Delhiwale: His heap of broken images

Hindustan Times

10-06-2025

While the sun beats, the dead tree gives no shelter, and the cricket no relief. The world is a heap of broken images.
This evocation from poet TS Eliot's Waste Land can get uncomfortably personal. After all, a substantial chunk of our lives consists of a heap of unfinished fragments. We rarely reach the end of things. Our incomplete endeavours are of many types—a broken New Year resolution, an aborted love affair, or even a thing as banal as the Uber driver cancelling the ride. Here are three of citizen Arjit Roy's many untitled verses that failed to find their end. This evening, the Rohini-based poet scrolls through his mobile phone, showing the poems he couldn't complete due to various reasons, despite his best attempts. (Judgmental readers must be gently told that Arijit has already published a book of completed poems! Brave of him to share his incomplete works, instead of the other way round.)
1.
The moon is cut
in two equal halves tonight
It is cut with such exactness
Such quality
Such precision
That I look at the moon and wonder
If a scale was used perhaps
So perfect it indeed seems
That the mind is forced to ask
Was it possible without human touch
Or is it so perfect
Because of its very absence
2.
Why is April
The National Poetry Writing Month
Is it because
No other month had a say
Or
Nothing is more lovely
Than a summer's day
But not in India though
Then why so
Is April given this status?
I think it's for the April's fool
And just to look a bit more cool
For only fools write poetry, that too in English in India
And that too for 30 days
Surely, these chaps didn't know of life's other ways
MBA, Civils, NET, SSC, IIT & GATE
Those who aren't really poets, can leave
You aren't late
3.
O Amaltas tree
If I touch your lowest flower
Will you also grow into me?