This is what we do till the wee hours of morning when sleep refuses to entertain.


Me: Tomar khobor ki?? (Whatsup???)

J: Aar amar khobor aar ki... (What can be my news)
Making love to a rugged man called life...the bastard that he is

Me: And life has not been treating me well too...sometimes I wonder...does he take bribes??? I would be more than happy to pay up then...

J:He is a nasty bastard.Wont accept bribe too. .And in any case I am bankrupt.How do I pay him?

Me: I don't know..does he accept chocolate icecreams????

J: Would he now?I dont think.
He prefers wine.
Not chocolate ice cream.
Wine is stronger,red like blood and makes his blood warmer,
his ruthlessness murkier.
He wouldn't accept it.
And if you do offer him wine...he'll just want your blood....
Salty like tears...

Me: Tears are cliched....
blood then, yes....
red and warm and thick...he might accept...
or lets say,
musty, old, yellowing, crumbling dreams????

J: Dreams?Well lets just say I have come face to face with them.
And I have learnt to accept that they closely resemble illusions....
Lets say they are as useless as garbage!
Dreams are just what we believe would be absence of tears.
Active and passive nourishment for him..life's madness and badness....dreams in the passive form and tears in the active
Or lets just say the negative and positive sides to it--
his hunger,his thirst,his wants,his desire...

Me:Illusions they are, yes,
But madness they are not..no
vividly coloured swirls perhaps...
or soft balls of nothingness...

J: Madness,illusion,dream--all are stringed.All are thirsty.All are crippled.And all are parasites.Sucking peace,love,empathy.

Me: Illusions...madness not...
unreal visions maybe...
a bit blurred at the edges..
crisp and crumbly to touch, musty to smell...

J: All blurred...all hazy..all insanely fuzzy.
One can never see through any of them ever.
Illusion is darkness and the copulating ground of madness.What is more unreal than darkness.....than believing something to be true when it is not? Isn't it but madness?
Insane desire to see what is not, to hear what is not...without light, without resonance we build world - a colourful and chirpy world.
Call it unreal.
I call it illusions..yes...
of a lunatic!

Me: Blurred and hazy are but intrinsic characters of illusions...of dreams....
And madness, woman???
What are dreams without madness??
Without that tangy taste of lunacy...
The jagged edges of unreal-unknown-hood???

J: When I say madness I don't mean the sweet twitter of whims and fancies and fascination.I mean the ruthless waves of obsession,pride,ego of a sadist as well as a masochist.It's eccentric, it's weird..and it's scary.It curls my blood.My feet turn cold.
Lunacy is different.It's sweet and it's also bittersweet.
Madness is frequently salty, randomly bitter.Dangerous!It is!
Unreals taste yummy with a pinch of crazyness.
Reality tastes well...INSIPID!

Books half-read/lying around unread -
1. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
2. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
3. The Native Speaker - Chang-Rae Lee
4. The black Tower - PD James
5. 100 short stories - O.Henry
6. Kim - Rudyard Kipling
7. The Last Man - Mary Shelley
8. Three Men in a Boat - Jerome K. Jerome (yes..yes..I haven't read it yet...shameful...yes I know)
9. Sankalito Bhromonkahini - Shankar
10. Purba-Poshchim (dwitiyo khondo) - Sunil Ganguly
11. Rijuda Somogro (5th part) - Buddhadeb Basu

And I have to sit and read up stuff like 'Anglo Saxon Poetry' and 'Beowulf'.....

Dammit.
Life sucks.
Big time.

"Whenever I am sad, Himesh Reshmiyya and Rabindranath come and stand before me...I find such solace in both of them..."




For once in my life, I was speechless.