The Diary Of An Armchair Activist

As the whole of Calcutta and other parts of the Nation took to Facebook to voice their rage against everything that happened in the Jadavpur University campus, Zuckerberg Land faced a similar fate as that of Kashmir's; only this was a flood of myriad voices and opinions. While going through many of these posts/articles, I came across one which was going fairly well till I came to the end where the writer signed off with a 'Laal Selaam'. The whole point of an Independent Students Movement gets diluted with mistakes like this one. Why is it so difficult to stay away from those colours? I find it completely justifiable to blame the present Government of West Bengal for everything that happened, for it has not done anything (apart from building cultural centers and tourism parks) regarding one of the most pressing issues of the country: women's safety. To top it, they have to their glory, dialogues ranging from 'Shajano Ghotona' to Tapash Pal's psychological disorders. They have not brought anything close to the 'Poriborton' they promised. But that does not mean that the previous Government was of any good either. Wrong on the present's part is not an invitation for the former to use an independent movement and smear as much red as possible when the timing is so apt.

Now, of course why am I getting bothered with such a small part of a post when there is a sea of posts out there and even a page which will make little sense to a sane mind: opinions like the women of JU provoke men to do whatever they do because of the kind of clothes they wear, or the fact that a good many of them smoke and quite a bit of more nonsense? I choose at this point to feel bad for such people because they are one-organ less than most of us here; that organ being The Brain. But the reason why I am bothered about the post I mentioned at the beginning of this article is because the rest of it made sense, is because it is likely that no one would disagree with an opinion like that: The opinion being right over wrong, justice for the girl who was molested as well as the students who were brutally beaten in campus. Of course, that is what the fight is about. Therefore there is little need for that Red Salute because that my friend, is also not the solution. What makes me happy though is that I know plenty of others who have been closely associated with SFI be a part of the movement and they have not tried to politicize the movement at all and a few others who voted for the new Government and are protesting against it now (because that is the right thing to do). The next party that will be born will be of no good either if we think that 'Nothing will ever change', so let's just accept it and peacefully vote for the best out of the worst. That is precisely what this movement is NOT about. The movement is not sure either, of the way to the best solution. It has only promised to wake the nation up and take heed. It has brought the much-needed chaos to our daily lives. It is at every point living up to its catch-phrase 'Hok Kolorob (Let there be some noise/chaos)'.

I have been seeing the honest efforts of thousands of students to protest against wrong and I am proud of them. I have been quite restless to not be a part of it physically (for reasons) but I have backed  the true essence of the movement with every part of my being. Just one thing to keep in mind: The Nation and future pages of History are looking at you with starry eyes. So, make sure you write it right. Because if there is anyone, it's you who can.

Answering My Beloved Bengali Society

I have realised that weekends really do not mean anything when you are trying to build something of your own. You start putting your work before weekend plans of meeting up for Beer or Coffee. Free-riding and desperation for Friday Night to arrive are things you can not connect to. When so much happens, your work becomes you after a while. Different aspects of your business creep into the way you live unknowingly and sometimes, well, a little creepily.

One example might do this post a lot of justice. The work I do involves quite a bit of product customization. We try to provide what our clients like and what exactly they want because they clearly are The Boss. I have adopted this simple strategy and have started customizing my answers according to the people who raise the questions and sometimes according to my mood and the weather.

I'm 24 and have taken a break from Academics to try my hand at something else. To be honest there have been times when I have thought of giving it up or worse still, save it up for later thanks to a considerable amount of ridicule and bitterness from a battalion of extremely concerned and risk-averse Bengali Society led by an equally but (for a change) genuinely concerned Bengali Mother. But it seemed like I'm kind of possessed by my dream. It does not leave my side even when I'm awake. So, I thought of seeing the end of it either in success or in failure. And there was just one time to do that: That time was NOW.

Gradually I started accepting questions from people and answering them to the best of my ability. The questions are more or less the same and can be generally put as: What are you doing now and what are your future plans?

Here is where I put my business to use and click the 'customize' button:

• If the question is asked by someone who thinks it's a shame to be just a Graduate and one should go to college to finish that Masters degree before you turn 25 (even if you do not know why exactly you are doing it. Well, everyone else is doing it. Is that not enough?), then my sample answer is:

Answer: Right now? Right now I'm not doing anything. Was thinking of doing my Masters. Tried going back to University but seemed like I do not know much of Economics. Didn't get through though almost everyone else did.

Note: This is the most brilliant answer that one could give if the question was asked by that distant relative or neighbour who is always curious about your whereabouts. If you can bring a Bengali to a point where they can pity you, they will continue to do so for a long time to come while you are saved to do what you really wish to. Except , whenever you meet them, greet them and say 'Kemon achho go? Ami aar ki? Ekhono cheshta korchhi jodi MA ta korte paari' (How are you doing? I'm still trying to get that Masters degree). Pity Button hit. You are saved for the next two months till you meet him/her again.

• If the question is asked by someone who thinks the only follow-up to growing up is doing a safe and secured job, then I'd rather go for this one:

Answer: I'm sitting for a Bank Exam next week. Do not think I can crack it but I really hope I do. Let's see what happens.

Note: If you can convince them that you are trying and yet not intelligent or competent enough to crack exams, wholla you have done it right again. Pity Zone: Here is where most inquisitive uncles, aunties and peers park their curious cars.

• If the question is asked when I do not feel like talking and the June Sun is giving me a bad headache, I go simply 'Me? I'm jobless and will be for sometime to come'

• Coming from someone who thinks it's really cool to take a break and travel: I'd say,

Answer: I'm on a break. Thought of just traveling this year. Just came back from 'put name of place where you went last' (doesn't matter if it was a month back) and planning to go 'some random place from the wishlist' next month (doesn't matter if you do not have the money to go there in the next six months)

Note: Expect to hear 'Oh wow. That's so cool' along with a few travel tips (save it up for later. Might need it when you actually make that trip)

• If a deeply committed person asks you 'What's up? How you doing?' 

Answer: I am trying to cope with a break-up.

Note: All career plan talks get side-tracked and start building on why such a terrible thing happened to you. Result: Saved again.

• If an alcoholic or a stoner asks you (less likely though), 'What are you up-to these days, buddy?'

Answer: I'm mostly high on something or the other off late. It's been awesome, man! You getting good stuff these days?

Note: This will be followed by all the latest high stories and the new places he/she has scored from and how smooth the stuff was.

Obviously, no offence is meant to anyone who finds resemblance with the kind of people who continue to ask me these questions and the answers they receive. Though taking a bit of offence might be a good idea. 

Also, if by any chance you happen to know what I actually do and in great details, chances are you know me for a long time/you work with me/I thought you'd understand/I really like you. As for me I do not know what exactly I do or will be doing except that I can't stop doing it till it's done.

Shit Happens

'You are late. I ran out of paper waiting for you'

'Erm, sorry. But what's the big deal? You could have just used some toilet paper to write on'

That stuck with me. I wondered about what she said for quite a long time. For a while it seemed like an insult to my already diminishing writing skills. But later it started making sense to me. I could not blame her for what she said. It was but natural. Thinking about it I have always compared writing or for that matter not writing to passing bowels. 

Often, when I suffer from tremendous writer’s block I usually say I’m constipated. Then a long yet bad piece is a loose motion. There is a lot of it but it’s all full of germs. The regular writer is the guy who suffers from neither of the above. He/she is the one who enjoys doing it everyday with much ease. Writing in more than one way is comparable to defecation. Whenever I empty myself I feel very relieved and happy.  Every word that comes out flushes the toxic out of my body- One of the many reasons why I recommend writing and doctors recommend the other on a daily basis. And by practice I do not look at what I’ve written before. I just flush it down the pages of this blog or my journal. Once out I abandon it. It is mine before it is penned, never after. But the best part is once emptied I feel invariably hungry to read. That’s the time when I read books to satiate my hunger and fill myself. But reading needs a good filter, maybe a good connoisseur friend. The bad ones or the bad part of the good ones form the greater part of what comes out. I realise it’s bad but I understand the necessity to empty myself too. 

To write this as a public post might seem like sacrilege to many. But if you think about it, I’m just joining the 638 million of my country who defecate in the open.

Happy Birthday

For You, Didi.

On your birthday a book you wanted

And for three years I daunted.

I'm much less of a writer

Than you are a fighter

And even lesser a poet

Yet today a poem is all you get.

Buying you a gift is reduced to a joke

As I'm unimaginably broke

Also, it is no easy task

As you never wear a mask

For you a gift is only fun

When it's a United Colors of Benetton 

For Three out of Twenty-Five

You had the most amazing drive

With a beautiful couple

Your life was perfectly supple

With close ones galore

A Russian baby they used to adore

Then Ninety brought a puzzle

And your baby fat gradually fell

You felt like the big one at three

Having the ultimate liberty

Of bossing over someone

Your ultimate childhood fun

For twenty-two years

There were few tears

But a lot of laughter

That would last many years after

Many a roads walked

Endless nights we have talked

From school to college

You always had an edge

Then, in white and blue a prefect
And now, in Biba you are decked
When they skip a beat
Because of all your heat
Don't blame hearts for playing darts
In the end, only choose lemon tarts.

Your talents, they feature
From financier to teacher
Be it lessons or Papercup
You manage to fill it up
Just the same way
I wish you many a happy day
To fill your walk of life
To play the perfect daughter, sister, wife.

For a day like today, a day which is a boon
Any fool would return from Doon
To wish you a 'Happy Birthday'
If my words may.

Iron-y

Truth is a gamble

All, nothing but a scramble

English, Math, Wonderland

A make-believe helping hand

English

Take the word fine

And think of a line

You have two in your mind

Separate meanings they bind

‘How you doing, Sir?’

Asked your chauffeur

‘I’m fine. Thank you

Take me to English Avenue’

For not obeying Traffic rules

He was one of the myriad fools

Who had to pay a fine

Which was worth a fine dine

He was then heard saying

After paying

‘That fine

Was not fine’

Mathematics

He who had no (zero) money

Was now at Avenue Sunny

Started his journey

To earn some penny

He travelled a long round way

And made 360 bucks that day

At no other place but Avenue Sunny

Still none of us think that Math is funny

Wonderland

He had a date with Alice the same eve

Stories, that is what she loves to weave

Her best is named Wonderland

It had a queer reader’s band

It is written as a tale for the children

But is best understood by grown-up men

And women.

Leonino Monsoon

The quickest Monsoon
An unexpected boon
Came the year I recovered from my leonine fear

Match-boxed in a maze
Opposite a lion in a daze
In Summer, a chronic diesease
With Talk, a poetic lease
We dissected Calcutta, the organ
Using Sex, the paroxysmal gun

What followed was
Of course
The prediction of rain in a Land of Cards
And euphoric killing with colorful darts
Which speed-posted Monsoon
The quickest bullet balloon.

 

Dreaming Of The Gulf

Photography: Rathin Mitra

                                                                                                                    
I

You know a place has touched you when weeks after you have left the same
You feel and talk and dream of a return which is nothing but a waiting game
A game; if it is so, I am willing to play. Only this time without a playmate
without my moonshine, without my brother, playing Pillow Castle love-hate.


II
I know that place has tapped me because often I still smell the Emirates in the air
And feel the cutting sea wind by the Breakwater, a water break-love story so rare
I know that place is young when I see the blue of the sea, the sky and a cocktail
And sleep at the backseat of a Cruiser, with almost the feel of a sea sail.

The Shadow Lovers

Photography: Rathin Mitra

Running through the street
With a storm under her feet
She reaches the old man’s den

The timepiece, oblivious of when

Knowing he would understand
The ruin of her castle of sand
With hope she pushed the door
In need of his unusual lore

In the stead of him she found
The room oddly crowned
With a heap of broken records
Which seemed to play unheard chords

Passing through scattered yellow hardbacks
A smell which every paperback lacks
She sees her old man on his bed
With almost no wrinkle on his bald head

He always looked as young as a lover
Resembling a Marquez story cover
Who only became younger
In the company of her female hunger

This time she came to let him know
Her story of the lowest low
That for long she was ailing
In her last days she was sailing

She tapped him on the shoulder
To wake him up from his slumber
But he lay there on a bed soaked with urine
With ears which were not too keen

She called him for the next two days
But he was lost in his deceased haze
He never woke up to hear
Or to hold his ailing whore near

In a day or two she too took the cue
To start a flight, brand new
Amidst diseased books and infected laughter
The corpses lived happily ever after.

My Boy Child, My Son

You remind me of myself
When I used to hide my poems in my shelf
When I was a little younger than you
Though in number they were few

I see the same fire in your eyes
As you rainbow your myriad highs
Every time you light a joint
And twist to make your point

Together we laugh in glee
As bullets on the bypass flee
Sitting on car tops
We try to eye the cops

I laugh endlessly at your jokes
As others pass them off as only a hoax
Between talks we drink caffeine
Between walks we stop by a known lane

Together we fly gas balloons in fields
As lovers promise to be mirrors and shields
We cross ridges
And burn bridges

Like my boy child you move
As you try hard to explain a seven and a half groove
Your eyes swollen
And your usual modesty fallen

Like my moon child you write
In my old time words you glide
Thinking poetry is your mistress
On music you give your stress

One day when you are as old as I
You would learn to twist a lie
And to make love to wife and mistress
With not an ounce of lust less

When on a fresh day of Spring
Under a eucalyptus you play me your one-string
Child, you will help me dream of my son
If between years of nicotine I ever manage to have one.

M.a.r.i.a

She cooks by morning

Washes a sink full of dishes by noon

And twists to the Radio by afternoon.

She teaches by evening

Plays the Violin by night

And writes till dawn.

She rolls by morning

Smokes pot by noon

And twists to the Radio by afternoon.

She drinks by evening

Injects love into her blood by night

And knocks at your door at dawn

She says: M.a.r.i.a

You say: W.h.o

One Hundred Years Of Love.

I touched Marquez's Solitude after half a decade

Again.

I figured that my relationships so far

Have had a similarity with the village of Macondo

At the time of Arcadio Buendia

For all of them seem to be so recent

And invariably ephemeral

That most are devoid of names.

And to speak about them

It often becomes necessary for me to

Point.

Boonyi.

Photography: Rathin Mitra

Moss is growing on your rooftop, Boonyi.
I remember times when your room was my hide out after school hours; you looking over a seven year old me playing with my toy train. Now they report to me that there are cracks in your ceiling. One August night after another water oozes out and wets your bed.
It's been twelve years I have not seen you grin your toothless grin, smile your wrinkled smile.
It's been long, too long I have not seen the sun shine on your silver hair.
Love is growing on your rooftop, Boonyi.

Bullets, Balloons, Body.

A river on my left

Rail tracks on my right

Yet the aim of a gun is my only sight.

A weapon heavier than me

A lover stronger than thee

And colored balloons under a tree.

An eye settling for the perfect gun-eye injury

A weapon close to a heart which (ironically) has never known fury.

Blue, Green, Red, Yellow

Each color in a row.

My finger on the trigger

And a mind of vigour

Shot four of them dead

Yet not a tear was shed.

On undressing myself the same day

I saw the same colors of May

On my thighs, breasts and arm,

A reflection of his charm.

Joining the Dots

Joining the dots between orators and poets

Poets and intellectuals

A handful of dots between the hashish we smoke

And the last haiku you penned

And even lesser between you and I.

Nothing Can Happen Over Coffee

Boy comes up to Sneh at the backstage.

B: You are such a natural. You were truly awesome on stage.

Sneh: Oh yes, I am sort of great!

B: Could we have coffee sometime soon?

Sneh: That sounds good.

B: It does? Can I get your number?

Sneh: Yes, sure. But before that I need to tell you a fun fact! I love coffee but I hate having sex.

B: *Coughs*

Sneh: God bless you. You still up for coffee?

B: *Still coughing*

Sneh: Seems like one of your organs are troubling you down there. You are not well. You need a bed and coffee both.

Imagine An iTouch Post

I can not recall a time when I was without you in the past couple of years. You have seen me through awful tutorials, worse end semesters, falling in and out of love, boredom, excitement and all that jazz. For that matter you are the one who taught me to love jazz precariously though you never forgot my old favorites-regular dozes of Dylan, Floyd, Beatles and the like. It will take me a long time to forget all those piled up bus, taxi, auto, car rides with you. On a sweaty Summer day when I needed to wipe off that smudged kohl from my eyes in a bus all I had to do was look into you. And I could always see myself in you. Of course, a lot of love and a bit of physics helped us do that. We have not just seen each other through traffic rush (ambiguity intended) but have saved funny men from drowning in the ocean from a sinking ship. I had my lighter times with you as well when we played everything from cards to darts and bowling to Hangman together. Though the real reason for all my wins in Hangman against you was you yourself. You have been my true word-power-made-easy; always came to my rescue to redeem the dearth in my vocab. But now that you are gone I wonder what I would engage in when I wish to avoid people; wonder who I would share my regular gibberish with; who would remember my favorite Calvin and Hobbes quotes; who would remind me of Birthdays, deadlines, pending work, meetings and beer/coffee dates. By losing you I have lost my longest playlist ranging from trite Bollywood to Indie and Jibonmukhi to Psychedelic. I am grieved beyond words by your sudden death.

p.s: My ipod touch died this evening. I have never been this touchy in twenty years. Pardon the mush. And to clarify: We were just friends. Rest in Peace. Amen.

Love Minus Zero

And even though we ain't together it is queer how I feel that I am closer to you than I ever could be to anyone else in this world. Hereby I end another day with the appreciation of the wonder that you are. Life itself is worth living because I have a mind which refuses to be youful on an endless roll; to say nothing about the cheap pen I hold between my fingers to write to you.

I exist
Because you do not.

Quietness

There was a time when I used to spend lonely weekends at home, solely without friends and largely without family. I used to be home alone with my legs crossed over a table, leaning on a chair, smoking; occasionally getting up to go to the kitchen in search of some cheese and coffee. At other times walking around in an empty apartment with a long forgotten book of poems in my hand, sometimes reading out loud as if to an expected audience. As noon came, I ate lonely meals trailed by a warm bath with green and blue hand-felted soap. And when I used to dry my hair and scent my body I always felt heavy for by then I was full of you.

Any Color You Like

After being colored for twenty years I have realised that it can never be too late to talk colors.
Red for a walk, a kiss and a rally by the old brick lane
Yellow for the garden that meets me when I look out of your pane.
Green for a small bullet in a box that travelled the world and cried myriad tears
Pink for all the moans you let out when I used to bite your ears
Purple for the letters we wrote to each other and kept in shoeboxes for five years.
Brown for the leaves that touched my lips,
Formed a cloud over my head and rushed out of my room with a point of no return
Orange for the rubber I used to suck in bed and eventually churn.
Blue for the place that taught me to love, a place where I met my dame.
And Black for whiskey in dark rooms and the dearth of an aim.

Tonight I Can Write

Tonight I am Jay Blue.
Tonight I smell of glue.

Tonight for you I am penning clues.
Tonight I shall paint more shoes.

Tonight I am like a fever.
Hence, tonight ourCup is over.

...................................

Tonight is never like before
Tonight is easy come easy go.

Tonight I am a lonely few
Tonight I don’t love you.

Tonight I am an open door
Hence, tonight I am a blessed whore.

.....................................

Tonight I am not sane
Tonight I know pain.

Tonight I want more
Tonight I fail like never before.

Tonight I am your yellow kite
Hence, tonight I can write.