not last night

tossing turning left right
hot sweat trickles down

hair sticks to skin
delirious so damp so hazy

so many dreams
broken
lost
forgotten

pain head stomach pains
food churns juices bubble
lights flash I scream
come out stop it

need mother need time
need you no why
you ahead of me

come back

please

Can't Rant

I know it's not love. But what it is is not important. Thing is, it is. You're beautiful. I wish you knew. It's nice to talk to you. Sometimes. Sometimes. It's nice that you're nice. Yes, you're lovely. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm romanticizing who are you. Mixing the concept of "you" with so much. The transient beauty of snowflakes. So elusive, so silly. And the smell of sunshine. So golden, so warm. Just building up a construct of who you are. And falling so deeply in middle-school-infatuation with it. I don't know if it's real. I don't know if you're real. But what you are is not important. Thing is, you are. Yes, you are.


In case you were wondering: No, this post is not about you.

Don't Let Me Down

Don't Let Me Down is one of the most simple songs ever written. It is also one of the most beautiful songs ever sung. Recorded in 1969, towards the end of the Beatles rule, this song was dedicated to Yoko Ono, from John Lennon. A sense of vulnerability permeates the whole song. It is that of a man who loves his woman unconditionally. Theirs is a love that lasts forever, a love that has no past. And he asks the woman, who loves him like nobody's ever loved him, to never let him down. Such was the intensity of the "Don't Let Me Down" scream that Lennon actually asked Ringo Starr to bang the cymbals hard enough for him to muster the courage to let it out. 

What makes this song even more special is the cover version done by the Welsh band, The Stereophonics-one of the most underrated contemporary rock bands. Rarely does a cover surpass the original, but the Stereophonics have absorbed the anguish and the essence of the original and sung it like it belongs to them. The slower pace, the strained vocal solos and the honesty in the voice of the singer induces the listener with passion, helplessness, nostalgia, warmth and hope-all at the same time. And the alternation of the soft, sincere singing and the painful, primal screams are sure to take you on an emotional roller-coaster, and leave your eyes moist. If you disbelieve me, do listen to their rendition of the one of most brilliant songs ever.

I promise you, it won't let you down. 

The Stereophonics-Don't Let Me Down Cover

একটি দিন

‍‍সকাল

ভোর বেলায় যখন পাখির কলকাকলি আমায় জাগিয়ে তোলে,

মনে হয় তুমি বলছ, "ভোর হল, দোর খোল।খুকুমোণী ওঠো রে।"

বরুণ দেবতার হাত থেকে গড়িয়ে এসে যে শিশিরবিন্দু ঘাসের ওপর পড়ে

তার ওপর দিয়ে হেঁটে গেলে মনে হয় তুমি পায়ের তলায় শুড়শুড়ি দিচ্ছ।

যেইদিন ঘুমঘুম চোখে জানালা খুলে দেখি আকাশ কাঁদছে,

বুঝতে পারি তুমি দুঃখ পেয়েছ।

দুপুর

সূযের যে সোনালী আলো কৃষ্ণচূড়া গাছটিতে আগুন লাগিয়ে দেয়

সে আলো্র তেজ স্পরশ করলে মনে হয় তুমি আমার পাশে দাঁড়িয়ে আছো।

বৃষটির পর পরীরা যখন রং-তুলি দিয়ে আকাশের গায়ে রামধনু এঁকে যায়,

মনে হয় তোমারই ছবি-কখনো রাগী লাল, কখনো আহ্লাদী হলুদ, কখনো খামখেয়ালী  কমলা।

খটখটে রোদ্দুরে আনেক্ষণ চলার পরে পা আর এগোতে চায় না-

আমি ভাবি-তোমারও কি এতটাই কষট হচ্ছে?

সন্ধ্যা

গোধূলীর পর ধূলো উড়িয়ে রাখালেরা ফিরে আসে,পাখিরা দল বেঁধে কোথায় যেন চলে যায়-

তখন তোমার জন্য আমার মন কেমন করে ওঠে।

আকাশের তারাগুলো দেখতে দেখতে যখন মাতাল হাওয়া চুল এলোমেলো করে দেয়,

মনে হয়, তুমি আমার চুল ঘেঁটে দিচ্ছ। 

একফালি চাঁদ দেখে তোমার কথা মনে পড়ে-

"ওই যে চাঁদের পাহাড়, ওইখানে আমাদের বাড়ী।"

রাত্রী

রোজ রাত্রে দেখা হয় আমাদের, আম সবপ্নের জগতে।

শীত, গ্রীষম, আষাঢ়, শ্রাবণ

সকাম, দুপুর, সন্ধ্যা, রাত্রী

প্রতি মূহুতে, প্রতি ক্ষণে আমি খুঁজে পাই তোমাকে।

কোনদিন কাছে পাইনি তোমায়,

তাও এইভাবে তোমার সঙ্গে কাটে আমার একটি দিন।।


Note: যদি বানানে কোন ভুল ধরতে পারেন, ক্ষমা করবেন। বাংলা কীবোরডে অনেক যুক্তাক্ষর লেখা মুশকিল।

Things I like/Psychobabble

Well, there really is no explanation as to why I like these things. If you psychoanalyze me through the list, you may find the reasons going to back to prenatal nerve-junction pairing, or something my parents did when I was two. However, this is completely random and spontaneous, and the items have been listed in the order that they occurred to me.

1. Kaleidoscopes
2. Bisexual men
3. Rich, brown skin tones
4. Drizzle
5. The Beatles
6. Photographs of old Calcutta houses done in grayscale
7. Satin tunics with puffed sleeves
8. Eye kohl
9. Glass bangles
10. Earl grey tea
11. Not knowing the difference between "nerd" and "geek", but knowing when you're both
12. Talking to myself
13. The use of Black Romanticism by the Bronte sisters
14. Red lipstick and "Purple Rain"
15. Single fathers
16. The idea of sitting in a European cafe-with a cup of Espresso, a notebook and a sharpened Staedtler pencil
17. Quentin Tarantino's vision
18. The letter V and all words beginning with it
19. Beginnings
20. Romantic comedies
21. Being a recluse, and actually not liking it
22. Actually liking it

Didriksha

Close your eyes. What do you hear? A dog barking, a car driving past, birds chirping, children screaming? Maybe you hear the splish-splash of the puddles, or the drumming of raindrops. Didriksha heard none of these.

She sat where she always did, playing the events of her life over in her mind. She was born to a middle-class clerk in a family of seven-four boys and three girls. She remembered being beaten up for a reason she hardly understood; her organs of reproduction were different from those that they had desired.

Then there was marriage at sixteen. She had secretly hoped for sunlit days and fairytale nights, but Destiny saved her the trouble of having to remember a new spectrum of events. The beatings started at her husband’s house too because she didn’t bring as much gold with her as her father had promised them. Time passed, and the promised dowry failed to arrive. Cigarette burns, kicks and acid splashes followed. One day Didriksha opened her eyes to find herself within four white walls, with their frocks of fungus and blooms of algae.

This was where she had been imprisoned all these years. It was only once (or was it twice?) in a day that the flap in the door would open and a handful of what was presumably leftovers would be scattered on the floor. It was in the room itself that she relieved herself- the red mixing with the white and the yellow. Sometimes she wanted to cry, but all her emotions seemed alien to her. Sorrow, laughter, life and death were all the same or, nothing at all to Didriksha.

The walls looked at her and smiled their silent, undimpled smile. They had been her oldest companions. They shared a common language- silence. It isn’t a language you and I would understand. It can only be understood by furniture stored away in a room, waiting for a death that they know will never come.

Walls never lie. They told me about Didriksha’s death. They showed me the dark stain on the wall where she had banged her head. They told me about the heaps of rice that accumulated on the floor weeks after she had gone. They showed me the room, within the confines of which lay Didriksha-whose name means, “the desire to see”. But I do not wish to get into those details. Let silence, the language of the walls, act as the catalyst for the realization that all sad stories do not have a happy ending.

And that all Didrikshas don’t die.

While she lies there, dead, the craftsman works in his shed. He moulds the clay taken from the banks of the sacred Ganges into the form of the Mother Goddess, the form in which the feminine force has been worshipped, for centuries.

I wonder why.

The Bioscope

Gazing at the Kolkata skyline on a dusky winter’s evening is a psychedelic experience. Images, sounds and smells related to moments in the city pop up and move, as in a bioscope- black and white.

My bedroom window overlooks a railway station. Every day, I see hundreds of people moving from here to there, or from there to here. Some leave, some return, some run away. There is always a swirling sea of humanity outside my window. They are accompanied by the noise- the shrieks, the screams, the honks, and the loud Hindi music. I am secretly thankful for the bustle and the noise. The pulse of life is infectious.

Strangely, I also love silence. Whenever I feel conflict within myself, I search for peace in the Maidan. The silence of the trees has a healing touch, and the gnarled roots are storehouses of wisdom. The liberating effect of the skies broadens up the mind in more ways than one. While lying flat on the Maidan and looking upwards, I have often empathized with Gilmour, who sang

“Can't keep my eyes from the circling skies

Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I”.

So I walk. The streets of Kolkata have a personality of their own, and a very colorful one at that. Bahurupis, literally meaning those with many forms, walk the city in the attire of gods and animals for pure entertainment. They are homes and beds to an unmatched number of people, and the playgrounds of thousands of “street children”.

My favorite part of the city is old Kolkata. Almost all the crumbling, colonial houses have freedom fighters and martyrs to boast of. The days of the babu culture, of endless entertainment and cultural efflorescence have long gone. However, the houses still haven’t lost their charm and dignity. I am lucky to belong to one such family and I have spent a lot of time in the old Kolkata house. The house is dark and damp and in the dusk of its life. But if you look closely, you will find tiny plants growing out of the walls. The house nurtures life.

The same is true of Kolkata. It lives, breathes and nurtures. The city is a melting pot of cultures. It has representatives from every Indian community, as well as those who have their roots elsewhere, but have made the city their home. As the cultural and intellectual capital of India, there hangs “a something” in the air, which makes one think, reflect and analyze. The hundreds of people who live, work and die here leave bits of them on the streets, in the air and in the sacred waters of the river Ganges. As someone who has bonded with the city, I have absorbed this ensemble of influences and became a bit of Kolkata myself. The city taught me to be sensitive, welcoming, reckless, liberal, dignified. And as the City of Joy, it reminds me to have the right to my orgasm. 

The Ink and Paper Romance

I hear you turn on the tap in the bath
Hot streams of water run down your body
Tickle your groins
And escape between your legs


You walk out and drop your clothes in a heap
Dirty and sweaty
Dirty-
From the long night in a room, airless and loveless
Sweaty -
From the heat of my burning lust, while you slept; snoring

A half-filled coffee cup

Half empty

Half full

Put down impatiently

"I'm getting late for work"

You leave, closing the door behind you

A loud bang

A hard, unsympathetic slamming of the door

The silence shatterns

So do my dreams

I take out a fresh sheet of paper

White and virgin, like me

And dab my pen in ink

Black and beautiful, like you

I scribble on the paper, little nothings

Let the ink glide over its surface

And gush out in bursts of passion

Taking over the whiteness

And destroying its virgin blankness

As a hopeless romantic, I have always loved romances

The only magic in the real, cruel world

It fills me with hope,

Love, longing, and lust for life

The big romance

The small romance

The happy romance

The sad romance

And the most beautiful of them all

The ink and paper romance