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…?

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.

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…

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! ;)

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?

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...

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

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?... ;-)

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...

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!!;)

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…

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!!

It's not a word...

How do you know?
How do you know it’s that?
Who told you it's eternal?
And should I claim the eternal?
No…it’s not a word…
It never can be.
The word is too little…inconsiderate…blind and shrewd…
My feelings are my own nest
No word shall hold them ever
And put us all to rest.
It’s a collage I tell you
You…me…your thoughts and
Mine…
Holding all each others hands
We do the all-fall-down…
Laughing and crying together
Till the magic fades
Tomorrow.
And hands change hands…
I see yours in other's…
A sound...like something breaks...
The little girl is full of sorrow.

Escape...

What do you say?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to run away?
Run away from the flux and battle?
Escaping into the arms of ambiguity and timelessness…
Away from the memories and nightmares…
Walking into a script of one’s own?
Away from your subtlety? Your judgments?
Shedding the burden of love…of livelihood…
Away from you? From your face too?
Into my world?

The Wedding...

I tell you…it wasn’t me. The surroundings…they were actually amusing! Tell me, how would you react when you see a bulky-bodied dame of thirty, attempting to stroll with fairy-steps on her terrace, all decked-up in a blinding red-saree? The aanchal too, mind you, was stretched out in true Bollywood style for the breeze to fill in…that is, if the breeze could find any space, anywhere…My poor soul! How could I stop it from smiling the moment I glanced at the bride across the lane, from my balcony? Not that it was my first brush with the Big Fat Indian Wedding…but somehow I am amused, shocked, bamboozled anew, each time.
“ Look at that!” I turned to Ma…“who does she think she is? And what is that bloke up to? Why does she have to make a sad-looking fairy out of herself for the photographer?”
“Shut up!” pat came the response from Ma! “ You think they have all lost it…like you?”
“Lost it?” I chuckled in amusement.
Ma couldn’t take it anymore… “Yes! Your head, your common-sense…not everyone in the world wants to have her vidai in an auto-rickshaw!” she blabbered, wrenching water from the clothes she was attempting to hang in the balcony…but couldn’t… too distracted by activities across the lane you see!
“Ma, that’s really called getting hyper and going overboard! I never said that! Just because I like traveling in an auto all the time…” Yes people…it was true. I loved auto-rickshaws…the thud of those cheap stereos, the glitter of the wallpapers, the badly-printed posters of Bollywood divas and the over-all thrill of being in the world’s cheapest roller-coaster…simply too-much! Besides I had to board one to get to college everyday…never mind…
As the afternoon passed, guests started pouring in to the lane. The scent of old and new perfumes, the sweat from bulky bodies, the cloistered smell of old benarsi sarees and silk kurtas…it all climbed up to my flat. Ma came in with her lunch-“ not cooking anything for the evening…surely we are all going to the wedding?” I caught the question as smoothly as it was leg-glanced towards me-
“ I don’t think I am going…can’t say about Dad…”. Ma had stopped eating “go on…go on finding faults with half the world…and the other half won’t care about you…your friends happen to be the only worthy creatures available I think…”
“ Why bring them in this issue Ma? Don’t you know it’s my final sem? Have got a dozen assignments to wrap up…besides…” I added in a jovial tone… “I have already checked out all the hunks pouring in…they aren’t worth it…All in over-sized kurtas…excess of deos and hair-gels…obsessed with their handy-cams…all in all, highly un-interesting!”
“And what about your great institution? No gem worthy of you there too, it seems…” Ma added sarcastically. She always came back to this…not that she would have appreciated if I landed home one day with a missile by me...err…a guy …but it was a handy thing to say none the less. True it was in a way…I hadn’t ‘fallen’ or ‘got up’ for anyone in my five years of hanging around in the campus. Was I a men-basher? Don’t think so…I could bash women too…I mean criticize…and more so because I couldn’t stand the kind of antics Tutu was indulging in on her terrace! Besides I had my close pals who were in relationships…and I never had issues…lets move on…
As evening set in, Ma became restless with my placidity.
“How have things changed…” she began lamenting… “Forget about obeying elders, girls won’t even listen to them anymore…”
“It’s okay Ma…I knew you would resort to this…” I sighed shutting my book… “Get ready, I will help you…”
“Help? And what about you? Are you bent upon acting headstrong? Can’t you just stroll across the lane and stay for a few minutes?” she was exasperated…I knew what would follow…a session of painting, coloring, bleaching etcetera…all for people who see you sweating it out marketing, washing, cleaning…everyday.

We joined the wedding-party at night…the lane was packed with cars. Tutu’s dad had booked some extra cars…plush air-conditioned ones…to be placed on the mouth of the lane, just to add to the ambience of excess and luxury. No sooner did we enter the house, than I met up with a few other girls of the locality. I had seen these bland creatures all my life…they had never giggled this incessantly before, all of course in honor of the young men present there. They are all young creatures…I told myself…simply chill…and let them be! But…what was I?… Never mind…
The wedding ceremony had begun. The groom’s feet were duly washed…a lot if suit pieces, gold, wristwatches and even utensils were being donated by the perpetually-stooping father of the bride
“Ma…”I couldn’t help it… “Is he a bhikhari?”
“Shut-up!” was the expected reply…
A young man approached my friend, as we girls were sharing a light moment… “I too will take my fairy away in a doli someday…” He told her excitedly, breezing pass us…truly Hrithik!
“ But don’t forget to buy some utensils for your home!” I quipped in, as we all broke into laughter…

“Can we leave now by your kind permission?” I asked Ma, an hour later, in part- pleading, part-humoring manner…
“ Stay here…look around…we shall soon have your sister’s wedding…don’t you have any sense of duty?” Why hyperboles hitting me all the time? I wondered and said…
“ I am glad you have two daughters Ma…do all your gala arrangements for Di…and spare me…I shall simply ask my fellow to come to the temple…call my friends…marry and leave…and yes! In an auto…!” there was nothing left in my kitty to irritate her further…

The night passed… I stood back to observe. To call the place over-crowded was an understatement… Sharma Aunty spent all evening comparing her saree with other’s, Ma kept on making mental notes about the Dos and Don’ts of wedding arrangements, the bride’s parents must have pained their jaws smiling to their guests and counterparts…stooping in hospitality…guys couldn’t have enough of capturing gorgeous maidens through their lenses…guess it all formed part and parcel of a gala wedding…but where was the ease and beauty of a lovely gathering with near and dear ones? I wondered…
And then, from nowhere, rose a wild roar of laughter…a young and fast voice caught my attention. It was the cynosure of a discussion, going on, in another part of the lawn. The peels of laughter it was generating, made me curious.
“ So buddies, personally I would not like to be fed and washed and worshipped like a lamb before sacrifice! Show me a temple…that is if my girl believes in one…I shall walk in, marry her in a simple, economy and environment friendly ceremony, and off I go…! Not in a hired Mercedes my fellows…could one of you get an…auto-rickshaw?” Hahaha…the crowd cheered!
“Hey!”…Did I hear correctly? … “Who are you fellow?” I told my excited self, walking across the lawn, towards the thrilled gathering…

With the Sun...

Something went down with the Sun yesterday…and never came back…
It was time.
Though you keep your windows closed,
My voice will surely meander into your room…
And you will hear…hear incessantly.
I had spoken…
Words do come back...to haunt…
They get along well with the Sun.
But I won’t…
I am the companion of time…
And time left you behind…behind me…
You can stand up now alone…pretending to frown with the Sun…
But I know…know you well!
So be with the Sun…proud and strong in its glory…
I shall discover you anew…when you cry alone
At nightfall…

Bouquet...

Days…evenings…dreams…reveries…words,
Gathered into a bouquet over umpteen hours…
Tied together with a new, red ribbon…
Kept in a corner of the room…a witness to all the love…
Till a day...when it’s picked up and flushed…swoosh it goes…
Into the drain…lost into the ever-swelling sea.
The sea of lost love…

A poem...

A happy dip in cold, placid water,
A joke coaxing sad faces into laughter…
A warm hug from an old friend,
A caring hand from a tie that’s uncertain…
A smile lighting up a wrinkled face,
A loved voice…heard after many days…
A memory sheltering you on a cold night,
A guiding word when the path has no light…
A song cheering tired souls,
A story weaved by a gentle voice, wrapping you in folds…
A word of praise from a grave voice,
A right move made…without making a choice…
A timely help from a not-so-good friend,
A lovely gift that your neighbor sent…
A good luck wish from an untiring mother,
A lazy, long stroll in lovely weather…
A help you gave and promptly forgot,
A memorable lesson that a stranger taught…
A home warm and bustling with all your loved ones,
A life of contentment…lived on your own terms…
A heart willing to live…not merely survive,
A soul that not only exists…but knows…it’s alive!