Imagine

Imagine you are not a man

Neither can you be a tree

Imagine you are a speckle of dust

Floating free, floating free

Isn't is surprising and traumatizing at the same instant that all the emotions, including heartbreaks and "falling-in-loves"s , including the death of your near and dear one, and birth of the same, including the most beautiful odor transporting you to someplace else, and the horrific stench numbing your senses for days together ;everything that you will ever perceive is on this planet earth?

What about that chocolate fondue which you had ages ago, but you still remember the taste like you had it in lunch, and that carrot juice which your mother made when you were sick, putting you to further bouts of sickness, or so you thought?

That wonderful moment when you were so close to your loved ones for the first time that your sense catalogued the odor of her hair? That slight touch you pinky finger made on her nape when you were struggling with that necklace that you gifted her?

All the movies you have seen, all the books you have read, all the amazing and unruly persons that you have met in your life, like it r not, they have kept their tiny brushmarks on the canvas of your mind, and have all contributed to make you what you are.
And all of these will end with you.

Isn’t it particularly disdainful of how things are around here, that however happy or sad you have led your life, you cannot pass the baton on to somebody else. Everybody has to start afresh with a  white canvas, your masterpiece is yours alone to stare at in admiration, and then to discard into oblivion.

Do take a minute to contemplate the fleeting existence that we all are in, compared to the existence of planet earth, what is the period that we exist in?

Aren't we all like the millions of nameless particles hypothesized by physicists, constantly popping in and out of existence, not keeping any space "vacuum" in the true sense? What we have in excess is probably just the power to express the sense of decay that we feel every passing minute, which these particles don't.

Or wait, perhaps they do?

Imagine birds you have never seen

Imagine lands you have never been

Imagine boundless, all and sundry

Because at the end you are just a speckle of dust

Floating free, floating free

Just for a fleeting second lend your brain to the thought that "inanimate" is just a word made by humans, to segregate a property between objects that we ourselves lack a concrete definition of.

What if there is nothing "inanimate".?

What if there are levels of "animation" all around us?

Layers and layers of different animate flavors, each incapable of perceiving the animation of the next level, or the level below them, when each levels are decided by size. Which again might not be the case. Since we are only imagining, take a case where consciousness flows uninterrupted between the “very large” and the “very small”, but whatever is in the middle range of the spectrum gets bound by a different string of information passage. Look at the small piece of paper lying just beside you, yes that! Maybe that is talking to the 5th volume of “Anton Chekov Omnibus” on your fourth rack. Or maybe it is a bit more sympathetic and talking to the old ascetic interpretation of Ramayana, which you had in some occasion that is lost in your memory, never to open it again.

What if the topmost bolt in Eiffel tower is talking to the glass pane of Louvre, what wonderful conversation they must be having. It is all out there, just outside the boundaries of our perception maybe.

Here comes the importance of imagination. You see, that is something you can never be limited about. Nobody can censor your imagination. It is a movie your mind is making with a lot of toil for you to enjoy. Let’s face the fact that the senses which we often boast to be the most potent weapons in our armory against the marvels of nature are really weak and has very restricted boundaries.

There are creatures on this planet earth which can see, hear and feel with much more accuracy than we can ever dream of.

What is real “reality” then?
The reality made out of auditory, visionary and tactile components which we use or they?

Since your imagination will be fuelled from whatever you have directly or indirectly encountered in your lifetime, that will be close to your reality, but a bit outside of that, still. So dream on, because what you think is reality, could still be a dream.

Don’t let people snap you out

Of your recurrent reverie

Dream of boxes dream of seas

Floating speckle, do float free.

Roof

He looked at the small Timex on his bedside table. 3 in the night. “Sheesh”, he thought, “even the Tamazepam 250 has stopped working”. He tried to sit up in his bed, an uneasiness wrapped his body like the thick blanket he had draped. Frail and stammering, he stood up, knees announced their angst in waves and waves of pain up his thighs, sliming up through his spine deep inside his head. Without even knowing it, he groaned. He mustered all the life force that he could gather, jerked his bodyqonce, twice, thrice. It seemed like he was duelling the pain for centuries. He was exhausted, panting but serenity of sleep evaded him.

He slumped back on his bed, lifeless, yet wide awake. Slowly reaching his hand out to the bedside table, he took his mobile phone. It was hard to keep in grasp, fingers revolting every second. He placed the phone on the pillow, once white, now grey with dirt and dust of the room which did not see sunlight for a long time.

Opened his “Whatsapp” account, and went through the same conversation he has been going through for years now. Initially he had been arrogant, had thrown the phone away in angst, had cried inconsolably to the darkness, many a times he waited with a with a thin shaving blade piece, looking into the ceiling. Now all of that was beyond him, what lay was a gaping void. A dark void in which there were thousands of poems and hundreds of tunes. He still shuddered from the echoes which came out from the void, even now. “That's fine”, he said aloud, to himself, “it is much better now. It will go away eventually”. Someone was not agreeing to his assurance. He did not know who. Neither did he wanted to.

A- why are you doing like this? Aren't we good together?

B- It is not about you, it is about me.

A- What is this rotten old, “not you; me logic?”. If there is something that I could do I will. But only if you tell me what it is.

B- It is just not possible, you knew from the first day that we met that it was not.

A- Yes, I did. I knew what I was going into. I still do. What I don't get is what happened NOW? Both of us were okay with that idea right? What is making you behave this weird NOW is what I am asking?

A- What happened, why are you not replying?
Oh wait a minute. Is it what I am thinking it is?

B- Yes.

A- But HOW? Why did you tell him? Was he suspecting something?

B- No.

A- Then? What on earth went into your head? Have not I told you that the steering for this whole thing is in your hand. If your feelings were exhausted, which is completely fine for me, you could have just told me. Why did you complicate things?

B- It is not about feelings. You know I will always feel for you what I felt from the day we talked, from hours on first floor canteen.

A- Then what on earth was it ?

B- I cannot keep lying to him.

A- Wow, nice. When did this specific “ascetic” realisation go into you? After haridwar trip?

B- Shut up

A- seriously, its your angle of definition which decides whether what you say is a lie or not.

B- If this is not a lie, then was everything that I said to him truth? When I said I had a meeting but I actually went out with you. When I said I was going to my parents house, but I went out with you. Alll of them were facts, was'nt it?

A- This you should have asked yourself before all of this started right. Tell me, where is it written that you could have feelings for only one individual at a time. Are'nt these social boundaries imposed on us?
Sure, feelings towards every person in our life has a different flavour, but who said even the emotion has to be different? My grandmother used to tell me this story about emotions and memories. She used to say that every person that we meet actually have a room in our heart. Our heart is actually like that hotel with infinite chambers, like Marrows paradox. Some rooms are small, untidily kept. Some rooms are like attics. Some rooms are spacious and furnished like deluxe suite of any high life hotel. Some rooms are dark, tubelights not working; but still at the end of our journey do you know who wins?

B- who?

A- Who has most of the chambers filled. Does not matter whether you keep somebody in the dark dousy rooms, or the furnished flat. Does not matter if the room is draped with moist trapped within creaking walls or lit by smooth yellow candle light. Does not matter whether the room shifts to such dark recesses of your mind so that it becomes a jail, or it is at the corridor, sun shing from the crimson east in the morning, what matters is there are people. Because every room you open you will be greeted. Because when you have lived life, you will not be bothered about good or bad memories, you will not be afraid by opening a door and being greeted by a slouchy, cold evil man, or a generous happy friend. Do you know what will scare you the most- an empty room, gust of wind hitting you face which has no meaning. It only passes through you wailing its void. That will scare you.

B- Hm.

A- Do you want to know what sort of roo I wanted from you?

B- What?

A- A roof. An open roof.

ব্যাগ

একটা ব্যাগ। তাতে কোনরকমের বাহ্যিক বিশেষত্ব নেই ।পুজো তে বাজার করতে গেলে ওরকম দু-একটা ব্যাগ সবারই জোটে। এই ব্যাগটা অবশ্য কোন পূজোয় পাওয়া টা আমি জানিনা, জানার কারণ ও উপস্থিত হয়নি কখনো; সুধু কিভাবে যেন ব্যাগটা রয়ে গেলো আমার সাথে। ব্যাগটা জুটের, খয়রই বাদামি রঙের, তাতে একসময় কোনও এক কাপড়ের দোকানের নাম সোচ্চারে ঘষিত ছিল, সময়ের সাথে শেই ঘোষণা ফিসফিসানিতে পরিবর্তিত হয়েছে। বাগটার মজবুত বাঁশ এর হ্যান্ডল ছিল, তাই এত সময়ের ভার নির্বিকার বহন করছে হয়ত।
ব্যাগটা আমি প্রথম নিয়ে যাই নরেন্দ্রপুরে যাবার সময় - প্রথম বাড়ি থেকে বাইরে যাত্রা, ঠিক বুঝতে পারিনি সেই যাত্রা অগস্ত্যযাত্রায় বদলে যাবে ভাগ্যের যাঁতাকলে পড়ে। সেইসময় এই ব্যাগ টাতে ছিল কিছু হাঙ্গার, রঙবেরঙের আর একটা স্টিল এর গ্লাস। আমাদের গ্লাস ও থালায় রেজিস্ট্রেশান নম্বর খোদানো থাকত, জাতে একজনের জিনিশ অন্যজনের কাছে ছলে গেলেও তা ফেরত পাওয়া যায়; মহৎ উদ্দেশ্যের বেশিরভাগ উদ্যোগের মতই এটাও বিশেষ কাজ দিত না, তবে তা এক অন্য গল্প।
আমি যখন অন্য "বোর্ড" এর পড়ার চাপ এ হাঁসফাঁস করছি, আমার সেই কখানা হাঙ্গার আমার কাপড়ের বিপুল ভারে হাঁসফাঁস করতে লাগল এবং অল্প কিছুদিনের মধ্যেই কাজে ইস্তফা দিল। গেলাসখানাও খওয়া গেলো। আমার যদিও জল খাওয়ার কোনদিন অসুবিধে হয়নি, নরেন্দ্রপুর সৌহার্দের মুক্তপ্রাঙ্গন ছিল- হাত বাড়ালেই পাওয়া যেত যা চাই, তাই গ্লাস আমার ছিল, শুধু সেটা আমার "কয়েদি" নম্বর এর নয়, অন্য কোনও সেল এর অন্য কোনও আসামীর। কিন্তু বস্তুর মূল্য তার ব্যাবহারে, যে জল আমি খাচ্ছি, সে জল ঠাকুর ও খেতেন। অতএব দিন কাটতে লাগল। নরেন্দ্রপুরের শেষের দিকে যখন মাধ্যমিক পাস করে বাড়ি আসব দেখা গেলো থেসিউস এর জাহাজের মত আমার সব খোলনলচে পালটে গেছে, যদিও বাইরের আমি তা এক আছে- পড়ে জেনেছিলুম ওটাকে "বড়ো হওয়া" বলে। একটা জিনিস কিন্তু পাল্টায়নি, বা বলা ভাল, হারায়নি - আমার চটের ব্যাগটা।
যখন বাড়ি ছলে আসছি, সেই ব্যাগ এ আমার দেওয়া কয়েকটা পরীক্ষার সার্টিফিকেট আর একটা কেমিস্ট্রির টেক্সট বই ছিল।
এরপরের দুই বছর একইসাথে আমার জীবনের উত্থান ও পতনের কারন। অবাধ স্বাধীনতার ঢেউ এ ভাসতে লাগলাম। নেশা না করেই আশপাশের সব কিছু রঙ্গিন লাগতে আরম্ভ করল। জীবনে সুখ দুঃখ ব্যাথা বেদনা পাওয়ার অনেক রাস্তা আমার জানা ছিল, এই অত বর একখান প্রকাণ্ড রাজপথ যে আমার বাকি ছিল ঘোরা তা জানতুম না; তাও ঘোরা হয়ে গেলো- প্রেম এ পড়লুম, আবার উঠেও পড়লুম সেখান থেকে, তবে সেসব আজ থাক। গল্প হল এইসব করতে গিয়ে সমাজসচেতন একমাত্র যে জীবিকা বাঙ্গালির মনে গাঁথা, সেই ডাক্তারি আমার আর করা হল না। পরীক্ষায় ভরাডুবি। অতঃপর অধিক স্বাধীনতা উপভোগের দায়ে আমার নির্বাসন হল।
জলের মাছ জলে ফিরে এলুম। এই দু বছর সময়ের ঝরে তাল দিতে গিয়ে আমার সতের বছরের একনিষ্ঠ সঙ্গীটিকে ভুলেই গেছিলুম- মানুষ যেমন বেইমান হয় আরকি, কিন্তু দেখলুম সে আমাকে ভোলেনি।
বিদ্যামান্দিরে যাবার সময় ও সেই ব্যাগ দেখতে পেলুম; মনে মনে হাসলাম, ব্যাগ ও হাসল বোধয়। তাতে ছিল একটা ছাতা, আর একটা মাইক্রোবায়োলজির বই। বিদ্যামান্দির আমার জীবনের ফুটবল টাকে এক শট মেরে আবার অন্য দিকে ঘুরিয়ে দিলে। কত অজানা জানলুম, মনের মত দু তিনটে বন্ধু জুটে গেলো। বেশ ভাল কাটতে লাগল সময় টা। তাও ৩ বছর দেখতে দেখতেই কেটে গেলো। ভিতরে থাকতেই পরের ঠিকানা জেনে গেছিলুম- বাঙ্গালর।
অশ্বার সময় কোনও কিছু ভেবে আমি ব্যাগ গছাইনি, কিন্তু চটের ব্যাগটা সুধু এখনো হারাইনি বা ছিরে যায়নি দেখে অবাক হয়েছিলুম। ব্রিধহ বয়েসে সেটা ধুঁকছে, কিন্তু বেছে আছে। বেশি কিছু নিলে ছিঁড়ে পড়তে পারে এই ভেব কয়েকটা বই ঢুকিয়ে নিয়েছিলুম। পড়ে বের করতে গিয়ে দেখই জুজুতসানন্দের একটা উপনিষদ, একটা গীতা, আর দস্তভস্কীর "নোট্‌স ফ্রম থে আন্ডারগ্রউন্ড" বইটা ছিল। বড় অদ্ভুত লেগেছিল, আমার যবনের ফুটবল ম্যাচের সে যেন ধারাভাষ্যকার, খুব ঘুরিয়ে কথা বলে, তনে কাটে, কিন্তু তার বিবরনের যুক্তি বড় ধারাল, বড় অকাট্য।
বাঙ্গালরে আশার সময় ব্যাগটাকে আর নিয়ে আসিনি, ওটা যেরকম ভাবে আমার জীবন টাকে দেখছিল, কিছুটা অস্বস্তি হছহিল বোধয়, কোথাও, আমার অবচেতনের কোনও এক স্তরে। তাই ওটা অখন যেখান থেকে আমার সঙ্গ নেওয়া শুরু করেছিল, সেখানেই।    

Ode to the Blackbird

It was possibly winter then, was it?
May be the last traces of autumn, withering away on the trailing east winds

Doesn't matter really, the off shades of white cloth that draped my fig is what I remeber.

At that moment , where nature scoffed,

at that moment when all wars seemed to come to an end, not a peaceful one;

a more imposed cohabitation- life met the dead

At that moment, I found a blackbird.

It perched its nest on the highest branch of the fig ;

as if announcing its omniscience, or indifference maybe,

I do not know. I don't.

It brought some blackened hay, and twigs of maples and laurels, and sealed it with wet vines.

The nest seemed like a spiral of questions,

it seemed to give some answers too, which I got much later.

Two weeks it stayed, two weeks I had to voyeur the life of somebody not like me.

Somebody very much like me, in some ways.

Not an ounce of roots it had, to anything, at all.

Three eggs I found one Saturday, greyish tinges of black, whispering of their age - unborn.

Whispering their wisdom – they know things.

I wondered how can something be so “knowing”, an infant, more so.

When they first hatched out, eyes glistening with fluid connecting them to life.

To my surprised they seemed exhausted, unhappy, but as if smirking at everything around them.

I looked at them every passing day, now they knew how to fly.

And one early summer morning, they never came back.

Flight took them with the wind.
They can be somewhere looking for high fig branch.
Somewhere else.
What matters is the nest, really.

The spiral of questions and some answers made of dead things.

What would you call a nest to which no birds return?