Ramakanta Das received his Masters in English Literature from Ravenshaw College, Odisha, India. He taught at a college for a few years, before joining as an officer in the Parliament of India. At present he is a Joint Secretary in Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of Indian Parliament.
Apart from taking professional interest in the study of the functioning of the parliaments of the world he has also a passion for creating writing. He is very passionate about poetry as a form of literature.
He writes about his innermost feelings; his poems offer a glimpse into the mind of this sensitive man, the way he perceives life as he comes to terms with what it has to offer or through his interaction with people he encounters or through his observation and reflection on things happening around him — the little details which people normally fail to notice.
He has seven books of poetry to his credit till date. He has edited a book of poems titled …And the Rhythm Endues. He has also written a biography of a famous freedom fighter of India namely Biju Patnaik.
Ramakanta Das is a recipient of Kalinga Literary Award for Literature and Culture.
His email id: rkpoet@gmail.com
I should gift you
My passionate musings
Of compassionate words
In fine rhetoric and prosody,
I said.
‘What’ll I do with them,’
You asked
Recite them —
They’ll embrace you
In a cosy warmth.
Speak to them —
They’ll paint a rainbow
On your blank sky.
Squeeze them —
Tears ooze out of them,
Share with them —
They’ll close you in
With life’s abundance.
And trust them —
They’ll never fail you,
I replied.
For years I have walked
on the familiar and not-so-familiar
paths of the city.
The hissing of the city automobiles,
the rustle of the feet briskly
trading on the concrete pavements,
the whispers of walkers and
the whistles of the traffic police
independent of the honking of
speeding vehicles pierced my ears
and the extra-redness of the gulmohar
from the side-walks hit my eyes.
As time changed its shade with every passing year
of my urban existence,
my dusty and arduous days
got fossilized into unidentified pages of my history
and my starry and lonely nights faded away simultaneously
with the morning dew-drops.
Over these bygone years
Of a vain chain of episodes of my city life
I had not cared
to discover you, my pretty grass-flower,
which I suddenly beheld,
in full-bloom in my backyard
at a season-less time.
You, my tiny grass-flower
metamorphosed yourself before my eyes
into the significant dimension
of Krishna’s cosmic image,
full of ethereal magnificence
and earthly fragrance.
Ah, you pervaded the vastness
of my world, my sky, my dreams
in a helpless moment.
Bound by my earth and sky,
in the space of an unfathomable vacuum,
the thin clouds of dew-drops
assembled in ones and twos
over my balding head,
promising a heavy downpour
on the withered leaves of grass at my feet,
during an autumnal twilight.
I was amused to perceive
how these mere dew-drops
could promise so much greenery
here, there, everywhere
and even on my balding head!
I was filled with wonder
at the sight of those dew-drops
of such range of colours
creating a cascading effect
in their beauty and significance.
On the dark boughs
of a parched gulmohar tree
at my distant horizon,
red petals appeared
and singing birds perched
merely feeling the freshness of those
sparkling dew-drops.
In the empty corridors of my ribs
broken desires and disabled opportunities
raised their wrinkled scalps
for those few drops of dew.
But, alas! I didn’t know
such ethereal dew-drops
could fade away
at the mere sight
of a pregnant eastern sky.
A benign musing
so much akin to an intimate breath
that sustains my creative life,
when disappears off and on
without a prior notice…
A void thus creates…
I am in post haste
to fill this stressful void
that gains a terrible dimension
as time passes with a stubborn indolence.
I suffer the ignominy of a mere foot note…
I thought I have so much to say
but at the turning point
I feel I have not much to add
to what has already been said…
I leave the stage speechless…
I thought I have so much to write
but as the fateful moment
offers me an opportunity
I feel I have reached a writer’s block…
I leave the white paper permanently blank…
A plethora of options
do not help me much,
when all options meet a destined road block
and all I am left with
is the monotony of the same path recklessly trodden.
In retrospect…
Very often am thrown
into a cauldron of a predicament,
the nature of which I can hardly dissect
by the limitations of my knowledge and
inadequacy of wisdom. I feel chained by the tangle
of the anguish of duality and dilemma
And a nagging harassment.
and when my feverish self and spirit
weigh me down like a heavy load
into a bottomless abyss of despondency
then I seek you in the magical silence
of the gospel and the tonic of benediction,
you have been gracious enough
to bestow upon me.
Benign words
make a bee-line,
when I wish to put a word for you to Him
on my behalf.
Praying words
jingle like church-bells
when I kneel down,
to make a prayer to Him
on your behalf.
