To Ghalib, With Love Beyond the Panorama September 2, 2021

To Ghalib, With Love

Written by Tathagata Banerjee


There’s still some rainwater, lingering on my window-pane

Like a scent that has still not faded from the air,

Some stories just keep on being alive…

Deeply buried hushed emotions did, as always, fail to find a language. 

Ghalib, I’ve always been fascinated by the stories that I gather

What do I have to do with poems, after all…

These half-hearted could’ve-beens are just like old novels

It’s been ages since I last turned a page or two

Ghalib, my pen’s getting older by the century in every passing hour

I’m barely alive, my voice and breath getting choked every now and then…

Humanity has a price in the stock market now,

And we’ve only condemned the society and avoided shadows

Which take us, back to us…

Like a harrowing silence, it becomes a practice slowly

To try to find darkness in the brightest of days

I’ve spent a few lifetimes in the search of my own name

In old, forgotten black and white papers and documents. 

Ghalib, when will I ever have a moment of peace

To look at the mirror, like you did…

And when all was said and done

And I’ve taken roads which led me to nowhere,

Ghalib, I too have felt the heaviness in my steps, 

All those voices that were known once in another life

I can’t seem to distinguish them now from the railroad crowds. 

Ghalib, I too have known a thing or two about melancholia and pain;

It’s only that, I’m no poet.


Tathagata Banerjee
Tathagata Banerjee

A lover of poetry and short stories, Tathagata also writes sports related articles and reviews on books and movies. 

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