Friend

Turning around time and again, looking back through the haze of years

It was you who held my hand, wiping away yours and my tears

Oh Friend you have been with me since then ----

The first awkward step in school and cinema

Through the screams at “Enkushe” and the pride of “Sesher Kobita”.

You cheered my defiance of the world, you feared my heartbreaks,

Oh Friend you stood by me at the rickshaw stand, patient for the last bus, listened till the end ----

Your forms have changed to the open eyes

The bob-haired tom boy, the specs and pigtails, the shy vermillion

The hints of moustache, the wrinkled shirt, the evolving of a man.

All I need to know its you

Oh Friend is your warmth ----

Not the pair of trinkets you gave me once, nor songs of Rabindranath

You gifted me your years of care, a zillion memories so close to the heart.

Your praises have been with me so have been your rebuke

Oh friend I fear to go to school now, stranger to me is the Rickshaw stand

I dread to be the adolescent and tread the path without you.

The seat beside now holds a creaseless shirt, an i-phone

The chewed corner of my handkerchief to him is so unknown

Oh Friend will you care to stop me like then

From tearing the threads off the cloth

Oh friend I need your warmth, I need your hand now and again and again.