Dear Reader,

If you are here by some misguided desire of being treated to a slice of an unknown life then I’m very sorry to say, the show is over… in these five years that I have blogged I have treated this place with varying degree of sincerity… when I started off (and when I was evidently younger) I treated this as a scared place where unspoken truths can come into the forefront, where resolutions can be achieved through a particularly clever turn of phrase… Soon enough, insincerity and self-consciousness crept in and I found myself writing keeping certain people in mind… I can’t say I’m ashamed of that but I wish I could change that fact about my blog…
Today, as I sit here dipping a rusk biscuit in my tea, I wonder why should I do this at all… I’m the sort who believes that there should be a proper distance kept between strangers, you and me…
How can I strip my soul bare in front those who have never even shared a rusk with me? How can I tell you about my little indiscretions in the metro? why should i tell u that I was jumping moments yesterday in a munakka-induced hazed? my little truths needn't be subjected to your scrutiny anymore....

So here it is, without any awkward drama and self-important delay,

Goodbye,
Me…

Fly on the wall

If I were asked to recount my school years, I will draw blanks… Of course I remember the school building (a white imposition over the serpentine lanes of Sealdah) … at least I think I do, but the problem that is they are all enmeshed in a hopeless little blob of a memory… so much so that I cant distinguish one from the other … the classrooms, classmates, teachers, tiffin breaks… the classroom must have been like any other … rows of window on the left, opening to the chaos of Sealdah’s Kolay market; in front, the weathered, white, blackboard, on which the teacher’s weary hand probably scribbled words they wanted to emphasise, their fingers covered in chalk dust… the teacher’s desk and chair on a foot-high platform… the walls must have been oilpainted in an antiseptic shade of green, devoid of any tenderness and comfort… there must have been a forgotten cupboard at a corner, full of books from previous years and coloured chalks which were never used (except for teachers’ day when the class captain would carefully calligraph a special message for the teachers)… my class must have been a microcosm of the world, populated with boys and girls waiting to grow up to be (hopefully) responsible, successful, future citizens … maybe they are important people now and I hear about them every now and then, maybe I don’t… the thing is, as much as I want to, I can’t distinguish any particular aspect of their personalities… Was Soumya‘s apparent calmness an act to hide his insecurities or was he really the Buddha, as everyone referred him to? Was Paromita, the pretty, shy girl with bangs, any different from other pretty girls with bangs in my class?

Oily, plastic wrapped tiffin boxes… scab-covered knees… teachers with vulgar, lipstick-smudged lips (I know I shouldn’t caricaturise them, but what to do?) … strains of a forgotten school song… early morning traffic on the Sealdah flyover… that’s all I remember of my schooldays… that’s all I want to forget…

my amethyst eyes
licks my livery soul
aaah you stood by my bedside yesterday night emmanuel
like peace comes to dying gods
Your dreams breathed on my nightmares
Like chocolatey city moonlight

Straight Talk

It’s the dead zone of an unnaturally hot afternoon. The crowd at the Coffee House has trickled to the die-hard regulars, and the hustle and bustle of College Street seems to be a distant dream thanks to the whir of the rickety old fans which drown all outside noise. The second floor of the seat of Bengali intelligentsia is however, astir with activity.
Pink banners, shouting AIDS and HIV are being tied next to a window, which seem to have attracted the attention of the local sparrows. They busy themselves pecking at the s rope that holds the banner straight. You worry about the fate of the rope but your eyes wander to the other corner of the room, where a young couple, oblivious to the activity around them, is sharing sweet nothings over a cup of tea and fish kabiraji.
Into all this walks a vision in black. Dripping sequins and faux pearls, Shyamolee (name changed on request) immediately grabs the attention of the boyfriend. The girlfriend fumes profanities to the cup, as Shyamolee settles herself in a table next to the couple.
The staring boyfriend doesn’t seem to affect Shyamolee, neither does the fuming girlfriend make any difference to her. She is used to such uncomfortable situations. “As a transsexual, one can’t help being subjected to stares. I realise that I affect these people, but I have learned not to make such a hue and cry about it,” she says before busying herself with her friends.
Shaymolee and her friends are at the Indian Coffee House to attend an adda on Sexuality rights and HIV, an endeavour which is quite unlike the usual Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) gatherings in the town. “The whole idea behind holding this adda in Coffee house was to reach out to people beyond our community. Issues such as sexuality rights is not limited to our community, these issues affect every human being,” says Anish Roy Chowdhury, a city-based LGBT activist.
Soon, other tables in the room are filled up with eager faces. A mike is installed in the middle of the room, a request for “the kind attention of the patrons” is made and the “adda session” starts. What follows is a potent discussion on sexuality and human rights. The microphone changes many hands as Article 377 of the Indian Penal code (which criminalises same sex behaviour) is trashed, pertinent points made and at times, irrelevant questions raised. After about an hour and a half, Roy Chowdhury is a happy man. “The evening is a success,” he declares.
In the middle of all these, however, the couple have made an unceremonious exit.

25 Random things about me…

1) I lie… beautiful, random lies which make complete sense in my mind…
2) I try and wear nice undies whenever I leave home because I worry I will be run over or something and when they perform post-mortem on me I will not look nice (which is also the reason why I brush my teeth right before I leave home)…
3) I recently had bhang for the first time and proved to be a text-book drunk…
4) Whenever I want to sound interesting, I quote from The Hours or from the Home at the end of the World…
5) At times, when I’m particularly pissed with my mother of sister I take random stuff of theirs and flush them down the toilet…
6) I’m not as bad a person as the above five confessions make me out to be…
7) I have never physically assaulted anyone in my 27 years of existence…
8) I have recently developed a passionate dislike for peanuts (which used to be my favourite nut till about a week ago)…
9) I share a very troubled relationship with food…we are like Jimmy and Alison in Look Back in Anger…
10) I envy everybody everything…
11) Though I claim otherwise, nothing really icks me out…
12) I’m notoriously bad with money… not only am I a spendthrift I physically treat them badly too… notes are a crumpled mess in my wallet…
13) Animals unsettle me which is why I’ve never had a pet…
14) If I were a reader I would have moved on by now…
15) I’m mortally scared of being called boring and fat…
16) I like people who like me… as in I can make myself fall for somebody who likes me…
17) Cinema is the presiding philosophy of my life…
18) I don’t read newspapers…
19) I pretend to read books in cafés because that’s how I want to be perceived as-an attractive young man reading a book in a café…
20) I’ve hardly any memories of my school and college days… in get-togethers I just nod and play along with other people’s stories…
21) I’ve promised that I will buy myself a guitar by the end of this year…
22) I discovered scrabble a month ago and was hooked for exactly a day…
23) I fantasise about food every few minutes…
24) I’m a selfish shopper…so much so that I even grudge my three year old nephew his shopping hour with me…
25) I miss home even when I’m there…

I wont tag anyone coz I don’t believe in tagging…

Abbas …


At my favourite Barista outlet, Abbas probably stands in front of the cappuccino machine, polishing its gleaming stainless-steel spouts and admiring the chrome finish of the Italian machine… Only the Italian can have such sense of lines and texture, only Italians have such sense of aesthetics, he is probably saying to himself…
For despite our presumptions about his background, Abbas is probably an erudite young man with a passion for Italian coffee machines. A passion so intense that he decided to take up a job in a coffee shop to be near one…
As I make myself comfortable in my corner chair and smile a smile of acknowledgement, he is probably saying to himself – “There is that guy again, I wonder what his story is…”
He is probably also considering the change in mid-afternoon coffee regulars… The old lady with the orange bag who always ordered a frappe and a lemon chicken sandwich, and slowly consumed it in her corner with the concentration of a surgeon at work, had disappeared…It’s almost as if she were a characters written out of a story… She had gone and taken her world with her… her small world of orange handbag and jingling change… The café now has a new regular, a beefy middle-aged man, who appeared out of blue one fine day, as if to replace the old lady…
Our little thoughtless gestures probably irks, disappoints or irritate him…
Maybe he flinches every time I pick up the copy of The Telegraph, because he is a Statesman loyal…
As we sat there and made casual conversations, there were probably countless moments when he could have interrupted and impressed us with acute observations… But as of now, Abbas busies himself with a cup of foaming coffee…