Stages of Life

Stage I (HOPE)

A seedling once thrown carelessly

After thousands of years

Sprouted into a beautiful plant

Where pleasant flowers of my dreams

Bloomed like I'd yearned for so long.

Stage II (STRUGGLE)

The yacht of life flowing random

With uneven tides of thunderstorm

The dark night engulfing

My destination with its fiery convolutions

Finally reaching the shores of void.

Stage III (EXISTENCE)

The heat of battlefield

After a long war

Still breathes the cool air of peace

Besieged long before

With hopes alive though.

Stage IV (END)

Life is very short

Whispered that old tree standing

Aimlessly for thousands of years

One day, it fell down

Really! Life's too short

Like my unfurnished dreams.

(These pieces of poetries have already been published independently. I just compiled them to make a meaningful single.)

The Guide: Revisited

I was wandering through the narrow lanes of Bagbazar (and dirty obviously) when a sadhu gesticulating his weird demeanours came towards me. I was afraid to confront his eyes because I was told that they rob you of all your senses but fortunately, the sadhu went passed by me and it was when I sighed a breath of relief. A little far, I was encirlced by a queer feeling of how these sadhus had been in their childhood and adolescent days. Were they sadhus by birth or some hefty circumstances triggered this spiritual transformation? And yes, I remembered the railway guide, Raju.

I found the answer in the review of TIME which read, “The Guide floats as gently as a lily pad on the surface of Indian life and yet suggests the depth beneath. It manages to describe a saint who is neither born nor made but simply happens, almost like the weather.” It was only last weekend while removing some old papers I happened to get sight of the 39^th reprint of my long lost reading ‘The Guide’. I don’t pretty remember the number of times I have read this book but I can definitely tell that I have watched it only once and that also many years before during my stay in India when the only channel of the time, Doordarshan-I had aired it in its weekly dose of movies. At that time, I didn’t know that this 1965 blockbuster was based on R.K. Narayan’s award-winning novel. I got the original script only ten years after, when I happened to find a road-side second hand(more correctly, third hand) book vendor put it under a stack of old magazines on the streets of New Road.

                ‘The Guide’ received the Sahitya Academy Award in 1961 and four years later, ‘Guide’ bagged seven filmfare awards. The critically acclaimed novel with its excellence is a magnum opus in the world of literature and Guide, a movie of its kind, is a masterpiece of the Indian film industry. The introduction published in the 1994 reprint explains the greatness of this brilliant work of art. The railway Raju is a disarmingly corrupt tourist guide who lives by his wits and falls in love with a beautiful dancer. More by chance than skill, he seduces her away from her husband, a lonely writer who is obsessed with local rock-carvings, and transforms her into a celebrity courted by wealthy and influential dignitaries wherever she performs. Raju makes and loses a fortune, finds himself in jail, and – through a series of hilarious, ironic circumstances – becomes one of India’s great holy men. The history of his success and unexpected fame has all the excitement of a suspense story, told with Narayan’s customary tolerance and delightful humour. At the same time, it raises many profound and disturbing questions. These contrasting textures of human nature have been brilliantly portrayed in the visual rendition of the novel and the justice given by Dev Anand to R.K. Narayan’s character has been complemented by the soothing melody of S.D. Burman which still leaves us sing along the libretto of Shailendra.

Even after 50 years of its first publication, ‘The Guide’ is still new in its form and The New York Times Book Review then thus had some verses of appreciation in store for this opus- “The latest of R.K. Narayan’s pensive comedies is a brilliant accomplishment… In the first pages of The Guide, we recognize the charity, the unstartled comprehension, and we settle down to a gracious but knowledgeable evening.”

In the year 1985…

I have been grumbling in my writings for quite some time now and it seems to have made me look cynical towards life, towards what I write. Changing the course of letters this time, I hope I won’t sound judgmental. Time and again, the best chapters of bygone days, nostalgia has attacked me hauling me to a period of time when all the hoof marks of memory appear vague. Even the chronicles of those periods have been flushed out of my head but this is one of that can never be over and done, this is my story of first love. Having passed the entry exam, I had just been admitted to Montessori One in Holy Cross School. It was back in 1985 and I was just three years old. Her name was Sushmita Mukherjee, a beautiful Bengali girl and I was her proud class mate. I don’t remember so much of other things, but the break time was when our love would take its deeper roots. It was the time when she always used to share her tiffin with me and many times, my parents had caught her feeding me with her hand. Our love bloomed in a childish innocence; her love, true like a dream and my falling for her as natural as a breeze. It was more of an acquaintance in the clear which my family making fun of me later had translated as love. Love it was indeed and intimacy but of our purity, of our simplicity, and of our juvenile affinity. I don’t have any idea of where and what she must be doing now. After completing our Montessori, she left for some other part of India and I joined St. Thomas. We have never seen or talked to each other since. Of an age that nothing can be recalled, I still remember her chubby face smiling at me and her handful of morsel moving towards me. Years have gone by and life has put us to different edges; many things have changed and many forgotten but still when I have to think of her, a blur image clearly shines on my mind and I hear Tim McGraw singing-

“I worked so hard for that first kiss

And a heart don’t forget something like that

Like an old photograph

Time can make a feeling fade

But the memory of a first love

Never fades away.”

A Writer's Perturbation

After years of scribbling in a scrap and throwing it in the trash, I don’t know why I have still been writing.  The trash can is full of my aggravation, my failure; even the recycle bin of my conscience cannot salvage my humility. But I still write with a hope that one day I won’t have any chip on my shoulder. My perception of writing is against those factors that babble insignificant stories of the social order. My norm of writing has an association with the progression and pragmatism of society and life. My impression of writing is a demarcation between the upper crust and the subjugated class.  My reflection of writing has a message, a story to tell of the everyday life. These must perhaps be the reasons why my writing breathes its life only in a litter. My pen never belched out the ink of treachery, my brush never stroke the contours of deception, the verdict of my principles never allowed me to haggle for pleasures and my writing always followed the esteem of my being. I was never taught to write for penny, power or praise unless it is compassionate to the sentiments of the laypeople. I won’t trade it against a meagre lump of comfort no matter how long these contaminated feelings transport my letters to a stack of garbage.