There are no questions left,
nor any answers left to be sealed.
Its just me ,
in the midst of that vast white space,
hiding behind the infinity.
I call out in an unknown voice and wait for the echo
to pierce through my senses,
to mute my voice
and to be called by no name.
There are no lines left to be read,
no words for my blank white sheet.
Its just me,
playing with the pile of meanings – intangibly spread in the air.
I feel them breathe, smell their space and
know why they belong to me.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Across the Street
Have you, dear reader, ever been to the colonies ravaged by builders, where every bit of land is squeezed to make a row house fit into it? Where the philosophy of the builder has an element of mysticism to it.He wants you to empathize with your fellow beings in villages that have no roads and on the other side he amazes you with the generosity with which he makes a street which you could gaily call a greater version of a ‘pagdandi’. If you have ever had such mystic experiences you know exactly where I stay and the setting of my narrative.
Her daughter is angry with her today. Since morning she has just been asking her to do some work and has not even said "good morning". The little seven year old is hurt and sits on the terrace alone, venting all her pain to an imaginary friend of her’s for the consolation of a patient listening sans moralizing. She called for her girl aloud from the first floor in her nasal and shrill voice - “Where the hell are you? Didn’t I ask you to tidy the bed? Couldn’t you find a better time to while away on the terrace?”
My heart pained for the young one. Can’t she be somewhat soft with her children? The girl climbs down the stairs and enters the house. I hear no sound now.
I am sure they are unaware of the fact that they have an avid audience in me, their neighbour. Though our houses face each other we had never been friends. To be precise we had never wanted to be either and were quite happy being cordial neighbours until one day we just wished that our houses could turn their backs on each other . And I am sure even if the houses wanted to do as we wished them to the street would never allow.Playing the austere symbol of a sublime philosophy,it would have never let such animosity to grow on its edges. If only it could!
In spite of all that not being friends and now not being neighbors either, I have always had a keenness in her life. She is an ordinary lady with three kids, little means, a whole bunch of household work and a decently non demanding job. The little insight that our dear street allows into her private life, I have always seen her going about her work, calling out or talking to her children( something that is very close to shouting), or taking her two wheeler out to drive all the way to her work. Over the years, nothing has changed the way she has been living her a day and giving every bit of her life for being what I so casually call
a ‘homemaker’. It was only a couple of years back that they built two rooms for themselves and I imagined on her face the satisfaction of a job well done, of a home well made. As I saw the progress of the rooms being built on the first floor of her house and the path for sunshine to greet my windows shrink , I complaint and appreciated her in a peculiar blend of incomprehensible feelings. Though I have learnt to miss the sunshine I haven’t still learnt to appreciate my neighbors who are not friends.
Everyday I go to my veranda and look at her house, her children, listen to her conversations with them. Everyday I face her as both of us push off for work at the same time and everyday I strangle my inert wish to meet her eyes across the street, smile and say “You have made a beautiful house!”.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Here or not, wherever I will be, I will always have a little of Kolkata in me.
‘I am wrapping up from Kolkata’ – a phrase that I have been using opulently since the past week. After staying here for almost six years I am going back to my roots, to my hometown. I have carefully distanced myself from the most hyped about class of people for whom Kolkata is the be all and end all.And now as I feel terribly attached to this city and begin to grow cautious of overstepping the ‘balance of emotion’ I so insist upon I realize that this city means what it does to me because of the people that I have encountered and associated with.
Coming to Kolkata has been about getting into school to learn from amazing teachers, who have come to be a treasure for my life, knowing friendship and finding amazing friends and guess what - about discovering my own self. Living here has been about finding new meaning in the odd bunch of relations I had known to exist in all parts of the city and about having weird experiences in the PG where I stayed and having all the more weird food the tiffin service had to offer the poor veggie gal and wondering how I was putting on weight in spite of surviving the daily torture of papaya.
It has been about walking down the streets of College Street, having ludicrous experiences in the famous Coffee House, having Momo at the Exide crossing and being called ‘Momovati’ by a dear friend(Oops!), meeting unexpected people in the library, cursing the CU people almost to the verge of hating my self for coming to this city(wince wince), fighting over with my friend on whether to take the metro or the bus, being told by her - at almost every crossing-how awesome the phuchka wala is(which has almost led me to believe that all phuchka walas in Kolkata are awesome).
It has been about noticing a house named "’Khelaghar” (playhouse) on my way to school with charm; as it bore the name of one of my most favourite songs penned by Tagore; of savoring the flavor and feel of the silent past of ‘North Calcutta’, of running to the refuge in Belur, of being desperate to go back to my hometown during Durga Puja and of just being and knowing more of myself.
And now as I am on a spree of tracing back my steps and gathering all the little somethings , I think of missing the people and the aeon spent here, and know for myself that all of it has beautifully become a part of me.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Knowing Words
There are always several words which remain unsaid or unheard. We forget some and some we remember all our lives. Some words though are not meant to be said. The
y just come -
y just come - “Hello! Can you hear me?”
Of course you can but who’s that.
“ Its me,” (hmmm… lets say joy), “Joy. Remember we saw each other a couple of days before.”
“Saw each other? When?”
“The day you had been watering your lilies and a butterfly had got wet in your rain. Rings a bell?
I was just there.”
You obviously have no clue.But somehow you happen to trust that voice and you open the door and let Joy in.
Joy seems familiar,someone you think that you might have come across in some of your letters or may be in some of your notes to yourself.
Yes, you vaguely remember him.
“ So finally we meet”, says he.
“ We have met.”
“No, you have seen me.”
He walks across your room, browses through the books on the shelf, passes through your well kept kitchen, looks out of the windows.
And you wonder why he is here.
Its a question he definitely doesn’t answer.
He just stays, saying nothing, listening to all you say. He waits and waits till you grow tired of trying to say something or to hear something from him.
Exhausted,you recline yourself on the sofa and just let yourself go.
There the word, Joy as he calls himself, looks into your eyes, smiles at your desperation to find answers to some petty questions about him (something he knows is typical of you), lets you go beyond the ceremony of giving and finding answers and solutions.
And once he is done with all of this, he places himself silently in the centre of your room, closes his eyes and remains.
Some words like Joy are just meant to remain .
Friday, January 15, 2010
Not All is Love
He saw something in her eyes which was alien. It was like a faint grey that had showed up in those beautiful eyes. She wasn’t quite herself – uneasy and lost.He took her hand and waited for her to look up at him with tears rolling down her cheeks. “I am sorry” were all the words she spared.
She saw reflection of her own eyes in his' and recalled how she had fallen for his ‘talkative eyes’. Over the past season of troubled waters he had subtly and sensitively done his best to bridge the gulf but she had never let the water calm. Now submerged in the same flood she groped for the bridge, for the hand in help she had persistently refused. He would understand - was all she knew and could think of at the moment.
"In spite of all differences I have never, never wanted to be... I am sorry, I am really sorry."
All these months he had patiently cared for her silence and had never forced her into words. He had faith in his love and waited for the wall to crumble but now the wall had come crashing on him. Shrinking back to his own self, he looked at the truth of not being able to revert what has happened.She had been unfaithful but not willingly perhaps, it could have been her weakness but not her deliberate will. And that was the worst of it all, he had always made such earnest efforts to understand her that it came naturally to him. He could not bear to be sympathetic to her weaknesses at a time he least wanted to be reasonable. How could he be mad at her even after knowing the loneliness that gripped her over the years , the void that neither of the two could fill, the void that had almost become a part of them and had now taken a different meaning and echoed various sounds.
Though throughout the period of differences she had blamed him for causing her pain ,it was he who suffered the agony of being in love of her,of being blamed by her and of believing in the better and happier morrow. Pain for him was locked up within and cloaked with hope but not liberated by it.
The sudden downpour on the agony he had nurtured with such care, dissipated it in a cruel coldness that almost burned the inner walls of his self. He saw the tears ceaselessly and pleadingly trickling down her cheeks and it irritated his bruises further. The ire cooled and in no time left him with bruises and blisters all over.It could not cool and push him to suffocation. It could not…
He pressed her hand ,tears stopped and in her eyes he saw the grey die for the blue.He saw pain metamorphose into hope in her eyes and he felt himself disintegrating into meaningless nothings.
He slighted her head that rested on his shoulder and left her hand, took his eyes away from her and walked towards the door. The sudden coldness was unfamiliar and knocked at her walls within. She knew what to make out of it but shrunk from facing it.
He opened the door and walked out, leaving her with a parting glance and in that glance was captured the colour of dusk in her eyes and a profound sense of equality.
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