As a child I used to feel strange every time New Year came. I could not distinguish between new and old, torn and full, smile and tears. I would start crying whenever I felt happiness creeping up my frail, fair body; it was like happiness spilling out of my self thorough my eyes… through tears. The children would feel scared of me, the children who were my friends when I smiled.
I wanted to die every New Year. My past simply slipped out from between my fingers and was forcefully pulled towards an unreachable Vacuum. Quiet. Or so it seemed. It seems. I lie like a mass of sensation on my narrow blue bed without a past, a root. Do I float? Do I fly? But then, nothing matters when time dissolves around you and you are dragged into a familiar dream. I take a lot of time in waking up when stories, histories and memories weave this strange mesh of lullaby. And when I do, the sense of loss had gone down the abyss as well. I ask for ice creams. I go to picnics. I watch rom-com movies. I visit friends, family.
The danger of the New Year passes by sooner or later, like Mr. Woodifield I guess, just as a new fly flies in.
Every time I feel equally threatened to know that I am the boss.
O you have grown so stagnant, my love! No longer do you dance along the breeze like before, like when you cruised all the way from the silver hills to end in me, said the Sea to the River. It seems another era when you would rush ahead, nomadic and beautiful, flowing like a constant wonder with a song in your heart. You are no longer the labyrinth that you still profess to be. Indeed, you are changed; you have lost the charm of flow.
But if I wander, thought the River, why, I might melt into another sea.
The Sea does not spare such spiral thoughts. He would rather think that the river is now a lake.
They missed me yesterday.
The gray whirlpool of the dead dust has leapt to life again. At last. At long, long last. A strange afternoon, I’d say, of swishing trees and fluttering plastic bags. And yes, the dimming lights of a faded day. It held many stories, mostly unknown, and some, half-forgotten among the everyday sweat… among a lull that brings anything but sleep… among the lifeless groan of tedium and monotony… among dreams that only enhance disenchantment.
Every kalboishakhi is special. Each brings a different darkness. A different aroma. A different tinge in the psyche. A different solitude. A different rapture. A different whisper. The ruthlessness breeds ache and alleviation with the same intensity- twin sisters rocking in the cradle of quivering fervor with the sudden strikes of lightning thunder.
I have seen strange times. Times when everything was too normal to breathe. My family was at peace. Exams, presentations and term papers keeping us fussed and frustrated. The yearly spring was in the breeze, especially in the campus of Jadavpur University where every March the grass is soft (without ants), the sky is a violent shade of ultramarine blue and the breeze too seductive to resist.
