2am: What are you doing? Talk to me na..

Circa - 2014

I was young, full of fiery quotes, rebellious and extremely dreamy - my ears would buzz with nightmares if I sat in a boring class for a long time.

I was in a Media Science course, first year - when this internship dropped. I got called in - an institute of Public Relations (not taking names because my professors in media taught me right - no promotion is bad promotion). Everything was super easy to start with. They named the internship Public Relations, but the whataboutery went on to interviewing musicians - basically I learnt everything except Public Relations in there. 

The real problem started when the manager (or secretary? can't remember his designation, but I clearly recall his face) started to be extra friendly. I had two other friends from the internship programme; we would hang around together. When the manager couldn't get through my phone, he would try the other friend's phone for me. He did vice versa to get through to other people as well.

I was young, scared and most importantly, thought it was normal. No one told me then. I'd play along.

2am, 3am, the calls started getting to midnight - when I slept off, I'd wake up to calls next morning asking why I didn't receive. Same, exactly same, for all the other female members in that internship. Sadly, the guys didn't get his 'affectionately overwhelming' attention.

It lasted two months. And I gave up. I stopped taking his calls - I gave a fuck that time because my internship was getting over. Oh, before I forget, there was a not-so-mild threat of not giving me the internship certificate because, apparently, 'I was being inattentive.'

Right after my internship ended, I closed doors. I blocked the contact, stopped the calls, texts and social media.

Circa 2015 - One of my acquaintance was interning with the next batch - same institute, same secretary. She told me one day, the secretary 'specially' works with her - sometimes the calls start around 3am, goes on till 5am. She didn't sleep for days..

The Other Side Of The Wall - Brick 4

You ever feel like time's running out? And when it does, everything you hold too dear, too close slips off?

Weird. I have never ever felt like it. Maybe with this lockdown, I have too much time, maybe with my work sabbatical, I have time to stretch my eyes off the digital lights of the damned laptop and stare and gape at the sky longer - and I can consider things a lot better, little longer.

I have been living my best life without work. I wake up in afternoons, I am watching films I have kept stalled since forever, I am reading pieces off the internet, cooking, laughing while sipping homemade wine and what not!

But hell starts to break loose when I check the time. 1.30pm.. I'm getting my heartbeat faster. 3.30pm.. I am count-downing. 5.30pm.. I want to run to the balcony and let the last air of the lit sky hit me. 7pm.. It's getting dark and my panic attacks come back to invade. 9pm.. I officially lose it. What follows, is choked up cries, howling behind my palms pressed to my face while I watch my dinner boil on the pan. 11pm.. I feel helpless and by 2am, I sleep on a pool of tears.

I don't know what brings it - I have spent afternoons decoding my own behavior, helplessly scurrying through plans to feels better, trying to search for a pattern, trying to talk it out - but it all returns.

Sometimes when I am in my balcony at 6pm and the sun has already set, the lights are getting dim, the people from the adjacent terraces start to descend their stairs - I want to bit my lips and press my nose to stop it from pinching my skin. I want to grab the sun by its head and bring it back to the sky; right on top of my head and buy more time. I can't stand it getting dark. I can't stand the balconies and the terraces getting empty. And most importantly, I feel I am losing out time.

Weird. I have never ever felt like it. Now all I can think of is this.

(Rest for another day..)

The Other Side Of The Wall - Brick 3

I have been living on realisations now.

I took a sabbatical from work. Crazy, you'd think! Specially when the world economy is all over the place, the biggest of the corporates are firing their force over petty Zoom calls, when companies are shutting down, salaries are getting deducted, people are 'asked' to stay home without money - Why on earth, I, someone who just trashed her one and half years of experience in a field to start afresh as a writer, take a sabbatical. Why I, a petty writer, making a life out of writing drafts for people noone cares about, make my employers see the vulnerable part of not needing me in their job? Why me, someone who is not good at her job for starters, would make myself more useless?

The answer is, peace of mind.

I had dreamt of a vacation, not because I need to be those hashtag wanderlust kinda Instagram picture-perfect influencers talking about climate change while sipping coffee in Santorini, but someone who can sleep peacefully. Someone who wants to sit in her locked up house and watch the sun rise and have the luxury of running to the terrace to let the first chirp of birds hit my eardrums, the first cold wind of the day before it starts to get unapologetically hot to hit the face, and come back to my bed to my well-lit room and find a cover for my eyes and sleep off till afternoon. Without alarm is the word you're looking for.

And these four days of sabbatical made me look into so many things that I have taken granted ever since. I see my partner waking up before me to get me the first tea of the day, I see him staying awake to massage my feet because second day of menstruation, I see the opposite terrace has a guy - worn out hair, always with a kite and talking in sign language to another girl on the terrace to his right - that other day I saw him tendering to a pegion. He slowly took it out of the cage, rubbed something on its wings and kept it back. I see how the ever polluted grey skies of Delhi is invaded by kites now. And whoever doesn't have a kite, they tie strings to a plastic bag and let it fly to the direction of the wind. This other day I went to the balcony and saw a huge textured cloud, my partner beside me stared at it and said, "You know people of Delhi only get to see such beautiful clouds on flights, and here we are, not paying a fare and looking out of the balcony."

The balcony to my right has all the access to a sunset, this other day I saw a whole family sitting on their terrace and staring at it - I wonder when was the last time I did that, get my whole family to the terrace and make them silently stare at a fleeting sunset.

I am cooking, exploring, and watching movies so much more. Cliche, you'd say. Well, not for me. I, who wakes up half hour before my shift starts and shakes at the thought of work, gets into a panic attack till I need my back to be rubbed to get my normal breathing back, this sabbatical of doing unimportant and unimpactful things isn't a cliche for me, it's a breather.

So here I am, putting my job and my earnings to a risk, because I need to sleep without alarm. And I will, always, do that again in a heartbeat.

(Rest for another day...)

The Other Side Of The Wall - Brick 2

I am facing a lockdown, for the first time in life. It has done a lot of changes:

My mother, who always thought she has my back, is paranoid for the first time. For starters, I have never ever seen that woman paranoid. She is independent, fully financially stable, takes care of the whole house all by herself, takes the decisions, she can come home from work at 9 in night, wash her face and wrap a saree again to go to the market because, I wanted brinjal fry and we have run out of brinjals - that woman is shaking and calling every day and asking me if there is some way I can come home. She is a healthcare professional and she knows the better - I guess we all ditch logic for the ones we love.

My father - a fiercely liberal man who can make some phonecalls and arrange for eggs for my home in Delhi, sitting in Durgapur, Bengal is helpless. Last time he called me, he spoke about how much he hates the Government. He spoke about his helplessness because what if I run out of satinisers now, how will he arrange. He spoke about how he thinks we will get a cure soon - how can humans reach the moon and still not come up with a cure. Crazy! But most of all, it makes him mad to think he doesn't have the option of arranging a ticket for me to go home. Classic dads!

My grandmother smiles the most when I call. When I video call her, she cries the most, too. She wants to tell me all that she knows - how in the recent storm, the neighbour's tree fell on our terrace, how she wants to play ludo with me but she can't find the dice, how badly she wants me to go home and cook for her. This woman who spent all her life either feeding her kids or her grandchildren, and now her grabdchildren's dog, has no clue where to put her anger. But she wants to - so she cries. She wants me to 'video casette' her every night, because she can hear my voice and see my lips moving. God I miss her and how! I ardently remember, everytime my grandmother used to cook fish, she'd smell of this stench of fish from her saree. I'd be asleep by the time she'd come to lie down beside me, and the stench would wake me up. I, who can't take that stench and also didn't want to hurt her saying that, would tell her to play ludo with me instead. Afternoons, I'd let her win. Night, she'd win it herself. My grandmother, who spend all her life feeding kids and her grandchildren, waits for me to go home and cook french toast for her. She says, 'Your mother makes them fine, but nothing like you.' 

I, stuck in an unfamiliar city that's slowly settling on me, try to take things one day at a time. The affected cases crossed the 20,000 mark. I made a mental note recently, the day the official records show 4,000 deaths in India, I'll lose faith. I'll finally settle for the fact that India has officially come to the road to Italy.

__________

I can't stop dreaming though. Sometimes my work gets tougher than usual. I cry more than I work, on days. I live for the weekends, I love for the time outside work, I can't think of shutting my laptop when I start to work. And I can't stop dreaming. This other day, I had a major daydream attack - it's a thing.

I was writing a story, and in the middle, I couldn't shake off a scene from the hills. I kept walking in the cold studded roads of Lava, extremely uphill, panting, the snow-cold air hitting my face, my teeth shivering and flushing my face of the cold red, I kept walking uphill. I was out of breath, I could see the Buddhist colourful flags swaying in the wind from far, some dimly-lit souvenir shops open on my both sides, like the smell of rain on a summer night the smell of pork thupka kept hitting my nostrils, I kept walking uphill.

I can't stop dreaming of Kolkata. My well garbaged lanes, the vegetable vendors screaming out the rates, the sun hitting the top of your heat and making the sweat drip from your eyebrows, men and women pushing you out from the sidewalk, the rickshaws blaring their honks, the cars stuck in a jam, I kept walking. Through that vegetable market, the smell of well crushed wheat from a nearby mill hit my senses, the traffic signal gets more confusing, the buses come and stop right next to me, I kept walking.

I can't stop thinking. I can't freaking stop dreaming in this pandemic.

(Rest for another day..)

The Other Side Of The Wall - Brick 1

I shifted to Delhi in the heat of a moment. I was done with Bangalore, its rush, its no old world charm, its busy traffic, hustle and its food. I was done. I would have shifted long back if I wouldn't have fallen in love.

It was beautiful for a while. This guy, I knew from an University entrance day, where neither of us got through - but we got through to each other.

2016- I tried for this University and failed. In the sturbborn-est of decisions, I ended up for a waiting list call, far off in Hyderabad. I didn't get through, though I walked till the last 4 people to have got rejected. But I met this guy, a nice guy from Kerala - literally the first Malayali I ever befriended. Though the years we kept in touch.

I enrolled myself in Santiniketan while he got through another University in Kerala. I fell in love here, another Malayali. And it was so intense, I rose in that love for a while. But sometimes, things get better only to get worse. It fell apart. Thats for another day!

Anyway, jump to 2018. I had just finished my Masters, I was struggling in an unfamiliar city, unfamiliar people, a start-up job where people didn't know basic things like 'modesty', 'respect' and everything that comes with it. And we met again, this University guy. We have ever since been together.

I had this old friend in Bangalore, literally a stone throw distance from my house. Like at midnight, I'd call him up to lend me his toothpaste. When my boyfriend moved out of Bangalore, me and my school friend would always hand around together. Midnight coffee shops, long walks, smokes, complain about bad South-Indian dinner. I guess he was the worst hit when I moved to Delhi. I remember he came to drop me off to the bus station and for once he didn't smile. I was his only friend there. That guy worked like an animal the whole day, only took a break to walk to a teashop with me. I think he was the worst hit.

When I moved to Delhi, I loved it for a while. All touristy, finger smacking oily food, huge monuments whose top we could see from our terrace, I struggled with the language though, I still do.

2020- I joined a new job - for the first time ever, my parents were happy. I moved on from Public Relations finally. I joined journalism. Now either you can say I'm whining or you can hear me out. I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night, stuttered by my nightmares - I dreamt of my office.

(Rest for another day..)

Little girl in that wooden house

The last time I went to the Himalayas was in 2017.

With a lover I don’t call mine anymore, with friends I don’t talk to anymore, with a camera I didn’t touch for a year now, with a love for frames that is choked by its throat in my small corporate desk now.


Last time I went to the Himalayas was in 2017.


The first time I went there, I was a kid, trading the age of 5-6, on my father’s lap, in the seat beside the driver of the jeep that snaked to the top. I vaguely remember.
I vaguely remember the hairpins, the rocks, the cliff that I hung my head out of the window to, the never-ending rocks on the other side with mosses, plants and flowers, the clouds that would just enter on the way and turn the view from the windsheild white. Perfect surrender to nature.

I vaguely remember the car would stop once in a while for the driver and my father needed a smoke and I would hold my mother's hand and walk near the cliff. We had a old reel camera then, my mother would pose with me, I'd smile.

I vaguely remember we passed localities, wooden houses half made, the dwellers walking with huge logs, sometimes a gang of goats would crowd the road ahead, the car would go slow following them till they dispersed. Perfect surrender to situation.

I remember the whole trip vaguely, but there was this small girl, perched on top of one of the wooden house's half made first floor, I saw her through the bamboos placed straight, waiting to be made into a room, with her sister or maybe mother with a book and laughing. Somehow our jeep slowed down there infront of her house, I saw her face distinctly. A small girl of most likely 1 or 2 years, still growing her mouthful teeth, her dangerously straight  hair sticking out of her two polytails on both sides, wearing a frock that had wild flowers printed, small hands holding the book, laughing with the women beside. I remember her eyes, small eyes with big eyelashes, hardly visible through ber wide eyelids. And in that wisp of the moment when my car passed and she looked up, she smiled. By the time I could smile back, the jeep has picked up speed again, and I lost her. And in my heart of a 5 year old, it brought a surge of sadness. Then we went places, villages, we came back, I grew up, I went to the hills many a times, but she stayed in my head.

I passed that roadway to the top some three times from the first year I visited, I never saw that house, or maybe I did. Maybe the house has changed it’s colour, maybe the first floor was no more a makeshift of bamboos but a room, maybe she grew up and looks different. Or maybe she left.

I vaguely remember, but she never left my mind.

I passed people cutting logs of wood, and wondered, is that her father?

I passed sheep crowding the way ahead, and wondered, does she own them?

I passed houses, hairpins, sunsets, cities and she never left my head.

Eighteen years from then I went to the hills, and made newer memories. I lost the people, passion, the love, the friendship. Two years from losing everything that I once went to the hills with, it still doesn’t affect as much as that little girl does.

What happened to that little girl in that wooden house?

Inter-caste

In this country of imposed Hinduism, I was fiercely in love with a Muslim.


I have got nothing against Hinduism. I have got nothing against religion.
I have, however got everything against the vandalism circling it.

I had just joined a course where I chanced upon this guy. A muslim, an announced anti-nationalist who'd been through prison only because he refused to stand up for national anthem in a movie theatre; because patriotism is real, only when it is shoved down your throat.
A muslim, I didn’t realise when I fell in love with.
A human, who the world doesn’t realise the Muslims to be.

We were in our own world, a room in Santiniketan, a roof with windows on all sides when it rained.
I was trying to stare at the rainclouds when he brushed my hair off my face and said, ' You know what our love is like?'

I said, 'Rain?'

He smiled, 'No. Petrichor. Rain is usual. Petrichor is the smell that the soil gives out as a thank you for saving it from breaking down. Rain saves the soil. Petrichor is the announcement.’

I smiled.

He murmured randomly, 'Can we name our daughter, Petrichor?'

I sat, jumped up on the bed,' Are you thinking of..?'

He cut me short, 'A future? Yes. So?'

And I remember I broke down. I cried and told him, 'We can't. Maybe in a parallel universe where there is no religion, where there is no riot when a Hindu and a Muslim marries, there we will have a petrichor and let her thrive.’

He didn’t say anything. He held me and kept staring at the rain.
________________________________

I had just joined as an intern in a company, a friend of mine worked there. We had been friends for a long time and she knew of my lover; she knew all the insecurities I was trespassing on to be in love.

It was my first day in that office. She took me out with her colleagues to a coffee shop, and dare me call that a mental abuse, made me say the name of my lover, and repeat his surname like thrice, so she can ridicule me infront of her colleagues; people I was meeting for the first time in my life.


This same friend, called me on my birthday, and even before wishing me, asked, 'Is your lover with you? Will your father get a heart attack when he comes to know of him?'

Now I don’t know if I am patient or self demeaning, I still didn’t cut her off from life, only before a month.
______________________________

I still remember the first night I stayed at my lover's place. We were sloshed, very close and I remember he pressed my face into his chest and cried.

When I asked, he said, 'Why did you have to be from another religion? Why can’t we be together?'

I don’t remember what I said, only that I pressed my face deeper into his chest and cried.

______________________________

I had a classmate, the kind of guy who’d say I'm sinful if I had pork, who'd say I'm going to go hell, if I fancied having beef.

That same classmate, I hated with all my might, not for being ridiculously religious, but for priding upon his pea-sized mentality; he told me once I'll die painfully if I am in love with a Muslim, being a Hindu.

When I asked him to give me a elaborate explanation on his stupidity, he couldn’t.
Mind you, he holds a Masters degree from the same Central University I studied in.

Guess you can’t judge education in degrees or universities.

_____________________________

In this country of failed Hindus who preach of the religion and don’t even understand any bit of its meaning, I was fiercely in love with a Muslim.

Bolpur Blues: Episode 15

Next day was Holi.

I had done the usual, played along, got crushed on a crowd-choked street, faced food crisis, and felt absolutely lonely. The quirk was at home all this while, completing his quota of sleep.

We met in the evening, and he took out a half bottle of Fenny from his bag.

'All the way from Goa. It took me a lot of self-control to save this much for you.’

We drank the fenny sitting on the porch, with chilly pickle as the side dish.

Malayalis, I tell you!

Anyway, few gulps later, and with red eyes, thanks to the chilli, I got a phonecall from a friend.

'You want Bhaang?'

I turned to him and repeated the question in the same tone.

'Yes, ofcourse', he looked at me as if that's some sin to even ask that question.

A hour later, it was already starting to get dark. We met my friends in the Poush Mela ground. The moon was vermillion red and the horizon with its silhouettes looked right out of a Picasso painting.

Me and the quirk were already high on the Fenny, and we held hands and kept looking at the moon. He came out with Nietzsche references, and I with Neruda.

After a hour from then, we saw a lean guy walking in circles to us, he was trying and still couldn’t reach. I didn’t know the guy.

I brought that to my friend's notice, and she said suddenly, 'Arey, he is the one who was supposed to bring us the Bhang an hour back. Let me get that.’

She came back with a big bottle with white drink and laughed out, 'You know why he is walking in circles? He's ten glasses down on the same Bhang. Good luck to us,' and took a large gulp and passed the bottle around.

We took gulps in turn and kept talking.

Aftersome time, me and the quirk couldn’t feel a thing and decided to leave.
We needed some time for ourselves.

We were sitting in a ramshackle hotel and waiting for dinner when suddenly I felt my head was spinning, and it was nit a good kind of spin. I grabbed quirk's hand and tried to say something, but I couldn’t.

The quirk crossed his fingers with mine and laughed, 'It has started, hasn’t it?'

I don’t remember if I said anything, but things started turning blur, the streetlamps were blurred tiny lights twinkling, dancing around. The world around me started spinning in good speed and the next thing I remember was I was in quirk's bed.

I woke up to see the quirk walking. I checked my phone.
2:30 AM. Fifteen missed calls.

'Why are you walking? Come sleep.’ I was feeling better.

'I can’t. I feel haunted. I feel sick if the bed touches me', he turned and I saw his blood shot eyes.

I was scared. Too damn scared to think of anything to do.

I got down from the bed and hugged him. I didn’t know what else to do.

I brought him to the bed and made him lie down. Closed the lights and tried to talk to him, so he could sleep midway.

But I was forgetting that the worst thing about Bhang is, it’s high is recurring. It would fool you that the trip is gone and right when you're comfortable, it’d come back.

I was still talking and I think I've talked him into sleeping, when the world started spinning again. I wriggled on the bed, I wanted to puke, I wanted to scream and cure it but I couldn’t do a thing.


When I woke up again, it was 6AM. The quirk was walking in his lawn.

He looked at me, 'We're never having Bhang. Promise me?'

'Never. I hate this trip.'

We held each other and sat down in the yawning morning light.

I still don’t remember what happened for the next 24 hours.

To be continued...

Bolpur Blues: Episode 14

I was counting days.

You know when you're excited for something and the bloody time just wont pass?

Goddamn relativity!

Anyway so,on the morning his train reached, I was already on the platform.

It was March already, and next day was Holi.
Santiniketan, for world famous reasons celebrates holi in a gigantic format. People from all over come and usually the roads are blocked, the totos won’t move, you find crisis in getting food, vehicles charge three times their usual rates, and it’s a misery for the dwellers.


Anyway, the platform was swarming with people. I saw him coming from far, and I didn’t know how to behave.

You know that strange feeling when you feel miles of distance with the person you're most close with?

I stared into the crowd and pretended to have not seen him.

He came right beside and hugged me sideways.

That smile. I had melted. All distances have shrunk.

I looked into his eyes. He held my both hands and faced me, 'Let me see you.’

I laughed.

He let out a sigh, 'It's been so long.’

'It has', I looked away.

'I'm sorry for being such an asshole. You know I'm like this.’

'Like what? Asshole? I know, bro.’ I pushed my palm on his face.

'Hungry! Let’s get breakfast. I didn’t sleep for two days. The train was so congested.’

'Come.’

We got food for us and he went to his room to sleep, I went to class.


He didn’t wake up for the most of the day, and called me at night, just when I was coming back to my room.

'Can you come to my room once?'

'Its late, I'll see you tomorrow?' I was in hurry. My PG shut its doors by 10.

'Please? For just few minutes? I have something important to tell you.’

So I rushed. I reached his room and was banging his door, 'Tell me what. Tell me what. I've to go to my PG.’

He came outside. He had a packet of gulal in his hand.

He smeared red gulal on my cheeks and kissed my forehead. 'Just wanted to wish you Holi. Go run now, you're getting late.’

I hugged him and rushed back, and I'm sure the blush on my cheeks was giving a good competition to the red gulal smeared.

To be continued...

Bolpur Blues: Episode 13

By the end of the month, strangely I was doing fine. The lingering aftertaste was strongly there of that short-lived love and the togetherness of the days you could literally count of your fingers, but I was doing fine.

By the end of the month, I was doing quite fine.

I got back to Santiniketan by the beginning of the next month. I didn't want to. I never had reasons to go back to that place, and with the quirk away, literally, I had strong reasons to not to. But the course, projects and whatevers push you to do stuff sometimes.

I was no less a victim of deadlines, having to shut my heart down and pack my bags and leave for the place.

And surprisingly, he kept shifting his return. Sometimes with the excuse of hating the place, and rest of the times for staying at home for some more time.

Never, for once did the excuses overshadow his reason of meeting me, and made him change his decision.

I stopped complaining. I was done with pushing stuffs and forcing people do things when they clearly showed no efforts.


'Know when to leave the table, when love is no longer being served'.


After a month, I was alone in my room.

A nyctophobiac, a flickering night bulb, an otherwise dark room and a winter night.

I contemplated of things, train of thoughts that forgot where it started from and ended at somewhere totally irrelevant, and I don't know when I slept.

I woke up around 3:45am, the last few minutes left of the devil's hour, with a hauntingly loud phonecall and a strange sound above my head.

I squinted at my phone and the quirk was calling. I looked up and there was a small bat in my room, batting with the stagnant blades of the fan and flying around.

I could literally feel my heart stop, when I picked up the call, and came down, ran to my bathroom and locked the door.

'There was a mob violence on one of my friends', he said in a low tone.

'There is a bat in my room', I screamed.

'I am coming. I hate this place', he was not listening.

'There is a fucking bat in my room', I cried out.

'What?'

'Whatever. Bye', I cut the call, and peeped through my bathroom door, still ignorant of what he said.

The bat was right beside my pillow, dead. I, sure and also cringing at the sight, came and cleaned the body off my bed.

When I had set my bed again and was preparing for another round of sleep, that's when I realised what he had said over the phone.

I called back.

'You're coming? When?'

'So now happy hormone has understood. Where is the bat?'

'Dead. Right beside my damn pillow. When are you coming?'

'Train's tomorrow. What should I get you from Kerala?'

'Just yourself.’

He laughed from the other side of the phone, and literally from the other side of the country and said good night.


I slept that night like I hadn't slept for a very long time.

To be continued...

Bolpur Blues : Episode 12

I was drunk in love, tripping on fingers entangled together, drugged on kisses, sloshed in lust.

So, when in no time came our time to part, though temporarily, at least that's what it looked like, we were hardly ready.

It was pre-Christmas and I had to leave for home to attend my family, he had to leave for his home, too. And our homes, funnily were miles apart.

I usually used to bring this in our conversations how our families will never even be able to communicate with each other if they were to talk only in their own dialect.

And he’d reply, it had never been about the conversations, it has always been about the silence.

And I’d frown at him for disturbingly philosophical all the time, which he would dilute in no time with his smile.


Anyway, it was Christmas, and we were parting in Santiniketan railway station. He came to see me off, and I stood infront of the door, while he stood on the platform.

Weirdly, when the train picked up speed, we both mouthed 'I love you' at the same time.
And then he started getting tiny with distance and home started getting closer.


I didn't know if it implied something but few days from then, we were not two people in love, anymore.
Long distance seemed to not work for us.

What started with missing each other took terrible forms by the end of the night. What used to be healthy debates earlier became arguments in loud voices. What used to be making fun of each other became taken as offence. What used to look like love was outgrown by insecurities.

And I clearly remember my intuition whispering me to let go; to cut the string than stretch it and let it tear itself.

But I was still in the hangover of that short-lived, raw, form of love.
Phonecalls started getting less, texts started getting shorter, video calls became extinct, and it was hurting no less.


And I thought to myself that maybe this was it, this love was short lived but it wasn't like it was not love.

We had just spent eighteen days together and felt so strongly, and I knew I had to get it off my chest.

That's when I took to blogging, because when I used to be a kid and I used to be sad, my father used to pat my back and tell me, 'write it out’.

And I realized, more than a lover, I have a story and a muse.

To be continued...

Bolpur Blues : Episode 11

Winter Dream
to ... Her

"One winter, we'll take a train, a little rose-colored car
Upholstered blue.
We'll be so comfortable. A nest
Of wild kisses awaits in every cushioned corner.
You'll close your eyes to shadows
Grimacing through windows
This belligerent nocturnal realm, inhabited
By black demons and black wolves.
Then you'll feel a tickle on your cheek ...
A little kiss like a crazed spider
Fleeing down your neck ...
Bending your head backwards, you'll say: "Get it!"
-And we'll take our time finding the beast
-While it roams ..."

-Rimbaud


The quirk had escorted me to my rented home in Santiniketan some fifteen minutes back, and I was just standing in my bare essentials, midday through changing my clothes, when he called me to read to me this poem.

I had no chance of telling him that in no poetic dimension is this a good time to listen to a poem, because he heard my 'Hello’ and got going.

Anyway, things have always been like this with the quirk, clearly wrong timed and too sweet to pause him in between to make him conscious of this crisis.

I let him complete his poem;

“Do you understand I was in the middle of something when you called?”

“You have to read Rimbaud. His poems are too beautiful to be true.” He was too excited again.

“I will. Ofcourse. But I'd like some clothes on me when I read him”, I laughed.

“Poems have no rules that they are to be read only wearing clothes”

“God you're impossible”, I was still laughing.

“You know what is the success of a poem?”

“What?” I could not wait for him to come up with another of his genius answers.

“It must make you feel naked, your feelings bare infront of it, emotions outbursting, and it must hit you where it needs the most healing.”

I didn't say anything. I had nothing so say. I could not come up with something in reply to that. I smiled across the phone and I guess he understood.

He stayed silent for some seconds and said good night.

For the rest of the night, I read that poem over and over again and fell asleep.


I woke up from a knock on my door at around 11 in the morning.
For someone like me for whom no morning exists, it was little too early, that too in winter.

I opened the door and there was the quirk standing, with ice cream and lunch.

He smiled sheepishly, “Thought you might be hungry.”

“Ice cream in winter?” I exclaimed.

“I read about that last night. Actually it is quite healthy to have ice cream in winter. Don't worry I'll have it with you. In that case, if something happens, we both will get sick.”

“I don't like sharing my ice cream” I rubbed my eyes.

The quirk smiled,  kissed my forehead and came inside.

I spent the rest of the afternoon lying, with my head on his belly, reading Rimbaud and listening to old Hindi songs with both of us singing along.

To be continued...

Bolpur Blues: Episode 10

Shivering under the blanket, and with some Indie-pop band playing in the background, we were sipping cheap whiskey that one of our friends managed to arrange.

We were pretty broke by that time of the month, and had to rely on beg, borrow, steal ways to quench our thirst for alcohol and get our bodies warmed up in that cold.

It had been just a week away since the whole scene of love coming out announced happened, and we were pretty much a couple by then.

Doing the usual things that lovers are expected to do stereotypically- holding hands, eating out together, roaming around the bushes at night talking of stars, exchanging music, having our inside jokes, having our ‘our times’ behind closed doors; the absolute kind that people and friends get irritated with.

But I was in the other side of the river then, and on my side, all the grass was damn bright green.

Anyway coming back to cheap whiskey.

You get know absolutely after five pegs whether a Malayali is really into you or not, because precisely all the Malayalis I’ve drank with, couldn’t remember their name after the fifth peg.

The quirk was no exception. Can’t drink but will drink. So there we were, in a winter that was some 5 degrees down in the mercury level and we were number of pegs down; that amount that makes you forget to count.

So there we were, out on the streets of Bolpur, at around 3 at night, to get our spines screwed and chilled in the winter. Drunk mind usually does not care of consequences or reasons, and we don’t know why me and the quirk lingered around a house, that would look to normal eyes as plainly haunted.

Devil’s hour, and me and the quirk climbed the dividing wall of the house and jumped inside its fence with the sole motive to inspect the interiors of the house, because our drunk minds had decided to buy that house jointly.

Don’t question me of reasons here.

Anyway we went inside, it was pitch dark, and by that time we had forgotten where we were.

After the time, when our eyes have got seasoned with the darkness and were seeing things, out of focus though, we saw a well, went beside and sat on its platform.

The quirk pointed to me stars and my mouth gaped as I was inhaling the chill and the sky.

And there, right there, below the stars, illegally inside a haunted house porch, with so much alcohol in the system that we could hardly see each other, we made love.

To be continued...

Bolpur Blues: Episode 9

‘How do you say lover in Bengali?’ he was onto Google.

I woke up, still trying to process what he had just said.

Messed up hair, eyes squinting from the lean ray of sunlight that somehow managed his way inside through a hole in the window and was falling right on my face.

‘How do you say what?’

‘Lover. Teach me the pronunciation.’ He was smiling, puffed up eyes and a book in one hand.

‘What is that book?’ I felt it to be so bizarre that he had an English book in his one hand, and the other hand was on Google to learn Bengali.

‘In praise of love.’ He held the book close to his chest and said, ‘It’s my favorite Philosophy book; it’s yours from now.’

It took me sometime to process the whole thing- I mean I was just up from sleep, still was staring at him from my left eye and struggling to open the right, and there he was asking me the pronunciation of Bengali words, and also giving away his favorite book; all at the same time.

He read my confused stare, ‘Sorry I get little weird when I’m in love.’

‘You are in love? What?’ I was still considering how someone could say something so huge, so easily.

‘You aren’t?’ His hand with the book was still outstretched towards me.

‘I don’t know. It’s too early, isn’t it?’ I realized a moment later, I had said the stupidest thing possible.

‘You must be hungry. I’ll make you an omlette?’ He smiled and jumped to another topic immediately.

And I realized, love can wait till hunger gets done.

For the next one hour, he made me a breakfast, while I read the first few pages of his favorite book.

‘How did I end up here last night?’ I was gorging on bread and eggs.

‘You came, we kissed. And it was very cold so we had rum, and you fell asleep here. You look beautiful when you sleep.’ He was smoothing the butter on the bread.

‘You were watching me when I was sleeping? Dude, that’s creepy!’ I laughed and he joined in.

For the rest of the afternoon, we digested more breakfast as laziness didn’t let us lift our butts and go for lunch, and I read more pages of that book while he listened to music, often whistling my favorite song to get a glance from me off the book, a shared smile, and getting back to what we were doing.

The evening dropped down, with the typical winter chill.

And I remember walking back home, with the biggest smile stretching my lips to the point my muscles allow.

To be continued...

Bolpur Blues: Episode 8

The night closed on us; the quirk, me, Cohen and two pair of lips occasionally and unreasonably touching at times.

None of us knew why we had the sudden urge to just stare at each other and kiss, but the evening returning birds’ chirps, the dusk coming down, and the trees swinging in the rhythm of the music, had some effect; It had to have some effect.

‘Can I trust you with staying here?’ I cleared my throat, lighting a cigarette.

‘Let’s do the bond thing that people does when they are not sure?’ He smiled, still holding my left hand softly within his.

I broke the embrace and found two little paper pieces. I wrote in both of them how he has to stay back, or else he owes me compensation for all the kisses we had for the day.

He signed in both and kept the piece of paper inside his wallet, in the same counter where he kept his parent’s picture.

‘This paper is as important as them now, I guess.’ He smiled while staring at his parents, and putting the paper inside the space he made in his wallet.

I didn’t find words to give a reply to that; all I knew we have started off something that would go on for long.

Apparently we ran out of smokes, and I needed a tea.

So we got out, for both.

The nearby market is something that has always made me feel good. People, lights; no matter how less they were, were still better than the cruel dark lanes on just the opposite side. And perhaps the best part of it was, it was halogen-lit mostly; the yellow hue is always good after a long day of songs and kisses.

Warmth and winter are sinfully done seductive juxtapositions.

We had a long dark lane to cover, and midway I couldn’t feel my hands already.

No matter how beautiful the winter in Santiniketan is, it is also a little cruel to people at night; when you don’t have the warmth of the sun to back you up.

He had a rugged coat on his body, and I was rubbing my hands to help with the warmth thing.

He stared at the sky, and pointed to me the plethora of stars. I pointed to him the North Star bright in the star-crowded sky, and suddenly, he took my right hand and put it inside his coat’s pocket.

‘That will help your hands stay warm, at least till you get the tea in your system.’ He said, still looking at the stars and walking.

I stared at him, my mind blank, while he stared up at nature’s dotted graphiti.

I asked him, irrelevant, wrongly placed. ’What are we?’

He took some time. ‘Lovers?’

Neither of us spoke for a while.

To be continued...

Bolpur Blues: Episode 7

Episode 6.

The next day, I dumped classes.

Well, when you don’t get enough breakfast, the lunch is flushable, and dinner, well you better wash your hands with it rather getting it down your system, you mostly wake up weak, tired and cranky. I had headaches half of the days to up my cranky-meter.

So, most of the first classes I’d laugh a little about, turn my alarm back to off and sleep through in my uncomfortable bad pillows.

Anyway coming back to my awaken part of the day, we got a little weed again, and suddenly me and my Malayalam partner were very ecstatic about getting our butts high in the same place where we got screwed up the earlier time.

Also, it was winter, the sun shone sweet, the shades seemed lucrative, and the weed looked green.

So, there were we, four of us, three Malayalis, including the quirk and another guy my beat partner dragged with him, and me.

We went there and sat in the shade of a wall that was injected with red concrete flowers; that, with the shade, also gave us a beautiful view.

I was making us joints, while the quirk came around and sat beside.

“You like Cohen?” he asked fidgeting with his phone.

“I’m just a station on your way. I know I’m not your lover.” I sang, copying the typical Cohen baritone.

“Amazing! I love that man.” Suddenly he was gleaming.

“Well, you got some real competition here.” I winked.

After that, some hours from then, we kept listening to Cohen songs back to back, while the rest of the two Malayalis got high on weed, and me and the quirk on the lyrics in baritone.

We were walking back to our houses, when the quirk said, “There’s some whiskey in my house. You want to come over?”

I couldn’t resist the offer of having whiskey and listening to music with someone whose taste matched unabashedly with mine.

Winter, afternoon, whiskey, music; there’s not much you can do to not say a yes!

I went, and well, we didn’t drink.

We just sat on the ground, with nothing under our butts expect the cold floor, in the front porch, and kept listening to songs; his choice and my choice, alternately.

And he suddenly said, “Actually I want to kiss you. Can I?”

“Well, when did you drink the whiskey? I didn’t see.” Litmus test. All girls do it.

“Not the whiskey speaking. I’m sober and genuinely asking. Can I?”

And with all that amber-lit sky, the perfect afternoon, the music, it had some effect on me.

“Yes, but on a condition.” I said.

“And what’s that?”

“Will you stay here with me for the next one year?”

“Done. Now may I?”

What happened after that is what I remember by the best kiss I’ve had with anyone till date.

So much so, that the panting after the kiss left us on the floor and with the most comforting laugh ever!

“I really like you.” He was in sweats.

“That came fast.” I wasn’t expecting that.

“You knew it, all this time, I know.”

I laughed instead of a reply, and we kissed again.

To be continued…