Thursday, May 28, 2009

A little locket of fantasy

If the end to such an exquisite sojourn was not as bitter as it was you could have read a post which would tell tales
Of a sumptuous house
Of outsized windows
Of skipping my desired siesta
Of the fire at the other end
Of the engulfing darkness
The whirling storm
The incessant rain
The curious ways of her shy dog
The biriyani gobbled at six in the morning
With a bewitching belle
It would have been a tale of times spent with
The most beautiful woman I have ever come across.
Even her flaws are only a sub-set of her comeliness.
So, the bottom-line is: Despite of all the unpleasantness in the air I was greatly pleased that day.

kOthOpOkOthOn

Aah dekhe
Chule taan porlo
Chokhe dekhish naa, naaki?

With tears in my eyes, no
Ebar dekte parchhish?
Bhijye dili to amar rumaal ta
Jaa taa ekkebaare

Rumaal na beral?
Chandrabindur cha, beraler talobya sha, rumaal er ma
Choshma
Now I know where he got it from
I just figured out Sukumar Ray
With a little help from a friend
With a little help from my friends
Good ol' Beatles
And good ol' Sukumar Ray


But beraler talibyasha is still recondite to me.

Need to meet senior Ray over coffee one evening to get that clear.
Is Friday fine with you, sir?

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

lonely no more

She speaks: My life was thoroughly mundane. People accused me for being blunt. There were times when they refused to accept my existence altogether. I was pensive for a long time. I cried for you to rescue me as I waned into nothingness. And you helped me to redeem my life. For that I thank you inside out. You helped me find my mate. We are a queer pair but that blissful wave between the two of us is unalterable. I could not be happier. Hurray! I am lonely no more.

I speak: My nose wished to post. I find that little one, sort of adorable. Just could not refuse the poor thing. She is on top of the world ever since she got a fake diamond as her soul-mate.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

New Words

I take back my words.
You and I are the same. More or less.
Filter-less yellow shitty Charminars.
And will continue to be so.

Happy?
And oh yes, I'm sorry.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

April, 2009 : My first ice-gola day

Yesterday was the first time that I had an ice-gola.
Till yesterday it was only in fiction;
Silly essays,
Sillier poems.

Rupaali brishti

And out of everything and all when it rains in Calcutta I miss Prinsep Ghat and ‘chaaye’ the most.
‘Chaaye’ worth rupees 2
and Prinsep Ghat worth all my loving.

Differences

It was sort of idiotic to break our record of not fighting with each other. Scribbling on the wall was an activity as close to you as it was to me. Last night my helplessness led to anger. It seemed as if I was being accused of a working process in which I do not take part anymore. You unlike me have bigger fishes to fry. You get pissed with people in your leisure hours to pass the time. I am and forever will be at peace to fry my set of small fishes. In my smaller earth I go through two phases. First, I get pissed off when something is not done properly. Secondly, I try to do something to alter the situation. However in bigger worlds people do not have the time for the latter. You by natures will have only learnt to piss…sorry, to get pissed off. I have realized over this not-so-required rift on a trivial issue that we are not the same anymore. You are now the big world’s red and white Marlboro while I still continue to be the yellow shitty Charminar. Or maybe the idea of us being the same was only an illusion that tricked us like spring this year was only an illusion of renewal.

Rain demands

The weather calls for a union. But I was forever skeptical of unions. After more than four months we cannot just start where we stopped last. His is an open life. A lot could and has happened. I do not want to consider multifarious options. But I get dreams where I see her getting him back. And it does perturb me. The rain forces me to do what I am not at all good at. Loving is not my forte. But ironically the weather is not same on the other side of the globe and perhaps will never be again.

When will we share the same sky?
When will it be that, when you say it’s raining, I can actually smell it pouring?

Sunday, May 10, 2009

January, 2009: Sepia-toned loving


Writa, you are irredeemable and incorrigible

I do miss that boy who said this. But I always knew how hard it would be. I need and long to type in a little box and see my words reflecting back. They come from someone who is so much like me yet so better than me. Sitting in this cold room, looking at that machine I am baffled so many times a day. What should I do? Play solitaire? Listen to the theme song of The Godfather and feel more miserable? I slept so much in the past four days. I am afraid to stay awake till four in the morning/night, afraid of two things.
First, I would end up smoking too much and it is a problem these days. I am trying to control but in vain. Secondly I think I would end up doing queer things to keep myself from going insane. Staying awake in the night would mean missing my spirited talks with you, missing youtube links, missing your humor and words. Words of all these things are the most important. I miss myself typing; I miss my words and yours flashing on the computer screen. It took so long for four days to pass without you. It will perhaps take me a lifetime to spend four months without writing to you.

Us

And though I’m in Calcutta I miss Calcutta now. Days as such when I puked in Sudder Street are too innocent and beautiful to come back. Prinsep Ghat can never be the same. It has not been the same anytime in the last two years. Bring me back my school days, the most idiotic white uniform with the blue belt and tie. Bring back to me what we were and what we would always love to be.

Note: I am at the nadir of my writing skills. And here is the effect :

Friday, May 8, 2009

An April day

My 94 year old raconteur who amuses me with his anecdotes vanished this morning. He rang up later this evening when I was not home, when I met my Prudence after months. Again after all these years I failed miserably to fathom what she is to me; the girl with the sun in her eyes. And well, she’s gone.

March 2009: An Abrupt Valediction


It was raining an hour ago. The huge old eucalyptus tree opposite our building fell of in the storm. April arriving. And so beautifully. Maybe a morbid beauty which in some way is even destructive. The presence of that eucalyptus never evoked me to pen something on its name. It is queer that its absence will give way to a few jumbled words here and there. I am sitting by the window where a part of the downpour kisses me. I will remember this night for a long time from now. Manik Bandopadhay, cigarettes and a trailer of my favorite April-rain in mid-March. As ordinary a night as this will be rare in future.

-a candle in the rain (no matter how surreal)

January 2009: Jibon jokhon shukaaye jaaye, koruna dharaaye esho

~Jekhane holo na khela she khela ghore
Aaji nishidin mon kemon kore ~

The empty playhouse- devoid of playthings, of playmates, of happiness and laughter.

I just hope I am not getting high on Tagore. In times of peril it is almost derisive how that old man rescues me. All that he has written is recondite to me. I hardly read anything and could not figure out the little that I did. I am too naïve to comprehend his greatness. I threw up thrice yesterday. Feeling dizzy all the time with bouts of occult poetry to ease me or make it worse. There is nothing supernatural about that dead man and his work, nothing celestial, nothing mystical-that is what I thought till yesterday. Till I realized that his songs are the only refuge to this mundane life of mine. I am consumed by his greatness, by his versatility. I hope this quazi-intellectual phase is ephemeral. Thy ghost shall leave my soul and return back to thy celestial form.

January 2009: Sitting, Waiting, Wishing

Sitting on a comfortable couch at his place I read a play which I wanted to read for a long time-Waiting for Godot. It is a play where nothing happens twice. It symbolizes today because there is no beginning and no end. It was a day of waiting. I was at places where I was neither a misfit nor really needed. Two men wait under a tree for someone called Godot to come. They talk to each other only to pass the time. Their cross-talk is funny and sad. Sad because of the exquisite emptiness of the hours they spent waiting. Scene 1 ends without Godot arriving. Scene2 ends without Godot arriving. It is a piece of nothingness but more enchanting than many a deep one.

March 2009: Brothers in Arms

As of World News our neighbors are in trouble. Sepoy Mutiny breaks in Bangladesh. A country which is separated from India by only imaginary borders, a country with which we share our language Bengali is poignantly unsafe. It is the country from which my parents come. Bangladesh like India belongs to the third world though it is tacit that the rate of progress is slower there than here. I see a poised brotherhood in terms of penury and more. My parents flew away from Bangladesh when they were young. I have failed to fathom the cause behind the tranquility in their behavior as news of deaths hit the newspapers. If I ever leave India, I wonder if news of political turmoil, mass killings et cetera in India would spare me equally unscathed. The idea gives me a demoniacal feeling.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

February 2009: Voices of the same poverty


And my somatic longing for that Londoner continues to pester me. Having nothing better to do I watched that movie yet again. It makes me wonder if the West really has a soulful desire to see and show India with the sordidness of her destitution. A British gentleman once said that you open a cupboard in India and a family of 16 falls out. Such ignoble truth unnerves me; such blemishes are unsavory to many ears. Is criticizing the movie irrational? Is to say that I could not concentrate on the movie as my eyes were stuck on Dev Patel just a reliable escape route? Why is it that even though everyone knows that a large part of the Indian population empties their bowels on rail-tracks, the depiction of this on celluloid unsettles the Indian sentiment? The answers call for a debate. And another debate on this ubiquitous subject is truly infernal. Chuck the movie. The panache of Dev Patel off-screen and his unrelenting presence have promised not to spare me. It is obfuscating as to what is more tetchy -the Movie or the Man?

January, 2009: Ideal pedagogy

That clumsy flat in the ground floor of a building illuminates my mind every Sunday morning.
It ranks after graffiti and Suhel Seth. The lady owning the flat, that is my teacher and I have two generations between us. I fail to fathom how a mind, a soul 65 years old can be still so eager to learn. She is simple in her lifestyle. It is her mind that makes her one of a kind. She has accepted everything except war and violence willingly. Even hints of homosexuality do not agitate her. I can connect so much to this old lady that it seems as if we have some celestial connection.