Baanwra ek ghunghta chahe, haule haule bin bataye, baanwre se mukhre se sadakna..

I am suddenly reminded of saattola, for some obvious and some not-so-obvious reasons.

Sometimes, when the rain gets into you, melting remains the only option.

Khattam Shud.

When I was very very young - smaller than even the smallest me you can picturise, Dhaka used to occupy the central place of my imagination.
More than tuntuni, more than red-riding-hood, heck, even more than random cat under the water tank.
My earliest memory of being told a Dhaka story is when we would all gather around the huge table at the boroghor, gulping down mounds of butter and rice. A dollop of salt, and a generous helping of incredible stories. Which would almost always be told by dadumoni.
It seemed a magical place. A place of less than perfect boundaries. With more than perfect people.
We were told of the steamers till Goalindo and the high-ceilinged musty smelling ancestral house where 35 people lived under the same roof. Scratching his throat, Dadumoni would recall how once he had gotten stuck in a Muslim mohalla during a riot, and how he had escaped with the help of the family dentist, who happened to be a Muslim. 35 people under the same roof, and not a single dent to show for it, he said. All of them having muri and batasa out of a single bowl and rushing off to school. Kilos of fish needed to feed the entire lot. And how my great- grandmother would cook, ghomta in place, throughout the day – huge pieces of ilish, gleaming with oil - and still have time to read the latest Sharatchandra. Dadumoni had come home from school one evening, he said, to find the house in an uproar. Because there were escaped freedom fighters in the chilekotha, and the police at the backdoor.
Each mouthful of rice I took would demand a story. The story of how 35 people slept together, for instance. All my grandfather’s cousins in the same room. All over one another. All around one another. And not one word of complaint.
Eggs being divided with a piece of string, he talked of. Because, heck, you can’t have whole eggs for all 35 people.
Dadumoni, white haired and scratchy bearded, eyes gleaming - would talk of my great grandfather. And how he would teach and look after all the cousins at one go. Correcting phrasal verbs and factorisations simultaneously. With equal elaan.
And then, there was the first journey to Kolkata. So many of them crammed into one space. Ans so much fun.
And then there was the last journey to Kolkata. So much space crammed into all of them. So much nothingness inside each when they came down to India. Leaving old houses behind. Leaving old lives behind. Leaving old blood behind.

35 people! He insisted.
35 people and no dent to show for it. Eggs and ilish maachh. Maths and English. All devoured together. All together. Together.

The old man lives alone, with his wife, in a clingy, house now-a-days. 35 people at the beginning of his life, and 2 at the end of it. The sons and the daughters are scattered in snazzier flats all around the city. There is still a fat cat under the water tank. And the huge table. But no boroghor.
Dhaka still remains. As well as the white beard.


But it’s once again like when they left Dhaka. There is a huge, empty house. And so much emptiness within. So much emptiness without.

I miss you, dadumoni.

It's the middle of the term.
And suddenly I want to puke and throw it all away, and go buy flowers.
Not. Do. Anything. For. A. While.
For. A. LONG. While.

Mile Sur Mera Tumhara.

This gives me goosebumps.

And reminds me of trysts with destinies and bleary eyed tricolours. Tricolours, when the world was all black and white.

Especially today. :)

Priorities.
RearRangEd.*


*I shall never be able to trust certain people again. The masks hurt.

There has been a powercut in the locality for the last 3 hours. And all I am doing in this oppressive heat is helping myself to all the chocolate icecream there is in the refrigerator.

Chak De India! is good. In fact, it is so good that I want to watch it again. And perhaps one more time after that. .


Once upon a time, I went through a wannabe weird phase. But then I stopped when I realized that my demands from life were/are pitifully small. Give me pastries, a good movie and nice, musical walks by the lake, and I am very very happy.

Now-a-days, I marvel at how in-your-face commonplace I am.

"I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the mourning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core."

"The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats.

This poem, strangely reminds me of random, breezy mornings on Benares Ghaats. And the strong smell of dhoop and gobar and ghee. And how, when I was tiny, I would sit on the steps, and wonder at the imagination that was humanity as it flowed past the Ganga.

Harry.

We’ve been together to many places. The road less travelled. The road more travelled. The mornings smelling of Chelpark Ink. And torchlights under the blanket.

Gulping down milk and rushing to school. Gulping down tears and ‘I will be fine’s.

There had been a link. Or an imagination maybe? Broken spines of books and yellowed pages. Inkblots on fingers and sometimes a bleeding knee?

But always, always, coming back to it. Desperately wanting a little, tiny bit of that nothingness, because magic is a powerful world. A powerful word.

Splashing through puddles, writing tutorials, burning fever and Wingardium Laviosa. Its always been like that. A big chunk of this world, and little bit of theirs. A dark, cruel, bright fascination.

I always knew this would end. It was altogether too fragile to last. Like a butterfly wing you so want to touch, but which tears under the slightest pressure? Too many question-marks, too many thoughts bordering on madness. Escapism.

It ended today. The boy didn’t die. But the magic did.

And somewhere within, the butterfly, which I had held on to, so tightly, yet so delicately..flapped its wings and escaped.

But it's okay though. I still have some of it’s colour on my fingers.

Elaan. Making it's presence felt.

While you are at it, do check out this, this and this.

And to all the people who were there for us, thank yous fall so short sometime. :)

Mania.

Disappointed. Muchly. :(

Since I have absolutely nothing to do. And like, you know, when you sit on the sofa watching nth reruns of SaReGaMaPa, and this huge tsunami wave of nothing-to-do-ness hits you? Well, yeah, that happened today. And so, I dug out a list. And that is my blogpost for the day. 7 things. And excuse me while I go and attach myself to the sofa again.

And here they are. 7 things I wish to do in my lifetime:
1.Go snorkelling around the great barrier reef.
2.Meet John Nash.
3.Watch a superhit movie being directed.
4.Give an eve-teaser a bloody nose.
5.Keep a pet pug and name it Hutch. (I read it somewhere, the pug-being-named-Hutch, that is.)
6.Experience Oxford. Real life.
7.Dance. At the Royal Albert Hall.

They define poignancy thus.

I say, it is simply, this.

Hori din toh galo, sondhya holo, paar koro amare..

The Sen person.
Taking random shit from people (and generally displaying no backbone whatsoever)

since 1988.

Just.

Barely there. :)

Realisation that my road to nowhere starts from Malory Towers and goes up to Jaisalmer (NOT the city, just hypnotism and globetrotters and Mukul), wounds through Blandings and meets up with the muddy pathways of Nishchindipur.

Yellow-brick-roads need to be found. Quick.

Sometimes I wonder at how pat I have my childhood down. Books and songs and certain conversations. And 12 years giftwrapped and delivered at your doorstep. Just like that.

Geromeet.

The curious tangy taste of vodka mixed with chicken and beef and fish and cheese.
And there was smoke in my eyes, and smoke in my lungs and a general smokiness inside the head.
Certain comfortable shoulders and conversations provided nice places to retreat from time to time, just as the little bit of Neverland left in this world shook itself and settled down over rickety tables and drunken souls.


A small bit of lost-lost magic, floating aimlessly about this world for so long, finally found a tiny foothold. :)

Oly.

This is to beef steaks, rugged carpets, and overflowing pegs of Fuel.
This is also to SPE next door, graffiti laden toilet walls, queasy stomachs, torn sofas and stoic faces.
To spinning rooms, blunt knives, scurrying rats and tumble-down ceilings.
And to countless, timeless, hurrying, whispering, nudges of time, and secrets as they poured out.

Kobi Guru.

"...Bosiya achho kano apono money,
Swartho nimogono, ki kaaroney.
Charidikey dekho chahi hridoyo prosaari,
Khudro dukkho sobo, tuchchho maani..."

This helps. A lot.


Thank you. :)


And happy birthday, by the way.

I was seven-years old at the time, when love, in all its glory and fury, jumped out from behind a musty bookshelf and bonked me hard on the head.
It smelled a little like Chelpark Royal Blue ink, and also a bit like the breathless-escapades-on-steamers-during-partition-stories which dadumoni used to narrate, before he went all wrinkled and quiet. It reminded me of 7o’clock dashes to the building which is 103 A&C Ballygunge Place, and the sour taste in mouth when the milk would just not finish and the clock would just not slow down. I touched it gingerly, and it was soft. Like mamma’s cotton saree-aanchals when I would wipe my hand on them after lunch.
I talked to it. It smiled back.
It took my breath away. And I have been lost ever since.
When heartbreak happened, and loneliness happened. And people just went on pretending and wouldn’t stop, I would randomly shut myself up, and wander off.

There.

And just sit there, in this random rajasthan fortress, besides the road in this strange kingdom far away, on the steps of this normal benares ghaat or in this half-forgotten village at the end of nowhere, until all the broken me-pieces were collected and glued back together.
And when pisemoshai just went away, (I refuse to say that he died), and everything just went freaky inside my head, I went and huddled up next to her.
And listened to her sing : "Hori din toh galo, sondhya holo, paar koro amarey..."
And cried, like I needed to.

Its been a fabulous 10 years of unwavering, intense love. And worship. And a way of life which just refuses to die.
Every single day, I am newly bonked-on-the-head, and every new facet I discover, settles itself inside, like this old and ragged quilt, which never fails to provide comfort, no matter HOW zonked I am.

Pardon my unashamed gushing. I adore, worship, love this man.

Smitten, badly, since 1995.