Sinchan Chatterjee writes

Books 




Selfish as we are,
We read books so we may hear about ourselves
And see our own stories
Lived by different fictional men in different climes.
We walk through their minds and trot through their thoughts
And laugh and cry and mourn and pine with them.


And at the end, we tear ourselves away from them
Drawing a line between us and them.
We put our finger to the printed page
And tell ourselves these are just words,
These are just thoughts of a person who never existed.
When our favourite heroes die and are mourned,
We breathe a heavy sigh and shed a tear
To remind ourselves we are real, we are alive.
We shut the book and turn it in our hands
And tell ourselves we are eternal because
So are the stories about us. 


When I am passing over and they ask me
What one thing I want to carry with me onto the other side,
Between my palms, clasped to my chest,
I want it to be a book, reminding me
Someone somewhere is reading my story
And finding himself in it.