Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Cytoplasm


It is not often I sit down to write – to write something substantial. Neither do I sit down to write something substantial all the time. However, there are things that every person cannot help. It might be active or passive reaction but the constant factor here is that reaction, which for me is writing.
When I first noticed the man on the footbridge, in close proximity to my place, he hardly occurred to me. Then I saw him again and never turned back – I was on my way to my workplace in the morning. The third time is the day I sit down to write this.
The usual after-dinner walk was a wholesome affair for me for all the wrong reasons and a perceived healthy routine. I never realized till now that it was a purposive attempt to see the unimaginable or rather the unavoidable aspects that creep through the shadows and stand out starkly under the dim neon haze.
He could be a man just like you and me. He could be a father, a husband, a grandfather or even a ‘nobody’. He could be a deranged, a homeless, a loner or an egoist. Yet, to me he looked a sixty something aged person with silver hair and unkempt beard. Disheveled full-sleeve brown shirt and a soiled crème pant over brown socks and brown leather, affordable quality shoe unworn under his dangling feet, he sat there on the damp staircase after a well showered evening in Kolkata.
There was nothing unusual about him as compared to millions of homeless in this city. Yet, there was a certain control about his stature as he sat on the sideway. That is when a bystander’s presence strikes a passerby’s imagination. It is more so, if the passerby is a voracious reader, affirmer and applier of deductive reasoning as proposed by Arthur Conan Doyle, through his gigantic literary character.
He could be a man kicked out of his home by his children or grandchildren for all the several causes that may be easily construed. He might be a madman whom his family members got tired dealing with. He might be an egoist who just could not take any form of mediocrity by his own standards from the people with whom he dwelled. However, definitely, with mosquito netting, shawl and a well-covered pillow you cannot be just another loner or just another vagabond. You have to be put in that position to be there.
An abject violence of humane society norms it was found revolting to the psyche of a social individual as me.
*****

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Amazing

This is to keep a tab on what happened today post quarter to one a.m.

After a nightlong party at 'Not just Jazz by the bay' three of us end up at Bade Miyan for food. I go to the the nearby HDFC ATM for money for that's where my salary A/C is. I find a card of 'Sukena S_ne Chant' Card No. 4386 2425 0150 0080. I ask my friends to come over to the ATM as witness. They come. I ask ATM guard for Customer Care No. and he gives me 2856 1818 which is useless. I call up 100 and nobody answers.
I go to the the nearest police officer near Taj Mr. Saukener (Mob. No. +919773094304) and deposit the ATM Card. My friends leave for home before me. I go to Churchgate station and take a taxi for home but think of taking the card no. and name of the person.
I go back to Taj. Contact Mr. Saukener and wait to get the no. Get the details and call back to confirm that I will be available for any help.
This is to let know whosoever it may concern that I did what I thought was right and will be available for any assistance.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

On Love

What is love?

How easily we utter this monosyllable. How easy it is to profess the same. How difficult is it to realize that. How seemingly impossible it is to get it for the same. Sad but true - as the sandman might say. But then none of us are sandman, none of us are superman - none of us know the answer to the question.

Sometimes love seems like a leap of faith. Sometimes it feels like life itself. Truely, what is life worth unless you have known what it is like to love somebody. What is it worth if you haven't been loved back?

Unfortunatley or fortunately these are unwritten rules which nobody has ever read. So, it is near impossible to figure out. Here, those who tend to differ, mind you, fortune is only perceptual. The ones lucky enough will know the sweet pain of longing. Those who are unfortunate enough will never know the way the first pure love can exist over a lifetime - maybe beyond.

We are only human. And there is only so much a human can realize. I cannot force it.

"Chahe kitna bhi pyaar ki bheekh maang lo, sajde karo ya cheen-ne ki koshish karo - pyaar nahi milta. Par kya tum kisiko itna pyaar kar sakte ho ki woh bhi pyaar karne pe majboor ho jaaye?"

(No matter how much you beg, plead or force for love - you will never get it. But can you love somebody so much that the person can do nothing but love as much?)

Maybe it is true... who knows?

*****