New Book – Story Collection

प्रत्याशा (कहानी-संग्रह)

पहली बार अपनी लिखी पुस्तक हाथ में लेना हमेशा आह्लादित करता है। कुछ विलम्ब के बाद, कल हिंद युग्म द्वारा भेजा पार्सल मिला और उसमें अपनी प्रतियाँ! कई बार पन्ने पलटे, अपना नाम देखा, कहानियों के शीर्षक पर नज़र दौड़ाई, लेकिन कुछ पढ़ने की हिम्मत नहीं हुई कि कहीं कोई ग़लती ना मिल जाए। मैं जितनी बार अपना लिखा पढ़ती हूँ, उसे एडिट करने बैठ जाती हूँ। हर बार लगता है जैसे यह पंक्ति या वह कहानी बेहतर लिखी जा सकती है, और कुछ ना कुछ संशोधन करने में फिर हफ़्तों बीत जाते हैं। इसलिए छपी हुई पुस्तक पढ़ने में हमेशा डर लगता है क्योंकि अब किसी बदलाव की कोई गुंजाइश नहीं। बहरहाल, यही प्रार्थना है कि जितने भी पाठक मेरी कहानियाँ पढ़ सकें, उन्हें मेरी पुस्तक पसंद आए।

पढ़ेगा इंडिया लिंक – https://rzp.io/l/Pratyaasha

अमेज़ॉन लिंक- https://amzn.to/3jlGSPi

Valentine Eve

Are we together
is the first thought that assails me every morning
I dare not speculate
in a dream last night you were breathing next to me
so near, it seemed I might slip into your arms
a togetherness which carries the doom of parting
I love you and feel invisible
your indifference in my soul
wind keeps blowing heavy perfume of tears
sorrowful howlings, sex and disgust
your mouth set in cobwebs
there might be subtle joys in hating
the one you loved

In quarantine

it isn’t so much about
why I never see you
or hear from you
that I piece together
truncated meetings,
disconnected texts
to create a long future
of seamless togetherness
it’s my naïve adoration of
your masculine remoteness
bewitching, snaring
hypnotising, implicit belief
of one soul in two bodies
roaming in an un-lived house
the roof is all soft,
pastel-coloured
I am all alone, pining
I let my tongue run on
the fuchsia walls, carnations
in window-sills, delightful
to every sense, strawberry lips
bleeding profusely-
its celestial home, if not home
full of roses, I pick
a long thorny stem
the sky in the west is broken
by the faint light, I scribble
‘I love you,’
on red-hued clouds, whispering
‘come home.’

Hindi Story Collection

‘कुछ आपबीती कुछ जगबीती’ अब Amazon पर भी उपलब्ध है! जल्द ऑर्डर करें-

Genre- कहानी संग्रह

Author – अनुमिता शर्मा

प्रकाशक – भारतीय ज्ञानपीठ

https://www.amazon.in/kuchha-apbiti-jagabiti-anumita-sharma/dp/9387919765/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?qid=1584166937&refinements=p_27%3AAnumita+Sharma&s=books&sr=1-2

Spring Song

of all this long life only one event seems real
touched and kissed entwined in your embrace
there were things I wished you would say, in your
lovemaking all burning questions sank, unwritten
melodies nestled on my lips; slightly off-cue
I dare not catalog their rippling tune, rapture beating
upon the smoke-grimed ground like rose-fingered dawns
have we met before in an incoherent dream?
you trotting along humming two lines of my song
drawing me close in rapid arpeggios, like an open
casement a note missing, all that brightness beyond
rushing in, a bough bending in the warm breeze
thin leaves swept summer-brown stirring spring
you are not perfect, slipping in and out like scurrying
clouds; distant in your masculine cruelty
I am afraid of your perfect beauty; mystical, so young
settling to sleep beside half-eaten chocolates,
vases crammed with roses, lilies, your breath
hot on my temples carrying sweetness of red wine
toes touching, arms clasped, your head on my breast
enflamed verses on loop, when I have these safe
in our metaphysical unity, what more did I need?

Conjuration

I play with images
you set floating in my mind,
every illusion casting
an identical shadow as we race
surrendering to the delirium
of which you remain in control
knowing it’d be over soon,
that the ground would become
frozen again.

I don’t even know what I say
at such moments,
you are growing silent every day
it’s always night where I am,
“I love you,” you say
if something has to be said,
what makes more sense?
we tell each other
we are lovers, in love
while my conviction
that we are on divergent paths
is revived from one conversation
to the next.

I wonder at the letters
I begin to write,
left unfinished
phone calls I break off
dialling before the last digit,
if this isn’t me on the brink
after a brief intermission
as though nothing has changed
and if I am not back
where I began?

“take this yearning seriously
you want me,” you say
and I rush to see you
in solitude I ask myself
if love is really in question
if it isn’t vulnerability
and embitterness
the neediness to which,
I am attracted?

Translucency

And how? You constantly arouse me by presentiments;
a sweet and strange mix of relief every morning
at waking up in the gusts of your musky
fragrance, and the renewal of misery; fear of
impending loss, the wondrous outlines of your lips,
just out of reach, when I am looking into the mirror, smiling,
combing my lustrous hair, each strand casting
wobbling patterns of shadow and light, my ageing skin
immorally beautiful, like an envelope folded over several times.

How solemn is soppy celibacy? Suffering as much as delighting
in air of expectancy, our bodies growing hot, chasing
each other around a track sown with violets and thorns,
tongues lapping, hunger for flesh on fingertips;
I am unfolded, unarticulated, deluge me with pails of texts,
magical nouns, verbs, adjectives of beautiful, douse the burning
phrases, white lines, when you take me, my hair, my throat,
my limbs, the world lays on floor, slightly broken, chequered
with colours, the splinters of cracked mirror make music.

A Reconciliation

Together in an erotic dream they speak to the star-strewn
sky, naked. She hears him stretching his arm to string stars
like pearls with all his skill, her skin glittering in milky veil.
A streak of amber in his eyes shatters the woman he holds
in delicious splintering. Confetti in her arms, ungiven kisses
splash the clusters of jasmine, she trembles like a struck violin,
for the man she loves had walked away in a bubble of music,
on the previous night in the middle of an unending poetry.
In the cleft of clouds a succession of moon-lit puddles float
drowsily toward her, she cranes her neck to meet the necklace,
his fingers lingering on her throat, ecstatic jewelled specks
slipping down her soft body, the round and full tawny moons
creeping to his side, her lips part like a bruised strawberry
to reproach him, Ah! How well he knows the autumn wound
laid bare on her breast! ‘What does she want?’ he searches
himself for reassuring words, long misspent in ambiguous
whispering. At the brink of illuminating destiny, an insatiable
hunger in her eyes, he fingers the circle of sparklers writhing
around her neck, caressing her shoulder blades, his heavy
fragrance permeate her nostrils, ‘You!,’ her silent shriek
reverberates in the dense blue sky, their souls divested of
bodies; the one fair, and another dusky, mate in the dank air.

Platonic

I mustn’t think of you, the ripples of love over moist skins,
the stinging world of magic, soul-sex, your hair tinctured
with gold, of the times when you meant what you said.
I must lay your thoughts aside, like the shrill buzz of cicadas,
cover your pale face out of sight, like cardinal motes of
daylight, which might diffuse one day in thick coral folds
to suffuse my glittering surface chequered with old frights.
I should simply doze on rickety chairs, delighting in far off
tenors of memory, bewailing the parting with spent dreams,
a wonderful craving in the gut, strident screeches of pigeons,
running taps, a game of truth and dare, credible lies. I’ll look
back with empty eyes, at the tiny month of ecstatic nights,
foolishly sweet, instant fires, hold my soul in flat palm, it’s
unhappy warmth clouding your splendour of silvery white.
I may be right I may be wrong, but I am out of way,
smoking lighted ends of cigarettes, stooping shy,
in the mounting sunrise your unbody merging with mine
my mouth on yours, just as I knew it would be one day ..