly life

Details | Sumit Majumdar Poem

My Redhead - Dictionary Fun Contest

Rehearsing my lines with passion
And yearning for her affection
A redhead flame, I was keen to meet
Desiring a meaningful relationship
My inner soul would cherish the touch of her tender lips
And the taste of salt from a shared packet of chips
But each attempt to connect was a struggle
Like that of a soldier fighting another’s battle
The fear of scorn is courtship’s doom
But soldiering on might see love bloom
Despite the abomination of rejection, I was undeterred
Cupid’s bamboozle, I’d outwit and find my love

Details | Sumit Majumdar Poem

A Girl Was Raped In a Bus That Night

A girl was raped in a bus that night 
By six men, all drunk, who had lost their minds	
Ambrosia was the elixir of gods, it is said
But godlike men in this age aren’t born or made
Alcohol wrecks judgment, makes beasts out of men 
Deeds under its influence have put us men to shame
Shops abound in our nation where alcohol is sold
The government till overflows when the weather turns cold
A corrupt force is tasked to uphold the country’s law
Incidents occurring on a daily basis expose this basic flaw
Fear of law is no deterrent for miscreants and crooks
The police prefer to look away; with them, they are in cahoots  
But a girl still battles death today aided by a ventilator
Skewered with an iron rod that night, unending was her horror
Demonstrations against this shame were met with brutal force
Citizens showing solidarity were bludgeoned without remorse
The hand that wields the baton to protect civil society
Is now the hand that throttles free voice and liberty
Bad governance, we know is the bane of any nation
Bad policing and lawlessness is responsible for any country’s degeneration
Instead of upholding law and maintaining order
Law enforcers are subdued by their political masters
Whose lack of will to rein in the force given selfish political aspirations 
Stems from a sense of indebtedness for furthering their ambitions 
Burning state fuel at night they stalk and chase prey
Fleecing shady truckers and wheeler-dealers who operate in markets grey
This extortion by night on city road and state highway
Robs the state of much needed revenue and is an add-on to their pay
Similar incidents happen each day of the year and night
In night’s anonymous darkness or blatantly by daylight
With the force preoccupied in matters so vital
Who will protect our girls and control the crime spiral
The government of the day is callous to people’s concerns
Callous to  a daughter’s fate on whom men on a bus took turns

Details | Sumit Majumdar Poem

On the Catwalk

In numerous locales countrywide, they hold sway
Pirouetting at intervals like ballerinas from Bolshoi
Beauteous, feline and very feminine
Slender to the point of emaciation, not quite
Cultivating the undernourished look on a frugal diet
Decidedly austere for a longer tenure in the limelight
Basking in the fleeting warmth of an adulatory audience
A gathering of the doting kindred and the upwardly mobile
Some dirty old men on the sly, dirty young men too
Glued to their seats craning for a better view
By and large captive by choice, a handful perforce
Sitting through to pen their weekly column
Giving those they fancy their due in the sun
Witnesses to a parade of demure eyed lasses
And a few with flashy looks walking tall on stilettos
Essentially female and contoured though not prominently so
At least not to a marked degree, yet with excellent muscle tone

Opulence, no longer deemed a career necessity
Once considered right stuff, now rejected as wrong size
An hour-glass shape belonging to an age bygone 
But hardly so, from the viewers’ mind, in retrospect
Enchanting and alluring yet not overtly titillating
Each in a state of dress and undress
Willing tools of designers flaunting their creations
Sporting dresses and hats and shoes, and lingerie too
In black or white and loud or subdued hues
Displaying formal wear, casual wear, swimsuits and sleep suits
Some scanty and figure hugging, others flowing and loose
A bony look required for some, others fulsome
A voyeur’s paradise, to be sure
Indulging a fetish without stooping too low
Chilly weather was never reason enough to cancel a show
Heat of arc-lamps taking care of goose pimples
Or brandy taken neat infusing the needed heat

Harbingers of tomorrow’s fashion and pall-bearers of today’s
The strobe lit platform of the pageant
Serving to launch new faces or is it legs?
The leggy look personified by Twiggy of yore
Carried through in the interim and sustained by the new genre
Captivating without doubt, and thorough professionals
Displaying unruffled demeanour and tutored bearing of thoroughbreds
Exuding confidence with every graceful step they take
Cool as ice despite the harsh glare of stage lights
And callous catcalls from boorish males
Performing in a backdrop of future fashion trends
Money and fame finding some, eluding others
Be it centre stage or in the shadows 
It is bread on the catwalk for all

Details | Sumit Majumdar Poem

Bangladesh: the Birth of a Nation - Ii

A civil war flared up and raged on for freedom
Unequal it was, this bloody war for honour and secession
The natives renamed their land Bangladesh
Inviting anew the wrath of a desperate West

The army’s presence then, was overwhelming in their land
 Due to the simmering discontent within and a border to be manned
And from ground and air the armed forces effortlessly struck
It was anarchy all the way with the West’s army running amuck

In thousands they perished, nameless sons of the soil
But the army had orders and the people’s aspirations to foil
They killed and burned and looted and raped
Digging mass graves to conceal evidence of the dead

Granaries were burnt and villages razed
The troops shot all that moved and Bangladesh bled
Women captured alive, endured inhuman pain
Brutally used, they’d be killed with a bullet to the brain

Through their brutal acts in ’71, a sovereign state struck terror
And as news of the carnage spread, an impotent world watched in horror
Protector of civilian lives, the army had turned butcher
Nine months later and a million dead, Bangladesh resembled an abattoir

Resistance was futile against the war machine
Would the aspirations of Bangladeshi’s remain just a dream?
In this riverine country that year, the monsoons suddenly arrived
Rivers in spate impeded troop movement and halted the state’s genocide

With the receding flood waters, India joined the fray
But now Nixon’s 7th Fleet showing solidarity with Pakistan steamed into Bengal’s bay
Mercifully the Indian leadership stood resolute and undeterred
And the rampaging army in Bangladesh was quickly outmanoeuvred

There was no resistance from the state sponsored killers
Ninety thousand troops surrendered meekly to the liberators
Reports of atrocities and mass graves were dismissed as slander and lies
The masterminds were let off the hook, pressured by powerful allies

Details | Sumit Majumdar Poem

My Neighbourhood

The road to my backyard is long and straight
Evergreen trees abound and provide welcome shade
Home to myriad birds, butterflies and the bees
Last summer their branches were sawn off, without notice
The orgy with power-saws lasted barely a day
The trees shorn of foliage, the limbless torsos remained
To secure the safety of a VIP on a state visit
To a smog-laden metropolis, labouring hard to breathe

A few years back, we moved house to an oasis of green
But now, the storm of development is relentlessly closing in
Razing and levelling with electric saws and bull dozers
And a host of equipment used by modern day builders
Pile drivers mounted on rigs clump through the day
Unrelenting even at night, when the elusive foxes bay
Grieving in the darkness with plaintive howls
For a vanishing habitat where his endangered kin prowls

They have acquired fish farms and farmland
And even encroached on the protected wetlands
Which naturally dispose tons of city waste
In danger of destruction due to greed and haste
Truckloads of rubble are dumped every day
The pace is frenetic, even in sweltering May
Toiling hard for masters, who’ve deadlines to meet
And citizens to house, from whom votes they’ll seek

A haze of dust now covers construction sites
The pace doesn’t slacken here, even at nights
Construction materials arrive here daily by the truckloads
And given shape by workmen, as planned on drawing boards
What was once green cover and blue sky
Will be concrete monoliths, stretching up very high
With parking lots and asphalt streets
And billboards and neon signs, ready to be leased


No longer will fields of mustard flowers sway sinuously in spring
Nor ripe ears of golden corn bob gently in the wind
The sounds of frogs and crickets are a memory of the past
Songbirds have fled, deprived of their natural habitat
Slowly the memory of winter’s migratory birds will fade
Never again, the razed canopy of green, provide cooling shade
As I walk through my ravaged neighbourhood, I wonder why
Impotent rage pervades through me and I silently cry

Details | Sumit Majumdar Poem

Bangladesh: the Birth of a Nation - I

We were one people, neighbours and kin
Before independence and the politician’s whim
In August’47, the brotherhood ended
The country was partitioned and we were independent

Democracy worked in India, floundered in neighbouring Pakistan
Victim to army rule and the power of the gun
And many a times since ’47, the two nations went to war
As defender of sovereign territory or blatant aggressor

A tenuous existence was Pakistan’s, to our east and west
Their land and race divide put this bond to test
The East staked its claim to governance on the people’s mandate
But unwilling to yield power, the West unleashed a campaign of hate 

Aspirations muzzled after twenty four years, bypassing legislation
Saw the birth of a defiant East yearning for liberation
A hotbed of political activity, Dhaka University was targeted
It was spring that night in ’71, the campus was surrounded

Troops loyal to the West sealed roads under night’s cover
And shells were fired in haloed ground from battle tank and mortar
Shrieking death, it is said, arced through the sky that night
Exploding amid the campus buildings, in blinding flashes of light

Besieged and battered was the East’s cradle of intellect
A grim warning for the masses, March 25 was the date
Then ground troops with weapons of death silently moved in
To slaughter at close quarters, academics and their kin

As flames licked the sky from adjacent slums
Fleeing residents were mowed down by soldiers with machine guns
The stench of burning flesh filled the night air
As bodies piled on streets were set on fire
 
The sky glowed red that night, as Dhaka burned
The orgy in the campus ended after all found were gunned
The handful, who escaped death, shed silent tears 
As ghastly fires burned to ashes, family and peers