From a girlhood garden

Golden amaltas, honeysuckle hive's delight

Guava greens, where caterpillars took flight 

A sombre tall cactus, the sentinel, stood last

Beside the big neem, through which breeze and storms passed.

My girlhood garden had it all

From nine-o-clocks to four-o-clocks

Hibiscus, lilies, every shade

And a money plant that  memories made.

It hugged the neem and climbed and grew

To touch the sky beyond the blue

Little leaves of pale ish green

Turned jade and large and bright within.

How it hugged and vined and changed and grew

Around the trunk, against the blue

Rooting, breathing, sipping light

Rising, becoming, seeking flight.

In quiet afternoons, of childhood winters past

Of oranges and quilts and storybooks, and us

Can I take you to such places, the wonderings of my mind

Like the magic money plant that went to touch a sky.

...

Be.

if I uttered a word that crossed the line,

or touched your hand at a wrong place and time,

if I called your name unaware in a crowd,

or lingered on the moment a moment too long...

Do still be.

You had said you would.

if I had to go, and never returned
or breathed beside; yet light years far,
if I left you too, and left it all
and set my sails to find my soul...

Do still be.

You had said you would.

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

This is Me

I am alive. And beautiful.
In the scorch of 10am summer sun
In a dented yellow taxi
Stranded at sweating traffic lights.

I am content. And happy.
With happiness only moments can bring
Not a life. Not this life. Not any.
Neither years nor people nor money.

Content to have this body
That I can walk the avenues
Run to perspire
Give birth to life
Hold my children
Read at nights
Write at dawn.

Content to have a soul
That loves to journey
Down all paths of life
So what if they go nowhere

Where are we to go anyway
Except inwards?

Winding forking mingling paths
Will always bring us back
To ourselves.

...

Last night when it rained outside the bathroom glass window,
And me opened it to let the rain in,
In the lightening flashes that lit up the sky every few minutes,
The shower stream looked a silver spangled waterfall.


Silvered in moonlight or sequinned with dissolved stars, as if.


...

 

Colours of Pujo

1.
A new billboard advertisement on Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, on the way to Kolkata IT sector says: ‘It is lovely at the top’.
This, under a skyline penthouse picture where a formally dressed important looking young father in mid twenties holds his baby precariously. The mother, an even younger pretty thing stands by with an expression that reflects the natural triumph of having achieved everything in life by 23. With a vague but happy smile, all gaze away at the sky which is all that can be seen from their level.
I chuckle when I pass this spot every morning. I bet my little finger that someone has bought one of those penthouses as a Pujo present to his wife and child – and the entire family are now frantically trying to look as “picturesque” as that picture as practicable. People decidedly have more money and desire to spend than is needed for and satiated by just Notun Jama Juto. Pujo gifts are therefore graduating to real estates and cars and investment gold for a certain section of Kolkata elite, especially the emerging affluents.

2.
At every Durga Pujo, some of the self-proclaimed “culturally sensitive” TV channels in Kolkata broadcast a documentary on a special visit to a good looking old age home in the city. It is typically the same old age home every year, and it is typically the same kind of background score of old melodies and the same montage of clueless faces unsure of which emotion to bring out to the camera. Same or similar unknown but familiar wrinkled faces singing a Rabindrasangeet listlessly just because they were asked to do so. Neither do they want to, nor do they think it makes any sense. And at a pathetically predictable camera angle, the documentary director repeatedly zooms in and out on a forlorn face at a window. It is nauseating – this insufferable drama of commercialization of just about anything.

3.
My grandmother is 90, and her body is giving away slowly. As mine will in a few year’s time. I often imagine her breath hindering at nights when she is trying to sleep alone. The darkness must be scaring her so much and looking like death. The whole Kolkata outside with the dazzling lights and deafening sounds and spectacle of all the people and the carnivals of Pujo and smells of perfume and food – in the backdrop of her failing body which has trouble finishing up even a simple breath, must be hurting her so much. Like it will hurt mine one day soon.
I was not sure what gift I should buy for her this Pujo. Finally I bought an inexpensive saree which would be comfortable to wear as I did not want to convey that I got her something special as I was unsure if I will be able to get something next year.

4.
Pujo is 2 kids,
3.5 and 4.5,
one with an elephant and the other with a horse,
sitting still with difficulty for quarter of a second for a picture to be taken.

And Maa Durga and others looking on.

I have always longed for adventures...

"It could be so exciting
To be out in the world, to be free
My heart should be wildly rejoicing

Oh…what’s the matter with me… "


While I was in the bus this morning, I wondered what happened to this song. Years after Maria married the Captain, did she sing it? Does she still sing it?
Can she recall all the words?

I reckon she does…as I do.

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This hue. And that.

An evening,
when loneliness was not its usual grey
the night turned deep. and decidedly violet
the sky through the window was an opaque black
the words all rainy-white

the pictures a distant sea-blue
and some silences,

sinful crimson.

That evening,

the yellows of my sunflowers and my long-misplaced self
stargazed through the rainbow bubbles

They touched me
before they burst.

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