সেকি সে যে বড় সেয়ানা। যেখান সেখান থেকে চলে আসে ঝাপিয়ে হাপিয়ে। এসে বলে, "শুনছ !" আমি এদিক ওদিক তাকাই  অনেক্ষণ  ধরে। কাউকে দেখতে পাইনা বড়। কখন আসে বুঝতে পারিনা কিচ্ছুতেই।তোমরা  দেখতে পাও নিশ্চই। হঠাত ঘুমের চোখে , কখনো কোনো আদরের চাহনিতে, কোনো সম্বাদে, কোনো দেশে।কখনো খারাপ লাগে না ?  তখন কি করো? িশ্বাস কর, আমি কখনো কারোর ক্ষতি চাইনি। তোমাদেরও নয়. আমি চাই সবাই খুশি চাই. ালো থেকো। 

I keep forgetting how much I put you through, and hey never say I didn't warn you. I came with enough issues to last an year in Iceland. And I lose my sanity to nightmares and nothing's ever enough. I wish some calming white substance, a recurring theme, would come to my rescue right about now - this afternoon that the trees noisily declare SPRING and it's an assault to my wrecked senses. I can see your brown eyes becoming sadder with every passing day and I want you to be happy. I wish I could extract some teeth instead in this lost world and hang it around my neck like a trophy. There there, I tell myself, everything will be fine, doesn't it always happen that way? How else would you want it, the world on a platter? So what if tonight I can't sleep and the bile reaches the roof of my tongue and all the thoughts and voice are an incoherent mess, lapping against each other like possessed twins. I have to accept and inhabit this atomic space provided to me in this world and  not make sense at all.

It was all good, she said. She blinked slowly. She mentioned the pain but not the slow, throbbing drumbeat that accompanied it. Nor the voices that had to be curbed every night. Nor the little things that had to go on happening, daily things, you know. Just the usual stuff. Just the stirring, the brushing, the waking up, the sloth, the tea peppered with a just a tiny pinch of cinnamon powder, the looking ahead. She mentioned nothing at all. 

Prothomoto, aami tomake chai.

Pete Seeger forms an integral part of my childhood memories. 

I remember me, Baba and Ma traipsing through the old Book Fair at Maidan, three tremendous lovers of books, tremendously excited. It was 1995. I was already an ardent bookworm, gobbling Enid Blytons and Upendrokishore Raychaudharis with equal voracity. 

Dusty old maidan, scores of stalls, hundreds of hungry Bengalis. Winter evenings, bright with the promise of crisp new pages. And, Baba suddenly chances upon a shabby looking man, reading a little magazine, with gigantic black and white posters of folk singers spread out on the matted grass in front of him. Baba stopped, and immediately picked up old man Pete, eyes crinkled at the edges, huge happy smile, a blur of a guitar and it said - 

'Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing?
Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago?
Where have all the flowers gone?
Young girls have picked them everyone.
Oh, when will they ever learn?
Oh, when will they ever learn?

The poster was there for the longest time in our Bijoygarh and then Lake Gardens house, in my parents' bedroom. And the first time I hummed "little boxes', Baba seemed really happy.
He used to take me for all the Sumon concerts as he loved young Sumon and his 'chena dukkho, chena shukh' and probably wanted his daughter to love as well. 

I remember Ma telling me that since I was a baby, hardly a few months old, I would only sleep when Baba would rock me to sleep, and there would be Ravi Shankar or Kishori Amonkar or Vivaldi playing in the background. She  would laugh and say "Baba bhabto tumi bhishon boro musician hobe" (Baba thought you'll be a great musician when you grow up). 
Unfortunately, that never happened. But I'll always be thankful to Baba for making me listen to such eclectic forms of music from an early age.

I have always been a Babar meye (Daddy's girl) and as I see him grow older, something tugs at me loudly, like a crazy jazz trumpet. 

I see him once/maybe twice a year, so worried about me, always wanting to help, always making me curious about new things. And I miss him. I miss the time I could have spent with him if I was in Calcutta. I wish I was there to talk to him more, or maybe help out more. I wish I wasn't angry at him. His restlessness is contagious, and I pray that he always stays this restless, this curious, this lovable, always.

  

Today I want winter. I want the mellow sun on my back like a lover's kiss. I want the chill to wrap it's little hard fingers around me, so I can bury myself inside my blanket, deeper. I want the comfort sleep that only such winter can bring. 
Bombay is getting relentlessly warmer. The pleasant cool breeze which made me shudder slightly has dissipated, slowly but surely like wounds heal and leaves fall. 

One fine morning you wake up with the strongest urge to not conform. You feel like going yaw yaw yawwwwwwwww, screaming, hair in disarray, scantily clothed, running as fast as you can through a busy thoroughfare, making faces at everyone who stares at you, gaping in their starched prim office clothes. You feel like sticking your head on the windowpane, as they fumble for (any kind of) reaction. You lapse back to a childbrain, words hardly forming, happy gurgles at the corner of your mouth.
For the last time that fine morning, you go back to sleep, rolling over in shared glory, and only a wide yawn, surreptitiously escapes. 

.......
  

Like a discarded bookmark from a novel you were ploughing through. It saddened you, maybe your shoulders drooped. The words were not a mouthful, but the length bothered you. It pulled you down a couple of inches and  you never knew when you left it on the shelf, and the bookmark slipped out, unnoticed. 

Ennui causes punctuation errors

oh it's 6 pm already but no end to boredom. I swore I would write stories, whole paragraphs, candid & common but lost my head instead.  There's a crazy sort of love inside, soaring high and beyond, but I plummet often, I beg your pardon, security can never stride over hand held out for a firm handshake. Home in three days, hardly know what to expect - a surge of warmth & nostagia or alienation disguised in revelry? Hey ho, I'll miss you, you keep me steady and in my happy place but I'm so frightened like a mistreated animal, unruly and cowering. I don't want punctuation oh no I want to run instead and lose this garlic taste in my mouth. Lovers, tie your laces tight, it's chaos out there. A new year soon, another new year soon.

wolf at the door

There's been a lot of conversations about the days when the sun leaves our skies. We settle ourselves in an imaginary womb-like state hoping that we feel good about something, anything. We don't want help, we refuse your well-pleaded, well-tried efforts. We are in a black room which grows smaller and smaller till we are the same size as it is. Yes, we fit now. A snug little bleak room. We embrace it. The light hurts our eyes. We need a hand, but we can't ask for help, because you might raise your eyebrows, pucker your lips, look at the ceiling, smile, blame us, shrug and say - oh come on, we all have problems.

We certainly don't enjoy it, and we hope you can sit with us in silence in our rooms with no sun.

----------------------

Silence of the lambs

The joy killers attacked again. In a grown-up world, they talk differently. Everything is a large slice of the perfectly-baked pie for these specific joy killers. Their gapes are silver-coated. They wave flags of hypocrisy over your head and you can do nothing about it - after all you can afford to wash your hair every morning. They are benevolent, you might say. They stand over your shoulder constantly, the usually grim mouths somehow twisted into a smile. Their claim - charity begins at home.
In other news, some of these joy killers attacked our kin. They dictated love. They pointed their fingers at you and you and you. A valiant move, we nodded. After all, what can we do. They have the power to chop off your tongue, snatch away the food from your mouth, restructure your dreams and nightmares. After all, we push the button. We are the ones who choose to make an informed decision. 

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