Paint it Black

An ember in the darkness wakes me up every day and just before I open my eyes it disappears, but in that split-second of light I see everything- from old lovers to old streets, from the distant past when I was a ball of blood to the wrinkled absurd future we all hold- the slow ones, the safe ones , and it seems like an eternity and I cannot escape it, it goes on for a while. Time consumes me.

I painted my clock-face black a long time ago. It still makes that tick tock sound beneath the veil of paint reminding me that time wouldn't stand still for anyone, and the mornings are not gonna get better- in time alarm clocks would replace a lover's gentle voice and...

I should just leave it there, as I know we will get by, like every other people- happy and sad, a bit of both until time consumes itself and everything is quiet and dark- like that dreamless sleep, you know.

For the Holiday that didn't happen

A couple of years ago, all I could think about around this time was leaving the mechanical solitude of the campus I was living in, you know, so that I could come back and wade through a sea of people who were much crazier than me.
My hometown, full of people and flies.

Often in life you are in the midst of things and you don't notice it, like you know, how we don't see the spiral Milky Way galaxy because we live on it and only an alien from another galaxy could see us in all our entirety. I believe in simple words- no matter how many mirrors you put in front of you, you can never be your best judge and that's why it's important to ask the ones you love and the ones who give a shit- to tell you what the hell they like about you and not the other way round- because for God's sake ( or I should say Durga's sake) enough Asurs have born out of the vocation of ill feelings.

Be good to each other, I will tell my devotees, if I were a prophet. Be good to each other, because its Durga Pujo and god doesn't exist.

Goodbye Calcutta,
see you in two weeks.

Subho Bijaya, Salt Lake

For the past one hour I am walking the familiar streets of Salt Lake all alone, watching merry people in Pandals, selfie Huddlers, sweaty cops and some unfamiliar faces who inhabit this town but who never come out of their homes, little community plays that do not forget the Bengali tradition. The streets look unfamiliar today, filled with people and more people.

Tomorrow when I will walk these streets again, with the music of Autumn plugged in my ear- all of this would have returned to its deserted self. There will be no one but the dogs to give me company - nothing but dogs and pretty houses and static cars. Till next year.

Subho Bijoya.

Love in Damascus

As I look outside my window and see aeroplanes sparkling by at this hour( its a beautiful sight believe me, all those distant airliners from faraway lands setting foot in my city cruising past my window), I feel a bit terrible about falling asleep. Its late and I know that, I could just stay awake for a while like old times and count all those planes- reading in between, but I am sleepy and tomorrow is a working day. I feel terrible that something beautiful always has to end, like me lying in my bed and watching these aeroplanes after an industrious day. I see flames racing towards me , somebody dropped a bomb somewhere and I will die soon, me and my entire family and everyone I ever knew, we are all gonna die, but the nuclear flames disappear and then the whole earth shakes , I see the buildings go one by one and then there's me and even that stops, there are no planes in this sky, no dreams, no voices, only the cries and shrieks of terror followed by a silence that sounds like death. I want to fall asleep now and I want to wake up tomorrow, I want to wake up tomorrow hoping I will be alive, and someone else will die somewhere in another place, another country because that's how the world works- some live on, some die. One moment you are here and then you are gone, dead and cold, your death not your own making but someone else's and your dreams they die with you too, but what if I could change the world?
What if I could teach people not to hate, to endure, to suffer, to fight back with words and reason... what if...

"How many deaths will it take to
know that too many people
have died?"

There are no aeroplanes in the sky tonight, perhaps they forgot all about my window, perhaps i am asleep just like everyone else, perhaps they are all dead in Syria- a pretty girl whom I will never know, a best friend with whom I never shared a smoke.

Numb your senses

There's violence in dark
There's violence in the light
There's violence in sound
There's violence in sight.

Numb your senses,
Nimrod.

Intolerance, India.

Religion itself is an outdated concept that needs to be abolished if we are to progress. I know I am intolerant when it comes to that, but who cares what i think. It certainly isn't tolerant when all Research Institutes where progress ,free thought and innovation come from gets fund cuts of the order of 70%.

Most patriotic Indians (mired in mediocrity) whose general aim is to better than their neighbors are happy being better than a Saudi Arabia or a Pakistan, and god, if it exists, help them.

You know what happens with less education?
A brain that follows orders, ask less questions, accepts wrongdoings, hates other pretty easily. Half-education is worse.

( If you think your leaders want anything other than that, then god help you, too. Because one day you may die like a dog in the street, unjust, unkind and it will not be because of your wrongdoing, because someone's brain followed orders without thinking. Your multiplexes and iPhone won't save you. Your swachh country won't save you.)

Your apathy creates terrorists, your subtle antipathy endorses it. And that is intolerance, but I am pretty sure you won't get me. If you do, teach that child, teach him to love despite the wrongdoings that have been meted out to you, despite your suffering and countless deaths of your loved ones at the hands of wrongdoers. Teach the children , be a good example, that's when they go wrong, when they are young.

Accept that intolerance is there, but don't be a hypocrite, don't run away, and its not worth being better than a Saudi Arabia, its worth being better than a Finland or an Iceland. 

Thank you.

Little Prince

On tranquil mornings like this when I lie on my bed and recover from the vivid shock of a nightmare, I hear my dog's bark and its mollifying. Although it reminds me of all the beautiful things that have gone by, and all the loss that I am about to endure; but familiarity begets hope and I am not afraid to love; as the author says- "Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence."

Good Morning.