Alien

The robots are on the benches,
the metro’s on the move.
There’re rows of drooping heads — lost in respective mobile phones.
The headphones in their ears, their faces lit with red-blue light:
Like the Shaitan’s searchlight,
or the fatal sign of the ‘Blue Whale’ game.

Are they robots or aliens? Why don’t they have a glance at the world?
Are they robots or aliens? Why don’t they have a look at their fellow faces?
Why don’t they see who is before them? — A friend, a woman, a tired old man,
a Jhau forest, sea waves?
Lost deep in the virtual world, they are not looking up.
They are not looking at reality.
In the sun, under the cloud, in the field, even when in love:
they are indifferent, unconcerned.
A strange hypnosis has turned them into cyborgs,
has eaten up their souls.

This evening, in the metro, I am so frightened that I am speechless.
Alone and sad among the rows of silent mobile bound faces,
among those disguised aliens,
I am the last endangered man
reading a book of poetry
which has promised me ‘the foamy sea of life’.

(This is my translation of a Bengali poem, titled ‘এলিয়েন’, by poet Ranajit Das)