Jibanananda Das (1899-1954) was a Bengali poet, novelist, and essayist. He is considered the pre-eminent and most-loved Bengali poet after Rabindranath Tagore. Apart from poems, he wrote several novels and a large number of short stories. He was educated at Presidency College, Calcutta, and obtained an MA degree in English from Calcutta University. He also studied law. He later taught English at various colleges. Das died on Oct 22, 1954, eight days after he was hit by a tramcar in Calcutta. Eyewitnesses said that, though the tramcar whistled, he did not stop. Some have claimed that the accident was in fact an attempt at suicide; it appears from circumstantial evidence that this was so. The middle-class Bengali, especially after the Second World War and the Partition of the country and the state in 1947, was in a state of fatalistic shock. Das's poems, with their understated, subtle pathos, naturally found an eager readership. Here, Chakravarti presents a poems.