…sometime it’s just sand, shells and sunset

When the silver sky fades in to darkness
Through the orange twilight,
It is solace for those tired souls who sweated,
Through the hard day fighting for survival.
“It‘s a beauteous evening calm and free”,
For poets in their poetic spree.
For some it is just another end of day
and for some it‘s a wait for a new beginning.
It’s cooling down.  It’s tranquillity.
It’s just that wonderful moment,
To be captured on the celluloid.
It’s just that time to light up the streets.
It’s just the time to fly back home,
The time for serene retreat.
It’s the time to feel one
When the mighty blazing sun above sinks into the earth,
Cool, calm, composed in the lovely red… SUNSET.
It means a whole lot,
For different times a different thought.
Just like at times it means nothing but
Happiness within Sand, Shells and Sunset.

My World Through My Window

My World Through My Window

My world through my window –
I see a mouthful of sky,
I see the lighted azure color
When somewhere around, the sun rise.
My sky turns dark,
When the sun goes down.
And at times,
Handful of stars shines around,
They say the moon shines behind
Where the river flows,
I see the mighty mountain stands out
With the moonlit glow.
They say my world misses the solitude
Of the full moon night,
And the calm serenity
Of the sun rise.
I witness the tiny stars in my night sky,
The melody fades the isolation
When they twinkle high.
I see my sky tinted with the red dawn,
I know the tranquil sun will soon show its brawn.
I see a part of the monsoon,
With the clattering of raindrops.
They say my world miss,
the rainbow the other side,
I see the coalesced greens
Fresh and beaming after the showers
Breathing life into the world for endless hours
I see little out of the lot,
I miss the dazzle of the impressive naught.
My world just a part of the colossal world,
I live in it unaware of the changing twirls.

दोस्ती और यादें

तू जहाँ , जहाँ तेरी सोच

में वही , वही मुझे खोंज

मिल जाऊं में तो दो बातें करना,

नहीं मिलू तो मेरी यादों को ना छोड़ना |

 

दो पल ज़िंदेगी की बिताए थे

जो हम मिलके साथ,

वोही पल बन गया आज

तन्हाइयों का याद |

 

जो तनहाईयाँ है तुम्हारी

वहीँ है मेरा सूनापन,

चल रहे है हम जिस राह पे अब

वहीँ कहीं पीछे पढ़ा है बचपन |

 

वहीँ कही अभी भी

खेल रहे है हम होली,

लाल काला हरा पीला

मुंह पे बनाए रंगोली |

 

छूट गया है रंग

और वो दोस्ती का त्योहार,

वो कभी ना ख़तम होने वाली मस्ती

वो ढेर सारा प्यार |

 

यारों की टोली टूटी धीरे धीरे

रिश्ते गये बिखरते समय के साथ

दोस्त गये बिछड़ते धीरे धीरे

रह गया तो सिर्फ़ उन पलों का याद |

 

उन्ही यादों की गलियों में

अब्भी तू है और तेरा सोच

में भी वहीँ कहीं हूँ छुपी

वहीँ मुझे खोंज …

 

[My first Hindi write up. Just a little try. Dedicating this to one of my most loving friend Jogi. Wrote this while one of our FaceBook chats. And with this I even want to wish Tinni, Nondo, Jeet, Ritu for the Best HOLI(s) which we had celebrated together … ]

Happy Independence Day

Flag hoisting…  Patriotic Songs… Tiranga Colors… Laddus… and wholesome of patriotic feelings…

Past were the days when 15^th August meant all these to me.

From past few years it’s nothing more than a holiday with a little more sleep. No snoozing Alarm. And I wake up to my freedom when the sleep and the dreams are complete. So was this year too. A warm Lazy day which started late and then a good bath and lunch and fidgeting with the TV remote for some time…

Too much of Laziness when started boring me, I took few steps to go and stand in the balcony. Tropical Afternoon.  Empty, silent lane. When I spotted three little school girls wearing white saris and their hair tied in plaits with saffron ribbons just passed by chattering happiness. I traced them moving my head left to right till they were out of sight. I kept looking at nothing as such I suppose when I remembered  the status my brother posted two days back in face book –

Do NOT grow up, it’s a trap!!!

A glance of Independent India I clicked while I was in my balcony passing time

Sweet Dream

Twilight at the seashore … 

The distinct horizon seemed so peaceful…so red… I felt beside me it was him. I was hurt. I was scared. To look and see if it was true what I felt. I was scared to be wrong… I continued staring towards the horizon… the calm colors of the twilight stayed on soothing my eyes…

Will it be dark soon? Or a bright morning will shine? Incomprehensible it was.

I wished the moment could stop and it did, leaving me with the feeling of eternity with him.

In the silence of the soothing sounds of the waves washing on the shore I could distinctly feel him breath. How I adored the warmth of his breathe in the air. How I realized the sweetest aroma of life is LIFE. I was lost in the musical fragrance of the moment when I trembled at the fact of his touch when he held me around with his arms. I was scared no more. All the fear of him not to be, faded away when I looked at him smiling. The smile I missed for perpetuity.

Nothing has changed. Neither the smile nor him. He keeps his promise as I always said he should not change for I never wanted to see him change. I wanted him to be just as he was handsome forever.  He says I changed. I have grown a little older than last time and that’s what he wanted to see, me changing with time. He loves the single grey hair of mine playing peek-a-boo among the waves of black youth. He says he loves to see me getting a little older every day. Living life. And only that could make him smile forever. 

With the smile I closed my eyes to unwind my exhausted self from the search of lost. I felt the warm tears of joy to get back which I thought was once lost forever.  I knew he was holding me and will never let go of me.

Will it be dark soon? Or a bright morning will shine? Nothing bothered me. I felt life.

I opened my eyes only to search him forever. I want to see him grow old. I want him to live.

And I don’t want Sweet dreams.

when the sky smiled blue …

The morning alarm of my mobile kept snoozing for a long time. But it didn’t feel like morning because my room was still dark. A feeling of technical malfunctioning of my mobile device I thought. Or else the silk window curtains of my room never betray me from feeling the first sun rays of the day to wake me up for a new instance of a continued routine. Yet it kept snoozing confidently with the coarse hateful alarm tone.

I turned to check the wall clock and it supported the snoozing cell phone of mine. Got myself up till the window and looked out. Yes a Morning it was – A Morning without the Sunrays. The dark clouds covered the sky and heavy shower blocking the view of the other end … standing near the window I could feel the splash of the rain drops too on my hands holding the window grill.

It’s no monsoon now. Autumn it is, yet such an unnatural morning for the season. Felt like breaking the routine. The office hours passed and I never got myself geared up for another working day. Sat reading a half read murder mystery to finish. An hour or two later, the rain stopped. The shower had shaded of all the dull greys from the sky. It was bright autumn day once again. The sky from my little window looked smiling with blue, the sun rays painting the white clouds golden at parts.

All I could do to feel one with the vista was to frame them along with every hours passing by with my camera clicks…

  

and when it goes on …

What is it going on you think, when one gets hooked to fm on her mobile set for every time she finds herself with no company?
While walking down a lane alone making a continuous effort of ignoring herself from the stray dogs’ disturbance, while travelling home to office in a cab alone she is tuned to retro hits on air by the modulated frequency.
What do you think is wrong or right when one downloads new games on her mobile handset and plays while she is on bed before going to sleep? And keeps playing, beating her own record every time making a new highest score, almost forgetting the unstoppable clock that is ticking on to welcome another day.
And what is she up to when even after the sleepless night she goes to office and keeps smiling and striking notes of small formal conversations of ‘hello how do you do?’ types to every possible known or unknown person and dedicates herself to work more and more, in between taking long sighing breaks to look outside the glass panes and see vehicles and human beings in their miniature forms from a height of the office building where she is placed to work from.
And at certain times scanning through the contacts’ list of the cell phone calls up some old friend, who was for long out of touch, just to say a ‘Hi what’s up with life’ and stuffs for no particular reason.
Every late evening diving into the pool for a tranquil swim under the dark sky sometimes studded with stars when not swathed by the silk clouds.
And in the little time left making sure to finish reading all the PG Wodehouse novels  and feeling one with Bertman Wooster and holding pride for Jeeve’s solutions for every impossibly complicated situation that Woosterand his fellows landed up!!!
Weekends are generally pricey while she goes around the city looking for rare shops selling rare bits and pieces to spend her money on. And then feeling good with her new possessions as if some part of aloneness is filled but

… With boredom sky high
And loneliness higher still
Emptiness is in the heart
A void that no one can fill …

TajPur Redirected

Mission Henry’s island … a plan that went on for months and when finalized with all hands availability; unavailable were four walls with a roof … a haven where we little creatures planned to take shelter when taking pleasure in our long waited summer chill. With all our efforts going fruitless to find us a shelter in the supposedly isolated place we had to give up on the mission unwillingly, yet we couldn’t collect all our unwillingness to squander the all heads available opportunity. And to beat the heat together we redirected ourselves to TAJPUR. This new name surfaced up and with a little Google-ing on the internet and Saikat’s conscientious efforts all was set and settled.So in one of the cool early Saturday morning of the midsummer all of us joined hands in the proposed railway station from where the train mentioned in our journey tickets was supposed to whistle start. Keeping the stories of arrival for each one of us untold in this particular account, we were finally moving on the track.

Destination: Dhigha.

Yes!!! That is place from where we were to take a four wheeler either moved by petrol or pulled by bull to unwind ourselves in Tajpur. Earth never ceased rotating so didn’t the coolness ceased to soothe us. Sun was shining with all his solar power bright, just upright on top of our heads, directing us to run for the most minuscule of shades we found after we got down from the train reaching the tracked destination. The smokers among us Tina and Rishi gave in for a smoke cooling themselves with the tobacco fumes, the remaining nonsmokers and the procrastinator of us Tona and I stood there breathing hot air quietly accompanied with our respective thoughts when Saikat went for  the search of four wheeler.

Sometime later we all were together again squeezing each other, contentedly seated in the ambassador moving towards our next 24 hours hideout. On the way, when we metropolitan living things saw specks of green and stretches of bare muddy lands and rice fields and fish ponds with fishes wriggling in them, we couldn’t keep our rooted subconscious emotion of being one with the nature restrained within us. And Tagore’s words with his tune came out with our voices creating melody, or not that’s not on us to decide though, what matters in the end of the day is what we intended for. And all we intended was sing songs of countryside…

আজ ধানের ক্ষেতে রৌদ্রছায়ায় লুকোচুরি খেলা রে ভাই, লুকোচুরি খেলা।
নীল আকাশে কে ভাসালে সাদা মেঘের ভেলা রে ভাই– লুকোচুরি খেলা॥
আজ ভ্রমর ভোলে মধু খেতে– উড়ে বেড়ায় আলোয় মেতে;
আজ কিসের তরে নদীর চরে চখা-চখীর মেলা॥
ওরে যাব না আজ ঘরে রে ভাই, যাব না আজ ঘরে।
ওরে, আকাশ ভেঙে বাহিরকে আজ নেব রে লুট ক’রে॥
যেন জোয়ার-জলে ফেনার রাশি বাতাসে আজ ছুটছে হাসি,
আজ বিনা কাজে বাজিয়ে বাঁশি কাটবে সকল বেলা॥

And with the magic of melody we reached Tajpur.

Tajpur: A newly cleaned up beach for tourist with not much of local habitants, just four to five resorts for the vacationers. No electricity from the government yet. The hotels have their own diesel generator to light up the rooms and the only place with AC rooms was our resort ‘Saagar Kinare’.

 Saagar Kinare Dil Yeh Pukare…

Melody again when we sighted the name as we got down the cab taking out our luggage consisting of a handful of SLR cameras and tripods to serve the novices for their novel pastime, a bag pack for each one of us and other than these Tona’s brief suitcase which had set of clothes more or less for every hour she planned to spent in the beach resort.
The resort stands beside a jagged muddy lane. On the other side of the lane runs a stretch of casuarinas forest from where we could hear the waves of the sea crashing on the shore… Peeping through the trees we could even sight glimpses of the beach but chained down by the intense heat none of us could run straight away dashing with the waves for a salty bath, instead we poor little being rushed into our den longing for a cool shower. All freshened up followed by food for the starving selves and then gathered together to sit on the bed, waiting for the noon to get over, chit chatting and planning for our steps out when the sun goes down. Mean while we had also used our long lazy noon to inquire from the hotel boy about what all are see-able around the place and the thing that topped the little list was Mohana (where the river meets the sea).

4 O’clock was the time decided. Tona by now has already changed twice. Now it was time for Tona to change once more, after all, this is that big event where we planned to go out of our den for the first time since we were in Tajpur. Tina and Rishi were birds who hardly came to our vicinity, they were high flying on leaves. Saikat and I hanging the cameras around our neck, mounting the tripods on the shoulder were ready to march forward. The rest mentally prepared to give us moral support along with them selves to keep patience with our shooting sessions. They indeed proved themselves when on the way Saikat happened to sight a wild half dried flower among the roadside bushes and took out his tripod stretching it, fitting to the ground firmly, mounting his camera and focusing on the object of interest. On the other hand I almost sat down on the opposite side of the muddy lane and crawled slowly towards a sloping land where I sighted cows and goats grazing in merry mood. Tona stood by us with all their lack of complaint waiting for us to be done with and move forward. After all we had to reach Mohana before sunset.When Saikat was done with his flower and me with my domesticated animals we decided to exchange frames and now I was framing the flower and he was looking for the cows and goats. The rest stood with their consistent tolerance. Done with all permutations and combinations we moved forward. Left! Right! Left! Right! Left!

Click! Click! Click! Click! Click! Click!

Yes that’s what happened when we sighted the river sea summit. The ‘photographers us’ making the non photographers pose, sometimes keeping the shooting device at self mode clicking all of us together … we clicked on. From sand to broken shells, river side, beach cactus what ever we sighted we (mind it!!! Its exclusively Saikat and myself in this Photographers context) kept clicking.

In one of such busy clicking momnet Tona called for us to show us something he saw and with her expressions we could make out that it was a must see thing probably. We joined her to find out what it was. And they were red crabs. Thousands of them; Coming along with the tranquil waves washing the sea shore leaving them behind. They crawled on the entire beach digging in to the sand making home. Moment after such a vista what I spotted was Saikat hurrying with his devices running towards the crab club. I felt the urgency too to be quick and made a similar move spontaneously, only to realize that the more I run towards the red shelled beach habitants the more I see them disappearing underground sometimes peeping up with the white eyes to see if the dangers were still lingering around. So there was the need for a change in our attitude. And now we didn’t chase them behind but cunningly tiptoed till certain vicinity trying our best not to give them any feeling of danger.

Click!      Click!       Click!

Long shot, mid shot, close shot… the Red Crabs modeling running, crawling, all around till it was dark. And now when I say dark I mean literal dark with no lights around. The Moon and the stars did shine in the clear enough sky but it was not enough for us to recognize each other with silent looks. Either we needed to speak out our presence or the sense of touch was essential. The situation made me doubt on all the beautiful things poets see in moon lit night when the sky is embellished with twinkling stars … [sigh] After all

 the poet is a liar who always speaks the truth

Clutching tight  our cell phones’ light and mocking each other to be the bravest among the rest we had to cross across the crabby beach and the forest line to reach back safe on the muddy lane where stands our resort welcoming us for a treat of ‘spicy pakodas’ snacks for the evening.
Snacks followed by a dinner and then loads of talks Politics to ‘PNPC’, revolution to reformation, Hitler to Vivekananda till we all fell asleep. Setting our alarms to hit on the sunrise we slept except the birds on the grass… who were left to wander around and follow their wishes.

Morning after we all unanimously kept our alarm snoozing till Sun rose quiet a height we rushed to get ready. Tona dug out the number sixth dress of her since past 24 hours… and then it was time for some more clicks on the morning beach, when I realized that I was left without any voice. The cool drinks, the chilled rooms, and the hot sun collectively dragged out my voice from me … making sign languages the only possible way to converse. And making everyone around me enter into the world of nonstop dumb charades, which made Tona feel miserable because of its illogical incomprehensibleness and with time she was all irritated and annoyed and was ready to gulp down gallons of liquor if only it was obtainable at that time. The rest though had fun guessing my mind but neither Tona’s irritation nor other’s fun could do me any good. I eventually became mute.

The heat didn’t leave much of energy in the rest too and our train back to Kolkata (that’s the place we belong) was still quiet late. We were done with the beach and beach people and beach photography. We longed to be at home and for the least early ‘possible reach’ we were ready to take any reroute. But how?

And after an hour of running around in the burning sun finally an air conditioned Scorpio (name of a four wheeler not the biting Bichhoo) was managed which demanded a decent amount (I mean the driver demanded not the vehicle) and would drop us in the city… With no other double thoughts in mind, within another half an hour we were all seated in the cool car for the next 200 km drive and reached safe.

Moral of the Story : Tajpur is a cool place for weekend chill but it is cooler if it’s winter.

good afternoon

Through my window a summer noon waited for a cool twilight. In the deserted lanes and the silence of the heat, when the thirsty chirpers with their tired wings found the little concrete shade on my window grill with the ecstasy of those greens in mud pots* they waited too for the sun to calm down  resting themselves.

Framing their feelings along with time I never realized how my isolation faded into the joyful company. A forlorn soul when blessed with glimpses of tweeting love and those sweet little fights over silly little nothings, the quiet rage of heated sun seems to be passing off peacefully welcoming the graceful breeze of the dusk.

*(part of the urban fashion of having plants growing in pots placed at the window panes of the apartments clustered with all affordable luxuries –supposed to be a symbol of loving nature /saving mother earth)