Trailblazer Award None
Dreamspinner Award Sayantani Dhang
Mastercrafter Award

Shishir Marathey

Sreya Sarkar

Budding Weaver Award None

Dreamspinner Award

“Adieu” by Sayantani Dhang using Catchphrase “Fear to delusion/ভয় থেকে ভ্রান্তি”

Almost midnight,
Hands of the clocks are about to be re-joined.
Silence has gripped hard my overwhelmed city by the shoulder.
Night has spread out all over the sky
Streetlamps fixing their focus on the neon dusts and daylong trampling lying beneath
them.
In the gloomy hazy street stands still a yellow taxi
Lights off – eyes closed – darkness has taken its seat – side mirrors turned inward
and
“Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear”
How shall I begin?
Shall I confess?
I remember our last ride together, yellow taxi and a sweaty summer evening
You kept your eyes out of the window, towards the grim sombre hues of setting sun
In our penultimate togetherness no one spoke, but me
“Have I told you I never loved you?”
Untruth, an irreversible lie
Gasping for breath, I ask for a second chance from you and my life
As I sit in my room, shut in my room.
The air is infected in here,
They have tested and marked me untouchable, unlovable, dangerous
I’m punished at last; curse of the final hour has fallen.
Like the roots of two neighbouring trees in the secrecy of soil
I want to move towards you, hold your hand for one last time in the midst of
everlasting darkness.
Oh! Pardon my fallacy, I am forbidden to be touched by anything humane
Like the metamorphosed Gregor Samsa
I feel like becoming a Kafkaesque creature
Through the closed door I hear my mother sobbing
A soft lumpy dough of tears gather at the end of my dry throat
I know she wants to hold me, kiss me, check if the fever has gone down, tend me in
my death bed
Or at least see me once before I am leaving forever.
Tick – tock – tick – tock, clock is ticking faster than ever, All will
end soon
My last wish: I want to breathe
Like every dying man, I want to live
And Often closing my eyes I hear the waves and smell the sea
But the truth is standing at my door, a step closer …
Adieu!

“The poem nicely portrays the grim reality of life, death and the grey area in between, so significantly relatable in current times. It brings out the fear that engulfs one’s soul at the very thought of inching towards death with each passing day. The appropriate illustration of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’ is quite interesting.”- JURY

Mastercrafter Award category Entry :

“It’s Tears” by Sayantani Dhang using Catchphrase ““… I contain multitudes”/আমার মাঝে হাজার বসত করে”

Hard stains of salty droplets on skin are not hard to remove
Dropping on paper it turns the ink into a blue blot of wordlessness
Countless salty droplets holding hands with each other, become a sea
From afar you can see a thin line of separation between the sky and the sea
Walking towards blue you can see the birth of grey waves from that line of separation
As you go nearer, the grey grows heavy and heavier
Your toes touch the grey
With the red feet you push those waves back,
You keep standing amidst the left over frothing, wet sand
You have nowhere to reach
And the blue sky start reddening like a bunch of Rose
Softening like your heart in love becoming bloody blue than a shade of red,
Waves attract you more, more than life
A profound pause . . .
Darkness start settling upon the shore slowly,
To you all sounds seem to fade out one by one
And the massive sound of waves turn to mild whisper in your ears like the voice of a friend
Ahead your eyes calmly lay the never-ending black watery grave
Inviting the tired you to sleep within it
But you know, before falling asleep you made yourself promises to keep
Broken waves
Broken images
Broken dreams …
The piles of broken waves slowly retreat and sink in the blue heart
Where they came from.
You move slowly back towards home
Holding hands with your shadow
You look upwards the sky of dawn
Immersed with a faint ray of ‘hope’
And there you see it’s not yet the time to give up or give in
With a holy dread you close your eyes
Your lips become wet with salty droplets.
-People name it tears.

“Well versed depicting the mystical wilderness of emotions and innocence. A blend of romanticism and melancholy has added a different flavour to the poem. This poem has very interestingly used the concept of the catchphrase and satisfactorily captures the poet’s state of mind while grappling with a difficult phase of life.”- JURY

Mastercrafter Award

“Present” by Shishir Marathey using Catchphrase “If I could travel back in time!/ফিরে যদি যাই ফেলে আসা দিনে”

“Good effort. Has a positive end with the actual realization. But there seems to be a lack of alignment with the catchphrase. A little more focus on Grammar and alternate useof few words and phrases like ‘fam’ (family), ‘pissed'(upset) , ‘stomach the picture’ (unbelievable ), ‘scandalous to ingest'( hard to digest) could have further improved the quality of the composition.”- JURY

“Hold on” and “Rewind” by Sreya Sarkar using Catchphrase “If I could travel back in time!/ফিরে যদি যাই ফেলে আসা দিনে”. Another one Titled “Society” by her using No Catchphrase.

HOLD ON

Dear generation,
Its 2019 and as a generation we are living safely in a metropolitan. The crowd, the rush, the hustle, the
bustle it makes us feel home. We hear the cars honk, the beggars scream, the traffic police abuse, the
vendors negotiate and all these noises make us happy, keeping us busy giving us no scope to overthink.
The crowded bus, the overcrowded metro, the footpath dotted with pedestrians, the push, the pull, the
rush like a fool it makes us feel a part of something, it never leaves us lonely.
But if I could travel back in time, I would like to tell my generation to hold on as this will vanish in a wink,
leaving behind only silence. The ones afraid to be lost alone will be the ones living alone. All it will take is
a pandemic and at last my generation will learn to stand and stare, feel and let our souls bare.
Away from the busy life we will see our generation’s rebirth in the next year.
The dancer’s leg won’t trace only her way from home to college and back with a busy schedule. She will
learn again to dance to beats. The painter in her who won every art competition at school will be reborn
every time she sits to paint her loneliness. The father who was always stressed with office projects and
presentations will hum a song to his son’s mother the same one he used to sing to his wife before
marriage. The homemaker who had spent her life alone at home will get back the company of her family
after years, they will sit together and have the cake she bakes them. Her elder son will appreciated her
baking skills and she will narrate her son and grandson about her days in youth when she had decided to
follow her passion to start a bakery. The middle aged professional and passionate photographer will get
time for the first time in his life to look at his childhood photographs and come to know what a good
photographer his dad was.
Not everyone will be happy in the coming year but we will manage, struggle, fall and lend hands to each
other to overcome. And you dear generation will beautifully merge creativity with this crisis to carve out
memories to look back at forever.
We will be making memories be it bad or good and like every memory in the shade of grey, not too dark
nor bright white, this too shall pass.
If I could travel back in time I would tell my generation to hold on until they remind the world once again
that- ‘.. Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But
poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.’
Cheers to creativity, art and my generation. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs
in the square holes. May we keep seeing things differently forever.

“A fairly decent composition with clarity in the expressions based on the realisation acquired during the pandemic time. However the interpretation of the catchphrase is bit confusing as the theme is reflecting the future scenario, not how we would relive our past. A little more focus on Grammar would be an added advantage for future compositions.”- JURY

REWIND

Time and tide waits for none,
But I wish for once it did
So that I could run
To go back to where it all begun.
I remember the day I learnt to write my name at school, and filled every corner of every page I could lay
my hand on with my name. My father would watch me in awe, the smile on my face as I stitched every
letter of my name, watching the ink soak and spread, some memories do not fade.
My maid’s sister smiles the same smile today. I wish I could travel back in time to be just in time to teach
my maid the same. I wish I could travel back in time to know my maid more as a person.
My maid didn’t come to my place on Sundays. On Sundays she was a different person altogether, closing
the door behind to all her struggles. I wish I could have had been a part of her Sundays where she lived
her fragile dreams strung together by poverty. On Sundays she sat with her six sisters and dyed her hair,
they gossiped about the households they worked in and giggled. They sat on the concrete and ate their
lunch, mixing rice with lentils tasting failures and fantasy, mixing dreams with reality. On Sunday
evenings she went to the market with her sisters and in between responsibilities of buying flour and rice
she stole some time to buy little trinkets and bangles and bargain with the salesman.
On one such Sunday night she return home exhausted and stared out of her small window, sitting alone
watching the smearing darkness engulf the slum she decided to end her life’s struggle in despair.
I wish I could have travelled back in time and told her to watch the vast sky that night instead, how dark
it was and yet how bravely the stars shone refusing to surrender to the darkness. I would have told her
how I admire the stars shinning in the heart of darkness, just like I admired her.
I smiled again watching my maid’s sister write her name. A month after my maid’s death I promised
myself that I won’t let that happen to her sister.
So I taught her sister to write her name and there she sat learning how her name inked the page, how
powerful it looked and how hard it was to erase, the small fragile letters which crawled on the paper
looked like a humongous achievement to her.
Life had pushed her to the brink yet she smiled at every scar the battle named life gave her. Before she
slept an eyelash fell on her chiseled cheeks and she made a wish and for a moment her fierce eye turned
fragile with hope. Hope to travel back in time and never let go of her long gone sister.
Strong yet fragile she slept like a naked poem with hope of a better tomorrow for those like her.

“Brilliant idea with a realistic and innovative concept. Very impressive expressions and robust vocabulary with a noble message for all. Also the perspective is refreshing. More focus on Grammar would be helpful.”- JURY

SOCIETY

Dear society,
You give me wings but clip my freedom to fly,
You enlist the rules and regulations to navigate the sky.
You teach me that girls should be soft and shy.
But if he is soft spoken he is not the correct guy.
You tell us our dreams can be high,
But if nine out of ten are not fulfilled we cannot cry.
Dear society,
Keep your glorifying masculinity at standby,
The horrifying faces under the veils are not signs of femininity as you
classify,
Verify your algorithms, justify what you imply or just nullify them till we
are satisfy.
Because we are done with sleeping till death hearing the sound of your
toxic lullaby.

“A good attempt when viewed from the perspective of composition. The satire in the poem is quite evident and convincing.  Few phrases and words need to be rephrased.”- JURY

 

Chota