কাজল

Wrote this a couple of months back, but never posted it on the blog... dont know why...

আমার কাজল পড়তে ভালো লাগে
আবছা রাতে যেমন
চাঁদ উঁকি দিয়ে যায়
আমার ঘর এর আঁধার কোণে ,
ঠিক তেমনি করে ভালো লাগে
ঝাপসা চোখের কালি ’র মাঝে
কাজল পরে সাজতে ;
কোন কনে সে আলো আনে
কোথায় তাড়ায় ছায়া
বোঝা বড়ই কঠিন !
তাই অত শত ভুলে থেকে ,
কাজল পরি ক'দি ন .

দেখলে আমায় এভাবে ,
বলে সবাই —
“কি রে রাতে ঘুম হয়নি বুঝি ?”
আমি ভাবি ....কি বোকা
নাকি সত্যি লাগে বিশ্রী ?
আলতো হেসে পাশ কাটিয়ে
কাজের ঘরে বসি
এধার ওধার ফাঁকা পেলে
বন্ধ করে কাজের পাহাড়
চুপ-টি করে দাড়াই এসে
দরজা ’র এই ধারে
আয়না দেখে হেসে বলি ...

“কেউ না জানুক , তুমি তো জানো,
তাহলে তুমি -ই বলো দেখি ?”
বোকা কাঁচ চেয়েই থাকে !
“কাজল পরা ছেড়ে দিলে হবে ভালো তবে ?”
আবার চুপ !!
“যাও ...কেউ দেখবেনা তোমায় আর ... আড়ি”
এবার -ও চুপ|
আমি প্রশ্ন করে ক্লান্ত ...
আঙ্গুল দিয়ে মুছে বলি - “এবার খুশি ?”

হাথের দিকে চেয়ে দেখি
...মুছলাম যে ..কোথায় গেল কালি ?!

এতদিন

বিদেশে এসেছি হয়নি যে মাস কুড়ি
না সাহেব, না দেশীদের দলে পড়ি
বছর কুড়ি হলে পর জোর গলে
যায় বলা - 'আমি আছি এতদিন ধরে....'
আমি পেরোইনি তার দশ ভাগের এক ভাগও
লোকে শুনলে হেসে গাল দিয়ে যাবে;
'এতদিন' তাই যোগ্য হয়নি ভাবার!
ঘরে থাকি আমি, আর জল ভরা শিশি
মাছ দুটো তাতে ঘুরপাক খেয়ে খুশি
দুজন তারাও, তরঙ্গ তুলে ফেরে -
সাঁঝ সকালে ঐটুকু পৃথিবীতে।
একা আমি, তবু একাকী ভাবতে নারাজ
কাজ শেষে, ঘরে ফিরে একা করি খেলা
কথার পিঠে কথা কাটবার সুখ -
একাই ভোগী, ভাগীদার নেই মেলা।
কাগজে কলমে মাখামাখি করে তাই
করি খেলা রাত ভোর কত ভাবনায়,
কখনো হাসি কখনো বা কান্নার
সুর মিশিয়ে গাঁথি কথা পরপর -
মানে যদি খুঁজে পেয়ে যাই, সে আশায়।

Lovelorn

Her tears had no note of loath
For the man who played the game
In love was she and was not he?
Whose eyes mirrored her laughter!
The heart she prized of all she owned
Now disdained her for the trust,
Oh why would he not rather kill her she begged
Tormented with lovelorn fate.

Time would heal it all they said
And time does never falter,
The gesture so genuine of smile
She made in greeting whoever loved her
Hidden beneath still lay a heart
Or, once a heart—
Now broken.
The thousand shreds
Some lost, some left
In the mosaic of her existence.

On a misty cloudy morning

It didn’t start as one of those days like I missed u. It was rather a plain and simple one where I knew I had to wake up, brush my teeth, grab a cup of Darjeeling tea, put on my t-shirt n jeans n leave. That was precisely what I did, and then when I walked out of my apartment to the bus stop, I realised it was quite cold and damp and drizzling. That... made me come back and grab a jacket....and an umbrella. And, I wondered how you were. I don’t know why I thought that, but well, I thought that. Looked at my dead watch.....and wondered how nice it felt to be woken at 7 in the morning....

Okay I missed the bus.

The air was damp and cold and it was drizzling. Like the water droplets were everywhere. No, I mean yes, they were droplets, not drops. And they kept flying in all directions at every gust. As I walked to my lab from the bus terminus at school, I guess I was still thinking of you. Or may be anything else that I can’t remember right now.... and didn’t notice the trees in front. So the moment I lifted my face up (I usually walk staring at my shoes) all of a sudden this huge crowd of trees beside the Red river loomed up from behind the mist. It was such a wonderful sight. Like, the very familiar grove of maple, pine and spruce were standing in front of me all new. Draped around this spray of water which blended beautifully into the morning mist, the huge conifers looked just breathtaking! I wanted to show this to you, but I didn’t have my camera, also, I doubt if I would be able to capture it the way it was.... Let’s assume I could, but then I wouldn’t be able to carry the fragrance of the mist and the damp soil and the wilderness along with the jpeg file! The desire was so great that I almost had to work my heads off today to keep the thoughts at bay. It was 6 and awfully dark, so I decided to come back home, I had worked more than many other days.....evading my silly and “hopelessly romantic” thoughts. But that’s being very 'me'.

Aelite thekey on..e..k durey



Sitting miles away from my heart, the very essence of being “alive” seems to get lost somewhere in the waves of the Atlantic when the dhaak beats emerge from a hi-fi BOSE audio system!! Those are the times when I hear a young little girl yelling inside this mature mind – Ma, Shashthii toh shuru hoye gyalo, dhaaki r or chhele koi? Of course before my mom could answer, the dhaaki would appear from nowhere at the dusk of Shashthi and that...would mark Bodhon.

Pujo was that time of the year when I could wear 2 sets of new clothes every day for five days, and stay out late as long as it took me to get totally tired. Baba chhara pujo vaabtei partam na... For, it was Baba, who would quietly slip in the house keys into my pocket when I said : Ekkhuni bari aschhi, aaj raat jagbona, promise. My innately skilled hands would later stealthily open the door at five in the morning, walk silently as a cat— afraid to wake Ma up– and pretend to be fast asleep, only to be awoken at seven for Pushpanjali!!
Yes, no matter how hectic, those were the best days of my life.

Durga Pujo meant rehearsals, rehearsals, and more rehearsals. It was a challenge to be in the songs, the dances, the dramas, and at times to be at side stage and hang on to the ropes of the curtain. I remember rising to fame amidst kakus and kakimas with a nazrulgeeti when I was only nine years. The childish me, beamed every time someone said: Pompom...kii shundor gaan korli!

Busy setting experiments for my research inside the 16-degree-maintained laboratory here in Winnipeg, I have completely lost track of the date and time. Dates are interpreted in my brain as—weekdays, weekends, and deadlines. Whereas, time has significance as in: to cook or not to cook?? So I very confidently said a “No” when some guy in my lab enquired whether we (Indians) had any upcoming festival or not, since he was fasting for Ramadan with Eid due on the 20th. Living in a digital world as I do, with orkut, facebook and chat boxes as companions, I noticed a series of pictures on somebody’s album the same night. It was entitled: “Kumortuli” It suddenly struck me then..... !!! Eii... Pujo!!


Afterall, no one calls me Pompom here. It’s always Shalini (more of a Sha-leee-ni). Durga Pujo..... Pompom(di)..... Aelite...flat 232 ..... all of them together, make me. Individually, they make little sense!

Still in love...

Your thoughts like the air are hard to evade....
They linger on my mind as though it was yesterday!
So fresh that I can see the mist of your breath
Against the December sky;
So vivid is your kiss that my lips still gleam—
With a smile that it borrowed from yours;
My hair enwrapped with the cologne
It stole from your chest...
What bliss it was to stand inches away from you
Yearning to be in those arms—and yet hiding the desire!
My toes curl even now as the north wind play
With the few unruly locks—
And as my very existence taut like the strings of a harp
Pine to be played on, and brought back to tune....
I miss you.
So much....that it hurts!

Back to the Sun

Shreds....pieces....broken.... blocks... unrecognized sets of thought. That’s how my mind is like. Nothing stays. Nothing leaves. I am now the epitome of confusion. I know not what makes the chicken tandoori tastier when my friend cooks it with the same ingredients as I do. I also don’t quite understand which makes my eyes look brighter- a black kohl or a brown. Confusion prevails when I think of settling with a lesser qualification and a higher peace of mind. It still stands erect when I debate between going home in 4 months or pushing it away till the next summers. In a line, I need to give my mind a break....from the potpourri of endless thoughts of to be and not to be’s. Yet I thought... I would try to give some kind of a shape to the feelings that well up from time to time. And, every time I try talking about it to someone, I either end up talking rubbish, or, the person in front of me lacks that eccentric element in his intellect to grasp my emotions. So, the best option was to write. Oops! ...type.
There was a time when I loved to bask in the sun. Around the last week of December, a fortnight left till the school would re-open, I’d bask in the sun....till my skin would go darker and my hair greyer. Sometimes Ma would be kind and offer a hot oil hair massage while I still sat there. Those days would count as bonuses. Also, those days would have a palette satisfying element for; my mother would be in a mellowed mood. We would sit at the table like starved falcons; since the aroma which had been escaping her pots and pans since morning would efficiently kill the civilised beings within us. I loved my mom’s cooking then. Now, I miss it. I have, however, succeeded in making myself a very bad photocopy of it. You know- the kind where the ink ends and you have to shake the cartridge to get a copy somehow....that kind.
When I stand at the bus stop on a summer day here in Winnipeg, the sun sometimes burns so bright that I can feel the tickling of its invisible rays on the bare skin of my arms and legs. The sunscreens are sometimes effective, but almost every day I come home to a darker version of my previous self. I keep wanting to sit idly on the grasses and basking in the sun as I did back home. But here, in spite of having a frenzied population going crazy about ‘sunbathing’, the sun lacks its sweetness which evokes the desire of ‘basking in the sun’. It’s more of a phenomenon devoid of the ‘s’- baking!! The same sun....in an alien land....behaves so alien-ly!! So now, I stand alone.....not basking....but rather, with my back to the sun!

It rains at night too!

I never thought about the rains...
To arrive at work with wet shoes ughh... messy!
Feels worse still!

Yet at the dead end of the night
The same drops look different.....strangely beautiful

The multicoloured streaks of gasoline spilled on water
Making its way to a nearby pot-hole
Reflections of the blinking lights of an Irish food-joint...
Followed by a total darkness...
A mystic numbness of the eyes locked away...
Where the lashes refuse to bat....
And the iris dilate to a phase of “seeing” and not “watching”
Colors....brighter than a painter’s palette!

I spread apart the five fingers of each hand on the glass pane
The outline glows brightly.....and fades a shade less
Till it goes black.... rhythmically to an unheard beat
A distant sound of celtic music making its way
Everytime the door opens.....
Silence again.... and the drops dripping past my pane
I wish to feel them run past the skin of my hand....
But the invisible irony makes a jest of my senses
Mocked, I wish again.....
Of enwrapping my fingers with an unknown hand
And then feel the rain dripping past the entwined digits

A chime of the watch brings me back to my room....
Far away.....far far away......
The raindrops did.... look so beautiful at night!

I loved the melody my mom hummed when she worked
The clamour of the utensils.....
The whistle of the pressure cooker eating away
Her half broken voice.....
Yet the humming ... broken.... faded words from a Rabindrasangeet

There’s a bitter sweetness about missing out on something
I realised this when I came away thus far
The nude beaches hardly delivered the sex appeal
That the fragmented vision of a sari-clad waistline did...
Especially so, if the sari could be red!
I have a similar feeling when I hear glass bangles jingling
I would know not the hand.... I wouldn’t remember the complexion
But the rhythm would linger in my mind....
Chhun......a long pause....chhun-chhun-chhun
It would seem like a much known stroke....
I love to imagine the bangles would be yellow,
And the eyes of the wearer would curl up and close
When she would find me admiring her quietly outside her kitchen window
The sense of stealing her attention without revealing my purpose
The feeling of letting a woman know how much you admire her
Without the use of words
And read her reply in her smile..... :)

If there is ever a name you hate more than you choose to, does it come out of a feeling of intense anger in your heart? But then why would someone hate a name? It sounds more logical to hate the person. But would you want to kiss the person whose name you hate? Would anybody want to kiss the person whose name they hate? Ahh... what a silly question to ask eh? But what do you call a woman who so intensely loves a man that she cannot tolerate to hear his name. Would you say her love is incomplete or would you suggest she remains to mature in her thoughts, or better still would you suggest she better go to a psychiatrist?

The subject of the talk has to be decided. Is it the name that she hates? Or is it the nature of her feeling? Well, let us first deal with the nature of her feeling. How does she love this man? She in fact does not know for sure whether at all what she feels is love. She once heard someone say he was keen on photography. After two years she saw an orchard of barren apple trees one fine morning after a freezing rain in January, the trees were all white – as though they were dipped like the sausages in white coloured ketchup and made to stand again. They looked like the silver trees of heaven. Ahh....she thought I wish you were here. Thankfully nobody around her knew who she was thinking about. And she felt his whispers in her ear: “Do you really think I’m not here?” Flustered, she suspiciously glanced on either side, pulled her hood and walked away.

.....He once kissed her. It was a kiss probably. Probably? She thought for days about it, and then came to her conclusion: yes, it was a kiss for 5 seconds. She had turned to say goodbye and they hugged, she had looked up and felt his lips on hers ...1...2...3..4..5. And that was it. Even a mosquito lingered longer than this to meet his nutritional needs. She felt herself floating in air. There were these intermittent phases of despair when she thought did he even realise that they had kissed? But those thoughts didn’t matter. As long as she had him by her side, nothing mattered. And the best part in this case was he didn’t even know he was by her side! What else could she ask for?

Oh we were talking of a name she hated and was trying to decide about the nature of her feeling.....well, it doesn’t really matter, does it? There are so many other things to talk about.

To be sad......peacefully

It's rather strange how man remains to be the social animal who takes pleasure in forgetting things that bring him great sorrow, and end up smiling all the more when his heart flutters against his chest begging him to shed a drop of tear. The more he runs away from his sadness, the more he excels in his performance to keep the show on. A kick in the gut reminds him of his losses and he desparately gulps down liquor to burn it out. A memory must be a fond one. So has somebody said.... some crappy stuff like fond memories bring the light the other days around me.... But it needn't be so.... memories are most often a sad one. I do not overlook the contributions of optimism in my life, but all half glasses inevitably share the obviousness of being half empty. Must it be so?

Ahh... a man as I started saying is allowed this. Not a woman. She is not allowed to be sad. If she is, she is most reassuringly surrounded by a masculine arm promising her to guard her against all of this. In fact, the more sad a lady is, more appealing is her nature to a man. She attains a different level of affection in the eye of a man. He enjoys a secret adrenaline rush of being her knight-at-arms. Her Don Quixote!

Strange huh? ....but that's how it usually is. Yes, usually.