Rainy Day

My face is against the glass and it feels cold and wet. I can feel the rain on my face. The persistent drizzle has bathed the city roads reflecting the city on its shores in varied hues. Sitting inside the bus and reading Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the wet cold does interfere in my journey with Marlowe but it is not totally out of place. Marlowe is not alone in his tattered boat, as he steers it close to the bank where the water is deep. Deep inside him he knows he is all alone, yet he feels a million eyes following him. The eyes lay hidden behind the surrounding vegetation which has swallowed the sun leaving Marlowe with only the memories of light. He is yet to meet Kurtz. He is yet to reach the heart of darkness. I close the book and look outside. The bus is sparsely populated and towards the rear I am all alone. I wish fervently that I remain so. In this late afternoon, I do not seek company. I thought of calling my wife, just to say hello. She must be sleeping now, I thought, and let it go. There is no music inside the bus, sometimes there is. Hindi pop, the latest film music etc. Often they start off really loud and you have to tell them to lower it down. Today, the rain brings with it its own music silently. I lean back on my seat and close my eyes. I just want to think of nothing. I love my wife, a woman who entered my life silently from nowhere, just like I did in hers. The slithering chill makes me long for winter again, reminds me of the warmth I find with her. It’s nice, all of a sudden, in the middle of the day to return home. It’s nice to have a home to go back to.
The drizzle shows no sign of abating. It is determined to remain in my senses without being overpowering. It feels like London, though I have never been there. Through the opposite window I see the outer face of the walls that enclose the book fair. It seems to be taking shape finally, getting hold of itself. I open my bag to take out my earphones. If the radio is playing something worthwhile, I needed to hear it. The bus has stopped at the red light. As I waited for the smudged red to change to green, I remembered that long ago, I hated such a day. Today, I am unable to remember the precise reason, but I know the hate is gone. The sun is sleeping somewhere, taking a break, and the bus makes its way slowly. The outside world does not reach me in their intensity and impatience. I feel like I am absent and unknown. The soft rain does sometimes make a day beautiful or so I seem to think. Maybe, I think right.

IPL 4: Dada Out in the Cold

Kolkata Knight Rider's CEO Venky Mysore, when asked about Sourav Ganguly's chances of making it to the team for IPL4 responded by saying, "Sourav is somebody I have always admired and have immense respect for. I still don't call him by his first name; it is always Mr. Ganguly. He has been a great ambassador for the country; in which ever shape or form, he has been phenomenal".
I never saw the expression on Venky's face when he commented on Sourav's chances as the quote above is courtesy The Telegraph, but I can well imagine the relief with which he had uttered those patronizing lines. What bothers me more is that Sourav Ganguly has allowed the likes of Venky to utter such gibberish by not being able to see the inevitable. Did Sourav not see the inevitable or chose not to in his characteristic non-chalance is anybody's guess. IPL4 bidding for the players is over and dada finds himself stranded with no takers and a price tag of $400,000. Not even once did his name come up for discussion and a greatness that once was lay in tatters in full public view.
Sourav will of course pick himself up and move on and it is tragic that inspite of all his sense of timing he just refused to see the punch homing in. It is also mere speculation whether other teams with Aussie coaches played a proactive part in keeping him out of the game by projecting him as a pain in the arse.

Looking at Sourav now, sometimes we lesser mortals have the feeling that we are witnessing a farce played out against the giant canvas of Indian cricket and dada is turning out to be the joker, albeit a tragic one!
Arguably one of India's finest captains,a great batsman and a good man, he deserved better for himself. What does he think?

Neda Agha Soultan

The video started to roll on my PC monitor showing the legs of someone being dragged along the street accompanied by other legs. Slowly the pair of legs dragged along lay down on the ground covered with blood and then I could discern the face of a woman with her eyes open wide and unable to speak. There was no eloquence in her eyes and I don’t remember them to be beautiful either. What remained with clarity were a shocked and vacant look in her eyes. Two people were bent over her, one cradling her head and the other trying to stop the blood oozing out of the bullet wound on her chest. She was dying. A moment later blood gushed out of her mouth down to her ears and all this time the shouting of the people around her stunned by the strange accident and probably watching their friend die in front of their eyes, kept her company. She was walking along the street, speaking into her mobile phone and was probably passing through a pro-democracy gathering when shots rang out and people around her found her shot. She has now become the martyred face of Iran’s pro-democracy movement without even her own permission. Human beings never had a choice on their own destiny, helping to make life strangely beautiful and cruel at the same time.

Kolkata Book Fair 2008: A Fiasco

Kolkata Book Fair finally ran out of a home this year. For the past few years, the book fair at the Maidan, was consistently opposed by environmentalists because of the pollution it generated. The Maidan is the city’s last remaining greenery and it needs to be maintained for the health of the city. This is a very simple truth, but it seems to elude the educated lot of the city. Ignoring the rising the need for a cleaner and a better Kolkata, the city’s intellectuals along with the Publisher’s Guild, have opted for a strategy based on emotional blackmailing, state sympathy and a love for books, ignoring the quality of life to be affected completely. Books illuminate life, and reading broadens it. Kolkata Book Fair with its illustrious past failed to recognize this very truth. The Publisher’s Guild, organizers of the annual fair, remained obsessed with the idea of holding a book fair without addressing an important issue like environment. Yes, there are other environment issues pending for action, but it does not provide the Guild with an excuse to aggravate the situation. The annual book fair is Kolkata’s premier cultural event. Such an event calls for proper planning, foresight and organization completely absent in the Guild’s agenda. The fair is an event which brings readers, booksellers and publishers together and is a unique event in India, and this event cannot be hosted without regard for human, environmental and social concerns which are addressed by the books themselves in various forms. For years, the Guild has always depended on the state for resolution of its problems, be it political, financial or organizational. The Guild does not declare its financial statements in the public domain and yet it wants the state and the people of the city to resolve incongruities and fallacies that have been the creation of the Guild itself. It is time, that as a responsible body which contributes to the cultural growth of the city, the Guild releases its annual financial statements for the booksellers, publishers and the general public who have every right to know how their money is being spent. The Guild needs to answer for the loss it incurred every year for the past few years when it failed to address the basic problem of hosting a fair leading to last minute re-arrangements, wasted media promos and absolute chaos.

The present problem of homelessness has been brewing for quite sometime culminating in the fair being held at the adjoining grounds of the Salt Lake stadium in 2007. Displaying an acute lack of common sense, the Guild assumed that it was a temporary arrangement. This year once again it landed at the door of an equally callous state government with a request that the Maidan be made available to host the fair. Under the able supervision of an increasingly senile Chief Minister and an incompetent Mayor, Park Circus ground was arranged as a last resort. The Calcutta High Court in response to a valid petition threw out the book fair to avoid the spectre of a traffic and pollution nightmare in a place already engulfed in chaos. The Mayor, Chief Minister and many well known intellectuals of this city who have tried to highlight this eviction as injustice and a violation of freedom of speech etc have held their thinking prisoners to senility, arrogance and stupidity in equal proportions. Books change lives for the better, and the book fair cannot affect lives for the worst. This might sound to some like empty rhetoric but I believe it is an important one. The Kolkata Book Fair needs a permanent home and the sooner it is found the better it will be. The Guild needs to understand that its survival depends on the survival of the book fair, and with each passing day their limitations and incompetence will become an unassailable obstacle.

Readers, as they grow in number, which I hope they will, with increased and better commuting possibilities will reach the book fair. Like everybody in Kolkata, I look forward to an enlightening, sumptuous and enthralling book fair in its own home. Don’t worry about me; I shall be there when it happens.

A Photograph

I am five years old and my small round face is lit up by two round open eyes full of wonder. A picture book lies open in my hand. My little sister is beside me and she is laughing wildly at someone or something. Her small mouth is wide open and she looks unimaginably happy. She is small and sweet and an adorable love. Her wet hair is parted equally on both sides of her small head. For a child her age, she has deep black hair gracing her shoulders. I trace my fingers across the photograph taken many years ago when we were small, and I have no recollection of my love for her. Now, in this very moment, I find the urge to reach out to her, pick her up in my arms and kiss her soft cheeks. I want to tell her, that I will love and protect her forever. There is so much love now, that this moment seems unbearable and my heart might just overflow. My sister will be here tomorrow with my beautiful niece and I will never be able to tell them how much I love them, but I hope they will know, they will understand.

The photographs are old and the albums in which they lie are older and worn out. When I told my wife that we need to shift them to a newer one, she warned me, that a new home might not be a better one. Looking through the photographs, I feel that the smile of my sister is so much now. It is all now. She is now. Who lies to me? Is it the photograph or time or is it just my love for her? Not a love that has come now, out of nowhere, but the love that lay hidden inside me beyond my understanding.

The Lucky Reader

I want to be a good reader. In my life so far, I have tried many times to be good at many things and everytime I have failed.I think I did not try enough.Reading came to me by chance. It was an accident of which I recollect nothing. What has remained with me as an aftermath, has been a gift. In school, I was a talkative and inattentive person and my teachers inspite of their best efforts could not change me.My mother tried various remedies like singing classes, art classes, which she thought might help me to settle down. I did not. I was a good singer and I liked singing and I was reasonably good at art. I believe, that I could have been really good at these had I tried harder or if I had put in the desired hard work. But I wasn't inspired enough to do it.

During my schooldays I read intermittently and my favourite was the Hardy Boys series. I liked the physical feeling and the mental excitement of being with an exciting book curled up in bed. I read mostly on weekends and, if the book was exciting enough then everyday till I reached the end. I usually read after lunch and before falling asleep at night. There was a special feeling about reading after lunch. As the torrid noon eased into a lazy afternoon, the drifting day and its accompanying silence gave me a sense of contentment, a power of concentration. I got ready to immerse myserlf in the turbulence of words and the mystery of the story. This is how I can describe it now. Then I lacked the felicity. I just had the feeling.

Amidst the chaos of school life , I did pour over newspapers selectively reading interesting and literary pieces. Literary reviews, analysis etc. I would also collect photographs of authors, thinkers, poets which at times accompanied the pieces I read. I familiarised myself with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Pablo Neruda, long before I read their works.I wasn't reading enough but I was soaking it all in, but had no idea what to do with it. I did not inherit a library nor did I have a reader around me. My mother tried in her own little way but I guess I required a bit more than that. Maybe, I was not lonely enough and could amuse myself with strange games. maybe, an access to a library would have led to an amusement through reading. Maybe. I was on my own and strangely no friend of mine ever discussed with me the virtue of reading. Later in life, I passionately discussed books with friends whom I knew in my formative years, yet in those years books were the last thing on my mind.

The reading bug bit me in the last year of college and then on reading and acquiring good books became a habit.A costly one. Books are never a priority in one's life. Especially books that serve no practical purpose. Reading A Chronicle of a Death Foretold and loving every moment of it is not going to affect one's professional career. Reading is not a priority.Reading instills in me a sense of power,a sense of awe and humility. The love of books has brought new and wonderful
friends.I only despair at the fact that it did not happen earlier.The love of books has led me to many new loves and I have come to realize that it is an invigorating and illuminating disease.

Reading is a tough love. It is time consuming and it is without material gains. But then love is always unreasonable and mysterious. Many of my friends who had been readers before and have let their love die away, always warn me that one day this love of mine too will die away. They have failed to understand that reading is a form of revelation for me, it gives me a
sense of wonder, it makes me a better human being (I think). It provides me with unadultered entertainment and relaxation.

Every book I read whets my appetite for another one and sets me off on another journey. A brother of mine once asked me why do I read all these weird books? Well, I read precisely to find out why.So keep reading and let each reading add something to your life, and remember that any excuse for not reading, is driven by stupidity,lethargy and arrogance.

On Writing

It was the fear of numbers that drove me to find solace in words. In retrospect, I could say, I shunned one fear to embrace another. Words are no less difficult, no less obscure. They remain stubborn, unyielding despite the many hours I spent writing and rewriting them. My arm is rigid from the pain of having to get them down on paper, but they remain silent and stare at me with a hint of a smile, as if they carried a secret within them. They enjoy my bewilderment, my confusion and my frustration. They keep telling me, that it is I who has to make them yield to me their secret. I drop my pen (sometimes I even use a pencil) from my cramped fingers and I want to give it all up. I want to forget this endeavour as just another playful indulgence and get on to more pressing matters. But I come back and I keep trying, and with each new manoeuvre I hope to overcome the word.
It is evening now. Where I stay, we have a few open green areas (playgrounds) but I cannot see them from where I sit. It would be beautiful to watch the descending dusk over a wide expanse of open land, but it is just a thought. Getting down the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, from my bookshelf, I notice that it has started to rust in places. The man who made it had told me it will not. Forget it. I start to look up a few words I need. I need them to describe a sudden pause in a long conversation or a soft touch on the skin or an unknowing glance or perhaps a fleeting sensation of a sinking heart. Suddenly, I feel the pressure of words on me, surrounding me on all sides and turbulence comes to my mind. It’s not the word I want. Now, everything subsides. It is quiet. The surrounding silence is too polite and it seems to mock me. The words have escaped me. The writing too has stopped.

I no longer keep count of the days when I am afflicted by this madness, but long for it to happen everyday. Everyday will be like a routine. Like breathing in and breathing out. Like life, it will just happen. The daily affliction is the only cure. I gather my sheets of paper and set them aside. I keep them in front of my eyes to remind myself of another failed attempt. I am less critical now and like a young child learning to walk, I am more forgiving. I am full of hope. Tomorrow, again, will be another effort, another similar journey. It might yield nothing other than just affording me another peep into my soul.