Airways

Gauranga Mohanta

The sound of wind-engine conspires to allow a sense of solitude⎼the roadscape which enshrouds kisses traverses the crimson border of a passion fruit. The river waves are gliding over the airways. As I’m swaying back and forth, park flowers burst into bloom. Some of my fellow passengers are meeting their deaths for a few hours under the blankets; the froth of words on their noses. The chardonnay of strange human happiness drags me to watch the greenness of grape bunches. I’m just going insane⎼drenched in Madhab cataract I’m stepping into the opera house⎼running to the park leaving behind the vibrating gas lamps of the harbour. I can’t find happiness–I don’t know how to act dead.

I flew to Sydney in 2016 to attend the inaugural ceremony of a professional training programme at Macquarie University. This tour helped me to cement ties with university luminaries. I talked to Sydneysiders, visited Sydney Opera House on Sydney Harbour where the gas lights evoked visions of Charles J. Fuschillo Park in New York and Madhab cataract in Bangladesh which brought unfettered joy to me.

An author of ten books, Gauranga Mohanta has a PhD in English Literature. His books, specially Robert Frost: A Critical Study in Major Images and Symbols (2009) and A Green Dove in Silence: Forty Prose Poems in Translation (2018), can spark a reader’s interest. He worked for the civil service and lectured at several universities. He has been contributing articles, poems and translated works to magazines. He has had poems published and reviewed in Poetry Out Loud, UK. He lives in Dhaka and endeavours to organize yearly Dhaka Translation Festival with the motto, ‘Unite through Translation’.