Dec(ay)embers.

Winter in Calcutta takes until the middle of December to hold you in its chilly embrace hallmarked by the cosily warm touch of fleece and fingers still enveloped by the lingering smell of post-lunch oranges. Winters in this part of the world are much gentler than their cousins elsewhere. It is somehow about sleeping late and waking up even later, eyes squinting through the blanket brought up to the nose, and the unruly hair’s leisurely caressing of a sleepy forehead.

December is about the sudden bursts of passion, the zeal of those dying embers that hallucinates the eyes peeking from above a hot cuppa. For instance, this December night, consumed by one such zeal of a dying ember, I take a sip of Darjeeling, look towards the window and smirk just so slightly for my young neighbours are jamming at 2am. An interesting one, if you must know – this rendition of Ba-Ba-Black Sheep along the lines of ‘Please Mr. Kennedy’ (Inside Llewyn Davis). It’s that zeal of dying embers, perhaps.

Reclining with eyes closed, a snatch of this song I heard the other day while walking through New Market comes back to me and perhaps I am in agreement that Aj jawani par itrane waale kal pachhtaye ga and Chadta suraj dheere dheere dhalta hai dhal jayega.

Anurupa.

December 22, 2017

O’er the Solemn Hush of Midnight

“O’er the solemn hush of midnight”,              (Christmas Carol)

“The inmates of my cottage, all at rest, 

Have left me to that solitude, which suits 

Abstruser musings”                                    (Frost at Midnight, Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

And I sit here in my well-lit room,

In the darkest and coldest hours of this winter night,

Pounding away at keys on my laptop,

Wedding poetry to music, and Coleridge to Simon and Garfunkel.

“But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence”                              (The Sound of Silence, Simon and Garfunkel)

“Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, 

Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, 

Fill up the intersperséd vacancies 

And momentary pauses of the thought! “    (Frost at Midnight, Coleridge)

“Quiet thoughts and quiet dreams quiet walks by quiet streams
And a window that looks out on the mountains and the sea,

oh how lovely
This is where I want to be

here with you so close to me
Until the final flicker of life's ember.”         (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars, Frank Sinatra)

Anurupa.

31.12.2016

Meandering Thought Tram To Nowhere

There is this very rare sensation that I have from time to time when my eyes sting, a weird tingling is felt near my nose, a crazy throbbing ache in my throat as if something is stuck in there; And this persists till my eyes water a little and I swallow. Swallow my inexplicable feelings and non-existent emotions and realise that I have a cold.

The humidity of Calcutta has the propensity to give me common cold inter alia. Yes, just cannot manage to not write about Calcutta and law school and in fact managed to put bits of the two in the last sentence.

During those privileged times when one is travelling by air-conditioned transport, rather than holding on to their backpacks like their dear life, dignity and money to go home are in it, one has the luxury to let their thoughts wander. North Calcutta and its culture have defined the Calcuttan nostalgia for far too long now. The internet is filled with musings of North Calcutta while those in the South grope in the dark by-lanes of their imagination for the dingy lanes the intellectual writes extensively about. The South Calcuttan in me often revelled in the glory of being called “tyash” and not –so-Bengali till I had to step out of the city and the rest of the country could apparently read the Bengaliness on my face.

I am one of those people whose Bengali accent is doubted back home for not being Bengali enough and outside for being very Bengali. I am not alone. If you are reading this, you are probably of my generation and in case you are from the same city, maybe you know what I am talking about after all. But through the cavities in your accent and the teeth gaps of your diction flows a peculiar fascination. The city in all its office-hour-rush glory fascinates me.When you walk through the streets of Calcutta, surrounded by the intimidating and yet inviting in a “mamarbari” sort of way- structures of Raj Bhavan, Town Hall and the Calcutta High Court, you feel small, tiny and freakishly jobless as you see purposeful faces rushing towards important places where they have to be. The street food that Calcutta is celebrated for – the cheap and good; that is here. In the midst of friendly morning chatter luchi-aloor dam and cha is downed.

When you approach the temple of justice from this side of the road, the blind lady's abode is to your left and that of her worshippers to your right. On your left justice is showered and a bee-line of the commonly clad is visible. You are better off looking at the commonly clad waiting for their showers of blessings rather than the scantily clad showering on your right. With British buildings on either side of Old Post Office Street , this part of the world fits well into the black-and-white days and by the end of the morning, it will indeed be swarming with multitudes of worshippers clad in black and white.

I have got to go, enter the building on my right for now. You admire the fascinating architecture all you want. Just be careful to not walk in the middle. It’s a one-way street. You will get hit by a car and all the admiration for the temple will bleed away with you.

Anurupa.

May 19, 2016

#ManyMiniThoughts5

You see, while you go about life, there are these extremely ordinary things that go on along the side lines. When you are travelling and you look sideways, you see people cycle along the narrow pathways leading to some village, some shortcut path across the green expanse and all you feel like doing is travel along them; Stop at the small shacks for a cup of tea, halt for a friendly banter with a stranger who speaks not your language but understands you just the same.

Anurupa.

19.01.2016

Of Times That Rush Past ...

One does not realise much of their attachment to their hometown until they have to move out of it. It even seems cruel at times,to be pushed out of the comfort of your home. For a true Bengali, true home is where you have the most peaceful and most satisfying pooping experience.( Yes, ‘Piku’ portrayed it most aptly.)

 Be it for your education or your job, you usually have to make a very sudden departure and even before the feeling begins to sink in , the train wheels start rolling.

The last moments before leaving are particularly difficult. The key to accomplish a tear-free and undramatic goodbye without creating much scene is to shorten the duration of hugs and putting on an XL smile. Keep poor jokes handy because this is one time when people will actually laugh a lot at them, and when they do so, you know that the slightly loud laughter is to camouflage the tears that are threatening to well up and the throat that is almost choked.

You look at your father, but you make sure that you do not look too long and you see him make himself busy with counting luggage for the zillionth time, taxi and tickets.It is then that you know how their battle is probably ten thousand times more difficult than yours. When he lectures you on professionalism and how when duty calls family life does not matter, you listen to him and nod, all the while thinking to yourself of all the times he answered your calls in the middle of work.

The secret is, the tougher the person appears to be, the bigger he talks – the greater battle he is fighting within. They are so very proud of you, so worried and overwhelmed with so many indecipherable emotions.  Though they try their best to hide it, in their eyes you see the battle they are fighting- between holding on and letting go.

Calcutta is a soulful city. It is a trap for the unsuspecting. Just when you think you are not enchanted, or have managed to escape its web of “maya”, it entraps you. It is in times like these that you think of all the Bengali black magic jokes that your non-Calcutta friends crack and you realise the probable iota of truth in them.

The city is cruel. The Railway Station is positioned in such a way that you have to travel right through the heart of the city to leave it. It is like the invisible arrow which seems to go right through your heart at around this time. The taxi ride is always the most brutally beautiful . When you look out of the window it is like a live trailer that plays out – Victoria, Maidan, Dalhousie, Eden and to seal it all, a final blow of the heart wrenching passing over the Howrah Bridge. This time you look out of the window but before your father cries out about how you will catch a cold from the Ganga’s riverside winds, something manages to get into your eye and you have to take out your glasses and rub your eyes a little.

Oh, dramatic stunts that humans perform!

For one who loves to travel, the Railway Station is a shrine of pure joy. While leaving home, among so many things even this changes. Another thing that changes is New Year.You no more want it to arrive and despite yourself you almost pray for a 32^nd December.

Anurupa. 27.12.15.

Other Blogs that I used to maintain ...

These are links to my old blogs. I started blogging in 2011, roughly. Sadly, it has been majorly inconsistent. I had three blogs which concentrated on three kinds of things.

1. A lady with a knack   -   You may view the blog by clicking here

 Here, I mostly published Fiction - compositions, the length of short stories.


2. Sadda Haq   -   To view the blog click here

It mostly spoke about the socio-political issues I felt strongly about.


3. Bric-a-brac   - To view the blog click here

This was more of a rag-tag blog. A lot of random things under the head of bric-a-brac.


With time, I understood the impracticality of having three blogs. This is one blog where I plan on being more consistent and less haphazard irrespective of readership or lack of it. :)

I hope you enjoy my writings. I would love to know your thoughts regarding the same and criticisms, if any, are more than welcome.

#ManyMiniThoughts4

We are all like musical notes. Together there is harmony. These notes interact. While some strike a cord, others strike a discord. Like old songs, memories of people in our lives are half- remembered, half-forgotten and the humming in the middle that we do is our own interpretation- as far as we can remember it.

Music, in general, provides much joy to me as it does to the rest of the planet. Someone had rightly observed how music is truth. It may seem ugly to some, pretty to others and yet others might even act indifferent to it. But just like truth, music prevails, Music can soothe; And in a strange way so does truth. Of course it pricks a little at first and then it soothes - once we have accepted the hurt.