Thursday, December 4, 2008

Meaninglessness...

Here is to writing...or to not writing...its stuck somewhere, the wheel, the mud won't let it go. There is a clear moment before us, when the truth is out! Of action, inaction, hopelessness and hoping anew...Who started it? And who will end?And who shall live out in the interim this drama of living?The question unrolls like a red carpet...red it is this time...the blood-soaked one!Hands raised, eyes wide, mouths agape...the act has taken place. Let each stand up now and answer to his ownself...does death carrying a meaning now or, will the living add a meaning to this grotesque place called our world...

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Birthday

It begins with those heavy hugs at midnight

The pleasant good mornings'

Turning into an afternoon of good wishes and greetings

Followed by an evening of happy giggles, familiar cakes, dwarfish candles and claps

What remains though is a ponderous soul at night,

And the taste of the pungent cherry... gone stale...

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Moment...

We are wasting the moment…
In decisions…indecisions?
In spotting the desire that quickly hides again
Under the tables and chairs…
The crackle of voices behind, the feeble music,
Waiting for us to talk…
And we wait…
To choose that easy moment
When our voices will shed their
Robes of silence for once.
The tinkle of glasses and coffee mugs,
Uncertain and infrequent as our glances;
Unsure, evanescent but warm
Filled with million questions…
Will it be laid out this time on the table?
The bundle of knotted confusions?
But we let it pass…
To be together in the moment…
Undisturbed, unheeded…
Our nervous, numbed, overwhelmed souls…
Bathed in unsettling happiness
The unchanging, unsure, eternal companions…

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Little things that I could change:

Taste of an apple…


Deep Yellow!


Our librarian…


Dry leaves…


My pet name…


The road near my house…


My fingers…


Himesh…(little?)


The smell of eggs.


My bad poems…


Hair-dryers

Colour of mud…


Impulsiveness…


British Council’s unnerving security…


Height...mine again…


You!


Thursday, October 16, 2008

Why hate…? I ask...
I mean, it does require some effort after all.
Because… it’s the next best option...

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

There are some things that occupy a silent, unacknowledged space in our mental landscapes...yet we take their sight, smell, feel and colour for granted ... there is an old Gulmohar tree near my apartment... Old beacuse I choose to make it old, so that I can travel with it back in time...as months roll down in the course of a year and foggy mornings stand with greetings at daybreak, I make a note of a certain whiff near the balcony. It will remain my companion each morn till spring decides to pack its bag...I love this damp, mild, elusive smell of the orange Gulmohar tree, as it reminds me of Diwali evenings, Birthday mornings and New Year dawns...My Old sweet, special Gulmohar ...that will remain in the landscapes of my happy times with its frail, unforgettable, dizzy fragrance...

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Ganguly!

Me and Saurav...yes, yes, Ganguly...have always shared a love-hate relationship.Not that Ganguly knew about it!...I liked him sometimes and disliked him at other times...but obviously I followed his game!But damn!He is calling it a day!A golden handshake after all!...And the saddest part...there is pressure on the Wall now...my dear, sweet, sad Dravid!:)

Monday, October 6, 2008

Burp!

Some things please you...just by the look of it...like a well-spread meal...you might not eat a lot(I for one don't...i swear!)...but then it made me verrrry happy to see the lavish table...it just completed the picture of a happy, memorable day...and the scent of the satisfying meal hung on to the finger-tips and napkins for a long, long time...

Monday, September 29, 2008

Some people know no middles...mediums...middle-grounds...

Just up and down...

Highs and Lows...

Hyper-Highs and little-hyper lows...

Grow up...!

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The tendency of time
To pass and not look back
Reminds me of you.
The atrocity of the sun
To warm and burn me too
Reminds me of you.
The audacity of the wind
To assume my wearied presence
Reminds me of you.
The ambiguity of the clouds
To wrap me in darkness
Reminds me of you.
The generosity of the rain
To drown me and still go on
Reminds me of you.
The tenacity of the rays
To somehow find me out
Reminds me of you…

Friday, September 19, 2008

It's the green grass singing...

It’s the green grass singing…
Calling out to you…
To come and dance a while,
As you look at the view…
Come and touch its green vein
As she waits for the happy-sad rain…
Make her wishes come true…
With promises dry and few.
It’s the green grass singing…
Calling out to you…
Come and be its friend
Help her beat the mad wind…
Fill her in your mind and air
Angry old winter will soon be there…
It’s the green grass singing…
Calling out to you…
You who never came…
After promising the light rain.
You who walked away proud
Taking sides with the moody cloud…
It’s the green grass singing…
Calling out to you…
Come and ruffle her hair
Don’t stand in and stare!
Come out of your cruel retreat
It wishes to be trampled by your dirty feet…

Thursday, September 11, 2008

The countdown has begun…and there is this continuous whiff of bamboos in the air. One wakes up on sunny mornings to the sight of half-made pujo pandals, carrying promises of a new season of festivity. From here on, nothing can go wrong. Here comes the best time of the year, when all goes well! Yes it does! A weird, unknown chemistry has set in, signaling a collective wait for sessions of serious dressing up, pandal-hopping, addictive gossip, photo-sessions, vibes and vibes, interesting scenes and sights, this and that, and grandmas and grand-dads, and cabs and phuchkas and jewelry and restaurants, and class mates and boyfriends, and old love and new love, and Maddox square and Bag bazaar, and you name it! This mad, dizzy, sweeping, buzz that overwhelms all! I love the smell of roll and cutlet and biriyani and phuchka and all blended into one…and the meaningless giggles and deliberate strolls in company of known faces…so many moments of colorful existence and collective merriment…so many lanes of expectations and memories…to be lived and cherished year after year…Calcutta I will never leave you! :)

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

How many times do you generally repeat a mistake? On an average, I repeat mine at least seven times. Not a lot, considering one is tempted to improve things each moment…

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

More Trash...

HUMOR is just the balm to soothe all pain and dispel attention from the problem inside….LOVE is just the word to defeat boredom and usher curiosity for a while…FAITH is the perfect push you need for falling off the edge, in case you cannot decide…

Monday, September 1, 2008

No matter what Descartes said...This and that…god and human will…and human choice and goodness… I Don’t Trust Myself!

Friday, August 29, 2008

Meandering mind...

To find is to lose…
To lose is to retain…forever.
To dream is to miss out…
To miss out is not to have dreamt.
To ask is to never get…
To never get is for never having asked.
To wait is to wait eternally…
To move on is to never meet again.
To talk is to listen…
To never talk is to listen…all the time.
To want is to know…
To know what you never wanted to know.
To run is to hide…
To hide is only meeting the other self.
To be is to think…
To think how you cannot be yourself…

Thursday, August 28, 2008

The bestest feeling in this world is to talk and talk and talk to someone you have loved for ages and met after a lifetime... :)

HAPPY...

I know not why, but I feel happy. Arre kyon yaar? Who knows?…for sure that is…May be its this or may be its that…may be its my salary approaching, or may be it’s the new season of the English Premier League…may be its being back with friends (the most probable one I guess…), or may be it’s the new bag! Who knows…for sure that is…but I want this feeling to last forever…so much like the stupid me! well, is anything meant to last forever?…may be yes !who knows...for sure that is! :)

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Be yourself….


Be yourself…..


Be yourself…..

Be yourself....




Okay, wait!


Monday, August 18, 2008

Uncertain, moody embers
Like uncertain truths and promises…
Waiting to ascertain their tired lights,
A tame hope of a new-born future
Wrapped in hazy dreams...
Still unraveling, sorting knotted sorrows
Following all those gray, cloud-borne roads
Leading to your shrouded, sad abode…

Friday, August 8, 2008

Cold mornings and colder dawns,
Meeting and melting before the Sun,
Arriving…with the smell of the eucalyptus.
The first glance of the day
Wrapping you with warm assurance,
A cup of brown, deep coffee,
Carrying sweet silent promises for the day…
Half words and half questions…
Silently shared and shifted under the bed…
And the happy blanket drawn again
Adieu Reality!
Of a paralyzed, gray love…


Friday, July 18, 2008

There are these bad days…when you wake up with a bad taste in your mouth…irrespective of what you ate/ did not eat the previous night…and it tells you there is a seedy day ahead…a day when you feel high-strung, tired, impatient, and very self-critical…when you cannot pat yourself for the advice you imparted to your friend, but rather question your own conscience…whatever it is and wherever it hides…where do you stand? What do you do? Which truth are you following?...and a similar set of philosophical luggage that you suddenly discover lying in one corner of your mind…sigh…and a deeper sigh…a long stare in the mirror…and you give up!
And then you blog to universalize your angst!

Sunday, June 29, 2008

We step once more into the vacuum of time
And trace the cunning noise.
A witness,
To our footsteps…
Companion…clock…critic…
Tap, tap, tap….mine and yours.
Towards infinity,
Hand in hand…
A word or two.
Perfunctory, empty, bare…
Floating in the air,
Catch and fold them…hide them in your pockets…
Wide-open eyes…drinking the white…
The white of the vacuum…
Sip, sip, sip…
And then rest on the shoulders of time,
A minute or two…at the station,
To catch the four o’ clock train,
The left-hand pocket of your overcoat
Carrying in it
Our tickets to eternity…
My creaky gray umbrella and yours…?
Here we go…
The whistling engine
Staring breathless and blank’
In the cold, white rain…
Tap, tap, tap…

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Let them walk out of the room,
Lest they count,
One, two, and three…
The number of times I gasped
Wanting more of the air.
Let me close the book;
The words might catch an eye,
And speak aloud the story
They never wrote…
Let me not talk to you anymore,
Else it might shatter hopes,’
Dispersing vapors,
As before…?
Let me draw the curtains once more
And bathe in the darkness
Of tales untold,
The words and worlds that are mine,
And live out this life…
Unnoticed on the murky shores of time.
I CAN wade grief,
Whole pools of it,-
I’m used to that.
But the least push of joy
Breaks up my feet,
And I tip-drunken.
Let no pebble smile,
T’was the new liquor-,
That was all!

Power is only pain, stranded through discipline,
Till weights will hang.
Give balm to giants
Wilt, like men.
Give Himmaleh,-
They’ll carry him!

-Emily Dickinson.

Monday, June 16, 2008

The rains are a big help…they make you abandon the hibernating holes underground and look into the eyes of the Sun…

Life...

The rays break upon the windowpane…
Trembling and vanishing into the room…
The sinewy hand attempts to tie a bun,
Hiding the grays and blacks of life within it.
A dry face recognizes itself in the light of the faded sun,
The watch assures the presence of time and a world.
How long? How long? The heart beats again and wonders…
The pace of nothingness grows anew.
The door stands dumbly, the dirty walls look on.
And life in a cold room shamelessly hangs on…

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Placid...

There is a strange contentment in leaving things as they are…teaching your brain not to think…to let the moment pass…read a book...type a post…talk to your friend…make a new dish…listen to the radio…learn with your soul…switch off the phone…fold old clothes…take up the crossword…write on a fresh white page…smile in the mirror…and quarrel with your bro…and it shall pass…leaving you to yourself…a happy soul!

Exchange...

Question- (asked with a napkin like straight face)“What kind of men turn you off?
Answer- (uttered with deep-shut eyes and breath-exhaling firmness) “Unintelligent, Uninteresting, Unfaithful!”
Reaction- (Stupefied dumbness) “Ma’am! Wah! Kya answer hai!”

blabber...

No, I don’t like melodrama! I really don’t!...Even you don’t I am sure…
Well…I do like it…I confess…but only when I am its centre of lament!

Again...

And you knew it would come…
Rolling down…threads of your life loosening themselves
Without your permission…
The moment drops into oblivion like the sigh from your tired soul…
You thought you had better control…
Control?
Like the traffic man at the signal…
You stretch your hands and the wind escapes you…
Damn! Not even the wind!
Lets take a walk tomorrow
Far and far…wide?
No! It takes me to your house…
I shall walk only far…
Far…far…far…
Will you come along?
You have seen the threads fall out…will you weave them now…
Weave and tie…tie me to you? Will you?
No…I shall walk…the rain comes now…I don’t need you…
I can weep.

Nothing!

Sometimes, it doesn’t satisfy you to be a simple, stupid, soul…you want to go further…and further than that…full length…touch the zenith…or is it the nadir?...never mind…its a weirdly engrossing journey to see yourself be duped, stand back and contemplate, shut your eyes, let things be, and then exhale deeply and proclaim-“Damn! I have been a fool!” :)

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

And it really turned metaphysical…I swear it did! I find no proper imprint of it in the camera of my mind…only a faint smell of food, fading memories of some awkward pauses…blurred essence of time and place…mixed voices behind…the damp breeze and a wide road…and the rolling of a couple of hours like a gusty wind!...it passed…and it remains…coming and going with the smell of the air-conditioner, warm coffee and my new white dress.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

And to write...

Some people can write…write well, admirably…. touching things in a unique way.
You had thought of it, your brain had conveyed you the impression. But, you could never articulate it correctly enough. And then you read those lines and feel..bingo!..precisely what I wanted to say….not written in black and white, but put in a shade of appealing and touching gray…And you turn and tell the writer-“Great job! Bravo!...the writing is indeed beautiful!” But what of the writer? Does he/she talk equally magically for himself? Or, is there a semi-paralysis that the writer suffers from? Can he talk on his own? When does he do that? Probably, when he is talking through his characters…? Or, do his characters say more than he agrees to…? Can he articulate “his” feelings? Does he end up borrowing a line from his character’s agony to express his own love?...may be it was “him” all the time…Or was he pretending in one of those mellifluous passages of expression? What is it that surely belongs to him? Who can say…? May be the writer….Or will his characters doing the talking…?

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

BLOT!

The dark ink knew…
The sheet was done for.
It had blotted it alright…
BLOT BLOT BLOT
Spreading itself thick and dark…
Touching the very atoms,
Or do they call it the heart?
BLOT BLOT BLOT
The present, the future,
And the unerasable past
Once and for All
BLOT BLOT BLOT
Dumb, defeated sheet,
Hide in my tattered diary fast…
I know you not…no, not with this
BLOT BLOT BLOT.

Friday, March 28, 2008

Survive...


Quick…it will envelop you...!
Overcoming you… in an embrace...
A plunge…a slip…a dark eternity…
Led into a lull…a hush…a forbidden place…
I admit…you have been deceived,
You are there…suffocated yet alive…
See...The world has found you out…
Now breathe…breed…kill...and survive…

Saturday, March 1, 2008

TYPES...

People are essentially scared of people...has someone said this before?...may be...well, you can read it one more time...so the strategy is to read as much of each others' character at one go...so that one carries an advantage at the next interaction...a common ploy is to typecast each other into particular frames...intellectual, loud, happy-go-lucky,snobbish, bore, "amma" type in girls, "ghochu" for boys...but the scariest are those you cannot put into frame...they just lurk around you, with a dangerously undefinable character,judging, observing, chuckling knowingly, cracking a joke when you least expect them to, reserved, yet so helpful, strategists and yet charmingly easy...BEWARE OF THESE....I have got a frame to put them in...someone told me, they are MY TYPE!!:)

Menu...

Some people went to a restaurant few days back...okay, me, Sohini and Rashmi...
we ordered some stuff...ate...anyhow, somehow...gulped it down with each others' support...time to pay the bill...the bill came...
V.POLIO- Rs. 70/-
CHI-MEN- Rs 50/-
SEND-WITCHES-Rs. 70/-
Implying...vegetable pulao, chow mein, sandwitches! ;)

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Crack...

A crack in the earth,
Blank...
Dark...
Dumb...
Parched...
Misshapen and Wide,
Alone...
Dirty...
Dilapidated...
It stares at You.
Or,
Is it you...
Blank...
Dark...
Dumb...
Parched...
Staring at It?

Thursday, February 21, 2008

It happened one day...

It happened one day, they played a trick again...
I tried very heard...searched all corners of my brain...
Here...there...not just the mind but also the soul,
Where did they go...a half, if not a whole?
I had felt them lurking sometime ago...
But the tongue did not have them, the heart did not know.
So I cried, abandoned, alone...a long time,
Someone knocked, and I saw...the words had finally arrived...

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

So here I am...in the middle way,
Trying to learn to use words,
And every attempt is a new start,
And a different kind of failure...
- T.S.Eliot

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Crookedness...

I am a nice girl...I really, actually, confidently believe this...
You cannot contradict this...sounds dictatorial?...okay, may be...
But the fact remains...that I am nice...and most people will agree...
You don't...and it makes me sad...but...I say it again that I try being nice always...
So where is the crookedness that you see in me?...it doesn't make you sound nice...
And all those who agree with me are also NICE...actually,really,confidently...
You still don't?... ;-)

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

The Road...

One day, I will set out with a bag
And traverse that dark blank road, outside...
The road that stretches its uncouth body like a lazy giant,
Waiting between my house and yours.
I will walk upon it one afternoon, slowly with careful steps,
And pick up those trampled dreams, those broken moments,
A couple of half-mumbled promises, some unsent letters,
A few unheard lines, few muted songs,
Those fast-fading memories and my naive poems…
All of which, the road keeps in its belly.
They are mine. I shall collect them,
And lay them all, where they rightly belong…
In that freshly-dug grave,
Right in the bosom of my beautiful garden...

Monday, January 14, 2008

you girls...!

We had all met in the ‘Eng Lit’ class of 2002…2002! Gosh! The amazement is still lurking as I type this…Is it a coincidence that we all chose to study Literature…? and how apprehensive…a little lost…dazed we were during the first few days in that awe-inspiring university… :)…no …I don’t want to make this a ‘Jab We Met’…this comes purely as the impulse of a couple of hours, when I am feeling pretty nostalgic…not a tear-jerking attempt mind you…just the simple feeling of lazy and vacant nostalgia…the five of us…how different, how happy, how irritated at times, how easy with each other…blissful!…there was sometimes, a sense a tension, miscommunication, coldness, misunderstanding, competition and the bunch…but then one smile, one heart-to-heart, one meeting, one class-lecture together, some scribbling on the back-page, one session in the canteen…and it was all back on track!
We do crib…to each other…. at times about each other…childish…we know yaar!
We want more of each other’s life…of each other’s ambitions, plans, happiness et cetera…but it will never change…the feeling of wanting each other around…being part of each other’s life…it will never go… ansa, sohini, rashu, deba…and yes…dear me!…now no tears you ladies!!;)

Friday, January 11, 2008

The Calendar...

It’s marked in the new calendar hanging on your wall.
The new white calendar, carrying in its belly, smell of the old printing machine,
Commanding you to get into the solid black boundaries
Of its multiple boxes…
It has planned it all for you…a day to cry, a day to laugh, a day to feast,
A day to pray, a day to remember a friend, a day to slice a cake, a day to fight, a day to meet, a day to pretend.
It’s all planned…
You too can enjoy the game…
Pretend to plan, pretend to arrange, pretend being your own master, pretend to change.
You move on from place to place, searching for the right box to rest…
It just hangs there…blinking from the wall…
The chequered body smiling at you,
It watches you in the trap…your box…my box…it has got us all…

Friday, January 4, 2008

an attempt...


Its too clichéd a thing to even talk about I guess… but each day brings its pangs to me anew…well pang is too strong a term may be, with its ‘-anngg!’ resounding a little too much! But let me talk about it nonetheless…about being misunderstood through my words…particularly when their text forms the mode of transmitting my ideas…and emotions, if there are any which ever reach out through them…its surprising how despite knowing the language for years, having used its words, read them, almost grown up with them, one is misunderstood…misquoted…even by people who know you since eternity…! Okay, we have read in books, the views of Saussure and Derrida, of how Signifier and Signified are arbitrary etcetera…and the ‘lag’ that remains in conveying the meaning…but then, if to write…to talk…to communicate…to express…to share in totality…are essential to your life, what do you do!…And yet I write…hoping my text will miraculously and completely connect the Signifier and the Signified!…phew!some mess it is!

Eating up a Storm...!


In that little fragment of living which passes under the name of college life, our gang found itself constantly haunting eateries…No, we were not the type to survive on fagging and boozing (you may add “only”)…good food beckoned us constantly and bad waiters beckoned us out! Of course there were the typical college\university canteens to hang around, but self-proclaimed connoisseurs like us couldn’t resist trying the greener/not-so-greener pastures. From aloof waiters to stinky food, from cash-crunches to candle-lit lunches (yes, you got it right! there was a power-cut)…we have seen it all!! And of course taken it all in our stride, there wasn’t much choice you see…While in the historic College Street Coffee House we encountered intimidating waiters in white, swooping in upon us like Satan’s fiery troop of rebel angels, demanding their share of a fat tip, in Jadavpur we constantly haunted an eatery which in turn was haunted by bad instrumental (almost weeping) melody and frequent power-cuts! I thought we were their special customers till time and experience taught me better…neglected orders, aloof waiters, constant queries of-“Arr kichu lagbe?”(“Anything else”), perpetual stare… it all had only one sentiment in disguise…which went something like-“ what the hell are these lazy, miserly, critically-analyzing, boisterous, quick-eating, late-leaving, no-tip-paying set of female gluttons doing here?” Sounds grand to me even today! On the greater/graver occasions, which included frequent but no-nonsense window-shopping, birthdays, post-class-test lunches, sessions on heart-aches\heart-breaks etc, we shifted base to the more lavish eateries in Golpark and Gariahat. No, we didn’t at all mind putting up with preposterous lovers, sinking and floating by turns in to each other’s eyes, or bloated mammas stuffing their untiringly yelling kids…They only strengthened our bond with the world and its miseries…we had other challenges up our sleeves…such as mustering the courage to gobble the hopeless new recipe we ordered for our connoisseur tongues and counting pennies to pay the unexpectedly high bill we frequently incurred! Of course we were also fond of promptly moving out, that is, before the waiter could discover he had been paid no tip…What little but strategic triumphs! I wonder whether they remember us! Whether they had nightmares the day we visited their joint. No…It wasn’t that bad! Of course they won’t recognize us! But I am sure the day they have an adamant set of noisy and miserly customers to attend…they will suffer from a sense of déjà vu!!