Marquez, A tribute.

When I first read Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it was not out of a sheer love for literature that propelled me towards the magic, it was the desperate need of a young boy to connect with a girl he was in love (infatuated?) with. The fallacy of youth is riddled with serendipity that when looked back through time would always make one smile. Some love remains and some fades away, like houses weathered through time, but when magic strikes your mind it remains with you forever. Some people find it absurd, some people laugh at it, some people just wonder with a scientific curiosity - but magic too is like that girl you are in love with, whom you could make out from miles apart in a crowd, whose every detail you notice with a profound clarity that it almost borders the modern word ‘creepy’ and yes, whom you notice in everything and everywhere- in coal mines and snow-capped mountains, in the leaves made of grass and then you sometimes wonder “what the hell”; whom you see in the past and in the future- mostly in the future, happy and smiling, forever.

As the earth shook the ground of that Aztec city, Remedios the beauty winked from heaven and said, “You send me up too early wise man, but tell me was life worth it?”

He too would float up in that ether of peace leaving behind a void of wisdom, still weaving all that beauty in his head, waiting for the right words to pinch in Remedios’s heart.
“Life is always worth it, when you have loved enough.”

We all have our second opportunities on earth,
that’s what he taught us.

RIP Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1927-2014.

Scheherazade

When a writer and a whore meet there is often a general tendency of an effervescing fortitude in the atmosphere. The streets that day were lit with the general lights that would go out in dawn and he sat by the footpath, legs crouched, watching over the bypass as the traffic sped by leaving a blur of light- in his mind and everywhere within him. 
He consumed all of this. 

He desired such blurs; such indelible marks that would always allow him make words pubescent children frolicked over. Everyone was writing about love those days, and how their heart desired, and how it felt and how it missed, and about the coterie of pretty lovers who could save the world; and yet the world of the other went on- spiraling down the steady road of decadence. Humans always try denying their animal nature, but animal nature hardly denies them.


‘Why do you write political novels?’
‘A writer must work on something he doesn’t understand.’



The midnight traffic thinned like his receding hairline. He stood up and walked towards his apartment. Scheherazade had missed the last bus.

No stories would be told tonight.

What is funny?

What is funny?

1. Funny is a poster of a waxed doll. 

2. Funny is a prank(threat?) call made at an wee hour.
.
3. Funny is a blank text-message, philosophically.

4. Funny is F.R.I.E.N.D.S. with friends, or alone.

5. Funny is long hair, high-doggies, and zombie Che-paintings.

6. Funny is the red/blue rain and auto-rides.

7. Funny is the price of a flake of gold.

Funny was college and now you're old.

Elections are here, medearie!

India's Press Freedom Index at present is worse than Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Colombia, Zimbabwe, South Sudan and many other seemingly 'regressive' countries that will surprise the hell out you.

Although the fictitious nature of any social survey can be put to question what's important to note down here, is the progressive Indians who think industries and more jobs will change the society for good is a farce. Otherwise, boy-gangs in fancy cars wouldn't go out and eve-tease girls at night. If that's development for you, fuck you.

As a student in erstwhile Presidency College, I saw how a CPI(M) aiding daily sensitized news and changed the entire version of a teen angst-story into a political battle. We live in a society where media manipulation is at large. With the recent predicted Namo Sarkar, that's what's at stake - already dwindled freedom of free expression and speech.

You take food out of the stomach, you do that, but the resilient humans live, but you take thoughts out of their minds, suppress them into your way of thinking, that's unbearable for most, that's what creates a Nazi Germany. I understand people working in a hierarchic system who are used to licking their superiors ass and have no say in their lives whatsoever don't get it, but think for sometime before acting.

I believe that's what your education was meant for.

One day in the city hospital -Calcutta

A crying baby caught my attention. I do not like crying babies. It was morning and my otherwise jovial nephew demanded, he be entertained. I am fond of him only when he is playful. Again in small doses.

Afternoon meant the sultry heat, and I hopped into the heart of the city. I had to take care of some 'work'. On account of having a green card, I sat a while in the general ward of a renowned city government hospital today and watched nameless subaltern faces huddle across their demi-gods hoping they would heal them. The luxury of being jobless, comes in handy with lonesome observations. Too many questions and curiosity clouded their faces, too many sickness clogged their veins. At times, their gods would chide them for being inquisitive. It's what gods do. But they heal too. Here for a minimal charge. And they know that too.

These hospitals on any regular days seem like a war-ravaged camps where injured soldiers are treated after a great war. It looked like something I had seen in movies. So much rush. So much health. Being an elite its convenient to avoid such places, it's very convenient. I conveniently avoided touching anyone in this summer heat. Sickness may pass through their skin into mine? It was a mistake to wear half sleeves and get in a place like this after all. That's all I could think. Situational shallowness?

I have seen many great men of my time ponder over 'society' and how it should be, and 'what should be done'. I have seen my contemporaries vehemently argue with each other on 'social systems' and measuring man with laid out rules and benchmarks, forgetting the essence of humanity perhaps, refusing to believe that humans can't be just good, that without law and order and 'social systems' there would be an animalistic anarchy. Predator and prey.
They are right. Aren't they? Open your eyes, read newspapers and all you see is an ever increasing decadence in the idea of humanity. I wonder sometimes. How different is it since we stopped living in the caves?
How different?

Perhaps my political friends are right. But can social systems teach one to be good to another? It doesn't take opulence to survive in this jungle. It's surprising if you ever try to survive you'll find you hardly need much. But we compete, the poor with the poor, the rich with the rich, for the want and not the need. Most of the times. Yes, perhaps our situation makes us good or bad, or shallow,or higher philosophical beings, but a system where one could obliterate all the ills could make us good to one another. May be it's only through restraint and order that love can be taught. I am not big in ideas of what should be done or what needs to be done, but a little act of kindness like paying two bucks extra in a public transport for people like me, doesn't affect our lifestyles. That's what I demand from myself even in my shallow days.

A crying baby caught my attention. I do not like crying babies.

"Baby of Rubaya Begum, edike. Porte likhte jano? Jano na? Accha.
Ei test gulo korate hobe. Beshi taka lagbe na chinta nei. Arekbar eta neeche giye dekhao ora bole debe kothay jete hobe. Ato kotha bolcho keno? Ami ja bolchi mon diye shono. Haan bhalo howe jaabe."

I also met a girl today after a long long time. Some people brings out the good in you. (Not relevant)

Go Team Pakistan.

'Go Team Pakistan.'

Nationalism appealed to me when I was young. But soon with whatever meager knowledge I acquired about our country and our culture through various 'literary' readings, I felt more disconnected to the idea of loving lands marked by kings and jacks. I have always supported 'Team India' in a cricket match, except for once I guess, when 'Dada' was dropped and there was a match in Eden Gardens.
'Go South Africa.' I said back then.

Regionalism too appealed to the young heart that knew certain bounds. There were perhaps more deep seated reasons that the physically weak Bengalis (notice the generalization) often associate with themselves-'of being victimized.' I often hear at Calcutta dining tables,
'Had they not divided Bengal, we would rule the country.' After all if we noticed our history books we would find, the freethinking of Bengal became the common sense of the entire nation. The Bengali prudence. How I used to love it. Things have changed a lot since then. A lot.

But alas, putting discreet definitions are not easy in matters of the mind and the heart. Just like marking boundaries on maps. Who can tell what could have or should have happened? Our grandparents who bore the knives of a forgotten time would often tell us scary stories from Barisal or Mymensigh. It's almost hard to imagine if all your life was suddenly taken away from you, all the familiar sounds, the smells, the surroundings, the people you knew....
It's unimaginable for us. But then both Bengal and Punjab went ahead trying their best to forget the peccadilloes of the past. And they did mostly. But somewhere in the crown of our newly born independent motherland, there was a paradise. Even the least romantic of men would say so. But it is no more a paradise, they say. Kashmir was and is still struggling to face the repercussions of the historical error of our 'privileged' forefathers.
I don't know what happened in Meerut sometime back. I know it wasn't right. I am not a Kashmiri, hell, these days I even forget to identify myself as a Bengali, all these identities, they are so important for some people. But your roots make you, they say.

While the better part of the subcontinent is hooked on television gulping their Parathas and Biriyanis I choose to write this, because nationalism doesn't appeal to me anymore. Who you support in a cricket match is your own choice, isn't it? I am not a Kashimiri and today I choose to support 'Team Pakistan.'

Very juvenile of me, you educated folks can say.
Very juvenile.

She is old school.

It was just a few years ago when the cuckoo still sang at my Salt Lake home, and the mornings meant cozy breakfasts and the rush for college. But then one day everything changed. 
'To move ahead in life you cannot get stuck at one place.''

That was what everyone was saying. They were perhaps right. 
So I moved on and those mornings were forever lost in the abyss of the past. These days I just lie down in my bed and try to sleep through the mornings, I try to dream. Two pillows over my head. Nothing in the world can bother me now.
Nothing in the world bothers me here. No body comes. No body goes. It's so peaceful. If there's a little commotion outside the room I can always turn the music on. Louder. I can always pretend to sleep if someone knocks at my door. I often do that.

Today someone knocked at my door. Who dare invade my mornings? It was always wise not to answer. But the person kept on knocking.

'You have got a post.'

The heart leaped a little. A pregnant yellow envelope greeted me. Inside there was a little book. It was a gift from a writer, whom I found somewhere in my dreams. A little piece of paper fell out. As it touched the floor, the ancient scripture written in turquoise shimmered in the virgin morning light.

'To the boy lost in abstracts.
Let's always create.
With love.'

And on this morning, after many mornings, I remembered how to write again.