Nothing but morning

It’s almost sun-rise time.

The darkness sheds her dress to reveal the morning, and if you read science in high school you would know, that it’s just the earth going round that makes a day and a night.

In a world that runs in circles you plan ahead of time, you think you are going up in a straight line but the journey is helical, you can’t avoid running circles, no one can run straight in this twisted of a world, people who go up, just follow the helical route and if you’re smart enough you will figure out that nothing of this means anything, what’s up or down in the enormousness of human conscience? We all die anyway.

The idea then becomes of life being of no meaning, damned, without hope. Of no greater purpose. Some people buy and create gods to argue that belief, human brain is a funny organ you see, it reconstructs and pre-conceive a lot of things. And in a way it’s marvelous because otherwise we would have been stuck in much more smaller circles than we are now.  

And then there are others in this hell of a modern world who just live as if nothing would matter, living without purpose and dying with lots of money.

But also there are many others just like me who must argue that something does matter, that if we look at the miraculous evolution of life through time, its birth by chance in the heart of this cosmic desert then we do marvel at its sheer brilliance. The acquired intelligence of the human race, the preciousness of memory, the collective consciousness, the will to work together, the will to love are all in a way so alluring that you just ignore the delinquents who are worse off than you, because life is beautiful. And the only goddamned way to live this life, is by teaching others the value of it all- how precious it is. Because this is where it all happens, this one life.

We live here, and we love here.

We won’t last forever we know, but we are the first one to have figured out that we are expendable, that extinction is looming in our backyard waiting to strike, we are fragile, very fragile, but even that understanding is that what makes us special.

So let’s run a little backwards today, let’s run in those circles ambitious people like us are scared of, and exchange love-notes with our crooked neighbor, because in this cosmic grave of time nothing can save us other than our will to love and feel, and because we must not forget that will is what lead to the birth of human civilization.

Let us be nice today.

Hear the words of her Lover

I am benign

So I shall never malign

You.

But then love’s wicked

When it’s not returned,

So

I will malign you.

Another Morning

The earth whimpers in tender infancy
Of the morning
And the pale shimmering sun lights up
Yesterday’s squalor
Warming another wintry day
Of lull and torpor,

And perhaps 
Love.

Into the Sun

Once upon a time when I was  very little, my brothers made little solar glasses out of x-ray plates, just to take a look at the wondrous solar eclipse, that was all over the newspapers. Those glasses were cute and black, just out of some sci-fi movie. Stanley Kubrick would have loved them, you know. 

So is it true these days, that on normal days, only lovers look at the sun?
The kind of people who loves life, who fishes for a little time just to see the sun go up or down.
The sun is milder when the day ends, it doesn't burn your eyes, it soothes it right? Beauty soothes eyes, they say. 
We're all asleep when the sun rises. Its more pleasant in the morning, but then what do we know when we hardly see the morning?

And then there are weird people like me, who stares at the midday sun because they have sepia glasses and have nothing better to do.

Photo Story One

I always imagined myself as Tintin and ma named him kuttush.( The Bengali brethren of snowy)

Our adventures would dominate the deserted boulevards of salt-lake, the endless rambling associated with two youngsters never ceasing to see the world. The more the better, you know.

These days I walk alone.
This Old man just silently asks me to take photographs of the places I have been.
He perhaps wishes he was a little young.

One Night, not long ago

Tonight I will stay with Mozart. Because tonight I want to cultivate a strange happiness and pretend I am like them, the ones who understand music, because tonight I am insomniac like insomniacs.
If you are reading this you must switch on Tchaikovsky and lie in your bed, eyes fixed on the ceiling, and think of all the places inside you that music can touch.  

Nothing like this winter when you don’t have sleep in your eyes. All you do is crib and be depressed about the weather. They are all running you think. But hey, I am sleeping. I am different. Such a bad thing isn't it, being different without a cause?

Right now I am writing this shit. You will read it later. I will read it later too and curse myself. Sometimes when I am typing such shit on the screen I hear the sound of some ancient type-writer being pressed, and I romanticize about myself in third person.

Some distant eyes watching me write, while someone is playing the piano on the far-side of the room. Roll over Beethoven.  
The night casually flirts waiting to end with a jerk. But I think it’s the piano music that keeps the night alive. It goes on and on, time moves slowly with the music. Suspended time. 

Mr. Auden, we cheated time. Mr. Frost, we are friends with the night. 

On some days like this I imagine telling someone to play such a music on my death bed. Perhaps on my deathbed I will ruminate about tonight. 

Perhaps it will dilute time a little. Perhaps it will prolong my life just a bit. Why do we fear death? Is it because life is so painfully beautiful? So much love to give. 

So much more to get in return? The lonesome romance of youth, so little faith in today that you get to plan life backwards from death, hoping it’s far ahead in time. 

Always believing in life to come. Always. The music seems to confide in me some ancient soul secret. The kind of wacky comradeship some weird people get. Music, like wine was invented by man. On nights like this you love humanity. You forget your woes, knowing that after the music stops you will sleep like a log.  

The night ends now, little birds are chirping, insulting the music.

I should hear them sing.

Fare Thee Well.

Dear Prudence,

People are so abundant in emotions that you often see them uniting over great things and great events, no one’s afraid to shy away in stating how they feel, or recollecting some sacred moment from their childhood, and since there’s a platform to share it these days, you just can’t look away from the abundant goodness of so many people. All of them feeling sad together, about the end of an era.
Well, with the cornucopia of farewell letters that’s coming up for Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, or the set of sweet epiphanies people are having about growing up, it all seems a little dulcifying and encouraging to me, that people still bond over great things and great people, that there’s still a set of sweet people out there, who could save the world with feelings, perhaps.
Then there are people like me who slept all day, draped in woolens, thinking just another shitty day had gone by, indifferent to the warmth that lures another thousand beings, of events that will come and go, of people that will die. It’s another grey winter after all.
But hey, the sweet people knows that in India it’s always summer, because no matter how the Brits ruined us they couldn’t leave their winter here, they left cricket instead, one bat and one ball and many little dreams.
And thus years later, in the land of many gods, one god was made, who could bring all of them together.
Perhaps that’s why these people are all sad and teary, perhaps because they all want to believe in a tender greatness of the man, who with a little editing here and there, has been nearest to them all.
The fact that they feel so greatly about greatness, is a toast to humanity itself, a toast to these people who are great in their own way. I wish I could feel like them, but then I will try.

‘Here’s to Sachin Tendulkar, and two decades of filling up the vacant spaces.
And making a winter’s day, a little like
Summer.’

Over the Hills and Far Away

Over the Hills and Far Away

In the House For Mr. Nobody

He went to find a friend.

But the Skies shunned him

And the cold winds cursed him, 

Harassed him,deranged him

Almost bereaved him

Only to remind nature's delicate

Fury. 

And when the winds had stopped

And the shun had shone

He still couldn't find the friend

For he was gone

With the wind,

Over the hills and far away

In the land of Shangri-La.

Because Home is where the Heart is.

I believe in roaming the endless boulevards at the far end of my hometown, those crowded alleys covered by a carapace of aged concrete where sunlight never reaches, I love the disgraceful scent of fish markets and I love watching those squirrels hide beneath my favorite rhododendron tree, at the jinx of midday in some offshoot city parks where some couples spoon after sunset.

I love the slow tram rides in the dizzying rain , and the yellow cabs smoking out an exotic black gas and I love everything that's ruined and dead and old, I like everything that moves, hides, squeaks, screams, flows, bickers, falls, and often slowly kills my city, because I am privileged enough to do that.
I know.

I love Calcutta because I was born and raised there, because I belong there and I hate those posh asses who criticize this city, when they live their life on inheritance money, whose idea of having fun is limited to 'pubs' being open till midnight to midday. I hate people bickering about the fact that there's not enough job there, there's no night-life, when they do nothing about it.
Why criticize when you don't contribute? Yes we are limited. Our hands are tied.
But then we can always travel free in the metro. For fun?

But then people will always whine and rant, just like I am doing here.

It won't change the world or anyone, but then one can hope right?

With Love. 

Happy Diwali Delhi

And the night begins with the sound of crackers and car alarms.

They all go berserk like unattended kinder garden kids.

Oh and there's smoke enough to choke your eyes.

And love enough to choke your heart.