06.10.2009.
... and for all the somethings that never change
I am home. Back romancing my lovely lady Calcutta. My bookshelfs are in disarray because Mumma cleaned everything for my home coming. Cleaning & setting up the neglected music system… lovingly rearranging the books to my satisfaction. Unpacking my carefully washed, pressed and packed clothes, ironing each and putting them back again in my usual military order. Wage and win the war to have my internet connection reactivated. Relentless adda with Maa, Mashi… answering Mejo Mashi’s questions and assuring her that I ate well all these months and am in good health. My para, durgashtomi’s community lunch… the old faces, the extra thousand quid chanda I happily shell out every year. Little Rishi a year older and proudly in fourth standard now. But still wide eyed, listening to Capt. Nimo’s adventures in faraway lands… while sitting side by side in our sun bathed veranda and sharing the Cadbury he brought for Capt. Nimo. I found out this time that Little Rishi is a Gemini. No wonder he has wings of imagnation and we gel. Catching up with ‘The Sly One’, him turning up late as always. Heart warming conversations with the ‘The Thinking Man’ and the joy of playing with his daughter. The excited - “P** Dada eshey gechey?” from each of my Mother’s single digit students. The warm feeling that their delighted smiles bring when given the coins I bring from places I travel to. Mumma and I in Lake Market fairly carried away while buying fish. Mumma halfheartedly warning – “fridge’ey erpor jayga hobena kintu.” Picking Mashi up after office, exchanging genuine plesantries with the two parking attendants outside her office and then hing’er kochuri followed by chanar gawja from that shop on our way home. Chilli Garlic Pepper Fish in Beijing, Mejo Mashi under strict supervision, my longing glances at beer served at other tables… sigh! The pleasant security guard at the R******** ATM who always says – “Dada eshey gechen.. bhalo achen toh?” My nightly excursions to Satyanarayan for ‘garom rasogolla’ and endless such trivias which are not trivial at all….. I belong.
Joy
…………continued
the Guitarist …………
he was a quiet man, he didn’t speak much… strange isnt it that as a child he is talktative. the Guitarist had keen senses… he understood people. To him people are like music… the stooped old man near the Minto Park crossing... like dusty forgotten cassettes lying somewhere in the Guitarist’s loft, waiting their turn to be disposed off. But the music in them… what about it? No the music is eternal. Reinvented, reborn in shiny new discs or eletronic gadgets… manifested in Levis clad, lively youth thronging Park Street. Time doesn’t change… time is standstill. It’s only us the subjects of time that change. Or the Guitarist is perhaps hallucinating… is he? the Guitarist has this habit of driving aimlessly around his beloved Calcutta… ornate, bejewelled in festive revelries of Durga Pujo… people abound happy & boisterous like elaborate colourful songs from hindi movies. Amidst this the Guitarist noticed those to whom the revelry meant nothing… these five days to them continues to be the same struggle as the other three hundred and sixty… they are like the music played on radios in Babughaat or obscure paan shops that no one really pays any attention to. Just after dusk a day after Dashami Calcutta & her people always appear weary and drowsy to the Guitarist… in that somnolence he hears that Tagore song – “hridoye tomaro doya jeno pai… shongsharey ja dibey manib tai… tabo doya shantir neerey, ontorey namibey dheerey… amaro boley kichu nai”.The rain clouds were forever kind to the Guitarist… obliging whenever he was home his fantasy of Calcutta as a beautiful young woman… rain drenched like the Miyanki Malhar raaga based song penned/composed by his Mother’s eldest brother and oft sung by his Mother…
… and when the midnight seems to be an hour too many, in his sea of silence the Guitarist turns into Mehdi Hassan’s rendition of Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan’s poetry…
“dil-e-nadaan tujhey hua kya hai… akhir is dard ki dawa kya hai
hum hai mushtaaq aur who bezaar… ya il-la-hi yeh maajra kya hai”
….. some things in life deserve to be left incomplete… I had written and had decided to leave ‘the Guitarist’ incomplete. Irony is it that ‘the Guitarist’ seeks the song that will complete him.
