That Baul in Denims

"Amay khub jante icche kore, na?" - the question which took me back to some long unforgotten years! Little did I know that the guy from the Dreamer's Sylvan Retreat, The Aguntuk shall delineate the Punk Bangalee in me.


His love for  Kolkata or Calcutta — the media-distorted British-raped “City of Joy" and my utter dissaproval for the same, his proud confession like " “Food, music, film, dance, fun, literature, politics, science, arts and what not…in spite of all the problems and stupid politicians and promoters today, it’s just incredible. And I’m not even talking about her GLORIOUS history.” And my silent disapproval always criss-crossed each other!

Meet the guy from the Nilgiris where the weather is much cooler than the post summer evenings in the city, the guy who can sell his soul to the Devil to return to the land of Robi Thakur and Bangla gaan - MY  'Baul in Denims'. With his bright, big eyes, he wants to capture all the detailed varieties of life. While am a proper Dilli-wali whose mind always wanders among the crowded bylanes of the capital. There are old stones everywhere with hints of blue glazed tile and flocks of bright green parrots, and you keep passing monuments that have stood witness to centuries.  I always imagined that if I start digging in these places, archaeological treasures will start poking out of the ground.  Layers of civilization will peel away to reveal even deeper secrets. 


Me: Aami dumb-i bhalo achi. Tomra amar theke onek beshi buddhi rakho! 


Aguntuk: Eta ekta rog ... nijeke Gobet bhabte bhalobasha !


Me: Tomar-o toh rog ache, nijeke na bhalobashar!

Aguntuk: Hain ache toh!


Yes, it started with little exchange of stale secrets, the boredom of being lonely and the spark for the city of love or Kolkata! What happens when a Mohiner Ghoraguli Bangalee meets The North-Indian rustic Bangalee? - A total disaster!


Aguntuk: HaNslam keno bolotoh?

Me: kyano?

Aguntuk: Jodi boli je tomar sab hotspot e jatayat nei?


Me: Aamar hot spot toh Aarshi Nagar !
  
Aguntuk: Konodin decker's lane Chandni Bar-e gecho? jaoni....

Me: hhmmphh...


His longing for the city made me to come closer with it too. Not that I wanted to! But I did, may be the Aguntuk was too fasinated to see the love of his life through the eyes of an apathetic dweller! His day dreaming with a flavor of "jukti-tokko-golpo", his love for the South Indian dishes, his madness for the maddening crowd and his "joghonnyo" - always took out a little bit of Bangalee in me!  How strange does the stranger become when he suddenly professes his hidden inner ailments by saying, " Shono, ami "bhalobashi"...anek kichui bhalobashi, abar kichu kharap bashi, shob miliye ami ebong amar beNche thaka!"


Five years is a long time. To be up-rooted from the city where I grew up and descending to a place which was never mine,long enough to make one homesick (sic.). Long enough for the mind to wander. And wonder. I have witnessed a lot of changes in Calcutta. For the better.
And I wonder how much things could have changed.
I wonder.

And in turn, I question if they are going to change my childhood. My growing years. My memories.
I wonder.

The Aguntuk keeps on taking me back and forth the timeline which even Facebook can't really do! I mean at least there, you have an option to scroll while here,you jog your memories till they are scrambled enough! His continuous enquiry like if we still have the sudden clap of thunder and the ominous darkening of the sky with the mad frenzy of a rain shower bringing respite on a sweltering Summer afternoon. Kalbaisakhi as he calls it. And ek poshla brishti.

And in return it gives me the detailed picture of Kaki closing the shutters on the window to keep out the scorching sun. And turning on the radio and listening to the Bangla natok as she prepares for her siesta in the afternoon. Ghori Rahashyo. I still remember the name of the natok!

The stranger, my Dreamer's "Ek class-er dost" and I get entwined in an elusive journey, where we bump against the "phele asha purono din-er gaan". His college days, mess, "chaNda tuley mocchob" to his translations of several Bangla words for me - everything made me to learn a bit more of the sweetest language, Bengali! He still brings out that Bangalee in me!



Me: Aaii tomar case ta ki bolotoh

Aguntuk: kiser case?
  
Me: Dwosh (10) baar kore dakadaki korte hoy kyano?!amar na bhalo lage !
  
Aguntuk: Shohoje dhora dile aar ki moja!!

Meet the brutal "Twins" who make you to wait though he says like a saddist he loves the joy while inflicting the pain!


Aguntuk: Aami unpredictable ...unpredictability theke sabdhan!
  
Me: Amar toh mone hoy tomar baire lekha ache, Handle with care, Fragile inside !




                                                                                                                                                ... continued

Keeping Eyes

To start all over is how you open your eyes once more to mirrors which have made you into what you are now, these mirrors playing semblances along, rendering the most peculiar feelings. But it is not entirely how you look through them, sometimes it's how they eat on you in some light, how they leave you to figure the blur, these questions so hard to lose or lift off your rational days.

One day a stranger asked in the voice of a man who first broke your heart, aware now how far you've traveled from such times. "Have you gone, grown mindless of your past." It was as if all mirrors then moved towards you, cornering, like claws to a once elusive prey, so close to rob you with its old searing light when all you could rattle by was a stare-- the safest, you guess, of all human responses.

"I've been looking all my life," he drawled as his fingers on your body now, searching for that part where your  answers dwell. He was trying to tell you something-- each of his wordless sound, your inconvenience.

"I choose not to remember," you said.

As he arched his back, your fingers pulled him down, his face now on yours—  as if to make sure you'd own or steal his wander for a minute —  with hope after, he'd understand, from a little distance, your tearful eyes.

No more invitations, telegrams and calls for those who never arrived!

Imagined Interiors

Tonight we spoke like a frequency graph,
Like a landscape without edges,
Extruded strokes of light to my lips like fingers
stretching through the architecture of your words.
To cocoon the sounds in my ear longer

I scavenge images to furnish this room
that holds you in sprawling pieces
with feathered edges that overlap and repel.
I smear the walls with my tender vision.

This passage doesn’t permit complexity.
A blocked aperture half-closed
the debris left by a fragment fallen
from the frozen eye of the storm.
It obstructs my view of your dislocation.

Someone coughs in the background.
Your voice lowers to a soft tendril,
I hear your body turn in your sheets
As you describe the darkness
that stares back at you.

In these implicit movements I accrue
the inescapable graduation of weightless light
that reaches from me to you under a heavy winter.

Colour will slide in the morning
over the outline of your refuge.
(like an unfinished house)

Like music climbs through those sounds.

Untitled.

In life or love pain must be felt. There is no other alternative. But that pain is accompainied by something else… hope.

“You have no idea how much you mean to me.  Maybe you choose not to see it.  Maybe you look past it because it scares you, but I’ve always been in love with you. We’ve seen the best and worst of each other.  You were a part of the reason I hit rock bottom, but you also influenced who I am today and I couldn’t be more grateful for that.  It scares me being with you.  It scares me how much I’m going to miss you.  I’ll always be hopeful.  I can’t help it.”

You gradually get over the pain. It doesn’t go away, not for a long time, but it becomes easier to live with. One morning you wake up and he’s not the first thing on your mind. And then a few months down the line you realize you’ve made it through half the day without thinking of him. Sometimes it takes months, sometimes, years, but eventually you reach a point when you only think about them occassionally. You manage to do this because you don’t see them, you don’t hear about them, you try not to think about them. And then you bump into them walking down the street, or someone unexpected mentions their name . . . and the memories come flooding back. But memories also become less painful in time, and I can talk about them now without really feeling anything. But I’d rather now. If you know what I mean. Was I ever truly over him? At one time I was sure that the answer was yes. But if seeing him again- and merely touching his hand- could peel back so many layers of my heart, then did I ever stop loving him the way you’re supposed to stop loving everyone but the one you’re with?

It’s the tragedy of loving, you can’t love anything more than something you miss. I sat down with a couple of people recently and as I looked around the table, I thought wow, we are all broken people. Of course, we all understand this in theory, but the practice of understanding and welcoming the brokenness of others, especially people who we look to as leaders is an almost impossible task. But still we try to maintain for what we are NOT, after all we have to lead them in any case.

I lead people, have led people and sometimes, I do a crappy job and have done it pretty badly with my brokenness spilling out in all my sloppy need and sin. I need grace, I desperately want to make right my offenses, I want to be forgiven. I want to lead people well but sometimes, I fail.

I am guilty. Guilty of forgetting that people who have led me, people who have walked with me are broken, imperfect and perfectly fallible. Being surrounded by brokenness, even creation groans and writhes in destructiveness, I am looking for something better, something less broken, more perfect. So guilty, I confess that I have put people who are leaders in the position of being that something better, that something less broken. In fact, they are not less broken, maybe they just have more responsibility and maybe sometimes they handle that badly. Yet, I struggle to forgive the debts of those who basically broken like me but hold positions of power, I simply can not get over that they are not more perfect than I am. I have made them demi-gods. Given them power in my life and expected that they would use it well and i fiercely hoped that they would not fail me. They did fail me. They have failed me. People who lead are broken, they are me, human, frail, fallible and destructive at times. Hopefully, they are also vulnerable and transparent, if in fact we will let them be...