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The gust of wind tugged at her hair and while she pushed away the strands whipping against her eyes, the sheaf of paper loosened from her grasp and took their turns at tossing and turning in small whirlwinds around her. She immediately went down on her haunches to pick them up and was struggling to collect them against the insolence of the blowing wind. She was slowly getting frustrated at her repeated attempts at gathering all the sheets being foiled when suddenly she felt a towering presence swooping down on his knees beside her. Without even knowing who she had for company at that juncture she felt a sense of relief. The papers were then quickly gathered without much of a struggle and finally Anjali could look up to see the face of the person who helped her in her pursuit. What she found was a man in his early thirties, neatly dressed in formals with a smile that had a quality of pleasantness and affability. Quickly mumbling her “Thank you” in return, she disappeared into the corridor.

Anjali Parekh was the English lecturer in St.John’s college for almost six months now and already the students loved her. She was not the usual ‘dry’ lecturer who went through her copious collection of notes in a hurry nor was she one amongst those who had no interest in her students. In one word she was ‘involved’ with her students in a constructive manner. Boys admired her for her candour as did girls for her aura of unstated strength .Her first day in college as lecturer cemented her place of pride within the students. She in reply to a jab at her dress made by one of the ‘usual ruffians’ in the class turned back and gave such a resounding and emphatic reply that jaws dropped and everyone knew she was a ‘no nonsense woman’. So, they listened to her with intent and approached her with caution. Same was the mood in the staff room too. She quickly made her presence felt all around although being polite and submissive in her approach throughout.

She stepped into the staff room after delivering one of her lectures on Byron when suddenly she realised the person sitting opposite to her was none but the man who had helped her gather the scattered sheaves of notes in the morning. She was about to say something in appreciation for his help and to explain her hasty exit when Prof. Sharma interjected, “Anjali, this is our new Professor of History, Mr. Druv Pathak. He has just joined today.” He introduced Anjali with glowing remarks which embarrassed her no ends. Then he asked her, “Would you be kind enough to show Prof. Pathak around? He was my colleague in Janakilal College, so we happen to share a long association. Would you mind?” Anjali readily agreed to the proposition and escorted Druv to the class room where he was scheduled to deliver his first lecture.On their way Anjali felt his constant gaze on her and as was her nature withdrew into her private domains of coy temerity. Meanwhile she also noticed the unusual look of jaded expense on the face of Druv and somehow felt strange. At the entrance of the class room she said, “Here is your class room for the first lecture for the day Prof. Pathak. I will take your leave now. Good luck.” She was about to turn to leave when she heard him say, “Call me Druv. Will you Anjali? I am sorry but, can I call you by your first name?” A little startled by such forthcomingness she somehow managed a whispered “Sure.”

All her way back she debated the kind of person Druv was like and atlast decided to drop the issue from her head when she realised its triviality. Still a feeling of inexplicable buoyancy lingered in her heart without much of her consent or will.

It was almost dusk when Anjali stepped out of the college gate to board the usual bus to her place when she realised the person standing next to him was none other than Druv. He was talking on the phone unaware of the fact that Anjali stood right in front of him. After a while when he realised her presence he promptly went up to her asked her if she went back home everyday by the same route. “Do you mind having a cup of tea with me, Anjali?” Anjali, both anxious and unsure could not think of an answer when she found to her utter surprise Druv rushing her into a bus. She boarded the bus and found relief in the fact that the bus would take her to her home too. She enquired where he lived and discovered that it was not too long from her home even on foot. “A brisk walk of five odd minutes” she thought to herself “and I would be home in no time.” On disembarking from the bus she saw Druv’s flat to be in a neat locality dotted by gardens. On entering the flat she found it to be in a state of utter disarray, a sign of house without a proper manager to it. Then out of nowhere a small kid of about six years old rushed into Druv’s arms calling “Daddy, why are you so late today? I came back from school a long time ago and Seema didi is not ready to play with me ......” A young girl came out of one room and took the child by his hand inside to finish his unfinished plate of rice . The child struggled and refused and it was only on his father’s persistence that he agreed to finish his food. He was chubby and sweet and teeming with life and vitality. She noticed another unique thing about the child. He had a gurgling laughter which was loud and hearty yet soothing to the ears as it rang with the sincerity of innocence. Druv turned back to her and said in a hushed tone, “That’s my son, Vipul.He lost his mother at his birth and...”A sudden surge of emotion seemed to choke him completely before he again regained his composure to complete his sentence. “And now he is going to lose his father too.” The impact of these heart rending words and a contemptuous smirk that accompanied such devastating a news plunged Anjali into an unfathomable whirlpool of incoherent emotions.Druv tried to diffuse the situation by small talk and levity as he immediately realised what his careless revelation had done to his ‘one day old colleague’ .Anjali could stand no more of this staged drama and asked Druv “What is it with you? Are you ill?” He said that he had cancer in his lymphatic system which was incurable.While she left the house she saw Vipul run to his father’s arms and through the closed door behind her she heard his gurgling laughter. She could not stand the pain she felt and she rushed out in uncontrollable tears welling down her chin. She cursed Druv for the agony he had inflicted on her in a single day’s acquaintance.

* * * * *

The door bell rang with a touch of impudence. Anjali woke up to the present from her reminiscence of the past and opened the door. As soon as she unlatched the door a sporadic entry of young feet inside the house greeted her. Within no time the whole house was resonating with bursts of laughter coming from the other room. Anjali sat down to have her cup of evening tea when a sudden surge of gurgling laughter distracted her. And its element of inherent innocence gave her a sense of joy which was amazingly both painful and triumphant. She sipped her cup of tea and looked up at the two framed photos on her drawing room wall with a smirk which meant a lot, only to her.

THE END.

ODE TO A DRINK

Shining within slender shapes,
Luring all my lust
Clouding conscience between drapes
I ascertain, “I must
Savor it to satisfy
My inner Devil’s crave.”
Flabbergasted, I do cry.
Mirror makes me brave.
Tumbling off the smoothened edge
I pour my heart with it.
“Give me not that crooked gaze
And don’t you contradict.”
Now dejected, I feel whispers
Mock in frigid noise.
Fomenting the breathing scars,
Muffling inner voice.
My indulgences not in pain
Nor cruel memory.
Inebriated, not insane
I sing to reverie.
I forget if I am broke
Or fortune is my slave.
Tired hands in pockets poke
To find a gaping cave.
Half awake, half careless
Inattentive to loss
Hiding in my carapace
Courage gathers moss.
Slipping into world I own
I touch my floating dreams
Ambling down a fancy-zone
I wish if I could swim.
The river of my fantasy,
Me lonely in my boat
As ‘nother glass of ecstasy
Goes gurgling down my throat.
Dripping with a fluid glee
Feeling for my peer
Spicing up virgin whisky
With a touch of beer.
Looking confused to my eyes,
They ask if I am fine.
In lasting languor I surmise,
“I love my glass of wine.”

COMING BACK TO MEMORIES ................

He saw her at a distance, approaching him at a leisurely yet labored pace only hand-pulled rickshaws could offer in this city of colonial ruins. Through his deep seated spectacles he slowly followed the changes that had set in her face, her figure, her persona. What he saw he committed to memory in his usual harmlessly surreptitious manner.

She looked about her age. Forty-nine that would be. Time had stroked her hair with its grey fingers and the taut outlines of her placid face made apparent that she had asked for more testimonies of age than these. Her face bore the look of a woman-in-charge. A lady who knew what came next. Yet, there was a whiff of disenchantment in her elegant movements, in the settling of her sari, in the caressing of the errant tresses and in the manner in which she faced the worldly audience.

There was a sense of quiet assurance in her eyes.

-Those eyes he could once die for.

He took a few steps back and from behind the refuge of a road-side stall his eyes followed her. The rickshaw passed him uneventfully, jingling its bells, raising no alarm.

-Only a whispering reminder to people on its way to make way.

He took to the by-lanes now. Long, meandering and as lonely as him. He remembered how it was the August of 74 that had brought love in his life. Their lives.

And how it all faded suddenly. For good.

Now, back to the city of his birth after almost two decades he was roaming the roads in search of his past. A past he then wished to bury in the endless murk which met his eyes every time he crossed the nullah. He aspired to reach for the skies then.
To challenge the very limits. His meager livelihood combined with an ambience of constant need cemented his faith in ‘money’, the things it could buy, and the attendant relief that his restless heart so desperately sought those days.

Still, escaping the watchful eyes of his determination to prove his mettle , dodging and hiding from his near-Spartan resilience to rediscover himself love happened almost noiselessly, and he was more than glad it did.

Madhurima Sarkar, was vivacity incarnate.
A girl to whom good books and good food made for life in entirety an affair with a boy whose only claim to popular notice was a ‘Grecian frown’ was almost unbelievable. But, from the very day they met both of them in their most private moments of childish premonitions knew this could go far.

And yes, it did.

For four long years they shared their life. She was the inspiration behind his stories and

she felt her heart aflutter while singing a particular stanza that made intimate identifications to her own life inevitable.

Life with all its lyrical thrills unburdened itself on these two souls.

The fights occurred often with a loving regularity bordering on trivial issues.

The reconciliations proved tedious yet rewarding.

And then the rifts surfaced. While her family sough out suitors with a religious zeal, he could do nothing but wander the streets in search of a solitary job,

-A face-saver, A ‘something’ with which he could bargain his life in return.

But fate had other conspiracies brewing. Amidst tears that were a continuous stream of suppressed grief and sobs heart-rending muted with the screaming conch life augured a ‘new-beginning’ as a story reached its end.

A neo-natal death of a love was well mid-wifed by society. Onlookers of this incident lamented 'fate', enjoyed the sumptuous wedding-feast.

He walked the lanes in search of some momentary solace. And found none.

After weeks of desolation and unforgiving bitterness he came back to the realization of the void in his life. The void that now surrounded him till he could gather himself to do something about it. So he did. He finished his course, worked tirelessly in the day while the midnight oil grew weak from his nightlong endeavors at mastering borrowed books.

On the 23^rd of April 1981, from the stairs of a prattling train he bid goodbye to his past of misery and misfortunes.

Today, back as a near-affluent NRI to that very city, he could not help but look back in mournful retrospect. He turned back at the road he had traveled unmindfully, engrossed in his thoughts. And as he approached the nearby grocer for directions to the main-road, a white smoke billowed from an adjoining window which he hardly noticed amongst the gathering scene of daily chaos.

-The window that had filled the eyes of a girl with myriad colours, all of whom seemed dull and vacuous amidst the flourish of her sweet remembrances.

-The window that had muffled her soft sobs from homely disagreements with the inviting hum-drum of the outside world and its activities.

-The window that had made the rain and the clouds, the sun and the spring a delight to watch within its restricting frame as she drank in all their aromas and ecstasies.

-The window that for twenty-one years breathed life into the numbing nothingness amongst the din of worldly worries that accompanied everyday.

-The window to the kitchen of Madhurima Sen Gupta, who once was a Sarkar and loved a boy who sported nothing but a Grecian frown on his face.

'Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix'

Got to see ‘Harry Potter and The Order of Phoenix’ today. Though I am not a Harry Potter follower by any means (have still to read a book on him), I found the film ......hmmmm.......quite ‘enjoyable’. The story starts with the interference of the Minister of Magic in the affairs at Hogwarts, and a sort of cold wave of suspicion runs through every character of eminence. Minister Cornelius Fudge believes Dumbledore is set to overtake him and for this he is secretly organizing his own army of wizards. So he sends his trusted lieutenant, the detestable Dolores Umbridge who promptly introduces a reign of draconian laws and suffocating regulations in Hogwarts. She gives one the creeps with her eerie smiles and Elizabethan frowns. In one word she is instantly ‘hate-able’. Full marks to her.

Then the expected turn of events is initiated as conspiracies are unearthed. He-who-should-not-be-named is named with gay abandon. Talking letters, Centaurs, giants, broomsticks, secret chambers and fireworks brighten up one’s mood for a while. The first-half drags a little. The second part is no respite as a sort of detailed narrative is attempted by the director, perhaps driven by a sudden realization to stick to the story. Almost in a military-camp manner.

Yes, Harry gets his first kiss (God knows what’s so sensational about it?).

And as a gross mutilation/diversion of/from the story Cho Chang is nothing close to beautiful. Leave alone being the most glamorous girl in the world as given in the story.

Then like a teenage fling it all subsides midst the gathering clouds of war.

And here approaches the moment I was eagerly looking forward to.

The Showdown.

But naahhhh, nothing like that.

Dumbledore steals all the thunder from Harry. He wards off Voldemort and saves the day.

Sirius Black vanishes into oblivion (he dies in the wand-skirmish) and Harry loses his only family left, his beloved godfather. The story ends with happy faces and an enlightened Fudge who dismisses Umbridge. Dumbledore is re-instated and ‘The Prophecy’ discussed.

THE END.

I actually came out of the theatre trying to convince myself that I had liked the movie. But I hadn’t.

No qualms about that.

But who cares?

I would have thumped my forehead in mock-disdain if I would have had to pay the astronomical150 Rupees (considering non-multiplex rates in my city are much cheaper) for a second day show of the film.

God be thanked that it was a dear friend of mine who arranged for the free-passes.

CURTAINS' CALL

Curtains blue, Curtains red

Curtains at my bedside said,

“Would you like to see the world?

Or, Will it stay dark instead?”

My eyes still in their dreamy blur

Could hardly see or decipher

The meaning of such simple words

I could not help but surrender.

I opted for the world outside

As light came rippling riding tides

They blinded me for moment’s sake

I stole a blink till they subside.

My curtains just did blush with gay

As now they could rest for the day

To wait for some unruly wind

That might come whistling midst mid-May.

Curtains floral, Curtains coy

Kissed and danced with winds of joy

And smelled the virgin rain on soil

That often goes for God’s envoy.

I looked at patterns etched at them

Like ancient truths they had no name

And as I looked past them I found

The world outside looked just the same.

Its That Sinking Feeling Again.

The last 48 hours has seen torrential rainfall in Kolkata. And among millions, yours truly has also been an unsuspecting victim of it. I can attest to the fact that I, in my twenty years in the city, have never seen such unrelenting ire of the rain-Gods being unleashed with such grievous malice. The major streets are all flooded and the lakhs of people residing in low-lying areas are under inescapable house-arrest. Stray commuters forced to report to their workplaces are either braving knee-deep water to wade and waddle to their nearest islands in the name of bus-stops or are getting themselves stranded being ill-informed of the ‘road-ahead’. Everyday there are half-a-dozen reports of deaths due to electrocution or collapsing of mud-walls. I shudder at the thought of life in the villages now that city-dwellers of this major Metropolis are busy hurrying to the nearest patch of highland.

Now let me narrate my eventful tryst with this Fearful-Phenomenon last Tuesday.
Lured to the connoisseur’s paradise (called Park Street in this city) to be treated by my oldest and dearest buddy I reached my destination in a state of zombie, disregarding the knee-deep water in Central-Kolkata streets (traditionally a safe place during monsoons. I found it flooded too, to my surprise. So you can imagine the extent of the Floods.). With a sumptuous lunch safely tucked within our stomachs we blew good-bye kisses in the air and said Adieu. Now, I had to go to some place infamous for its water-logging capacities to the south. I had to pay double the rickshaw fare both ways as the rickshaw-puller paddled through wheel-deep water at a place where the last semblance of demarcation between land and sea was lost due to the downpour. When I was on my return-trip the skies opened again and to no one’s respite there was more of water and less of transportation. Taking temporary shelter under the roof of an already crowded sweet-shop I could see the steady rise in water-level in the clogged streets and the panicky commuters struggling to latch onto the next auto-rickshaw. Even the major-roads were under water and where I unboarded from the auto, the very sight gave me a shock-of-a-lifetime. There was waist-high water and all forms of transport had shut down. I was left with no option but to join hundreds of others in their wading-expedition. After a tortuous, filth-filled murk-waddle and after seeing ten-odd rickshaw-pullers turn down my route owing to bad-road, I finally managed to get hold of one who was willing. And God be thanked for that. He declared it would cost me thirty rupees due to inclement conditions which was understandable and going by the extortion-spree of their trade in this weather was also quite a reasonable bargain. I was overjoyed for I had estimated I would be set back by something around seventy rupees and this was a winner coming my way. I quickly climbed onto my rescue-chariot and the man (my savior of sorts) paddled-struggled-trundled-waddled-walked-paddled me to my home. I was immensely grateful to him and continue to be so. And this post of mine is only but a fleeting tribute to him. I gleefully handed him forty rupees and he was quite happy. A lazy smile lit his face which so often conveys both gratitude and happiness in people who toil their heart out to make a living. I duck-walked the rest of the road to the warm comfort of my home. And as I write this post, looking out through my window, it is still raining. Sometimes coming down in bucketfuls, sometimes in a light drizzle, sometimes in a reckless deluge. It’s almost like a marathon out here. Cold, calculated, measured and most dreadfully assured and inevitable.

God help us Kolkatans if the skies decide to play a Budhia with us.

Let there be light.
And yes.....some clear skies too.