Silhouette

She walked down Mandeville Gardens every evening... Her floral printed skirt kissed by gentle summer wind...Her legs covered in stockings that almost resembled her skincolor... She carried a dark red umbrella, with its brown oval end clasped in her palms....her black shoes though quite old fashioned had the pointed heels, that made a quaint sound on the tarred stretch of the posh locality...

I saw her always from a distance..Never managed to see her face...Her back was quite alluring..Her fully formed hips, her stockings, shoulder length hair that kissed her loosely fitted shirt, formed a silhouette on my mind...I follwed her often, though keeping it as a cherished secret...Her red umbrella, and floral printed skirt, gently combed hair all added to the silhouette... I never had the courage to speak to her... I was never confident...My middle class Bong sensibilities overpowered me, everytime I wanted to approach her...

Today I had made up my mind... I stood on the other side of the road for the entire afternoon, just to have a glimpse of her face...

"She listen'd with a flitting blush...with downcast eyes and modest grace...and she forgave me, that I gazed too fondly on her face!"

I was in love...I knew her by now almost...How she walked...how she gently moved the curls that kissed her face... how she wiped the trail of sweat from her face...i just wanted to lift the veil...
just like the anxious lover on a first date, I almost stood there for hours....expecting her long awaited arrival...expecting the sound of her heels...her floral skirt and a girly fragrance that filled in the air each time she walked by...

There was a commotion near the main road...May be some sort of accident...I rushed to the spot...A trail of blood on the black asphalt...over enthusiatic and curious crowd...clueless cops...

A speeding vehicle had crushed another life... The face could not be identified... I peeped in... The red umbrella was lying on the side of the pavement... The pointed heels on the other side...It was almost twilight... I returned home carrying the silhouette on my mind and a secret in my heart...

Loneliness overpowers me sometimes...Though I desperately stick on to my facade of "oh me so happy" "oh me so fun" "me the extrovert" but still sometimes my lonely self surfaces over all facades, all the fake smiles, all the "I don't like it but I need to smile" moments...I lose the battle...I give in sometimes...Its embarrassing...
The world around me is not used to my lonely and quiet self...thanks to my pukish pretentions...they keep on nagging me with the question ..."Ki holo, aj eto chupchap keno? Mon kharap korche?" I answer with renewed vigour..."Arey na na...emni"...I can never define this "emni" in my life...I don the mask again...and again I'm a part of the world around...
Nights are all the more empty...a vast expanse of dark sky stretches beyond my iron grilled windows...I have figured out the world outside is equally lonely and cold ...just like me...

The night unfolds and my eyelids get heavy with age old slumber...I'm tired...it finally gives me the long awaited respite from my facade...shields me from all the pretentions...I hide like a helpless child inside its unfathomable darkness...but then yet another day begins...

La Lettre

She finally wrote the letter..the letter was a vivid detail of her emotions...bare naked emotions..She read it all over again..How would he react? Is it okay to let him know....the questions overbrimmed her helpless mind...she was desperate to let him know of her feelings....she badly wanted to speak to him once...let him know how she still feels about him...is it too late? whats the point? the eternal negative pangs of reality stopped her again...

She badly wanted to tell him tonight... tell him how important he was in her life...wanted to tell him that how his absence affected her... how she wanted to get back...how she just wanted a world of their own...

"Maa..." Her 13 year old son shouted from the other room...18 years or was it more? the letter was stacked in one of the dusty useless envelopes in the attic, written ages back...Mrinalini discovered it this afternoon , while cleaning the mess...A teardrop gently kissed her cheek after all these years...She crumpled the letter inside her soft palms...she tore it to pieces...the waft of autmn wind scattered her emotions over the concrete skyline... The white pieces of paper abandoned in the whirlwind of time kissed the tarred stretch beneath...words ruthlessly crushed under speeding vehicles... or was it speeding Time?

"Maa",Mrinalini wiped off the last trail of tear drop that kissed her dusky skin...Its too late...Its really too late...

Influenced, Inspired plagiarism

I was going through a blog last night...author was a friend of mine...shared a lot of precious moments with her years back...As I read her posts...I saw how she had skillfully lifted from my posts ....She not only lifted them...edited them...added her own words and posted it on her blog...My posts my creations but with a little here n there modifications...

It was not surprising...as she had done this before as well...but then I will not really get into this...I take it as a compliment friend...You can go ahead and lift the rest of the stuff...well of course I'm no Shakespeare and blogs are not copyrighted...

Somebody once said , "Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research. "...

Well hope your inspired research continues...And moreover "influence is used as a nice word for plagiarism"

So happy lifting...though I really love my posts, my phrases, my words...but then at least I'm happy my posts are worth lifting...a big thanks goes out to you sweetheart!

This post goes out to all the mindless readers who hardly read/think/ use their brains before they comment:

You may be the smart ass in town...do not have to prove it on my blOG...SPARE MY BLOG from your cheeky idiotic comments...

There are days when you just feel like talking...saying the right words...but then there are also days when you dont have a listener.... I have somehow started smsing myself...

Its kind of strange, when you start speaking to yourself...somedays...when life suffocates you, you feel like taking a break, when theres a lump inside and you cant speak about it, when you are happy, when theres nothing, yet something to talk about...talk to yourself... it doesnt help...but it doesnt harm either...fast life, facades, faces, words, time...things are moving so fast, all I can hold on to is... Me... may be

Of Airports, God and Airhoshtesh

Well someone once said: Just got back from a pleasure trip, I took my mother-in-law to the airport"

Airports and railway stations somehow are a place where the phrase 'endless wait' really holds true...Either its waiting for the long planned departure or long expected arrival...Thanks to the flight schedules these days, endless wait is getting a bit more stretched...

I somehow love going to the airports...I have lost count of the number of times I went to the airport, though my flight journeys are quite less in number...

I went to the airport early this morning... Busy, sleepy yet snazzy as usual... A few frantic luggage stuffed travelers, Air India airhostess in neatly done horribly printed silk sarees, sexy Kingfisher 'bitches', yellow sleek Jet crew and so on... but wait till you visit the airport washrooms... They are almost similar to any local train station 'toilets'...Dim lights, smelly, and watery floors...watever be the source of that flood!

I was going through that endless wait phase in the lounge. As I looked around, a kid was moving his both hands aimlessly in the air ...the jesture was followed by the adults sitting beside him... the playful act was one of the ways to keep the mosquitoes and flies away!

But this post is not about 'toilets', 'flies' and other third world theatrics... Someone once said "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players"-

I spotted a number of Hare Krishna hippies today...Rucksacked, Krishna clad, sporting shaved heads, the tuft of hair on the back of their head, fair skinned legs wrapped in silk white dhotis... Each chanting Krishna prayers oblivious to the world around though making it more obvious for the people around...God knows what Krishna had in store for them which Jesus did not!

Well I'm not that religiously inclined to get into a debate. I spotted a middle aged woman... Trendy tracks, almost 6 feet, well built female in her 50s...Busy stretching half the time...Her tees boldly declared her love for the Himalayas as she was busy reading a book on the British Raj days in India...

Airports are not only about international tourists.... Our good old Dum Dum airport has the local flavor too...The doting son, bidding farewell to the proud North Calcutta parents, leaving for - Mumbai! The frantic newly married jeans clad wife, vermillion smeared forehead, overdose of Shakha Paula, Mangalsutra, bidding farewell to the husband, going somewhere I don't know... The husband ensures everything is in place, before the newly born oops newly married starts to fly... He even explains her how to fasten the seat belts... May be the airlines industry would soon get a few volunteers... Parents providing breakfast to their sons , husbands checking the documents and the sisters and brothers doing the last minute security check- "Nailcutter ta bag ey rekhechish to?"

I can't miss out the group that inspired me to pen down the post... They were like me , had come to 'see-off' someone...May be the daughter in law/ daughter... She was wearing stretch jeans and a well fitted shirt that made her plump figure all the more prominent....red shoes... red vermillion that ended in a triangular shape on her glowing forehead ( typically inspired by the daily soaps)... Her relatives ogled at the pancaked air hostess who passed by... pointing at them one of the yellow tanter saree female told the old man in the group: "Oi dekho...era shob air hoshtesh"--- The man stared silently at the picture perfect fashion school dropout divas ... "O erai"--- Seemed like the most important information he was waiting for, a minute later he answered..."Bhaloi banieche" --- May be he was talking about the airport, whatever...

I left at around 530 am... The sun had already kissed the Calcutta skyline... The city was waking up to a Monday morning... I need to get back to office... A new month begins... On a positive note... and I was coming back with my mother in law...so the pleasure trip quote was not much applicable for me though! ;)

P.S: My comments are solely based on my travel expereinces to DumDum airport...Haven't done much airport hopping in this short life!