THAT day! :)

Impromptu is Life. Impromptu this happiness lying in old books. In straddling through breezy streets on a rainy evening. Burying the predictability of darkness in warm coffee mugs, sipped with careful madness.

Somebody plans. Plans with his "You know..." and takes life on a new road of gibberish. To play along is to be part of the contagion. The contagion of jokes and ache-inducing giggles. We start our boat. Its a motor-boat mind you, leading to the inevitable, crazy ride.

I found myself walking in the Rain.'Cause I liked the rains, my companion ever-so-wisely added. Coffee shop was the island we kept hunting for. And Lo! on reaching we made the grandest entry imaginable- book-laden, rain-drenched, enlightened souls!

We lived the spell. We weaved the spell. We ate, drank (coffee mind you) and made merry!

The charm of random living, of being with people who had matched you step-by-step in bonkerishness!

The books are precious. Even more so now. Old books with old pages, carrying the smell of a moist evening. Of bitter brew, turned sweet...and how! :P

Divine Matters!

"How will she take her aunt to the Kalighat Temple? She is a naastik."- Maa was speaking of me. Tired and exasperated.

It didn't shook the ground under me, it didn't break my heart. But, it immediately struck me as lightoprofoundophilosopho topic that might call for some mild pondering, a cynical blog-post.

I am not a Naastik! How can I be?! I am not well-read enough to denounce the might of all the gods and goddesses floating in the heavens to protect us. Me too!I am just a lazy female who never had the time to attend to gods after flipping through Old-English, Middle-English translations, Albert Camus, essays of Simone de Beauvoir and all that luggage. Not to forget the household chores that kept tumbling into my daily life, the multiplying population of guests and siblings, and finally, urgent matters of my delicate heart. Where was the time left for deities huh?

Parents are to be blamed too. Of course. Shocking as it might be for the reader, our family has never had a Puja-room, so to speak. Like us, the billion struggling, sweating Indians in this cramped country of ours, our household gods have also had to jostle for space within a fragile, wooden cupboard, which I guess belongs to some year in the B.C. era. Framed in big and small, seated and standing in brass, silver or a stingy coating of gold, I see them all as a community equally plagued by issues of space, attention, care, infrastructure and so on.

For my part, I have never discriminated. I have prayed to them with the same brisk swing of the incense stick, each time I had an exam in college. However, persistent unsatisfactory scores, ensured the end of that prompt practice too...

As matters stand now, there is complete harmony between me and the godly community. We are each others' well-wishers and even room-mates whenever I am here at home in Calcutta. I hope with their divine generosity they might still have some pleasant things stored for me. Your's truly, you will be happy to know, has plans of building a Puja-room for the plagued divinities...some day.

Naastik. Who?

And...

Ands and Sos keep company often. Like tears, breeze, sunrays and raindrops, your words touch me. Prick, Baffle, Move, Please. They keep piling in my brain like sand, in a corner, one among the many I have built out of Love.
Love. A word, a prick, a sound, a vaccum. Poetry, promises, foolery and so on.
Paint your life, smudge its corners, blur the curves, remove the lines, dampen the brush and keep throwing in the colours. Who has known, who has understood the purity behind most mistakes. They are what your Halo is made of, your very own delicate crown of thorns.
Arrive Monsoon at my doorstep to mark the end of struggle, to mark the beginning of enigmas that carry much Hope, and little of anything else. Leaves rustle in that very green most poets sing of and birds pretend to be in tune too.
Life is here. To be lived in words. To be built out of words. With silent prayers to carve out better days in Yellow and Peach.
Someday we shall be inspired.