Rapture-Love-Rupture

Like a detached variegated feather of a possibly mythical, mystical bird that floats, dances in the air- a little exploited, a little caressed by nature, not stagnant, not firm, maybe fickle, almost always in turbulence yet in absolute peace; and then it comes to complete rest when it gets caught, entrapped by someone or something, depleted of alacrity, replete with insensitive senses, a sense of kinship, belonging, acceptance, of being overpowered, held, caged; Neil’s sight, the sight of a coherent, dull, fastidious, gullible, transparent, convoluted, sane, lunatic romantic walked, sprinted, peregrinated from one place to another, not waiting, not stopping, with unflagging spirit adulterated with mirthless vigour; and then it got stupefied, it froze, subtly, suitably, enchanted by some oblivious spell executed through a seductive, exquisite tool by a sorceress.  Neil’s sight remained bound, albeit loosely, like a ribbon tied carelessly to a little girl’s hair by herself, in a desperate effort to prove her mettle and failing miserably; but that outrageous freedom urged his sight to cling, hang on to the hypnotization. The freedom coaxed him, teased him, mocked him; it was as if a challenge, a casual one, thrown at him, telling him that he would not lose if he quit, he would not be humiliated, humbled if he refused, and just by saying that it also said that it would be his greatest defeat if he did surrender. His sight remained fixed.

She was an embodiment of the sun.

It hurt his eyes to keep looking at her.

What she had, she held, what she had begun-

He was helpless before that, he had to defer.

In one of her hands she held a small paper packet, the usual ones made out of sold off or discarded old newspapers. It contained a delectable mixture of puffed rice, spices, pieces of vegetables and snacks. Neil’s eyes chased the movement of her hand holding the paper packet. She raised her hand, tilted her head a little backwards, then poured some of the food in her mouth. He could separate, see, each element of the food that got lost in her mouth. A sole soul, a diminutive speck of puffed rice, a stranded, estranged entity, nonentity got marooned, prisoned in the island of her moist red lower lip; but she was generous enough to liberate it with a swift movement of her tongue.  Neil closed his eyes.  He was defeated. No. Not yet. He resumed looking at her, after that sudden pause of stare. Her mouth shut, her jaws moved, she crushed the food with her teeth, and then the sublime paste slipped down to her stomach, grazing her throat, leaving marks inside her with incoherent ecstasy. Neil’s eyelids batted in a synchronized fashion with the movement of her mouth, lips. He listened to the gentle sound of bliss, the unchained pleasure.

How he wished he was the…

The bus started moving. Neil had forgotten that he was sitting in a bus which was about to leave the bus-stand in a few minutes. He was startled, but he was relieved. He was on the verge of defeat; he was succumbing to the colossal coercion, the fatal force. Escape, could he? Did he?

Neil knew that he had fallen prey-

to that primitive propensity,

the delicate desire,

the daunting, haunting urge,

that he could not successfully purge,

the feeling, the reeling, the peeling of the soul,

the object, yes object,

which he had ruthlessly ruptured,

mercilessly murdered,

then carried it’s carcass himself,

in his arms,

and unceremoniously cremated it,

the thing called ‘love’.

Apparently, it had come back to life. Suddenly he felt an emptiness, a void in his stomach.

The ticket collector of the bus asked for the fare. Neil handed the few coins that he fished out of his pocket to the ticket collector and declared the name of the bus stop he was to get down at. The ticket collector asked for 50p. The bus fare was Rs. 8.50. Neil had only Rs. 8 with him. He produced his college ID and got a student-concession of Rs. 2, which reduced the fare to Rs. 6.50. The ticket collector sighed, frowned, returned the balance and left. So Neil had Rs. 1.50 left with him now. He didn’t know what was he going to do, from whom was he going to lend money; he was drowning in debts already. He rejected those naïve notions and closed his eyes. Of course he had better things to muse.

Neil went back to his own world, again. He wondered about ‘love’. It had been a conscious choice of his, semi-completely consequential to his circumstances, to sacrifice love. Then why did he feel love again? Why?

But he just couldn’t deny his love. He loved FOOD. He loved to eat, but he was broke, he couldn’t afford food, let alone good food. He could starve for days and weeks and months, now.

How he wished he was the one holding that paper packet and having the food.

---x---

Food is a necessity, a biological need. So is love, may be, or may not be. Some ascetics conquer hunger and also desires. If love is a desire, they conquer that too. Neil was not an ascetic. But he thought that he had conquered love, perhaps; hunger, of course not.

He still had food,
when he could afford to,

but he didn’t feel,

the same zeal;

love, was not there,

it didn’t matter though;
he didn’t care,

and then comes love again,

to heal,

or perhaps, to kill.

Neil was not hungry. Neil was in love, with food.

Visions

A sequel to Lives.

Sean did not visit Andy at the hospital.

Sweat beads decorated Sean’s forehead. The sweat infiltrated his eyes and irritated him. He scratched his eyes. His eyes, a little moist, a little tired and incoherently calm delineated a coldness that belied all comprehensions about and all complaints against the hot weather. His eyes carried a tinge of orange, formed by the redness of the scratch and the yellow left as a mark by an execrable and agonizing jaundice.

Sean entered the metro station. The cold air from the air conditioning hit his face, and fell back, as if accepting defeat to a greater force, to a higher degree of coldness. Sean stood at the queue to purchase his ticket. Tokens flashed before his eyes, reviving the memory of a city where tokens were given instead of tickets in the metro. The uninvited vision could not bother him. With the ticket in his hand Sean waited for the train to arrive. The train arrived. The doors opened. The doors closed. The train left. Sean stood at the same place. When the sound of the train moving on the rails ceased to reach his ears, he started walking towards the exit. He wanted to walk.

Sean was walking by a playground. The green-ness of the grass hurt his eyes. He stood there for a moment. A few kids were playing football. The swift movements of the white and black skinned sphere sent him in a tizzy.  He saw his brother score a goal. ‘No. Not real’, he said to himself and resumed walking. He walked past a house where a lady was singing Hindustani classical music. The voice of his mother singing Raga Desh, an evening raga filled his ears. It filled him with a peculiar sense of excruciating ecstasy. ‘No. Not real’, he said to himself and increased his pace.

Sean entered the coffee house. He wasn’t hungry, nor thirsty, probably tired. He rested on the chair and ordered for a cup of coffee. Two middle-aged men were sitting at the next table. They were discussing something very animatedly. Sean didn’t bother to listen, until he heard one of those men reciting a poem. The poem didn’t just sound familiar, he knew it by heart. He saw his father sitting across his table and reciting ‘Nirjhorer Sopnobhongo’, a poem by Rabindranath Tagore. ‘No, not real’, he said to himself and got up without finishing his coffee. He paid the bill and left.

He crossed streets adjoining which stood buildings with picturesque architecture. The white pillars, at a place, a thousand miles away got projected before him, as if through his eyes, exploring some hidden chambers of his mind. He saw a couple walking hand in hand, talking and smiling. Who was the boy, was it him? Who was the girl, was it…? ‘No’. A kit of pigeons rose from the ground and assumed flight. It startled him. No. ‘Were they pigeons or a murder of crows?’ They sounded like crows, but he thought that he saw pigeons.

He was exhausted, hallucinating.

He plugged in his earphones.

He needed some respite.

The hospital was five minutes away.

Andy had been unconscious for two days. The doctors did not say that there was much hope that he would make it. Andy had made it, apparently.

The first thing that Andy did after gaining consciousness was to call up Sean.

‘... Sean, my whole body is covered up with bandages and plaster. I look like, rather I feel like an Egyptian Mummy…’

‘Okay Andy, I will see you in the evening’

Sean pushed the glass door at the hospital’s entrance. His facial muscles yawned and stretched as if they have been woken from a long slumber. He was smiling. All the hallucinations and their misgivings were swept aside. A strange energy flowed through him. ‘Is this, what they call happiness?’ He thought to himself. ‘Adventures of the Egyptian Mummy and Frankenstein’s Monster. Now, that’s a vision, a good one’, he shared a joke with himself, the smile still painted on his face. Maybe it was Andy. Yes, Andy was his priority now. He felt that.

The last but one stanza of his favourite song stimulated his eardrums.

“I took a heavenly ride through our silence,
I knew the moment had arrived,
For killing the past and coming back to life.”

– Pink Floyd

Sean walked towards the reception.

Andy’s father was filling in a form. It was for Andy’s death certificate.

Andy had made it, apparently.

---x---

The End.

The Beginning.



Sequel - Fits.

Lives

A sequel to Fumes.

From the heaven descended bulky drops of rain, they struck Sean’s face like arrows hurled from the slings of a group of deft archers. He had been waiting in the rain for more than ten minutes now, and he wasn’t carrying an umbrella, abiding by his inveterate trait of acute carelessness. Andy is supposed to pick him up. Andy had called five minutes ago to let him know that he was caught up in a traffic jam and would be there any minute. Sean had replied ‘Okay!’, not complaining the slightest, in his usual strain of uncompromised indifference and utter expressionless-ness. He was indifferent to the rain, to the vehicles that went past him splashing mud-water at him from the roads. He stood there shaking, feeling and observing- the unobserved, the unkempt, the unfulfilled, the unnerving facades of the vivid, poignant and beautifully destructive dystopic  colours of unnatural nature, which mercilessly yet mellifluously debased life, his life. He was painting, capturing, narrating and listening, all with his eyes.

Time flowed,

So did water.

Clouds bellowed-

Hoarse thunder.

Sean could feel a silhouette approaching him, but he chose to be indifferent and be engrossed in his job of discovering the dystopian spectrum, the obscure light which was making unflagging and unmitigated efforts to keep dusk, night at bay.

A man appeared out of nowhere and asked Sean “What time is it now?”

Sean replied “It’s quarter past six by my watch.”

Sean realized then, that five minutes had long passed.

It was no theatre,

So did he ponder.

Why did people gather-

In a crowd yonder?

Sean asked a person who was walking hastily towards the crowd, “What’s the matter?”

The person, without even glancing at Sean replied hurriedly, “There’s been an accident.”

Suddenly everything seemed still, the rain, the noises, the people around; everything. Sean’s senses seemed to have undergone temporary selective impairment. He walked towards the crowd, often bumping into people; not apologizing, he moved on.

He dreaded these accidents, these sights made him sick.

Sean recognized the car at once. He saw the body lying on the road, soon to be put on a stretcher and carried off in an ambulance, a few people surrounding it. The man was still alive, Andy was still alive. Sean observed Andy and the car, he couldn’t figure out which was more wretched, Andy’s body or Andy’s car.

The blood made him sick.

Sean’s senses did not get better. Silence prevailed.

Without inquiring anything about the accident, he found his way out through the crowd, swiftly.

No tear escaped his eye, no shriek escaped his throat.

Sean reached home. He was soaked to the skin.

The warmth of his home was hauntingly tranquilizing. He did not turn on the lights. He didn’t change, nor did he get himself dry; he sat on his bed, inert, motionless.

His mind drifted-

One year ago,

“He was in love. They have been together for more than two years now and the spark was still there.”

Sean was on his way to meet Penny. Penny didn’t turn up that day, instead she texted him, ‘We’re through!’ They had their fair deal of occasional tussles, but that was a bolt from the blue.

Dejected and crushingly mesmerized by the aura of atrocious affliction, he had switched off his cellphone and wandered apathetically on solitary streets.

When he reached his hostel, he was informed that a friend of his father’s had been trying to get to him all day. Sean called him back immediately. Sean was instructed to get home as soon as possible, availing the quickest and best mode of transport he can manage to get.

Sean stayed in a different city. He was studying engineering.

All the while he was on his way home; his mind was digging up the same cadaver of his deceased relationship with Penny. He had even shouted out once in his mind, “Thank you God; what can be worse?” He didn’t even try to know or comprehend why he was rushing home.

Sean’s family comprised his father, mother and younger brother. They had been out to the market on an evening, shopping. While they were returning, their car had met with an accident on the highway. It was a ghastly accident.

There was no corpse on which Sean could rest his head and weep. Just a heap of flesh, undistinguishable; what was his father’s flesh, or mother’s or brother’s.

Sean hardly remembered when was the last time he had hugged his father, had a hearty chat with his mother or fought with his brother. He was away, in his own kingdom of inherent insane inanity.

Water dripped from his hair and from his clothes on the floor. The bed was already wet.

“Andy: ….Don’t be this dead man, this zombie. C’mon, don’t be Frankenstein...”

Sean: …Victor Frankenstein is the name of the scientist who created the monster and not the monster itself. ‘Don’t be Frankenstein?’ I’d love to be him….”

Sean bent down and with his index finger as a pen and water as ink he started writing on the floor-

Why do you follow me so assiduously, o’ Death?

I won’t give up, although it hurts with my every breath.

Why do you bruise me with your abhorrent tentacles of depression?

My life is annihilated and exiled are my expressions.

Why do you stab me again and again, to inflict agony with your blunt knives?

With my head still on my neck, I won’t be afraid of you, for those taken LIVES.

Finished with his eccentric scribbles, Sean sat up again.

It was still raining outside.

He kept sitting on his bed, inert, motionless!

-------

Life is futile-

And short-lived.

A bullet fired,

Hits the target-

In no time.

Tracing the path of-

An obnoxious projectile.

Sequel - Visions

Fumes

A sequel to Ashes.

“A pack of Marlboro regulars, please!”

Sean lit a fag and smoked it listlessly. He loved it. The cigarette smoke was strong but his throat, his lungs were stronger. With dwindling footsteps and a rugged poise, head burdened with joyous premonitions, he moved towards the subway.He needed to board the train, he had to meet Penny. A swift flick of the fingers and the brown cigarette bud disembarked his hands, right into the trash bin, and cuddled amongst a half-eaten cheese sandwich, a rotten apple, and a fresh bouquet of roses. Sean fished into his pocket to retrieve a mint gum; to retrieve himself from his foul breath. He couldn’t kiss Penny, like that. He needed his mouth to be fresh; his lips moist and awaiting his love’s lips. He was in love. They have been together for more than two years now and the spark was still there.

Six months later –

Andy : “Sean, would you like to have a smoke?”

“SEAN, hey; HELLO… Would you like to have a smoke?”

Sean : “Umm…”

Andy “WHAT?”

Sean : “No thanks!”

Andy : “What the hell is wrong with you? Yes, Penny left you for the better. Now, shrug it off and get going. Don’t be this dead man, this zombie. C’mon, don’t be Frankenstein.”

Sean : “Yes, okay! I won’t smoke; not for some time at least. And by the way, Victor Frankenstein is the name of the scientist who created the monster and not the monster itself. ‘Don’t be Frankenstein?’ I’d love to be him.”

Andy : “Don’t smoke, if that makes you happy. Frankenstein or his monster; you got my point, and that’s all.”

Another six months later –

White cigarette buds were strewn on the white marble floor, gray ashes made the immaculate harmony dull, and a few pages with staff notes written on them made unflagging efforts to obliterate the monotony with their silent melodies; a drawing sheet and a few colour pencils, an almost damaged cellphone, a diary and a pen. Amidst this chaos, lay Sean, unscathed, oblivious to the filth, the cosmos.

He is in a dire need to decipher his creative and intellectual traits; that is if he does have any. He needs something to drive him, something which can make him live, make him believe in himself.

Sean, searched for a cigarette. His pack was empty. With herculean effort he got himself up, put on his jacket and walked down to the nearby store.

“A pack of Marlboro lights, please!”

Sean needed to smoke. His throat and lungs were still strong, they could bear the smoke of Marlboro regulars, but he smoked lights now.

Penny is a person of the past now.

Sean likes Tina. He isn’t in love with her, yet; and he doesn’t hope that he will be in love with her anytime soon. Sometimes he finds this feeling, his ‘like’ for Tina, repulsive.

Sean lit a fag and smoked it listlessly. He loved it.

He coughed.

He never coughed while smoking Marlboro regulars and then Marlboro lights made him cough; Sean wondered and smirked.

Sean took a long puff of his fag.

He puked.

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

Marlboro regulars and ‘love’ were delightful.

Marlboro lights and ‘like’ are repugnant.

Sometimes the harsh doesn't hurt, but the soft stings!

Sequel - Lives

Jour de naissance

In a pensive stance,

I sit beside a window,

with my head tilted sideways,

my eyes affixed,

on the blades of grass,

that dance to the tune,

of mellifluous drizzle.

I have switched off the fan,

I didn’t like the sound of it;

it is obstructing, distracting, subtracting;

the convergence of my cognitions.

I light a cigarette,

I smoke effortlessly.

The smoke,

sometimes slaps back at my face,

and sometimes it is extracted,

deep from my mouth;

in a twisted cyclonic fashion,

goes out of the window,

and dissolves into the moist air.

How, the direction of the wind changes without any notice.

I try to recollect my last birthday. Abhishek wishing me at midnight; lunch with Sumit and Anish; the movie Love Aaj kal after that, at Inox. Yes, Ma had made Ilish Biriyani for me. That’s all. I don’t remember anymore of that day.

The last year of my life had not been very eventful, as I’d supposed it would be. I had spent most of the time coping with my illness.

A few good people were added to my life,

a few good ones subtracted.

Sporadically, at times of depression,

I feel, maybe,

I’d held the grains of sand,

Too tightly.

They slipped through my fingers,

Through my clasp.

Well,

I could have gathered,

the grains of sand,

could have taken a piece of paper,

made a few strokes,

with a brush and glue on it,

and then let them slip away,

all of it, again.

It would have remained.

A piece of art.

Birthday kiddo.

You’re a year older.

Letter

Dear I,

I wonder why I didn’t write me or myself or just simply my name Sayak. Maybe I have an affinity towards the vowel ‘I’. You might think I, that’s also you, are a narcissist; maybe I am, or may be not. Let’s drop it, it’s not important.

Look at me, look at how lame a thing I am doing, perturbed by the hallucinated repercussions of self established, self demolished melancholic felicitous ode of insularity, noisily ranted in the harshest possible voice. Why don’t I sit for a while in solitude and get over with this conversation? Ah, I can’t strain my vocal chords to yell my quirks at you, or even if it is a mute conversation I can’t vex my mind to do the talking; I am too lazy to do that, you know. But I can do the typing; it comes to me almost involuntarily.

We hardly talk nowadays; and to speak the truth I don’t feel bad about it, rather I don’t have the time to feel bad about it. I am always busy doing something or the other and more often than not I am in the company of friends. Not that I am all ablaze and lost in hyperbolic hysteria while I am apparently and technically not alone, I do feel solitary at times, I glance at your silhouette, try to speak up, then reject the notion and lapse into the prevalent marooned numbness of temporarily anaesthetized inertia of the fake frivolous presence, the thing called fun, joy and very loosely life.

Sometimes, I feel like that small bird perched on a high tension wire, oblivious to and free from the facts of science. I don’t even realise what flows beneath me, grazing my feet; just like I let the relentless waves of time flow, disdaining and mocking that dimension altogether.

Nothing concerns me nowadays, not even you; I stay afloat and adrift on the turbulence of the jittery ocean of interminable nonchalance. But you are indispensable to me. I might burn out, but you are like the Amaranthus plant, which never withers, never fades away. You are the soul, the energy; which can neither be created nor destroyed.

I shall cease my speech now. I hope to talk to you soon, although, seriously I am not very hopeful about it.

Yours sincerely,

Sayak

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

" The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves. "  - Eric Hoffer

Injury

I got injured while playing a football match.

My ankle got twisted, and it got twisted so bad,

that I wasn't being able to stand up;

so I was carried out of the field.

The injury was bad.

I informed a friend about my injury. 

She was laughing.

I replied : 

Please, don't laugh. 

It's terrible. 

When the pressure is intense,

and I ought to run to the toilet, 

my condition becomes pathetic. 

I limp and crawl to the toilet,

restricting a volcanic eruption of bowels,

which by the time has built up so bad,

that I don't even get the time to lock the door,

lest it floods my pants with all yellowness.

I feel like a soldier,
 a leg of whose has been blown off by a bomb;

 who is dragging his ass up to an already deceased medic,

 who lay,

 on the earth covered with his own blood and used up and unused bullets;

 with the faint hope that he might get something which could make him live,

 while blood oozes out from his torn out leg.
His agony rocketing sky high,
with every inch he moves.

Soul Mates!

Ida and Uso considered each other soul mates. They were a very young couple, a couple in their teens. They were deeply, madly and badly, intensely and profoundly passionately in love. They were more than sure that they would be together till eternity. They believed that they were destined to be with each other not only in this life but in all their other lives to come. Most of the people want to attain nirvana and transcend the mortal bindings that keep them in the deplorable cycle of births and rebirths; Ida and Uso didn’t. Theirs was a fairy tale.

Well, their love story might be dreamistic but they lived in realistic world. Their high school had ended and they had to go to college. Ida had studied Arts and Uso Science. They weren’t very hopeful about studying in the same college but they were happy with the fact and knew it for sure that they would be in the same city. They had even planned everything out. They were young hearts oblivious to the countless labyrinthine hurts that tortuous tricks of fate could inflict.

They say love is blind, it’s not. Love is short sighted. Love limits its view to the propitious sceneries that promise perpetual illusory happiness. Watch it; the jellyfish looks beautiful. Touch it; your condition will be pitiful.

Life cannot be an amorous affair of happiness and destiny. Affliction butts in to reaffirm the heterogeneity of nature.

In the course of precarious ego hassles and acute tussles between Ida’s parents, her wishes were sacrificed. Ida’s parents decided that it’ll be good for her if she is sent off to another city to pursue her studies. Ida had loving parents, but they were strict too. Ida’s copious sobs, boisterous rants, deliberately obtuse behaviour made no difference to the decision made by her parents. The decision was put to action immediately. Whether by choice or by force she had to abide by her parents’ wishes. Ida loved her parents, and didn’t want their anguish to be multiplied manifolds due to her actions, yet she couldn’t tame her relentless wails.

Every dark cloud has a silver lining, even though frail and bleak; Ida's parents had decided that they'll move with her to the new city. Her father had applied for a transfer and it was granted.

It was a bolt from the blue for Uso. He fell silent when Ida informed him about the catastrophe. Uso didn’t utter a single word. Ida wept and wept, Uso didn’t say a thing; neither did he empathize nor sympathize.

Finally, the day arrived when they had to part. Ida, with teary eyes and a trembling voice said to Uso, “We are one, our souls are united. It’s not our ‘lives’ but our ‘life’ and we won’t let it crash and burn, before our eyes. We can find ways to be with each other whenever we have our vacations. We can always talk over the phone, as we do everyday for hours. We can even talk over the internet, for free; she chuckled softly in her sobs.” Ida tried to crack a silly joke and make Uso speak at least, if not make him smile; but in vain. Silence dawned upon the ambience, which was till then filled with Ida’s unflagging harangues. Ida knew something was terribly wrong with Uso, judging by his abnormal reticence. She knew him. She knew that he would open up eventually and tell her everything, but she wanted to know it fast; she wanted to know what was bothering Uso so much that he wasn’t even speaking to her. Still, she didn’t push the matter too hard. Ida said, “I am missing you already. I love you”. She didn’t bid adieu; she had never ever said a goodbye to Uso; she knew they would always be together. Uso, nodded his head and gestured that he felt the same. Ida left.

Ida reached her new house, which was yet to become her home. She called Uso to let him know that she had reached safely; the call was rejected. On her way, she had tried to call Uso a number of times, but he didn’t answer Ida’s calls. She left a couple of voice messages for Uso. She expected a text message at least in reply; she checked her cellphone every now and then first hoping and then hoping against hope that ‘one new sms’ would pop up on the screen of her cellphone; but nary a sms arrived.

The journey of a day and a half left Ida completely exhausted; she yawned, still waiting for a call or a sms. More than the exhaustion from the journey, she was fatigued mentally because of the unnerving turbulence and the obnoxious anxiety that had been eating her up all this while. She could listen to the excruciating shrieks of Uso’s silence. It felt as if her ears were bleeding; the screams were killing her. She had cried a lot, yet tears were born, burning her eyes. It felt as if a redundant few drops of lemon were being ruthlessly forced out of an already, totally squeezed helpless slice. Ida closed her eyes, and slumber took over her.

Uso and Ida had affluent parents. Paying their phone bills was never a big deal. They talked over the phone for hours at a stretch. From their never ending conversations to no conversation was an abrupt metamorphosis.

Ida’s cellphone beeped continuously for sometime; ‘six new sms’ flashed on the screen.

It was from an unknown number.

It said:

• “Ida, you know that my father used to work in a MNC. He used to get a handsome salary and so I’d never paid heed to how much money I waste. My relationship with my father was a give-me-money-and-I-will-be-happy sort of an affair.”
• “It was good; it was great in fact. I led a lavish lifestyle and neither my father nor I ever cared about changing it. Actually my father did care, but gave up when he realised that I ignored him point blank. I’d never felt even a speck of guilt for squandering my father’s hard earned money.”
• “The college I’ve taken admission in required a hefty sum to be paid as the admission fee. That has been paid. Now due to Global recession, the company my father used to work in has suffered huge losses and has been shut down. He is jobless”
• “At my father’s age and given the present scenario, it’s awfully tough to get a new job. He is already in a lot of debt and to support our various tantrums and wild wishes the bank accounts have also been somewhat depleted and are in a dismal state.”
• “I want to stand by my father now, but I don’t know what to do. I am clueless. I thought of sharing this with you that day when I called you up but I found you crying and listened to our other part of misfortune. I was aghast, I couldn’t say anything.”
• “I think I need to figure this whole thing out. I need some time by myself. I love you and I always will. – Uso”

Ida called up the number immediately and found it switched off. She tried to call Uso’s actual cellphone number and found it to be ‘not reachable’. She tried calling at his landline number and no one answered the call. She called up Uso’s friends and asked them about him, but they could hardly help. How can someone vanish just like that?

Ida wanted to run to Uso and hug him tightly and say; “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be alright. I love you.” Alas! They weren’t in the same city anymore.

It seemed like ages had gone since Ida listened to Uso’s voice.

Ida tried calling Uso for days, but she never did succeed, even for once.

Ida felt stranded. She didn’t speak to anyone for days. Her parents got worried and put her under proper medication. She didn’t quite recover from the shock but she made genuine efforts to get better, at least for her parents who loved her so much.

She had sent many a letter to Uso’s address but there wasn’t a reply, ever.

Ida became normal or appeared to be normal, gradually.

Ida made new friends there; of whom Sar and Kev were the closest. Sar lived in the house next to Ida’s while Kev was her classmate at college. She had shared her story with them and even showed them Uso’s pictures. They loved Ida and they were hopeful that Uso would miraculously appear someday; although he was answerable to Ida for innumerable actions of his and owed her apt explanations for his inane idiosyncrasies which accounted for Ida’s acute depression and ill health; and of course happiness.

Uso had started tutoring pupils so that he can earn some money on his own. Defying his earlier self; now he felt bad about asking money from his father, under those circumstances. Ida was on his mind all the time, but he never called her or sent her a letter.

Months had passed. Uso had saved quite an amount of money by then; sufficient for what he wanted to do. Uso checked the sender’s address on the envelope from one of Ida’s letters. He set out on his mission, his pursuit of happiness, err Ida. He wanted to surprise her. It was the day when Uso had expressed his love for Ida in words, for the first time a few years ago.

Uso reached the city where Ida lived. He booked a cab to Ida’s home, but asked the cab driver to stop by a flower shop before reaching the destination. Uso wanted to buy a rose for Ida, just like he used to, earlier. There was a marketplace near Ida’s house and the cab driver chose to stop there.

Before Uso could dismount from his seat, he recognized the girl at the shop, with a rose in her hand. It was Ida. But who was the person whom she was holding onto? Who was he, whom Ida had embraced so firmly, whose shirt was getting soiled by her tears?

Uso was dumbfounded. He knew it was all his negligence and vice that accounted for this fiasco. He had not cared about Ida, he was too busy with himself. He had pushed her away.

Uso instructed the cab driver to take him back to the railway station.

Sar who was in a nearby shop fetching some stationery for Ida, saw Uso in the cab. She had seen him in photographs and wasn’t sure if it was really him.

Uso left.

Sar went up to Ida and told her that she had seen someone resembling Uso sitting in a cab a few while ago. Ida ruled it out as an emphatically preposterous notion, as the person in question was Uso and it was so uncharacteristic of him. She knew him. She dismissed it as mere jest, but wished, hoped and prayed that it was true and she would be able to meet Uso.

Ida had not forgotten their special day. She had gone to the market to buy a rose for Uso and a few sheets of designed paper to write a letter to him. After buying the rose she could not help but burst into tears, as the very sight of the rose reminded her of Uso. She hugged Kev, who was giving her company, in her harrowing angst. She needed someone to lean on to. She was feeling very weak.

It was then that Uso had noticed Ida and misconstrued the whole scenario.

Uso returned home, shattered and crestfallen.

He didn’t want to be obdurate and continue making things tougher for Ida. He wanted her to be happy. He took a piece of paper and inscribed a few lines on it. He put in a few petals of rose in the envelope along with the piece of paper and sealed it. Wiping away the tears with his hands he affixed the stamps on the envelope with glue. He dropped his letter in the letter box. It was addressed to Ida.

Glue mixed with tears can have poor adhesive properties. The stamps didn’t stay glued to the envelope. Moreover, Uso didn’t notice that he hadn’t mentioned the pin code of the addressee and nor had he mentioned the sender’s address.

Ida started writing her letter to Uso.

She wrote a long letter at first and then tore it into pieces. A rush of a multitude of emotions overwhelmed her and made her think otherwise. She wanted to know- does Uso love her anymore, did he ever love her? Couldn’t Uso just spare a few thoughts for ‘them’, for her? She jotted down a few lines quickly on a rough piece of paper. She put in a few thorns from the stalk of the rose she had purchased. She sealed the envelope and got ready to go and post it. With another mood swing of hers and the unconscious inclusion of former forsaken inhibitions she decided that it was enough; why should she be the one to send countless letters without any reply like an oaf. She put the letter in her drawer.

Uso’s letter :

“Love seeketh not Itself to please,

 Nor for itself hath any care,

 But for another gives its ease,

 And builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair.”

   - William Blake (The Clod and the Pebble)

Ida’s letter :

“Love seeketh only self to please,

 To bind another to Its delight,

 Joys in another’s loss of ease,

 And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite.”

  - William Blake (The Clod and the Pebble)

They would never know again-

They were soul mates.

p.s. - This story was written in a lamentable state of mind and that too in a hurry. Please, ignore the grammatical and typographical errors; the post has not been properly edited. The story is factually fictional and the abruptness is impurely intentional.

Abstruse Papyrus.

An OLD BOOK, BLACK in colour, rests on the table in an overtly synchronized state of vicious equilibrium with the dystopian world. Nothing is written on it's cover.
Light emanates from it. The whole spectrum.
Isn't black, supposedly a colour which absorbs all other colours, or let's say devours all other colours?
Is this good or bad, a miracle or a sin?
Will it be wise to open the book?
What is that book?
What lies inside?

p.s. - please pardon me for my naive painting.

An apparition!

She ensconced herself in her chair,
unaware of what was going on outside.
She flipped through the pages,
of "The Bridge Across Forever".

She was humming a tune,
oh, what was it?
A song of love,
'Sacrifice' by Elton John.

The execrable power cut,
out of nowhere.
The tube light seemed to glow,
in the fair darkness; she sighed.

She lived like a funny apparition,
not afraid of light,
but loathing the sun.
Hence all the curtains on the windows were drawn.

She walked up to the window,
and pulled the curtains.
The blood-like light of the evening,
touched her eyes.

She didn't block the light.
She let it mix with her sclera,
the white of her eye,
and become orange.

She was drinking with her sight,
all that she could.
She was extracting all the powers,
stupefied, there she stood.

She looked at the sun,
never taking her eyes off.
She had a fit of reminiscence,
what was she feeling, omniscience?

She knew everything,
had the power to do everything.
She could go anywhere she wanted to.
A tear formed at the corner of her eye.

She stared at the sun, without blinking....


Photo Credit : fineartamerica.com

Her and her lover!

She was getting overwrought about her exam. She was excogitating over the probable outcomes of the test the day after; what could and what would happen at college. The day had been a hectic one, comprising protracted peripatetic practices and astute argumentations. She was at a friend's place the whole afternoon. She had to return to her abode, and flip through the notes. Reluctant she was, but little, rather no option did she have to replace this one. The journeys and those despicable contemplations of the exam left her drained of all energy. She grabbed her bag, bid adieu to her friend and departed. Lackadaisically she boarded a rickshaw to reach the nearest bus stand. It was almost evening. On the way she saw little kids playing on a playground nearby. Seeing them she felt nostalgic, recollections of her childhood flashed before her eyes; but she was too tired to even smile. Reaching her elementary destination, with sluggish actions enough to infuriate the rickshaw puller, she paid her fare. With short unmindful steps she reached the bus she would be boarding to reach home. She was fortunate enough to find a vacant seat beside the window; it was in the last row though. She quickly occupied the seat lest someone else claimed it before her. She needed to sit, she really did. In a few minutes the driver ignited the engine; it bellowed and grunted like a raging bull, ready to charge at the enemy.
The bus started advancing. She reclined in her seat. Soon, within a few stops the bus got jam-packed with people. The uncouth unease of the congested bus did not bother her. She mused about mundane affairs such as how the sun rises everyday from the east and sets in the west; about inane things such as trying to calculate the diameter of Obelix’s tummy through imaginary tools of measurement. She yawned; she struggled to keep her somnolent eyes open. She was desperately trying to stay awake as she feared that she would miss her stop, moreover she found it embarrassing to doze off in a bus full of people. People were already noticing the half sleepy girl at the last seat; their stares had an overdose of resentment incurring invidious wrath; how dare she have forty winks in such a hot and humid weather, how can she be so heedless and sit there with such sheer complacence, when they were perspiring profusely and were burdened with so many worries.
The bus driver increased the pace; the bus ran wildly like a stallion in the desolate street. The setting sun winked at her through the trees, the light teased her eyes, played with her state of sleepy helplessness. She got annoyed, blinked her eyes, and pulled up a hand of hers to shield her eyes from the apparently harsh rays of the sun. Warm air was hitting her face, and it was pretty vexing too. She let her mind wander and wonder about anything and everything possible, so that the randomness of her thoughts undergoing destructive interferences produced tumultuous wicked noises, banging all the twenty two bones of her skull to keep her awake. Yes, she was a cantankerous egotist; she would even let her own thoughts murder her but would not stop complaining about the elements of nature tickling her. However, all her efforts and the efforts of nature were going in vain; she was trying to stop a moving train with her bare hands. She forced a stare with her bloodshot eyes at the distant sky where suddenly she saw black clouds appear out of nowhere, which were soon looming over head.
From warm air to cool air, she felt the transition and loved it. Nature, as if like her loyal lover, teased her for a while and was now making up to her for the mischief. The cool breeze hit her face. She closed her eyes. She quit thinking. She leaned her head sideway against the bus. The breeze ruffled her hair; the strands of her hair were dancing to the tune of the enchanting and rejuvenating zephyr, inveigled dexterously by it. It appeared as if nature was a passionate lover tugging at her hair, pushing her back and blowing cool moist air from his mouth to ease the irritation of her gentle skin brought by the warm air before. She relaxed. She knew she had reached her threshold and gave up on her efforts to keep away her already postponed siesta. She broke free of the realms of reality and drowned into the sweet plethora of fantasy. The caring windy lover ran his breezy fingers through her hair and cuddled her with his spiralling motions of airy hands. She slept like a child and nature sighed seeing her.
The bus kept moving; like her it couldn’t take a break from the wakeful state, even if it wanted to. The bus neared the stop where she was supposed to get down. She didn’t even stir; not showing a sign of getting up. Like a responsible lover nature called her name in his heavy thunderous voice to wake her up. She did not show any movement other than a feeble twitch in her face. Nature got worried; he had to do something to wake her up. It started drizzling. Tiny drops of water landed on her forehead, they moved down on her face embracing and her eyelids, tingling her with their brisk touches; the humble drops rolled down her cheeks gracing and damping them like innocent tears of happiness; leaving trails of their passionate touches the drops reached her lips and broke into an amorous kiss. She trembled a little in her sleep. Nature, a graceful lover he was could not have considered being harsh with his object of affection, yet he had no choice but to do something drastic to wake her up. It started poring heavily. He manoeuvred the huge drops of rain with the wind in such a way that they won’t hit her pretty face but hug her neck and rouse her with outright passion, and fervent compassion for sabotaging her slumber. She shivered. Drops of water dripped from her hair, she was almost completely drenched. Finally she opened her eyes. She was little worried about her getting soaked to the skin, rather she was delighted.
She didn’t have a hint that her stop was approaching. She sat there cosily in her seat. Nature got annoyed at how imprudent his loved one can be. Still, like a benevolent lover he made his last attempt to bring her back to senses. The rain stopped abruptly. She was slightly astonished but didn’t pay much heed. Nature made everything still; he made sure that there was enough quietude so that her auditory nerves can pick up the stimulus of the utterance of the name of the next stop by the conductor’s vocal chords’ oscillations. She stared at the sky which was clearing abnormally fast.
Nature sent a flock of birds flying in a V formation, which looked somewhat like a crooked arrow beseeching her to look at the direction the bus was approaching, but nary was a motion of her noted.
Nature gave up in disgust.
She missed her stop.
She persisted to look at the birds. She envied them. She wished she could fly.
Far away she saw an aeroplane. Fathom the arrogant adroitness of humans, they don’t cease to make the un-doable doable, she pondered. She smiled. She got lost in her random musings again.
She wished she had nine lives like the cats….

Bowl Of Cereal

He lay on his bed wide-eyed, staring at the ceiling with stolid emptiness. His mind was blank and so were the white ceilings. He looked around to find some variety, something different. Alas! He didn't find any. Everything was white around. Yes, he was in an asylum.
He felt stranded and strangled. He needed to get out, to breathe and let his mind breathe. He needed oxygen to feed his nostrils and feed his brain, which was going numb. Not that he was able to think much with his bruised mind, but at least he could think of good food. Oh! How he would savour the hallucinated delicacies; those despicable phantasmagorical misleading imageries, absolutely unsynchronized with even a far-fetched fairy-tale reality, wrapped up in bohemian flavours of sugary chilies and honey like venom. Saliva drooped from his seemingly serpentine tongue. He derived unethically righteous, blissfully transgressing pleasure out of it. Well, food, that was the only thing he could think of, sitting in that closed, infinitely white place, which seemed to have only one dimension. Nothing but the act of feeling the chunks of elusive comestibles dissolve in his mouth breezed his mind; no art, no science, no sex!
Panting heavily, trying to breathe with his mouth open, he strained his mind desperately to bechance upon a scrumptious treat, but in vain. All he could think of was a bowl of cereal. He was slenderly disappointed with the food he had stumbled upon; but this shrewd traitor-like feeling was overshadowed by the respite brought by leastwise being able to find something to ruminate.
Precipitously and miraculously, like a flash of lightning, a roar of thunder, like a tempest being born from the womb of mother earth, the oceans, the mountains, the forests all conspiring with the new born, their temporary sibling, to beget a horrendous catastrophe; rushed in his thoughts, in a turbulent flow pushing him back with a hazardous punch making him hold his head, crawl on the floor and writhe in pain.
After a while, when his pain attenuated and his fear subsided, he sat up with renewed vigour, he rubbed his eyes and looked around with blurry yet focussed vision. With an abstract sense of clarity he saw the image of a bowl of cereal on the white wall in front of him; it seemed as if the picture was being projected by his mind onto the screen.
When a storm gets over destroying everything, it makes place for the new, and so happened with his mind; he was being able to THINK. His thinking process was marked by simplicity, discarding the varied inconsistencies of haywire language and incongruous rhetoric malapropisms. He started pondering over the bowl of cereal he could see before his eyes. Cereals, well, he loathed to have them. He imagined the cereals as adversities and the milk as the courage to deal with the adversities. Some people can gulp down the cereals with less milk, some with more milk, some with no milk at all. He was one who always used more milk and just swallowed the cereals along with the milk. His cereals used to turn into a mucilaginous paste, but he preferred that to the crunchy stuff, if not enjoyed it. He thought about it philosophically, some people can deal with affliction with little courage and yet succeed in getting over them, some people need a lot of courage to deal with disasters, and some plain indifferent ones just slip along giving troubles naught a thought. He was someone who needed a lot of courage to face calamities. But, corrupted and defiled by egotism and his own coherently unethical arrogance, justifiable only before his bereaved myopic vision, he decided to encounter adversity head on. It was, as expected an inelastic collision. Adversity took him along with it and drowned him in its oblivion mists and turned him into this. Why did he try to swallow the cereals without milk? He choked. His throat hurt, he felt the roughness of the cereals bruising the inner lining of his oesophagus, his saliva failing to make it any better.
Knock! Knock! He felt someone knock at his mind's door. Swiftly he returned from his state of philosophical pleasure to raspy reality. He found out that he was actually choking. He wasn't being able to breathe. What was happening? Where was he? He had so many questions on his mind, to which there were no answers and as it seemed, no time to find the answers. His wispy remembrance of deportation flashed before his eyes. That led to more questions. Who was he? Was he a soldier who was captured by enemies? Was he a traitor who was court-martialed? Was he a mafia don? Did he do something wrong? Was he wronged? So many!
Whatever doubts he had in his mind, remained so, but he was absolutely certain about one thing, he was being stifled to death. Again, questions. Why wasn't he in a wicked cell? Why was he put in this white walled scary cubicle? He wasn't mad, was he? He shouted to let them know that he was not mad, he wanted to die like a normal person and not like this. Oh,wait! What country was that? Would they understand his language? Again, was he really mad, and got cured phenomenally just then? Yet, he didn't cease shouting; he put tremendous pressure on his vocal chords to produce some sound, he felt his throat get sore and blood oozing out and greasing the walls of his throat; he coughed out blood staining the white floor giving it a devilish look, the blood spilt on the floor grinning at his misery; but not a sound was produced.
He lay there breathing his last breaths, and was soon still and stiff like an inanimate object.
He lay there amidst the white walls like a speck of cereal in a bowl of milk.
He, his thoughts were confined to a bowl of cereal.

S.I.N. (Shit In News)

A recent U.N. survey shows that there are more cellphones in India than toilets.

So let's reflect on it.

The Government  Of  India will ban the following sentences. People will be fined Rs. 200 if heard saying these in public( ah,the smoking in public places ban)  :

1. Dude,are you shitting me?
2. Oh,you're pissing me off.
3. Holy shit! (blasphemy too)
4. I'll beat the crap out of you.
5. Even a child saying to his mother, "Mom, I need to go to potty".
so on, any sentence that involves a synonym of human excreta in whichever language.
et cetera.
People will have to start inventing new words so that they don't get caught. This will encourage creativity, but soon Government will term them illegal and there will be large scale probes. People signing up for foreign language courses will see a rise. (C'mon swearing with especially shit and its likes have become inseparable from the so called modern peoples' lives, we need  some alternatives at least) Translators, high profile detectives will be hired so that no one can say 'shit' or 'piss' even in any remotely possible language.
Population problem will take a back seat. We have to achieve the targets set by the U.N. and show the world that we answer nature's call in our own toilets. (Grow up, more the people more the shit, and more the need of toilets. So population will never cease to be a problem.)

Two people are 'shitting' sitting side by side in the open(yes Indian style obviously,although there's no fixed boundary for dropping the shit. What did you expect,a commode?). They have recently watched LSD(Love Sex aur Dhokha) and they found it amusing, they have turned techno geeks and well, being Bengalis they never miss a chance to discuss state politics.
Person 1 : Hey,wassup?
Person 2 : Nothing up. Just dropping down some shit.
Person 1 : LOL. Have you watched the movie L.S.D. I watched it recently.
Person 2 : Yes, I have. The name attracted me. Story of my life. Never mind, I shouldn't divulge my personal life to you.
Person 1 : I see. Bunk it. Oh the camerawork of the movie was great.
Person 2 : Seconded. Have to give credit to the director for taking such realistic and raw shots.
Person 1 : Yes,true. Err,what was the name of the director? Can't remember his name.
Person 2 : Oh,me too. Some Banerjee. Lemme check it out on my cell.
Person 1 : Yeah right. That'll be good.
Person 2 : Damn! Poor reception. God knows when 3G will replace GSM in India.
Person 1 : Ohh. What's your service provider?
Person 2 : Vodafone.
Person 1 : Ok,lemme try. Mine's Airtel. Ah,here it is. It's Dibakar Banerjee.
(Suddenly, realising something, they look at each other with frozen expressions)
Person 2 : What if, we're being shot right now?
Person 1 : You're right. I've never given it much thought. But now that you say it, I am scared.
Person 2 : I don't want my butt cheeks surrounded with mosquitoes being shown to people. That reminds me, the good knight mosquito repelling cream is good.
Person 1 : Don't worry. On other thoughts, I think it's okay. What's the harm in being famous and getting a little publicity for doing what we do everyday, 'shit'.
(The face of the other person lightens up)
Person 2 : What do you think will be the name of the movie?
Person 1 : S.F.I. (Shit Full India) which will be followed by a sequel of the same initials S.F.I. (Shit Free India). But the sequel will have to wait. There's a bleak chance that our grandchildren, when they become grandfathers might get to watch the second one, which shall be directed by the grandchild of the present S.F.I. director.
Person 2 : No. I don't like the name. It's so Leftist. S.F.I.
Person 1 : What do you suggest? C.P. (Crapping People). Okay, let's leave that to the time of the release. If it's pre 2011 it'll be S.F.I. and if it's post 2011 it'll be C.P. Happy! God,I'm apolitical.
[S.F.I. - Students' Federation Of India(Left), C.P.- Chatra Parishad(Trinamul Congress)]
Person 2 : By the way, I was thing of changing my service provider to Idea.
Person 1 : Why?
Person 2 : I liked their new advertisement. The one that says save trees, use your cell phone. If there are no trees left, how can we feel this bliss when we 'shit' amidst nature.
Person 1: I would like to think otherwise. I wish we could shit with our cell phones. They show in the advertisement that almost everything can be done through our cell phones.  I don't know if it'll ever become a reality. But let's be optimistic about it.
Person 2 : Maybe. I like to do my thing in nature. Anyway, I am finished. See you tomorrow.
Person 1 : Ciao!

Folks, let's look at the brighter side of things. In today's world, where people are becoming more and more lonely, it's 'shit'(yes shit,not facebook) that brings two random strangers together to have real conversations. (How,pathetic!)

New headlines for newspapers. :
->All charges against Lalit Modi dropped, as he has promised the government that he'll organise a 'Sanitation Fundraiser'. (Really, 'what an idea sirjee'. Hopefully crappy corruption will not stand in the way of 'shit' at least. Let's not be too skeptical and observant. We know our country. Apparently, 'Ignorance Is Bliss') 'The IPL is the proof that he's a good businessman. Now let him put those skills to work foo some common good.' as said by a cabinet minister.
->Shashi Tharoor, a learned man he is, comes to the limelight again, with his new satirical explanations of the present 'sanitation scenario' of India.
->Shahrukh Khan expresses his grief on twitter for the large scale constipation in Bengal due to KKR's losses. (the government expresses BIG sighs of relief. Thank God! less shit) The Knight Rider song changed to "Korbo Lorbo Ha*** re" (please guess the incomplete word. If you aren't a Bengali, ask a Bengali friend of yours. (S)he 'll surely know it.)
->ISRO puts it's heart and soul in correcting their faults in the indigenous cryogenic engine for their satellite, so that they can send the satellite loaded with shit to dispense it in the space ASAP. Yay! We'll have a big mass of shit orbiting our Earth. Oh, the shit satellite.

Okay. Enough of shitting around. Need to control my bowel movements now. I'll add to this post if anything else crosses my mind; err,my colon,later.
 But, I request people to at least spare a thought over this issue. It's a serious one.

p.s. - All proper nouns used in this post are solely for the purpose of humour. Didn't mean them to be derogatory and I hope people won't comprehend them otherwise. Please ignore, petty mis-informations(there are some). I am an ignorant ill-informed Indian, you see.(wow! a long alliteration)