On my long ride back to Kolkata, I stepped out of the car with romance in my soul yearning for the dusk to fill me with wonder.
I went into the fields with the sentiment of staring at the infinity of kash phool swaying in the autumn breeze.
I thought of witnessing the sunset as it dipped into the horizon in a vibrant display of colours.
And I thought I will see and hear the birds fly in droves as they come back to their nests and branches for their evening rest.
I took my “branded” shoes off as I wanted to feel the earth.
All my feet felt in the city were concrete and leather.
It was time to touch the nature.

But,

When I stood barefoot to experience the soft earth below,
I couldn’t help but feel the wet mucky earth wrapping my toes and feet.
I wondered how do I wash it before hopping into the car as I didn’t want to soil the mats or the shoes.
I looked up and saw at a little distance, a cow calmly grazing.
I felt if the cow never bothered about its muddied hoofs, then let me forget about that problem too.
The cow farted
and defecated a pile of dung on the ground.
I looked away and saw two children running holding their kites through the fields.
I smiled at them as it reminded me of Durga and Apu running through Ray’s monochromes.
They were full of life and giggles and they seemed to come towards my direction.
I wondered if I can strike a conversation with them.
Adults need injections of innocence through children in order to stay alive.
As they came nearer me, I saw their tiny brown faces and couldn’t help but notice a big line of mucus drooping through their nose up to their lips.
It really stuck there probably dried by the crisp air.
The romance of innocence suddenly escaped my thought and I didn’t make any eye contact fearing they may actually come close to me.
And I’ll be greeted by their mucus.

By now the sun was merely peeking through the horizon and there were clouds gathering.
I picked my shoes and went towards my car.
I grazed my feet on the road to scrap of as much mud as possible and then let my feet hang uncomfortably from my seat as I headed home.

She always had a wide smile.
She put on a good show,
as always.
Masked in the most deceptive mask.
Face fair and bright, accentuated by the kajal bordering her gloom.
Contrasts can play wonders to create an artifice.
She laughed on time;
Spoke on cue;
Reciprocated and validated others on instinct.
An instinct that required careful cultivation of numbing of ‘instincts’.

Her flawless self, seemed like the reflection of a coloured mirror.
She decided her colours, as and when it suited her.
And people were bought in too.
They didn’t hear the chimes and the buzz of her heart.
Or hear the mellow melancholy that dripped from her eyes and her lips.
They couldn’t notice her askance, her appeals for help, her gigantic screams.

They just swooned for her,
And feigned elaborate concerns.
They played their part in perfect harmony to her conceit and self-deceit

They became ‘her’ and she became ‘they’.
Such affectionless camaraderie!

Her autobiography could have been titled-
“Selfie from my better side”.

She tranced around her days,
And shriveled in her nights.
She lived life high. Or so she thought.
Perpetually in motion. Disoriented. Facade.

But; she always had a wide smile.

Perfect parents. Perfect partner.
Oh so perfect social life!
Glamorous snaps. Funny boomerangs.
Such cool friends- all huddled together smiling the ‘oh so perfect’ smiles!
Perfect independence. Perfect freedom.

And so much love!
An exquisite display of vanity that has been
mastered painstakingly to perfection.

But,
let us all swoon and drool over her.
Let’s heave sighs and ‘only ifs’.
Such miseries surround us in the pale comparison to her ‘ecstasy’.
Curated. Hand-carved.

The distance between liberation and decadence is just a little nudge from our empty selves.

Let us all put on a little smile on our face.

The earth is dry.
Bone-dry
It hasn’t rained since ages.
Not since Kusum came from Ma’s womb six months back
You cannot till the land here
Life will be scorched into a dry despair by this relentless sun
So any effort seem full of naivety and hopelessness
I remember when the drought struck five years ago,
Thakurda did not leave the soil unattended,
People from our graam made fun of him
They thought he has gone senile and will drive the bulls to death
Bulls survived. Thakurda did not. Crops did.
We called it ‘bhogobaaner maya r thakurdar sesh bhagyo’
-God’s wonders and the last luck of my Thakurda

But this time the sun is passionately arrogant
It has come down with unchallenged anger and aggression
The parched land has stopped giving us what we want. Need.
There was a time
when the greens from the soil fed our bellies and our eyes
And now the eyes seem too tired and wasted
And the bellies rumble in hunger
There is not an inch of relief in sight
Nor a gust of hope

I stare into the brown with a strange melancholy and defeat
Why do we have to face such a curse?
Maya? Bhaggyo?
I guess a poor man’s belly need no extraordinary tale to
justify his misery
All in a mind’s work.
All in a luck’s charm.
Life could have been better
If only………
Thuddd.
I hear a voice of metal crashing against the stone-hard soil.
I look to my right and I see Ma
She screams at me with her big expressing eyes
and a lash of her heart,
full of rage and hope.
“My kobi son, somebody’s got to go pick up the axe”
Thuddd.

29.
That’s the amount of years I’ve dragged my brown-damned ass on the earth. And boy, it has been difficult.
Especially the last decade or so.
The more I became aware of myself, the more I seemed to be lost.
Self-awareness led to confusion and chaos.
I have imaginary battle-scars all over me.
Battles with life. And pain.
Battles with anxiety, loneliness and depression.
Being an adult can be a fucking pain.
A fucking fucking pain.
If I had a chance to go back to the age of seven and write an essay on what do I want from a genie, I wouldn’t take a moment to write that it would be freezing my age.
Who the hells wants to fight it out when you can be draped in your Ma’s tenderness and comfort.

But here I am. With some more decades to live god/devil-willing (too early to decide sides).
And I have no clue where the journey will take.
Will I find peace?
Will I find happiness?
Will I find love that sustains?
Will I have made it?

Even a quarter-life reflection few years ago made me make unceremonious comparisons of my life with others.
I wanted validation.
I wanted to know if I have made it this far.
I wanted to know if I was worth it in the smaller scheme of things.

I didn’t want my perspectives to be as hollow as the never-ending Facebooks posts of people who had little less than zilch of a contribution in my life.
But then what explains my hollowness anyways?
What reason or rhyme do I have of those nervous jitters in a packed hall in the middle of a concert?
Or when I am sleeping alone in my queen-sized bed and getting up all of a sudden thinking I’m dying.
What makes me so weak. And vulnerable.
To unknown. To future.
Nights after nights.
Days after days.

I feel that I am losing a little bit of myself everyday.
A bit of myself.
A bit of my love.
A bit of my hope.
And as I see them crumble and flushed away by the winds of worry, I try to hold them back.
With not a speck of success.

Existential crisis.
Identity crisis.
Survival crisis.
You name it, I have it.
Like beads of despair being threaded into a noose of disorientation.

It’s so funny that when I first heard Beatles croon “All you need is love”, I found it too cheesy.
Now I want all the cheese that’s available.
The irony is you can’t even fucking buy this cheese.
It can’t be transacted or bartered.
It can only be received as and when it comes.

Being adult is a bitch.
And I don’t even have the bite
Fuck this love shit.
I want some ‘bhooter raja’ to come and grant me the boon of feeling loved.
Forever.
That sustains.

Rest, I’ll figure the fuck out as my time (and I) waltz away to oblivion.

Let us take a bus and travel till the last stop it can take us
Far enough for us to not remember our daily chores and hassles
And on reaching, let us not be in a hurry to return
As we alight from the bus, let us discover happy faces with funny accents
Let us check in to a place that has a bed and a fan
Where the walls are clean enough and the paint, old enough
Let us ensure we get a room with a window that opens up to our conversations
And our silence
Let us take our clothes off for they are filled with malice
And let us lie down next to each other for our bodies and mind are tired
Let us lie down till we feel lost and awkward;
till all the discomfort subsides and all the past becomes thin-air
And as we absorb each other’s’ breath with our eyes, let our bodies be in warm embrace of each other
Our legs intertwined
Our hands affectionate enough to discover the whereabouts of the other
Our eyes filled with tenderness
And let us feel the warm fuzzy feeling deep down and skin up
Let our goose bumps be the only one with voice
Let us be upset
Let us be happy
Let us smile till we cry
Let us cry till we laugh
And let us laugh till we are short of breath and words
And all this while, let us forget
Forget the weight of the pasts and the mountains of the future
Let us be unaware of what we hold in our hearts’ crevices and what our mind tricks us into suspicion every time
Let us give in to reality.
Let us give in to deception.
Let us give in to love.
Let us give in to lust.
Let us look deep into each other’s eyes and when we get tired, close it
Let our lips be warm and wet enough
Our bodies like a knot
And let us, my darling, be happy and content with what we have and what we shall get
For the nature offers plentiful to the one that keeps the door open
Let us be a gentle peaceful lake
Let us be a tempestuous stormy ocean
Let us be the depth of the night
Let us be the light of the day
Let us be the comfort of the moon
Let us be the rage of the sun
Let us be the thunder
Let us be the rain

There is so much sadness in your eyes Rii.
If I drink a gulp of it from your eyes, will it make your grief less?
Or will it make you a part of me as I swirl and twirl into your topsy-turvy life
Rii, you make me nervous.
It has hardly been a few months, since my heart wanted to take shelter in yours with an uneasy nonchalance
I tried to stop it Rii; believe me, I tried to stop it all the time
You are not the sprightly fervour in which I would ever have danced
Nor an air of happy abandon in which I would love to fly
But I come to you again and again as a devotee to its temple
I know you are never to come but faith has been like oceans
Strong and arrogant
Tell me Rii how many men have you let drown at the altar of your bosom
How many eyes took the shade of the black from yours
How many bodies must have limped and lurked in your glowing haze
Have you ever not thought that you are not just a woman? You are an incarnate of love and lust, pain and pleasure, rust and rage
I am chained Rii. Chained to a wall that no magician in heaven or earth can wand a life out of it.
What am I to do with so much sadness!
Can I weave those tears with my hope strings into a grief necklace and wear it?
Can I take the moon from your eyes and keep it in my black hole of a heart that now cries for validation?
May I just be yours without you ever being mine?

Binodini lives in 4 Kalicharan Datta Road.
An innocuous lane in Notunpara. Behala.

She is beautiful.
Large round eyes. Kohl-lined.
A small bindi on forehead. Red.
Draped in a cotton saree. Goddess.

Today she is coming back from her
weekly routine of ‘career’.
11.30 PM. Dim lights light the road.
Dogs stand guard as she walks
past them in brisk pace.
She is the oldest and the youngest of her home.
So she has the full right to herself.
Yet, she quickens the pace.
She thinks of the bucket of cold water.
And her body laden with dust and sweat.
And the distance between the two.
Distractions help on such lonely nights.

Binodini hears some voices few strides away.
Strangers and their noises.
She has to decide between speeding up and
speeding up.
With luck maybe she will know a face or two.
Their sound gets louder.
She nears them. None familiar. A beat skips.
She hears some rushed whispers. Or is it the wind.
The sound of a distant dog howling.
Or is it just one of them?
And all this while the moonlight is casting melancholy shadows upon the road.
Binodini rushes past.
Her sweat trickles down her face, onto her neck and
into her breast-folds.
Breasts filled with pride and fear.
She sees few head turn.
She senses it. Like always.
A quick glance through the corner of her eye;

Sigh!
Mental check-mark done.
Cold bucket is back in the picture.
Landscapes transition out of the metaphor.
Sleep shall be safe and sound.
Binodini saves the day.

There is a well right across my own backyard.

For ‘forefathers’, we have been fetching water from there;

And when I peep into it,

I can see the water is still there.

It is not bone-dry or undrinkable

as my son, Bidrohi tells it to be.

Yet I don’t know why he has to go to the river

to fetch the water.

It is ever-changing, ever-moving.

We don’t know where it comes from

or where it flows to.

But Bidrohi trusts it more. Not just likes.

Trusts.

“It is so fresh”, he tells.

“And it has fish too at times”

“And if you are lucky, you can get diamond-shaped stones too”

His eyes glitter as he tells how

Monolota caught a big fish the other day.

“She was dancing with joy”, he shouts.

I asked if she liked it.

“Monolota doesn’ eat fish. And besides, the fish was dead”

I stare at Bidrohi in amazement.

Such worldly intricacies is beyond my grasp.

What am I to do with the fish and diamond-shaped stones!

I sigh.

All I need is the water.

There was a well right across my own backyard.

Another strike
In the wall, In the whole
In my gaspy grisly soul

Another fight
In the might, In the right
In my tardy tidy sight

Another blow
In the core, In the roar
In my voices protests soar

Another buzz
In the nerves, In the stones
In my uneasy queasy bones

Another shudder
In the look, In the poise
In my raspy ‘risk-it’ voice

Keep mum or get tight
Keep warm or feel night
Stay wrong or do right

Another strike!

(A poem I wrote as a high school kid)

There we go for the hundredth time.
Thumps get louder; it’s on for a race.
I hear temple’s bell and churches’ chime.
Seeing myself buried six feet under in earth’s face.
The breath of the sun sinks deep in my skin,
Whirlwind dusts fade the vision away.
Just don’t know why for blood we are kin,
When we are born to die one day.

I see scarlet in my clothes,
Don’t know if it’s from in or out.
But I drag myself further.
Otherwise the pain will clout.
We fight for a living in all devout.
Shattered at last from inside out.
There we go for the hundredth time,
Memories washed with tears and sands of time.

I think of my moon and my little star back home.
What will they do when lord takes me up.
How will she feel placing rose with quivering fingers.
Behind enemy lines, these thought still lingers.
My whole body shakes with national pride.
But a loser after all in personal side.
Trying to lift the flag a little further.
Denying a daughter of her brave father.

Reality sets deep in my mind.
Pierced by triple bullets do I lie.
Just can’t forget the face of her in palanquin.
When she came to seek protection from mine.
Forget me dear for the love I denied.
Forget me dear for my worthiness fake.
Forgive me for the hearts that I made cry.
Forgive me for my little angel’s sake.

My bones get too heavy to lift.
The arms won’t budge neither move nor drift.
I see a strange light illumine the sky.
Is the chariot here to take me high?
The war rages on with all glory and gory.
And he is slowly taking my breath.
I am afraid of dying, also fear to live.
Here it comes; Alas! The arms of death!