Pages

Bidyut Bhusan Jena is Assistant Professor of English at Christ University, Bengaluru. His poems, translations and other writings have been published in various literary magazines and newspapers like Rock Pebbles, Muse India and The Hans India. Some of his areas of interest are world literature, comparative literature, comparative philosophy and East-West encounters. His doctoral research is on the problem of perception in the fiction of Raja Rao and Iris Murdoch. Jena studied at Utkal University, University of Hyderabad and The English and Foreign Languages University (formerly CIEFL), Hyderabad.

Teaser

A Footnote on Waiting

Dusk it was;
dusk at the far end
of a nondescript town,
a place where partings are planned
under a deciduous tree
with unreadable names and symbols
engraved on its timeless body.

An old presence with wrinkles
on his body and
scales of time on his walking stick
was lost in an unnameable elsewhere.
Was he looking
in the direction of the leafless tree
that sheltered
the long-damaged body of the train –
a time-rusted relic, since that day?

I too was waiting for a train.