The white stallion

He liked to believe he was a hero, the last of the knights that cantered on the lush meadows of earth. But where was the greenery, except in his eyes, and where was his stallion, save in the idleness of his reveries. Yet he galloped on, in search of something he never knew.

There was no war for him to fight; there were no damsels in distress for him to comfort. It was hardly a kingdom of yore with carnation at his steps and the whole wide world under his chin. He evaded the reality of his displacement with a taciturnity of a lonesome house lizard: there but not there!

He remained invisible throughout his life, for he lived in a different plane. And he died a lonesome death. His disappointment unctioned by the fact that Galileo died a sad man, and Columbus did discover America. He bore the ridicule of time with a nonchalant stoic, as is the badge of his tribe.

After his death, the white stallion traded his rein. He gleefully ferried teenagers on sea-beaches, his arrogance obviated by his hunger. As his silky mane swayed in the evening gale, his master smiled in his grave.

Pastel Curtains

She wept throughout the afternoon. She wept alone, in the comfort of her pillows, in the familiar warmth of her ruffled bed sheets. And when she looked up, she saw the sunny world with the stained glass window of her eyes. Nothing had changed…

Why did she cry? She was not sad (she was not happy either). No one was rude to her; neither she wasn’t reeling in the compunction of acute sarcasm, as she is prone to. She hasn’t lost any lone war; she hadn’t fought any raging battle ever. She wasn’t crying over blunders of a kaleidoscopic past, neither was she contemplation on a uncertain future with beads of wetness. There was nothing in the world to make her sad: she was too far away.

However, she didn’t feel lonely. She was happy with herself, her slaking embers of lonesome nitty-grittiness. She was not complaining, nor was she penning an elegy with grey lines on her pillow. She hasn’t been spurned, she hasn’t been loved, and she was hardly moved.

Then why did she cry? Why then, when the trees swayed, unencumbered, with wholesome joy, when the breeze piped in through pastel curtains, when the birds sang with unbridled joy? She never did, for the tiniest of fleeting moments, feel she needed to have a reason to cry…

She knew then that she still could.

“La tristesse durera toujours”

The bullet pierced the heart hundred and seventeen years ago, this same day…

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer’s day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul…
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colours on the snowy linen land.

Now I understand
What you tried to say, to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free:
They would not listen; they did not know how –
Perhaps they’ll listen now.

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue
Colours changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand.

Now I understand
What you tried to say, to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free:
They would not listen; they did not know how–
Perhaps they’ll listen now.

For they could not love you
But still, your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do–
But I could’ve told you, Vincent:
This world was never meant
For one as beautiful as you.

Starry, Starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can’t forget
Like the strangers that you’ve met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn, a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

Now I think I know
What you tried to say, to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free:
They would not listen; they’re not listening still–
Perhaps they never will.

~Don McLean

Of Phuchkaas and Rosogollas

Being the typical Bengali I am, I must say, if there are two things I miss when I am not in Calcutta, they must be Rosogolla and Phuchkaa. Prosenjit potboilers, traffic jams and mawkish maidens finish a close third, fourth and fifth respectively. However, looking from the right perspective, the only element that surpasses the Bengali’s love for all things cultural is his inexorable appetite. Therefore it is no surprise, you see.

When you ask the random non-Bengali (to be kept in mind that for Bengali’s the planet is divided into two broad categories: Bengalis and non-Bengalis), he might also profess a certain love for the above-mentioned delicacies. But can he match the gourmet of a compulsive Bengali? Not by a long shot.

 

For example Nalini Das rosogolla is very different from a Bhim Nag. What Sen Mahasaya dishes can hardly be the same as what Haldiram makes. It has to be spongy, at the same time soft, must be a mouthful, but never a inch more, and should possess the ideal proportion of saccharine and syrup. A rosogolla that doesn’t meet these requirements can be served to uninvited guests, but never in your daughter’s wedding. Of course the most important prerequisite of a delicious rosogolla is that, there should another one in the offing!

 

If Rosogolla is a fine movie, then Phuchkaas must be a thespian’s delight. For like good theatre, its magic flickers out each evening and has to be rekindled again the next. The ubiquitous Phuchkaa-walas can be found in almost every crossroad, but that doesn’t mean good Phuchkaa. The good Phuchkaa has to be diaphanously crispy, must contain the optimum amount of fillings, and be delectably huge! However, there still remains is what can make or break a Phuchkaa, the teetul jol : tamarind water, in rough translation. A celebrated phuchkaa-wala would never reveal the ingredients of his teetul jol, and maybe, rightly so!

 

For me that’s the last word: phuchkaa and rosogolla! Nothing more!

Quasimodo

The wicked old man lived in the seedy veranda that overlooked the alley. He was haggard and his eyes were opaque green. He watched us play cricket in the somnolent afternoons, like a gargoyle, sipping from his lukewarm ceramic cup. He never moved. And busy we, with our late cuts and off breaks..

As the afternoons made way for sleepier evenings, we packed up and went back to our respective home works. He did not move, the wicked old man. His green eyes shone like fireflies under decrepit lampposts. No one knows when we left his cosy armchair, or if he ever did. No one knows if those green eyes ever blinked.

He saw the colourful schoolbags with natty water bottles go to school. He didn’t smile at them, he didn’t wave them goodbye. He sat there on his veranda, with a muffler around his neck. And those opaque green eyes.

Days passed like water from the public tap. Beginning and ends tied up in fulsome bows. Teacups measured his life out in saucerful of nondescript etude. He played on his invisible flute, his overture to a sunny morn that never came.

And then one evening the fireflies blinked. The veranda was empty the next dawn. But no one knew…

Worries!

 

Grandpa worries over his toast and marmalade. Worries about whether his tottering teeth will be able to withstand the ravages of the golden crust. And whether the tea after butter spells acidity in the afternoon. He munches on.

 

Dad worries about his business meeting in the afternoon. His tea orbits his laptop as he ponders over the template for his presentation. He worries about the car battery that needs to be replaced on his way to office. He worries about traffic jams that might prop up. He takes another sip, nonplussed.

 

Mom sits at table sewing Dad’s cufflink, worrying about the guy Didi is seeing. He doesn’t look all that good, does he? But look doesn’t matter these days; he must be very good in studies. But isn’t she too young for all this? She needles through the gossamer whiteness, criss-cross and loop.

 

Dada is worried about his B.com results. He knows he has hardly spent even a month studying for the finals. He just wishes to pass, somehow, anyhow. But now its too late, even to cry over spilt milk! He can’t afford to fail, can he? They wont be able to take it, no one has ever failed. Why, even Piku comes first in class. He polishes his shoes with enervated zeal

 

Didi quaffs her glass of milk, absentmindedly. She is getting late. Smarting at the prospect of the crowded mini bus, she picks up the newspaper. Behind the mundane pulp of print, she worries about how to get rid of him. She can’t be too jumpy neither can she be rude. But she has to be firm. She has to do something, she has to…Page 3 smirks at vitreous drops behind the befogged eyes.

 

Piku hates milk. He stealthily empties his glass in the flowerpot near the window. He ogles at the ladybirds floating on the pallid liquid near the roots of the bonsai. He frets over how long will it take for the milk to go down!

Unweaving the rainbow

 

There was a time he believed that when clouds were hurled against each other, they got hurt, and rains were teardrops of contused clouds. He watched rains puffed up with emotions and felt happy at watching the rainbow, lining the misty horizon.

 

He also thought birds can talk amongst themselves. Whenever he saw a chirpy sparrow come up to the cage of his pet finches, he imagined they discussed their daily miseries like midwives in sultry afternoons. He watched from behind the half closed door of his terrace, almost feeling guilty at eavesdropping someone’s cherished secrets.

 

Fairies used to come in dreams, and unicorns and mermaids. War meant only those against dragons and evil princes, and love meant hazel-eyed maidens and arrogant stallions. The world was not round then; it was helical, ineluctably taking you down the looking glass.

 

He believed that angular blue mountains, hallowed by a blood red sun, existed somewhere. He believed that lively brooks flowed from them, meandering around a lone thatched hut amidst the greenness. He believed that kites could be flown without the wind on your side.

 

Violet was the crayon that left stretch marks, indigo meant jeans that were a craze in the class two pujas. Blue was sitting alone at the windows and watching the sky, green was taste of ripe stolen mangoes, and nothing tasted better then. Yellow was sunflowers and orange, the four o’clock ice-cream-walla. Red had nothing to do with politics then: it was the muffler in Darjeeling.

 

Now that it’s unwoven, how ephemeral is the rainbow!

Close shave

 

There are times when you have nothing much happening around, or with, you, that you learn to take paramount joy in the simple pleasures of life. Those quotidian entities that lose their vitality otherwise but carry a lot of meaning when you have time at your disposal. Like writing your diary, going for a morning walk, buttering your toast at breakfast, sewing the collar button of your shirt, polishing your shoe, or maybe the afternoon shave.

 

The afternoon shave is something that is blissfully ignored in the hubbub of a busy day, but which brings in a new dimension to a nondescript day of a nondescript existence. Sometime at four, sometime at five, when you gather your razor and shaving cream and brush, as if in readiness to a ceremony. Dipping the brush in tepid water smelling of schoolboy kites of summer, you paint the gaunt mandibles with rich lather. Then with one bold stroke, you dab the excess foam on the chin. Leaving the brush on the rack beside the basin, you proceed to examine your whitewashed cheeks on the mirror.

 

Whether the long angular sideburns or the short clean look, this decision can itself be a wholesome experience. Then you pick up the razor, cleaning it first in the cold running water from tap. Then like velvet over granite, you run the placid sharpness on the cheekbones, coming down from beneath the socket of the left eye to the chin. You stretch the skin of your neck, gingerly wiping away the foam. Then the right cheek, the same absorbing feel of steel. And then the recalcitrant stubble at the chin.

 

You wash your face in water, looking up at the mirror to scrutinise the effect. The blood-shot eyes, the shabby mop billowing on the forehead, the accentuated lips, the line in chaste red near the sideburns. Ah! The redness. The reward of the untimely indulgence. You press your fingers to it, smudging the line, and bring it to your tongue to get a taste of yourself.

 

The acuity of the aftershave washes the freshness across the obsidian face.

Football in free verse

 

At kick-off they pass the ball sweetly to the defence. They pass it around for sometime, as if to let the opposition elicit their last wishes. For what follows is poetry. With a bit of tango thrown in. That’s the way it has always been and today’s Copa America semi-final against Mexico was no different. Vive Argentina: football in free verse!

 

The first half was decidedly insipid by the Argentine standards. They passed the ball around, mostly in the midfield marshalled by a certain Juan Sebastian Veron. The defence was up to the task whenever called for action, with captain Ayala being in the very thick of it. Nevertheless it was unceremonious. Until that moment of magic from none other than Juan Román Riquelme: a free-kick that seemed awfully out of target, dipping precariously, drawing the goalkeeper out of position and landing on the right foot of Gabriel Heinze who drove it home without fuss. That was how the first half ended.

 

The next forty-five saw what could succinctly be described in one word: chutzpah! What vision in passing; what skill, with a single Tevez out-running every defender in the Mexican ranks; what disdain in the ball control of Riquelme, what exuberance in the skill of the indomitable Lionel Messi. And a million short passes to rejoice the simple pleasures of life.

 

The second goal of the match was more than just a goal; it was audacity in fluid motion. It seemed for Messi, with a couple of defenders by his side, and the goalkeeper rushing towards him as he approached the box, scoring was just incidental. What mattered more was how; and how? A prodigious chip that saw the three Mexicans stranded agape and awestruck.

 

The final goal from the penalty spot was no less spunky. Riquelme who could have tore the net apart, chose again the immaculate chip. The ball sailing to the back of the net, almost with a song on its lips, leaving the keeper prostrate at the posts with nowhere to hide.

 

The thing about Argentine football is that it forces you into believing that it’s all too easy, like the free verse. Yet you can hardly ignore the brilliance. The indolence of their passes, the parsimony at sharing the ball, the egotism at control and tackle – everything so distinctly middle-class, if I may use the word. The genius, I feel, lies in celebrating their suchness and with what aplomb!

 Postscript :

Soulmates

 

They come in the listless hours of darkness. They don’t talk; their silence impales the shroud of wilful naiveté. They come together, for if they were alone, you could reason with them. Maybe, they know that a bit too well.

 

They act as if oblivious of the others presence. Maybe they don’t realise. While one philosophises, the other philanders. While one is jaundiced in the hubris of rectitude, the other humbled by the yoke of servility. While one sings and dances, another lets out muffled cries of anguish.

 

There is one pacing the room with a book, chanting phrases of unsullied dreams. There’s another pulling at my pillows, to shake me out of my reverie. There is one pointing his index at me, from the easy chair. There is another, sweating profusely, pulling himself up the ceiling fan. There is one bedraggled and asking for more. And there is a certain someone looking straight into my eyes…

 

There don’t ask questions, they don’t demand answers. They carry on with their invocations to a demigod I have never worshiped. I dare not mock their belief, though. I just pray for peace amidst this chaos in my secret universe.

 

However, as I lie naked in my bed, stripped of my ken, I feel no semblance of shame. For when I close my eyes, I know, they seamlessly fuse into the reprobate overcoat of my mundane compromises.