I am not a poetry person...let's face it,I'm not the kind you would look out for when you're in the mood to discuss Neruda or Elliot for that matter...I can't write poetry for nuts, and I'm not a voracious devourer of poetry,either.
However,poetry composed in lucid, free flowing language manage to interest me much.I have a penchant for poetries such as these..so much so that I've often scribbled random verses I've heard somewhere in scrap pieces of paper and tucked them inside my jhola...
One such poster manged to grab my attention today...there it was prercariously hanging loose on the wall right outside JU...
The poem's called "Malda Station"...And it goes like this..

"station theke kaalo megher chhaya dekhte pai
musafir khanay jhogra kore lok
ami dekhte pai cha walla boshe kaade
dukhho holo engine-er awaaj
dukhho jokhon kome jay
neel akasher chaand dekhte pai"

some non descript,typically common place seventeen year old Raju Chakroborty wrote this..
'So what?',you'd probably say..
The irony is that Raju is a peddlar.He sells waterbottles and cold drinks at the railway station...the rest of the time he writes poetry...
It gives me goosebumps to even think that maybe someday I've bought a bottle of soda from the boy,carelessly thrusting the price in his hand, without realising for once that the fingers with which he took the money from me are the same nimble fingers that produce such wonderfully graphic poems like Malda Station
Incredible how these people still manage to dream so big despite whatever hindrances and struggles that befall them in their everyday fight for a better existence...
Kudos to Raju and all others like him who haven't yet been disillusined about life in general,and who still manage to potray the reality through such simple yet strong imageries.

[whoever wishes to read more of Raju's poems,or even other poems for that matter may log on to www.daywalka.org]