The Way She Looked That Night...

I bet its the last day that the Mother looks her best..with a vermillion smear adorning her face. And she seems to make every other woman acquire a fraction of that beauty she defines. Just like I've always wished to look exactly a copycat of the way my mother looks on every Dashami evening. The beat effusing from the dhaak on this day, I feel, seems the most elusive and irresistible, slipping out from everyone's reach in the blink of an eye and engulfing the festive spirit alike quicksand. The last few hours of the festival seems to pass over in no time. And its when you pointlessly argue with yourself that it would certainly have been better had the Pujas arrived a little late. Its always a sulk that the fervour is finally over and I'm really getting short of words and rhyme and thoughts to write something that'd be somewhat a pleasure. Seeking a vent, its imperative to walk the optimistic way..that we are surely getting nearer to the festivities awaiting in the forthcoming year.

P.S.:- Subho Bijoya to everyone out there. Hope all of you had a great puja.

She...

And this time the wait has presumably been the longest for me. There is a certain unnamed aroma I've always linked with Her. Probably its the product of sweets and incense, flowers and clay..but I've always called it 'Her' smell, which floats around since days before Her actual arrival playing the messenger bird of the homecoming. That idiosyncratic smell of Her arrival has never left to enchant any of my fractions, but this time it seemed all too irresistible. Too heavy a feeling to carry around. And now that She's here, that She's finally perceivable from my balcony, it seems all too surreal..to perceive, to smell, or to reach out for a touch.

This is seemingly the last Durga Puja of my 20 year stay in Kolkata. And next year around this time I'll probably be missing classes to stay near home, near Her. But what I'll really miss is the countdown to the festival..the moment since when monsoon starts drifting away giving way to cottony clouds..when a clayey aroma wanders between us, implying that She's on Her way..and the mushrooming shopping destinations which go berserk with their offers. I'll miss the framing of the pandals at almost every corner, which first bring about Her smell..and Her arrival at midnight amidst some euphoric dhaker baddi, when on such an event, once a kid told me.."Didi, Dugga Puja eshe galo!"These will always frame the bits and pieces of my life that can never be shrouded under ignorance or oblivion, irrespective of how much tears they bring about. And there'll always be some little things like the occassional dhaker baddi and vibrant dhunuchi naach, whose mere thought will convey the smell of my city to whichever corner I am. Leaving apart all the political and economic changes that it imperatively requires, I'd really wish to stay alive to see Kolkata exactly this way during the Durga Puja ever and forever down the millennia. And seek that ethereal smell through and through my marrows that plays with me so often, and that, which has and always will help me to keep myself spirited, effevescent and alive.

When Imaginations fly...

When the day sets afar with the Sun
The queen of evenings peeps through her veil..
Alike the bride blushing scarlet,
As she dissolves in her new found delight
All that’s dreary and withers away..
All that was gloom till last night.

And someone alights a blown out candle
Renewing the vigour of a new dusk in life
Along the horizon where thoughts cease to wane..
Across the courtyard where dreams shimmer bright..

When grief conquers the course of life,
And the sun adieus with a tear and a sigh
When despair gathers murk too dense
To behold the zenith of the twilight..
Someone stretches a hand through the mist
Someone, who is nowhere in sight..

Somewhere the mind trails a wrong way
Somethings make it falter to sway
Somewhere the mind faces its end
Someone it seeks as its only friend..

Times when solitude throttles every might
Deserting behind with multitudes of plight,
The kiss of a breeze whispers it all
That beyond here there’s nowhere to fall..
From where the sky gathers all its white
And hopes fly high and free as a kite.