I have a forest growing inside of me

I have a forest growing inside of me.

Wild and filthy, at times, overgrown with weeds and climbers and creepers and dirty velvety moss,

washed by the sun sometimes, yellow and sparkling and dazzling and razzmatazzy,

caressed by the rain,

dripping wet, drenched or drizzled if you wish.

also leafless and whitewashed by soft downy flakes of the sky.

Nothing is allowed in there.

Only, occasionally, indulgently, a worldly seed falls mistakenly and grows into a tender sapling,

Full of wide-eyed curiosity and menace,

to be devoured by the deadly evil creature-eaters growing daily in that untiring jungle of mine.

Remotely interesting point of this stupid poem: the trees have no roots, nor are they floating.

They deeply grow, side by side,

often clinging to each other like snakes.

They grow roots: whenever

they can, wherever they can, so that

no permanent immovable immutable fixture called idea or opinion can bind me

in shackles of love or hate.

the forest grows within, so that my outer garden,

beautifully adorned by this world’s manicured trees,

cannot invade and consume and destroy the untamed virginity so threatening

because it’s flexible and accepting.

Of aloneness and its companion

I have always considered myself to be a loner, (or even aloner, than other people, that works too). It's not really a badge that I've worn with pride on my sleeve, but something I've been secretly proud of. Yet there was a point in my life when I used to dread loneliness. I remember, being the older child, I was forced to sleep alone at night by my 'modernized' parents (especially my mother) who wished to cultivate a sense of independence in me. Well it's not as cruel as it sounds, except that in those days, I used to cry every night, feeling afraid of the dark when often my grandma came to my rescue and used to secretly lie in bed with me till I fell asleep. Till the time my sister grew up, I used to sleep alone, and I don't know at which point I discovered the liberties I could enjoy when I slept alone. I used to stay up till late (an abominable thing to do for a school kid), dance around the room, talk to myself and to imaginary characters, write my diary, read books under the light of table lamps, and when I grew up further, masturbate. I don't know when the darkness grew into me and when loneliness turned into a much coveted aloneness. It probably contributed to me, a child with a penchant for incessant chatter and labelled 'talkative' in her pre-primary report card, becoming a soft-spoken, reserved, introverted teenager. I started to love being alone. Nothing, not a room full of people, could ever touch my aloneness. What is aloneness, after all? It is a heightened consciousness of the self, a realization of the love for the self, love which entails anger, hatred, passion, sorrow, grief and every emotion known and unknown to mankind.

I had Riki, our spitz, who passed away when I was in class 3. Not realizing what death was, I felt sad that my live plaything had died, but felt no deeper sorrow. It was in class 10 that Coco, our labrador, made her grand entry into our lives. And it was then, perhaps, that someone invaded my aloneness. Her company was sought after, I used to seek her out in moments of distress and anxiety, sit quietly beside her and vent my feelings to her, and it seemed that she shared my pain by being the silent listener. She was somewhat like me, a silent friend, not doing much to allay my sorrow, but giving the much needed shoulder to cry on. She would sit with me for hours in our balcony, as I would stroke her and say all that I had to say. I think she could not take it anymore after a few years, all the pain, the sorrow, the miserableness of the world, and left us in 2011, when she was six years old.Even in her last days, when she could hardly walk, she attempted to get the newspaper from downstairs, and refused to pee anywhere but in the toilet. Coffee, the golden retriever, was different. He came a day after Coco left us. Mischievious, intelligent and hyperactive from the beginning, he was the naughty little brother I never had. He was not the type to sit and listen to my rants for hours; he would inevitably do some mischief or perform some antic that was bound to make me forget my problems and run after him, laughing, despite myself. He never learnt; he peed in the dining room, ate from the dustbin, barked his heart off at strangers and at every unsual noise. He was like my younger sister, a lot of fun and an attention seeker. I don't know why he had to go, why he had to leave us so prematurely, from an illness abruptly contracted and lasting for a week. Looking at the superactive dog, who never even took a slow step, walking exhaustedly with drooping eyes, and not protesting when I stripped on the muzzle was heartbreaking. It was as if the kid had suddenly grown up, and worse still, it was pain that made him grow up. I don't know why he had to leave us two weeks ago, when he was only four years eight months old, and that too after extreme suffering and pain. I am still trying to make sense of the meaninglessness of the injustice and cruelty that life metes out to us. Till then, I have realized, these two were not the invaders, but rather the companions of my aloneness. Now, my aloneness has become lonely.

To Routine

           I refrained from getting a daily metro pass, though I am a regular. There is something about daily passes which scare me; it is as if I get sucked into the irretrievable routine of existence, becoming another nameless head amongst millions of daily commuters, an entity sans identity, 'petals in a wet, black bough'. That is the problem with people like me who strongly wish to prove their difference to the world, their need to stand aside from the mundane and from the throng, to prevent themselves from becoming mechanical creatures blindly following the line. Routine petrifies me, but there is no way I can escape it. And I am thankful for that. I am thankful for routine because although I desperately wish to shed all the monotony piling up every day bit by bit on my soul, I realize that I need it more than it needs me. Have you ever been blinded by a very bright light? A light that took away your vision for a few moments, and engulfed you so entirely that the other things around you became non-existent? You must have. It is when you instinctively put the back of your forearm before your eyes to protect them from the existence-denying light that hurt your eyes so horribly that you forgot who you were, for a few moments. Well, I have realized that life often comes at us like a speeding truck with flashing headlights, and however much you try to protect yourself from the blinding pain that is inflicted on you, you fail. The pain then gradually becomes a dull throbbing ache in the lump of your throat, in the pit of your stomach, and the tips of your toes. 

                This is when routine comes to the rescue. Routine is like that forearm with which you try to protect yourself. The very sucking nature of routine helps you to mechanically make your feet fall back into rythm, your hands work automatically of what is expected from them, and though that thud in your innards recurs every other second, you slowly forget, for a few moments, that you had faced that blinding light. You forget, momentarily, what that light had taken away from you, how it has rendered your existence meaningless in an instance. You go out of your home, walk to the auto stand, take an auto, get off, take the metro, reach work, do your work, take the metro, get off, take an auto, get off, walk back to home. The same thing, again, again, again. Till one day suddenly you notice how your soul, mangled and maimed though it was, has been perfunctorily patched up and covered by the everyday. It isn't the same, it can never be, the red of the blood is still visible, but it has now blackened and formed a defensive crust that can open only after incessant scratching. And you don't want to do that. You do not want to scratch the messy layers on top of your soul, although the injury has left a certain part irreparable. Here is where routine helps. It fools you into believing that you have escaped the pain, that you have healed. But alas! The mundane is not as powerful as life, It covers your dismembered soul only to expose it later to even more blinding flashes of light. Till then, follow the line.

Night-mare

The night rides away, the dark mare,

I leave the reins as I see her go past me,

With deep, dark, balmy eyes

For I have promised not to sleep with her

Not tonight.

The blurred glare of the faraway window lamp,

Promises a softening at daybreak,

I stare till all becomes a yellow lurid star,

Yet the stubborn black refuses to fade,

No drop of purple-pink soothes the eastern scape,

No chirps or flutters greet the dawn,

A dawn that never came today.

I have promised not to sleep with night tonight,

Yet a time of failed promises is this,

If I sleep, shall day ever come?

Or shall the promise-extracting night-mare prevail? 

I shall not go with night, no, not tonight,

I shall gaze unto an imagined sky,

Where stars struggle to keep night alight,

The stars too, will die, tired 

When night will ride on like the mare in heat.

For I have promised not to sleep with her,

Not tonight.

Ashes to ashes

A barbecue in the open,

Sizzling on it are

Meagre, brown, one-side burnt

People. Charred raw flesh, smoke

Billowing out of the prison

Like grills, hissing noises

Muffled, distant, unheard.

In a heal-hell zone.



Licking the legs, the waist.

From toenail to hairtip

Flames. Orange-blue,

Welling up, lunging

Through the broken windows, felled walls

Enveloping the earth-child Sita,

Concealing the hell-bourne invisible

Devil, sucking souls

With its clouded black agents,

Killing lives. Killing the city.



Was the city hurld headlong flaming

Accursed with unquenchable fire

To blaze into ashes the living hopes,

Or in a bid to purify

The putrid, squalid 'city of joy'

An annual arson?



My city is singed, yet seething alive.

Home is where heart is

I was born on the coldest day of the decade. The city was caught unawares with an 8.8 degree Celsius on the records. From that unusual day of my first frozen breathe on a hospital in a busy part of the city, till this typical drizzly, rainy day; I have grown up, and the city has grown into me. Into my nerves.



I do not remember my first meeting with the city. Probably, it was a staggering attempt to grasp the window railing and stand up on unsure feet to catch a wide-eyed glimpse of the enormous world. Perhaps it was the security of my mother’s lap or the firm grip of my father’s little finger on my first venture into the unknown. Whatever it may be, it wasn’t unpleasant at all. That, and these 21 years of life here, interspersed with the departure to some ‘guest’ places, consists of my relation with this place.



It was not until late that I came to know the city has a name. A name that, like all of our identities, is uncertain in its origins. A name that traced its history. A name that became so familiar that I grew to love it without giving it any thought. A name that changed, but couldn’t change its past. Neither could it alter my feelings.



As I grew up, I gradually encountered all aspects of this curious city. At one point I found it beautifully photogenic in its most natural form, on the other hand, I was exposed to its seamy underbelly. I witnessed and observed its different moods, the smoke, the fresh, the cough, the deep-breath, the stench, the fragrance, the green, the brown, the tradition, the trend, the culture, the ‘un’culture, the fashion, the bare necessity. But like a person who is loved despite his or her flaws and inconsistencies, purely out of familiarity and knowledge of the heart within, I fell in love with him/her. I term it a male due to its childishness, predictability, its hullabaloo, its chaos, disorder, tendency to feel superior. Also for its untarnished cheerfulness and love, devoid of malice, of its pride in itself and of its untainted helpfulness, I believe it’s a ‘he’. I call it a female because of its opulence, its abundance, its pristine nature, its sacrifice, its depth. Also for its sentimentality, its conservatism, its sluggishness and its tendency of putting the blame on others, I feel it’s a ‘she’. A city that embraces the qualities of both the genders. My city.



On the eve of my departure, the city seems to smile at me with all its decadence and its new found glory. A wan smile it seems, or perhaps a calm, blissful one. Perhaps it mocks me for leaving it. Perhaps it is disappointed with me for going away. Perhaps it blesses me, just as a parent would his/her child when she leaves him/her, heart full of pain, but pain subsiding for the child’s betterment. No, Kolkata. A flower may bloom in a forest to be taken away to a garden, but does it ever forget its happy forest days?



This is for my beloved old city and for all those who endow it with life.