Mine's been nearly a year in Bolpur. People keep saying there is something very addictive in it's air; once you're here you keep coming back hopelessly for another little bit of dosage.
Well, I can't tell you anything about that. Almost a whole year here and it's been not addiction for me, but a habit, like you brush your teeth in mornings, and let me tell you, some days I simply hate brushing my teeth.
Anyway, the only thing I like here is how disturbingly quiet it is, and how disturbing silence can be for nights, in a place that merged solitude and loneliness for me.
I have a lover here, and a bicycle that I took, borrowed. So, afternoons of cloudy days, or days when the sun is just little less hard on us, we ride away slowly to places undiscovered.
The lover is always the one doing all the labour of circling his feet on the paddle, managing the balance, and also carrying this weight behind him who is mostly shifting in her seat screwing his balance scheme, asking bizarre questions; answering which demands some mind off the street and into contemplation.
I usually have nothing to do, except gazing at slowly fading landscapes, people, trees that hug the sky and lush greenary.
This whole idea of writing came to me when my lover told himself in half consciousness of appreciating a golden-hour lit stretch of green beauty, that how perfect a village it is.
And it occured to me, that indeed it is; a perfect village. Sad that it forcibly keeps trying to change to a town. Imagine the failure a poet would get if he tries his hand at cricket!
And for the most of the journey, I kept looking at how perfect it is. How perfect the sunset looks with the green farmlands in off-focus, and how awkward the smoke looks that is puked out by a nearby factory that the village could do without.
I pass mud houses set in the middle of the stretches randomly, with perfect petite black windows, mostly closed. And when they are open, they let in to the visuals of dark walls with marks left by raindrops that ran down through leaks in the terrace, Hindu devotee pictures in ornamental attire whose brightness has been smudged by regular smoke from incense sticks, polythene bags randomly hanged from hooks on the wall.
I keep passing, and the sky grows darker.
By the time I reach the nearby market, each shops have electrical lamps put up, and I wonder how aesthetically correct it would have been if they had fire-lit lamps put out hanged. How aesthetically soothing it could have been if the perfect evening had a perfect halogen flavour to it!
How perfect it could have been it the perfect village would not have tried to be something that wipes away the remaining beauty from it?!
