SHE #11

Don't go out alone in the stormy night It's pitch dark in the ground outside The one that leads to the horizon And stretches all the way back to childhood Don't go near the lonely giant banyan A thick fragile shadow, it sways wildly At the mercy of the conniving winds Lightning will lash at you Pierce through the darkness, sear through your bone Don't look at her picture if you are alone Her eyes will stare through your being And sear through your bone. Like lightning she would expose All that you have buried deep in the night sky It would not be sticky, ,like rain or guilt She would lash, swift sharp and decisive: like death And in the flash before, reveal all secrets: yours, mine, man-kind's So don't go out alone in the stormy night Don't look at her picture, if you are alone

SHE #10

A different shade of mundane

Every single hour in the day

Every single hour in the day

I seek a rhyme worthy of you

I reach the right milestones, but I'm lost in my way

SHE #9

You are a well
To most, you are precious
For the sweet water of beauty
And the refreshing coolness of company
But what do they know, who only know of you.
  
  
You are a well
Of mysteries that scare Light
And fluid darkness that whispers ancient secrets
To some, you are the Holy Grail
For the lifelong quest behind a question mark
And the roller coaster ride of seeking

The few who know you, know the universe.

SHE #8

SHE #8

She makes me feel like a toddler

"Baba, can we count all the stars?"
On a star-spilling roof
On a load-shedded Calcutta night
(A magical Calcutta night)
How will the buds next door bloom by the morning?
What do the fireflies eat to shine so bright?
How does a moment feel to pass her by, forever?
The sacred geometry of her curves
The restless dynamics of her furious, ticking mind
How does the universe regret not crashing unto her feet?

She makes me feel like a toddler

"You can count them stars"- said my old man
"All of them, here, start from the Pole"
Like then,as now, I CAN
Count these tinkling seconds that lead to her
Twinkling like the stars
Its good to be a toddler, after all these years.

I watched this film, The Holiday recently. Loved the relationship they depicted between a senile and once famous hollywood screenplay writer (Arthur) and a woman, perhaps in her early 30's, who has come to LA on a vacation. I wonder how it would be to fall in love at an old age. I guess it is getting back the gift of wonder, a gift we are all born with but one that erodes as we grow up. I feel love can bring back that gift. As a kid I used to enquire of my father everything that would arouse my curioisity, these days I enquire of myself everything I find curious in this girl I know. I guess that sense of wonder has become more internal now, I wondered if that had been the case with Arthur.

  

The River Girl (She #7)

I met a river high up the mountains.

 Nascent, now she twists and then she turns
 Just free from clutches of momma glacier,
 Restless, she scoffs and then she roars
 As she speeds by broken hearts, of many a lover dear.


 I met a river deep into my youth.

 There is music in her new found gait
 Dance, in her serpentine motion
 Some turns are abstract poetry, like confidence in a newly teenaged girl 
Some curves are self doubt, a newly pimpled boy in infatuation.


 I met a river deep in ecstasy. 
In love with herself as she brought the moon down
 And let the pack of clouds gulp it
 She turned red, blushed, enjoying assiduous attention
 Of meditative mountains, keenly watching sun, waking meadows-- all voyeuristic. 


 I met a river like a Byzantine empress.

 They both didn't know where to go
 But are out to build a queendom 
They both will break a few things-- hearts, fences, rocks
 (And build many more)
 As they embark on their quest for freedom.


 "Don't talk about a prince"- she said
 " Nor about the sea" - she said
 " Never settle"- they said together
 The more you travel, nearer you are to who you are.


I met a girl high in the mountains
 I met a river deep in her conscience

SHE #5

I must be like a breeze for her

I'm welcome, liked too even

But she would'nt wait for me

Would plan for me on her pink lifeline

C'mon, who ever waits for a breeze ?


She is like a cool fragrant breeze

Like a shot of glucose, before the last leg of Mumbai Mjyhon

Like a cool , happy sensation after a rewarding review

Like a good day for no reason, a rare welcome good day

She is like a breeze for me
She lights up my lifeline even if for a fleeting moment

I wait eagerly for a breeze.                                                                                                                                      

The Desire Game

I have always always felt the best things in life hit the same spot on your brain to elicit essentially the same reaction, Happiness, by some hormonal play or the other. But for me, the two best things that can ever happen to me, giving birth to a poem or making love to a woman, are very similar at a very procedural level. This is why...

The Game resembles a poem
The birth of a poem
It starts with trance, or of losing the selfish self

I am a slave
To an idea yet to form
To the promise of pleasure yet to come

I am a mind, only a mind, consumed by just one thought
I am a body, nothing but a body, consumed by desire
The words are elusive, as if a 'lil shy
Like a familiar word long gone by
Like 'pittoo' , like 'rainy-day', childhood or the library room left ajar
She sits close, just a little far.

The words I can grasp but not quite grip; they tease
Like bra straps,hooks, buttons and zip
We rush ahead of time, like the Budhdha, Cobain or Scorcese
An abundance of words, gold, a pirate and a defenseless ship.

Wonder which is more primal to Man
A thirst for words or a crave for completion
The words, precious and perfect, fall in line
Like 2 bodies, complete and in rhythm divine


What follows is infinite bliss
A poem, two lovers, joy and peace.

SHE #4

She is rare.

Like an unlit street in bombay
Like an unlit street in Bombay
Like an unlit street and starry night in Bombay
Like an unlit street, a starry night and a deserted Bombay
Like 2 lonely young beings under a starry night walking by an unlit street in deserted Bombay

She is rare
Like darkness, solitude, silence, a wish granted or a shooting star
Like a corporate honcho's heart laid bare

SHE #3

To think of her is to listen to Desert Rain (Indian Ocean)

You marvel at sheer possibilities, infinite avenues

Of harmony, of life, of having a life

Through the murky clogged canals

Of incentives, emi's, debts and raises

(A desolate moonlit night, a brook and a raft)

She wafts through, butter under knife.

She #2

To catch the first pearls of dawn
I need not wait for the sun to rise, nor wake up early
I see sunrise everytime her lips part
And her face make a pinkish smiley

SHE

She smells of a new book
All her stories alive,
Of distant oceans
Of 2 lofty mountains
In their womb, a brook
Her eyes a page mark,a constant reminder
To know more I must strive

A Mid Autumn Night’s Dreamy Reality And An Ancient Ageless Empress

Place- The middle of nowhere, flanked by an unending beach that starts from where roots end.

Time- A Mid Autumn Night beyond any calendar, beyond memory.

A night that gifted me a long awaited dream, a night that ignited many more dreams and a night I spoke to the waves and saw an ancient, ageless empress on her marauding conquest.

                                                                                    

A conversation is on here, between several centuries and me. They shout out to me in their rumbling manner and acknowledge their understanding by lighting up the horizon. It is a sparkling conversation in a very literal sense. We have been talking for sometime now, about secrets tucked away safely in the tiny huts of the crabs we’d seen in the morning, about secrets being discussed stealthily in the ants colony I see so distinctly in front, secrets of time and space they have discussed for centuries, and above all about the enigma that I am standing close to now. The conversation is interrupted at times by lighting, probably because Titan doesn’t want me to know all yet, probably because Titan and the sea want a closer look at her, she who belonged to them since the beginning.

It did not start like this. There was nothing up to 30 mins after the ‘drop.’ I remember Pink Floyd getting scant attention in the room. In a flash however my entire world became the iconic artwork of The Division Bell. I had only heard of the Publius Enigma (I know for a fact, nobody ever ‘solved’ the Publius enigma) but I discovered a new facet of the artwork. Now I know there are actually 3 faces there but this was the one and only time when the 3^rd, the largest, the all-integrating face appeared to me as a whole. I was hypnotized as I stared at his burning glowing shrinking and expanding eyes. Those minutes triggered the mid autumn night’s dream.

Outside, in distant smell of seaweed and amidst thunderous applause of her familiar waves, she was busy creating her queendom. It seemed like I had no further truth to unearth, nor know any more, but what was going on in her tiny little head.  Like an impatient fetus craving for life outside, like a poem that is eager to be put on paper, I probed her about everything going on in the tiny little head. I saw a tree burning, burning bright, burning pink, sparkling but with glisten. Then there was dopey, her firefly, from that place far above the marketplace. I have only seen fireflies in a herd, very rarely in isolation. But it seemed like she was the only firefly left in front of the vast expanse of the sea, she had come on her bidding.

Then there was the boat, a few feet away from the sea, being rocked by the turbulent waves. She put on the captain’s coat and I was this petulant tourist, hell bent on staying at the deck, drunk on dreams. I could imagine being forever in the boat, in the turbulent tides, banished from the distant lands, quarantined from work and bosses. I dreamt of being ghosts that tired sailors see from their masts, before they sip some more of sailor’s rum.

The ghosts wouldn’t leave me, the ghosts of all poetry I read, all films I saw, and every single shot I wanted to take. The waves had become spot-lights now, and I had the camera rolling. In a few infinite seconds I shot all of her, in every angle, in all profiles. She was a coy woman speaking through her eyes now, a proud ageless beauty whose every cell screamed dominance the next moment. I had a lifetime’s worth of footage shot in those seconds.

The empress was now on her conquest, I followed suit like a hagiographer. We were fighting our crusade now, taking religion to far off lands, the religion of questioning faith and freedom. I followed suit to witness history, to document history. The beach was full of moonshine, full of battling waves; the beach was empty so long as our conquest went. I had tears by now, tears of pure joy, of desire, of a new language and its script.

There seemed to be rebellion in far off lands, there was a fire rising, red as blood, sharp as a shot of pain through the spine. Her conquest ended, she went home.

The flight of fancy was now on its waning curve. She wud’nt reveal any more of her secrets. Undaunted, I persist. To know more of her, to look for some hint to the riddle, to unearth that tiny little head. I kept thinking of it, of the layers of thought beneath it, of so many filters that keep out the otherwise mundane world from reaching her.

I don’t know if I slept, I don’t know if I have been sleeping much since. But I keep thinking of her conquest, her queendom and the tiny little head, in day dream, or in dreams; I am not very sure.

Relief

It was just another day. Yet another day, of hitting new lows, of feeling isolated and lonesome, of abject surrender and disillusionment until...Until I got a call from a very special person (best friend is an understatement for him). We don't talk everyday. Infact we talk once in months!. It's been eons i've seen him. But when we spoke, it was as if we were  still teenagers, frenetically hopping from one coaching centre to another, eyes full of dreams, our newly discovered bodies full of experiences! (in a strict sense of personal, self-discovery though, but why am i even giving a clarification!)He was probably high, and I was low! But we spoke as if we were still in class X, as if we had just met an hour back. And I felt so positively reassured, of not having to be alone in Mumbai, of not having to spend too much, of not having to be ALONE at all. Perhaps that is what friendship is, the feeling of absolute comfort, beyond the selfish pillars of P&L accounts. Perhaps it is something more that I am still not able to comprehend. The call left me with a lasting sense of security, of assurance, not only of a comforting person, but of my roots, of my foundations, of my comfort zone. This one is dedicated to you, my comfort zone :)

Sometimes the darkest pall of gloom

Brights up by a conversation most inane

All it takes is a pal, held close to bosom

And memories, of a time carefree and insane

The times ahead will try to gulp

Us, like acquisitions and hostile takeovers

Let’s not pledge, nor be candy floss-pulp

Let’s be us, of the same chai, undies and pullovers!

Us of  teenage, of ambitions and mistakes

Us of  weed, and seeing Time go slow

Us of the unflinching hatred to dictates

Us of reaching new highs and newer lows

Theatrix-Tohfa (adapted from a short story by Sadat Hasan Manto)

A humble effort by Theatrix-the passionate Theatre club of IIM-K, and an integral part of my stay here. It is the rehearsals, the uncertainty till the last second, the thousand goof ups that only we notice on stage- all these give me a welcome breather from the insane, monotonous academic pressure at IIM-K. Theatrix instils pride in each of it's members, a vent for creativity and a confidence to hold our heads high. I am sure to post more of our work here. Like each of my works in this site, my poems or my reflections, the process of labour at Theatrix is similar and the testosterone rush as the curtains fall and the applause begins- no less than being kindly appreciated for a poem.  I wish I had a video of the nukkad we performed at Roobaroo, real proud of that work too

Directed by : Debtanu Dutta
Adapted for stage by : Ashish Tickoo

Meenakshi--the deity with the eyes of a fish

Meenakshi

Fishes are said to feed their offspring through their eyes. And, I just do'nt seem to grow up, silly everytime.....

Meenakshi

I find you still

At peace,like a photograph

Or a memory, framed forever with newness

That feeling of a First

First touch,first loss,first tinge of blush

That feeling of new-ness.

Your Piscean, Aiyangar eyes

Calm with centuries of wisdom

Betray a ripple now

Someone must have mentioned Bertrand Russel

Or some retard must be taking vigorous notes,minting money

The ripple spreads now

Like the mad race of life,like teenage hormones

Brimming on the large lakes of your eyes

Stretching the crescent of the lips.

You will draw the leash now

It's too early for full-moon
"I'm not the Konkan coast"-you'll say
"Caressed and tormented alike by promiscuous waves"

Yours is not beauty ephemeral

Nor seed of wars,pain and misfortune

You've sustained life for centuries now

The Well of Zamzam, the wealth of the Ocean

You're mine, my son's and every man's on earth

Yet greed holds no stake, you are beyond possession

So your smile is put on a leash now

All urges to express restrained

However much the poet may plead

Or peculiar evenings with their irresistible clouds beckon

However much the woman inside may burn

The smile must be restrained lest the World goes for a churn

Because you protect

Because you don't want another Pokhran,Nagasaki or Amrit-Manthan
So the poet shall wait till the world grows up

And continue to set ripples on the lake of memories

Till you pull memories,him and the lake

Into the origin that is you....   

HUNGER

I had a dream last night that whatever I have been scribbling on a Diary for a year now,has been published!!...so,a slight exemption to my vow of secrecy,the others will be best read in print!!!!!!!

This dates back to exactly an year from now.

HUNGER

It is spreading now,slow and thorough

Through my parched throat,through the wet lungs

Through my tired heart,pumped into every aged artery

Searing through my boiling skin,peeping through centuries of oblivion

The hunger is spreading,slow and thorough.

It emanates from faraway ,forgotten Byzantine Empire

From its riches,filth,blessings and sins

And surges through the Penis and the Pineal alike

Till my existence curls into a single foetus of craving

Her navel,waist and ribs,looked at sideways

Still wombs the Empire

And as I starve over millenia of wasted food,beverage,human skin

The Queen of Sheba smiles,lopsided.

A Symbol Has Died

I have always maintained that I can write only when an idea has sufficiently germed inside me,so much so that it yearns to come out into recognition and that craving stifles all my preoccupations and for some divine moments I am One with the idea. It is really like childbirth. But this particular piece,was written to vent out a suffocating feeling inside,to literally write my way out of trouble. This is not a product,this is an excreta. I have always wondered about mothers who abandone their child at birth or those that commit foeticide. What reason on earth can compel someone to kill a part of her own,an extension and proof of her divine creative self.Well ,i can now say that I have lived the life of such a mother.What is about to come is an orphan,a product of a selfish carnal desire and not an offering to the citadel of pure creativity.So dear reader,you are forewarned.

A SYMBOL HAS DIED

I had read somewhere that the Brain saves and interprets things in terms of symbols. For eg,if I say “Apple” the image of a red oblate spheroid hits a particular part of the Brain. Ever since I understood and begun to think, I've always had a feeling of thinking in terms of symbols,as if all speech,all words had their origin in some obscure,yet significant,symbol. For eg, when I think of 'being there beside you' ,I think of a rock,and when I think of that huge rock,I feel I have actually thought about my father. The symbol f gloom is a dark,wet monsoon evening when there will be no cricket,the symbol of a threatening loneliness is a deserted corridor in my school with the classes in progress and I coming late,stranded afraid in the peculiar suffused light of fear.The symbol of spirituality is Poulomi,she comes to mind when I think of a White Dove,the symbol of insecure love is Dwip-Tito,now that we've grown apart(not grown apart really,growing away from each other with our love feeling threatened by the physical and psychological distance in between),the symbol of safety is Maa's oval red bindi,worn right after her ablutions,and of course,the symbol of all things beautiful is the Girl that I love. The symbol of trust.........

A symbol seems to have died. A swift,sudden death,but painful all the same in its searing swiftness and sudden absence. But as it died,it also made me live a few lives,perhaps to make me aware of the intransigence of all things human,and the futility of emotional attachments.

The words came slowly. Leaden,innocuous words,words that do not even map a symbol to my brain,but inside they were laden with Trojan horses,each carrying countless infidels with shovels and boring drills. Once inside,they unleashed the borers, scraped away every trickle of resistance,every remnant of my fading sanity. I have always wondered(not sure exactly at what) when a boring machine drills onto the ground and spits out splinters of concrete. I led the life of Earth being bored at.

I had once seen a freshly severed foetus at a drain in Kalighat. Vermins and flies had a field day on it,as they swarmed over an almost sticky,fetid odour and I had wondered if this was disgust that I felt. I was never sure,but now I became disgust. Disgust to me was an unkempt,old insane in my childhood,with saliva all over his beard and a bare torso full of stench of infection. And now I could see him.coming to me,coming closer,being me.I remember my first hash trip when I had actually peeped out of my mind and body and seen my cage,and the heart within. And I remember taking pity,and mildly condoning my glaring dirtiness,my prejudices interlinked with some inherent goodness. They both shone in a natural,virgin glory.Raw,human emotions,and failings and that had never invoked disgust. Presently,I became the old ghost of my childhood,I became disgust for some time.

I had always wondered,in basic Science classes about what a vacuum was. The complete absence of anything was something I never could fathom. I understood it then,when suddenly I became a complete absence of everything. My mind,always throbbing with emotions,always talking to me,became silent as a corpse and the warmth of all my contradictions was replaced by a definitive,freezing emptiness. As if things end here,never to be again. I lived the life of vacuum.

Ever since 9/11 happened,I have wondered about all those who came to work the next day,how they must have failed in the absence of the colossal towers. Even the ones who did not lose an immediate family,must they not have felt a sense of loss,an emptiness within? The twin towers must have grown so deeply into their existence that they might not have granted special privilege of attention to them. Trust is somewhat of the erstwhile twin towers for me. It has been there ever since i've been,and to have seen it not there in a long fell swoop,I lived the life of a 9/11 victim.

Now that the oozing has stopped,I am left stunned at the lack of reaction to this death. I have only died once before,a complete death, but I was born again with my core intact. But the death of a symbol is the end of an integral part of my thought and as thoughts make up my existence,it is a partial death.The emotional type that I am,I had thought I will let out a long sombre wail and tears will once again inundate the barren lands of battle,all in the comfort of my solitude. That would have meant that like all damaged cells in the body,this too shall be replenished. But to my shock,and remorse,my mind seems to have settled in a comforting numbness,making the verdict deafeningly clear.It's not a symbolic death after all,its a death indeed of a symbol. And now I'm left hoping that all this was nonsense,that the human mind does not think in terms of symbols at all,and the emotion stays as it is,with or without the symbol.

The Mind Of The Matter

It's been ages,i say with shame,that I have actually written anything,anything at all. Not that there wasn't anything worth writing,i've had an eventful time in the last 9 months it was a terrible sense of mental laziness and a fear of going through the labor of childbirth all over again.Good news is,i could write down something tonight,and however incoherent it might appear(it does..it will in a short time) i would like to believe it will hand me back the only thing I do with heart. All apologies if you tend not to like it dear reader :P







Far from the confines of the skull
Floating,fearless,not swimming
(Swimming speaks to me of death in hushed whispers)
Misty-eyed in a swirl of lucid consciousness
In an ocean,in The Ocean
Of love,hatred,pain.hemorrhage,gangrene,and of Love
I had a bird's-eye view of the Cage.






My cage,strong,slouched,robust,dark
Lit scorching by the eyes,the penis and the pineal
And strengthened by layer upon layer
Of bones,muscles,corpuscles,greed,lust,exam grades and greed

Purely meek,like the dense mass of vermin that line up the neighbourhood vat
Purely weak,such that every puff of consciousness,every breath
Of salvation,tore apart the ribs and the spongy dark red blackness within

Crushed,like dreams,like castles built in hostile beaches
Like dreams that lived in the castles,like memories
Of the hands that built those castles,crushed meekly

And I wondered how I fit into it all this while
I have been a misfit all through.






Floating in wave after wave of clarity
Thinking,becoming the thought, in vast swathes of omniscience
Fast losing the long nurtured sense of self,scared and eyeless
I looked for a fellow Mind
Instead I saw the genesis of the cage and its kin.

The eyes were meant to see and rate
The good,the bad and the ugly of other cages
And pile strata of tailormade truth

Eyeless,the Truth is singular outside the cage
The truth is She

The core and whole of it all,the cages and what is left
All dreams,pain,laughter and hissing pain
End up,and begin,to end up again in her

Like the sea that returns all that it takes,the sea itself
Dissolves,merges and forms in her.

Marijuana,Camos,Pink Floyd,dead cells
The cycle of karma and emancipation
Anger,lust,greed,gluttony,blasphemy,wrath--the purest and the fiercest
move meekly in and keenly out of her
As She undoes all creation,to create again
with her pets ying and yang.

And before I slept off to falsehood again
Before the doors of my cage were to open
I screamed into the walls that were She
" She is the truth "--is only half true
The truth is She.


And since I saw the whole of her,I could'nt make out a face
And since I've been searching without knowing what
And I feel thirsty all the time.

PRIYADARSHINI

"there are,on the average,about 20 traffic accidents in kolkata every month"

"Ei Karunamoyee..karrrunamoyee...kolyamoyee...seat khali..assun assun.." --
the conductor did not scream his advert,and that was what woke me up with a jolt. I was minutes into a Garia-karunamoyee -- apparently conductors in the route are too gentle to shout ( they are usually gentle except when it comes to granting student's concession)--and this conspicuous absence disallowed my drifting into slumber.

I know this beautiful lady who resides in Gariahat. Calling her on includes listening to the sales pitch of every hawker,the hustle of a streetfight over a wrongly placed paan spit,and the misfit Beethoven playing between traffic announcements. It appears as if the whole old city,with all her cosmopolitan vibration is breaking through us,thus inevitably(and perhaps unwittingly) providing a noisy disquiet of privacy. Try taking your beloved to an afternoon in the Indian Coffee House for first hand demo.
Coming back,this friend of mine says she cannot sleep in quieter places because of the conspicuous absence of the din that resides in her subconscious ,thus playing a part in all routine,pre-meditated responses. Thus was I jolted back from a siesta that never was.


The clouds had sewn darker as they boarded,while a breeze brought a soothing old melody from afar.
"Oi seat tai boshun" [Sit there]
--the conductor pointed to a forlorn single seat.

The man was dark and reeked of family life. As is so often the case with such men,he had on an unstarched khadi that bore bites of bidi, and proudly wore his travails,struggles and sacrifice in a faint smirk. One never notices their trousers. He was a father,bringing his daughter from school.


The daughter was a playful young flower,probably in the early embrace of puberty. She was not fair but there was a glow,of innocence or of promise. She wore the essentials of her generation-- a heavy schoolbag and grim spectacles,over her blue striped uniform. You noticed her uniform because the suffused light beneath the dark veil of cloud whispered to you to take note. While the pallid weather waited in anticipation, the father took her schoolbag on the one free hand. He was bringing her home.


I was once hopelessly with a girl (she's blossomed to a beautiful lass now) back in class 5.She ,shockingly, liked a sophomore moustachioed Guy. I understand now,it was conniving Mother nature at that age,that charmed her to look for an object of hero-worship,a MAN of freedom and a past (of achievements and disrepute).Our girl evidently hero-worshipped her father.

"kota baaje re maa?" [What's the time, maa] [Its comon among Bengali fathers to call their daughters, maa]

"Baba,12ta.."  [baba, it's 12]


"Tor 12ta baaje ni toh?!"--(chuckle) [old, silly joke]



The kid looked around with a little unease,and then broke into convulsive giggles.By then She was sitting on his lap because there weren't any vacant seats,because he had asked her to :

"Maa amar kole-e bosh" [Maa, sit on my lap]


She sat happily,but she had shot a furtive glance at her bright surroundings. She seemed vulnerable,but she was secure with her father around,she smiled brightly.

"Patuli,2to" [2 tickets for Patuli]

--she paid from her purse while Father looked away with a solemn contentment--kids love their first taste of authority!

A heavy woman,her dark belly visible from beneath her pastel brown saree
 presently obscured my view. I could still hear her chirping,interjected by Father's dim,affectionate mumbling. A toddler behind them asked his mom:

"Maa,shibthakur ki khub raagi?" [Maa, is shiva a very angry god?]

And without vision or hearing I could feel She dissolving into peels of laughter and feel father gently patting her back. Just as in foolish first love the familiar road,hazy smoke with its lonely beggar screaming hunger,its fearful mongrel and screeching auto,suddenly appears new and wonderful,so did a sudden memory appeared to clog over my thinking.

There was a stout tree rooted in my childhood that bore white flowers every day.I remember once sitting intently beside,missing an entire scorching day of Cricket,fights and blessed corporation tube-wells,to actually see a flower bloom. The flower  never allowed me,but I remember a vine that crept on growing,like a knot,around that tree.And then I saw her again,sitting on his lap chin up,melting into tides of mirth and occasionally looking at the people around with slight hesitance. Why was that for? Approval?Pity?But why so,when she looked so proud,both of them and the moment?

"kaku ekhane rakhben"  [Uncle please halt here]

--she muttered while the conductor ensured that the bus came to a safe complete halt. The Sun reappeared again crushing hopes,of rain in particular. Father stood up,bag in his shoulder and her fingers clasping to the free hand. She winced once at the sun that was about to blind the world with merciless clarity. He stepped down the stair first,daughter followed coyly,leaning on her father,smiling sweetly all the time--it was impossible not to notice the admiration in her eyes. SHE WAS BEING TAKEN HOME.

His stick made a metallic clang on the road,he adjusted his dark glasses once. The plump benign woman now sat at the solitary handicap's seat ( it spelt 'handicaft',perhaps evolving from handicraft,a crude irony really if one considers each mortal as GOD's handicraft). The man from the dark walked content beside the wise school girl. Father had brought back the little girl home through the perilous traffic.

CASTLE IN THE AIR

It's been a long time since I've written anything.I've always maintained that writing for me has always been like child-birth,there is a proper time and place to conceive the idea, followed by a perilous labour during which one is acquainted to the queer joy of feeling the presence of another individual with a mind of her own,in oneself. Over the past half year,I've been searching the answer to a peculiar yearning within me in numerous futile sessions of vodka and marijuana. Futile they really are,further,they accentuated the feeling of this overflowing,stuffed emptiness within--empty of expressions and filled with this eerie presence of something,sorry someone,a woman,(all works of beauty is feminine,in fact beauty is feminine),within me.

Omniscient TIME,my great worship TIME had chosen a queer venue for the birth of HIS latest muse--it was our last mid sem exam and she had to see the light of the day then.( I am slightly sorry HKC sir ).

I must quell any salivating gossip monger here. The term 'Pratyusha' referred to shortly has no connection to any earthly mortal namesake--the term is an idea that has germed in me since eternity,an idea I experience in blessed rare moments of meditation,an idea that eludes me in my desperate attempts to emulate a 'vision' with alcohol or marijuana induced hallucination.

You are a big time loser if you've ventured thiis far into this gibberish,but if you have by any chance dear reader,just make note,anything that you might read below,good or bad,whether it elevates your hidden spirituality or opens up the beast in you,everything below is dedicated to GAURAB BHAI MUKHERJEE.

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CASTLE IN THE AIR

Moments,like waves they hit

'cross the blue expanse of pain

The Castle I'd built

Dreaming through 4 minutes in IEM.

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The Castle had bore the brunt too

Ere moments bequeathed events

Through surges of War,hatred and Love,new

Real or not,all linked by desire currents.

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Pain is its lonely neighbour

A friendly neighbour too

Screening wandering ships of wonder

Checking in a select few.

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The ones that Joy cannot pollute,

The ones purer than sorrow

Sparkling,like Pratyusha's eyes

Brighter than any precious gem ,

The searing pain that poets salute

And the World will,tomorrow

The castle's stinking scar the critics eye

The scar moans,but proudly,IEM.