Dated : Neverland

Not long ago, I loved a woman.
The love lasts, not the bond, not anymore.
Often I feel she cheated on me.

But then, if that is how you define love, I don't mind being cheated, again and again.

My Chuchurah : The Dutch Cemetery

In areas near College Street there is today little space for solitude or contemplation. At Chuchurah, the town I live in for most part of the year, there are certain places which are steeped in quiet so much so that you feel a blessed belonging whenever you rest yourself, all at peace with oneself. Few strides away from my place is the Dutch Cemetery. Absurdly green, peopled with dilapidated tombs and frisk canopy of restlessness, the cemetery is a wonder which amazes me. Often, in the aridity of summer days, I leave everything to enjoy the hubbub of the cemetery. Lying on the grass floor, one senses a closure with the clouds poised right above you, and as the flight of pigeons swoop down like dive-bombers in a war comic, you are smitten with excitement to witness their wayward droppings on various tombs taking shape of a giant canvas, depicting the brilliance of natural art. The caretaker, an old man of fifty, with grey features, wrinkled skin but eyes, alert and attentive, is one companion you get in the cemetery. He persistently smokes. His teeth, like his fingers, are nicotine-stained. He talks less, sits passively, enjoying the warm presence of a living body midst the cold desultorily weary tombs.

That’s it. Nothing much of a splendor that attracts tourists or anybody for that matter, but the unnerving charm of the cemetery never precludes me from paying a visit to it, even today.

Pseudonym

The room was damped, as usual, carefree of his everyday endeavor to paint it new with his words. Letters laced together didn't seem magical, perhaps, it was only her presence that brightened the room, though passively till the candles burnt out.

"Tonight, I've no money," said he.

"Good. Write something for me tomorrow, let me feel what the world sees in your writing", she replied as she got dressed before the mirror.

As she left, he shattered the mirror, collecting the broken edges, he neatly placed them in a dry sheet, as his new poem, to be sold tomorrow.

My Chinsurah: The Enchanter.

Provided the Municipality is not suddenly charged with a desire to do away with all the rats, the road, cutting right past the Hooghly Ghat station, is terribly dirty. These squeaky-eyed creatures, inhumanely fast, do their best to keep the garbage under check. The road, which runs straight into the Ganges, derives a filthy flair during the monsoon. With unremitting rain, the pools of water, gathering all over, makes you take your shoes off and walk bare-footed, feeling the incomprehensible agony of those residing here.
                        The Ganges, here, is not considered holy. The absence of a bathing ghat makes the place all the more silent and lonely. It’s only when the man, who sells flute, comes, carrying a rustic bag of colorful flutes, that the place is relieved of its loneliness. He has no customers here. I doubt if he at all has any customers. But his passionate playing of the flute and the place’s indifference to his art provides a contrasting picture which makes one think, “Is it really possible to separate a man from his mind? “

 

Strange Love's Labour

A bank is a storehouse of money, mechanically preserving notes which inspire healthy income of happiness.
“What’s money to me?” said the Strange Man, but the weather is too cold to linger outside. So he walks in, whistling to himself.
“Only this few people? Oh, money saved brings forth sound sleep, I forgot. Earn to save and thereby sleep to make love and pass on your savings to your future generation, who are seated on the threshold of witnessing modern tragedy, each day after they are born,” chuckled the man.
The world, he feels, is a strange place. For it is blessed with strangeness, caught in a circle of strange reasons and this incomprehensible strangeness keeps the world breathing.
He sees a cashier devotedly counting money.
 “Whose money is it?” thought he, and suddenly he believes, “these notes have an aura of romanticism in them. These have crossed many hands, imprinted with touches of varied places and peoples. Notes are imbibed with feelings, a romantic languor to feel hands.”
He takes a cigarette out of his dusted pant and lights it.
“You can’t smoke here,” the Guard instructed him.
Perplexed, he stubs the cigarette.
“I’m just plain tensed with all my money in the lockers”, said the Strange Man. “Smoking relaxes me.”
“Strange, as it may seem, lying comes to me naturally. There’s no enterprise in being honest. Lie. And see the world lie with you. Look at the gun! Isn’t the gun heavier than the man? Poor chap. But why a gun? Ah, greed! Can a man, who steals money, sleep peacefully, with all those money at his place? He will need the bank soon. To save the money. Someone, like him, may steal it again. Ah, poor thief! He doesn’t even realize he will get trapped in the circle of restlessness once he tastes success,” ruminated the man.
Just then an Old Lady entered the bank. Once a beautiful woman to look at, now she is has been wrinkled with time. She sits next to the Strange Man. The man stares at her, and keeps on doing so until the lady, disturbed by such reckless attention, questions him, “do you want something, son?”
“I’ve not seen someone with so dense a white hair, and your skin has been diligently distorted with subtle wrinkles. I travel places. And I get things, for free of course, from those places as gifts from the place to me.” He searched for a thing and got a key-ring as a present for the Old Lady.
“I collected this priceless thing from the most beautiful place I’ve ever visited. Keep it. It is yours from today.”
Abruptly he gets up, smiles at her and leaves, whistling like he always does.

As Rumours Have it

A town is like a caged animal. Resting peacefully, as it fed daily, without much hindrance. It has a definite system, a body politic and a state apparatus which, ceaseless though it seems, is hardly bothered. It lacks its own thoughts, and it is surfaced with superficial joys which shadow the daily dreary chore of its life. What make it peculiarly unbearable are the occasional events that disrupt the listless flow of life. The absence of a housekeeper in a particular house is sentenced through to others in a town, crossing fences. A house, where the television is switched on, at all hours, refuses to switch it on for a day becomes news, darting fast like a truant from school.  A shriek in one of the houses arrests the attention of many and the dinner tables are filled with discussions. Mind you, every version is different from the other!
                          When you are yourself part of this cobweb, winding deep and deep in every street, all you want is to grab a book of Woodehouse and pray to have Jeeves’ life!

Thank you.

My Chinsurah- Clandestine, Clannish.

Flanked by the imperturbable, reddened households, the northern part of Chinsurah, my hometown, is bereft of the crowd and its maddening chaos. Since the invasion of the Dutch, it has remained so, sticking unflinchingly to its not-so-modernistic trait. Commonplace judgement name it 'underdeveloped'. I call it conspicuously clandestine.

The natives, here, live in little huts, roofed by plastics. The only concrete structure, amid these hurdled huts, is the 'Shandesotola' temple which provides them their only daily recreation during the evening puja. Being the working-class, the men do all the earning possibly while their female counterparts stay back to look after the family. The Feminists may find it hard to accept but the women possess nothing against the patriarchal system. The little grievances they nurture are often subverted when they come together in the afternoon, in the field by the Ganges, along with their kids, to talk about their household problems. Simple conversations ostensibly subside their tension, it seems.

Often they would come across a boy of twelve, who could almost pass as my double, sit, with his cycle kept right beside him, and listen to them. After an initial indifference, they welcomed him. He would play with their kids, and,at times, stayed back for the evening puja. This was not something extraordinary. In fact, nothing was. But their affection for a stranger and their willing acceptance of his presence did inspire the boy. 

Even today, if chance has it, he goes there. Few recognize him nowadays. It hardly matters. For the unremitting breeze of the Ganges still carries the innocent sensation of those long lost evening.  

Happy New Year, Chinsurah

A town, however timid it is, has its own special way of welcoming a New Year. Chinsurah is no different. A certain sense of belonging surfaces the people, who, in their gentility and comicality, celebrate the first day, knowing well that this year will be no different from the previous one. But the freshness, that the people feel and reflect, has a unique essence and it goes a long way to bring everyone together as one single community.

                                                          Yes, I’m talking of the evening when the sun sets early; of the aged-fathers, staring from the balconies as their sons leave for the night; of the wretched beings, eagerly searching the plastics at waste bins to get an item, thrown away by someone for its New Year. Of the ferries, generally moored in deserted stations, now jam-packed with people, where sleepy sailors seem active; of the barbers’ endless scissor works, the sound of which will continuously vibrate today; of the old booksellers, trying their best to make people read and lurch their financial crisis, in the process; of the dust-ridden children, jocundly  running errands, to beg; of the auto-drivers, hunting for passengers to church; of bus-men, busy striking fares for all; of the hotel-managers, shouting at their waiters to serve fast; of the street photographers, clicking photos for couples; of the man who sells cards, in the same spot, for the last ten years; of the lights that adorn every worn-out building, in every street; of the commonplace tobacco smell outside cinema halls; of unremitting shrieks of bangles on the road; of controlled chaos outside the tea-stall; of the powerful whiff of toilet on crowded avenues; of the mothers carrying their children to pray at temples; of the fire-crackers that finish only at early morning; of the sleep that kills an abnormal day at my timid town, Chinsurah.