Adrift...

The audacity of your weak attempt,

The feebleness of the YOU in you…

I can clap hands, I can shout, I can walk out, I can laugh aloud,

At you...

And at myself.

My boat is adrift.

Thanks to the radio silence you supplied

On that weak weak day…

(Your patent analogy of Pearl Harbor mocks me.)

The dark signal that broke something….

That anchor for sure, and a lot of other things I presume...

A heart or half was also dashed I think….

The perversity of circumstances we say,

Or, lets call it of character.

The equivocator in you, the fool in me?

The generous waves call out

Time to abandon that shabby cloak

The stained abode

And drift away from agony…

To a sadder, clearer shore…

MOvie-thon!

The last five days...I have seen about a dozen movies...like a woman possessed...after work, at night, on weekly offf, all through Sunday....whenever I could....! God knows when will I get a T.V. and a dvd player again!! Here's a precious peep... ;)

99- first time

Sliding Doors- first again

27 Dresses- first time

The Secret Window- second…

Notting Hill- (second...I think so…Hugh Grant….rest don’t’ quite rem…)

Hitch- second

Forrest Gump- (200th)

Monalisa Smile- err…third…

Oceans Eleven- 2nd

Jerry Maguire- 5th time I guess

The Departed- 2nd..don’t know why I saw though!

Alex and Emma (200th show!)


P.S. - My deepest prayers…may I always have movies around me!! :)

Beginning...

I can do miracles I know,
I need not run with others
I can make it being slow.

I can count on myself
All the time
There’s no balm
That my own hands cannot provide.

No joy, no pleasures,
No hopes that need to be denied
Only some milestones waiting
Till Life is again on my side.

I prepare again to dream
I will not trudge
I wish to fly this time.

I will tell tyrant Time…
The decisions I make now.
Epiphanies I provide…

I can hear them calling aloud
My Happiness of yore…
Desires that are there again
Winds of change waiting to blow…

Just this night to pass
Just this narrow road
And then the wide wide path
Of a new Sun, new morrow.

I will join you Life,
I will embrace you too…
I call out to you World…
I will build my home anew….

Rescued?

A ride in a big, white, Whiteliner through the bypass has always done wonders to me. Somehow, I had always half-feared, half-wanted, to fall asleep in these buses and be driven to a far-off tourist spot…Digha or Ranchi or anywhere…I boarded one that day...feeling low…and soon began enjoying the ride through the rain-washed stretches of the V. I. P. Road…I felt that the rain, clouds, trees, bus and even the driver were being extra kind to me…So perfect and refreshing it all felt… Staring out of the bleary window…I felt a pair of eyes glued to me. A well-dressed, middle-aged man sitting on an adjacent seat was looking at me…Nothing out-of-the-world about it I thought. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the numbness of the chilling, uncontrollable air-conditioner….I could still sense his attention in my direction…half-an-hour…and I was in snooze-land, when I felt someone standing right in front of me. It was the same, sturdy, somber-looking man with thick glasses. Before I could expect anything, he placed a laminated piece of post-card on my bag and got down from the bus.

Still bleary-eyed, I saw him outside the window, waving a bye to me…What for? I turned to the post-card. Three Gurus lined-up…one after another…in sacred...pass-port size photos…Swami Vivekananda, Sri Ram Chandra Paramhans, and Baba Lokenath…or so I later identified these bearded/unbearded,/turbaned men to be…

I did not know what symbolic meaning lay ahead of me…what journey…what revelation…the whole day I kept waiting for something strange…bizarre…new….to happen to me… in the market, on the road, in the bus, at work, in the library, home, kitchen….anywhere!...and bed-time came too!...Nothing happened…


And I am still waiting….;-)

Heart of the Matter

I can’t emote in the same manner for everyone. I am not always ready with a set intonation in my voice. It varies from a smile to a laughter, from a neutral ‘hi’ to a warm ‘hello’. I don’t have the same set lines for all. That is how I am programmed. I am frequently short of the right phrases. No striking lines, sighs, winsome sentimentalism. Sometimes, I can be downright boring and extremely plain.

Perhaps the sweetness of renaming people into pet-versions is also missing in me. I take you as ‘YOU’. I do not want your meek, weak, fragile version. Nor do I give you mine to carry. May be that does not provide the right amount of angst. It might even dangerously bring in some happiness that is so unsettling to that nature. A happiness that is ever so plain, non-euphoric. Yet it remains unpalatable, uncomfortable. It’s the vague, irresponsible, ‘pain game’ that should prevail…

Of course, I have always cherished being there. I can love in my own way. Through the seasons of pain. However, I do not want fragility and gloom as conditions for giving my affection and support. I will give them always. Just like that. They have always been there. Without the right lines. Without the histrionics. And perhaps that makes them invisible, unnoticed, unacknowledged, insignificant. It is not gift-wrapped. It cannot be…like the Sunshine that just intruded in your room- unnoticed, unasked and unwanted.

Dear friend, you say people bring about painful circumstances for people…uncaring and slightly self-centred perhaps…so you pay…No. I chose, wanted, shared, went through…My judgment, my choices, my foresight or the lack of it….Self-critique, Accountability, Lessons. Yes, they will do the work for me. Always.

Even the empowering ink couldn't make the finger taller!:(

Alone...

After a failed stint with a pet gold fish and our coup that liberated their birds, our neighbors brought in two rabbits. Sweet, round and self-indulgent. They were placed strategically in a sty-cum-kennel-cum-house-cum-rabbit-inn…that was kept in the common passage of the fourth floor. I noticed them…obviously. One thin, a bit quiet and calmer fellow…the other healthier, chirpier, more agile. I grabbed the opportunity and got familiar with them….No prizes for guessing that the healthier one and I got along….birds (?) of the same feather etcetera… etcetera….

Not that my life began to revolve around them…but they became an integral part of the scene outside my flat. So while climbing the stairs, I would imagine them jumping across their shelter with ears standing up…and I would tap my shoes and see them go round and round in a tizzy….a fond ceremony it became….I could feel they anticipated my antics each time I was around….

But more than me, they were busy with each other….the fatter one burnt his calories by chasing the thinner one…I sometimes felt it mumbled to the other about each passer-by….Didn’t they get bored in there…of each other…of chasing round-and-round…of talking?...What garrulous…lost…busy souls! They went on and on and on in each other’s company….Phew!


And one day, as I came up…there was just the thin one there….sleeping, I thought. May be, the other one was hiding behind…may be it was freshening up somewhere…may be it was eating out…may be it was snoozing...may be. But, I soon came to know it was dead. And a closer look at the thin one made me realize it was shell-shocked. I tapped my feet…clapped unceasingly…made a dozen faces…antics… all that I could think of… it just didn’t move.

I came home…I will not say my life was shattered….but I felt a strange discomfort …an unrest…a heaviness…time and again I would put myself in the shoes of that lonely rabbit and try feeling the difference in its life. I couldn’t even do that…I didn’t want to be in its shoes. It was too scary. It was overwhelmingly sad. What will it do now? Where will it go? Whom will it talk to? There were too many bad, empty, painful questions. So, I let it be.

We have an understanding again…I don’t tap...it doesn’t respond.

The Right Card....

I feel like the most important person in the country presently. Yes, elections are precisely the reason…no...not a party ticket…I got my voter’s ID Card done! And getting it made was no less an ordeal than campaigning for any big-shot, small-shot party-warty or neta.

One sultry afternoon I landed at a dingy sarkari make-shift office in far-flung part of Calcutta. Even as I approached some Babus enjoying a bidi-adda session in their chairs, I could see their expressions change. It was the most heinous crime I could have committed, arriving at three when they were supposed to call it a day at five! “Heavy late!..heavy late!”…two of them mumbled….

“Ei Baba!...Photo nei?” one of the five officers gasped…looking at my Id form….The job of putting the photo there was optional, I tried to explain… "So Bhat?”- another replied, if they don’t see my face, how would they locate me in the area list? But wasn’t I in front of them already?...I exclaimed, exasperated. Surely I was being logical??

It had been some 7-8 minutes already in that dingy, hot den…and I could feel the drop of sweat tricking down my cheek, as the portable fans were turned exclusively in the direction of the babus. No more formalities. I pulled a chair and sat down. And soon paid the price. They handed me down about 10 sets of voter lists of separate blocks of the municipality, and asked me to hunt my name out…written obviously in chaste Bangla! Me poor soul….having bid Banlga bye-bye in the 8th standard…tried conjuring mental images of the bangla alphabets that would form my name and began my mad hunt through those maddening papers….ten…fifteen….twenty…thirty minutes and I saw my name written in all glory!

“Here”. I stood up, handing the paper, trying to sound as pissed, miffed, caustic, sullen as possible… "where?” one of them accosted me as I tried leaving….Oh yes…I was forgetting to get my photo clicked for the card. There stood a reed-thin photographer in a pink shirt with the saddest looking digital camera in the world!...Already out of patience, I wanted him to simply go through the motions…but, but, but…. “Your hair…madam…” he pointed out to the few misguided strands…”your complexion”…he pointed to the drops on my forehead…trying to do a Mona Lisa… “its perfect!”- I almost stamped my feet…and then the blinding flash came down…and I left….

I saw my ghost finally when my card was handed out a fortnight later. But, but, but…I got it done people!

Truth

Being great is easy, being generous is easy, being scapegoat-ish is easy, and being a martyr is easiest….It saves a lot. A lot of truth, a lot of pain, a lot of bitterness. But being honest is becoming increasingly difficult. Why don’t people open up and walk the road I wonder? Me included. Me even more so. Shedding the burden is not easy you see. One gets used to the acting. One cannot give it up. It’s the other skin, the role, the mould, the part, the other identity. One lives it out each day hoping someone will notice the blood that oozes, the sweat that screams out, the anguish that pricks. No one does. And you keep dragging it- inside out….outside in….and the days are passing by.