2008, National Library and a Gost

It was around 2008, a sultry afternoon in the National Library, Kolkata.

Like many other people who have frequented the National Library, I had also heard stories about Warren Hasting's spirit roaming around the rather solemn building, that housed the library premises. It is rumoured that Hasting's spirit roams around the library looking for a black book that could save him from impeachment. It was a sleepy hot afternoon and I was searching for an old magazine, as a part of the research for my book on Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen. The National Library being a store house of many such old magazines, I had spent a good part of the day already looking up some of the very old Bengali magazines from the 40's and 50's. there was a stealth to the air, some old fans stirred, pages creaked in some corner of vague rooms, faint footsteps in another random corner..

I was reminded of Ruskin Bond, a documenter and creator of some ghosts. Mr. Bond who has extensively written on ghosts once said that a young 10 year old reader had found his ghosts not too scary and had accordingly asked him,  ‘Can you make them frightful?’

By this time I was desperate to find a particular article about Suchitra Sen. Like anyone who has written biographies will tell you, at a particular point one starts almost reliving the life of the personality one writes on, and sometimes becomes almost a part of their spirit. There were evenings when I had walked on Ballygunge Circular Road and wondered if a particular lady with her head in a scarf was Suchitra Sen.

A copy of 'Prasad', suddenly fell down as I jerked open one of the rusting old drawers. On the open page, a stunning photograph of the lady. I could almost hear a certain Hastings chuckle.

Revisiting 'Opur Sansar'

Nine years is a long time

some would say a life time

and yet Sharmila hasn’t aged.

Strange,

those about to smile eyes,

the strand of hair misplaced

a sidurer tip, so cozy.

My daughter rides her cycle

her new bell rings out loud,

louder than Apu’s train in fact

it hides the sudden tears

of a happy copulated screen,

suddenly gone Kafkaesque.

In the distance are scraps of little dreams

floating in 

from another’s novel-

destroyed, stamped over

adrift, on a strange hillock.

Apu resides there,

I'm told

alone, voiceless, mindless.

I stare at my walls-

in the yellow of an evening light,

a pig is dead.

I put on a switch

Kajal lit eyes screech in happiness.

I have always hated the word ‘sansar’,

did Apu smile at last?

I look twice, touch him on the screen

and smile back.

( Written on watching Ray's 'Apur Sansar' after nine years again last week)

© 2013 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

Prosaic love

The writers for me have always been those who have crept into the shadows, worn Red shades in the Yellow lights, written absurd lines, made a mess of every book they signed, sung an off beat song and made prosaic love.

( Image from the Internet)

Gathering Stillness

If someone asked me what I have in abundance, I'd say stillness. And yet that is the single emotion( if it can be called that) which scares me. I seem to have some special ability to meet some of the most still people that nature could have produced. Extremely interesting people, in their own ways, endowed with the enduring capacity to be still. 

During my college days, I would often travel from college to home in night buses, during holidays. During one of these journeys I once met a man who sat next to me and talked nineteen to dozen, shared silly jokes, trying to make me laugh, related anecdotes, for most of the journey while I hmm d and nodded in my limited conversation and listened mostly to what he might be actually trying to convey. At the end of sometime, he turned towards me and said, 'Talk, I'm scared of silences' Over the years we kept in touch, we wrote to each other, became fast friends. But as time went by I discovered that there began to be more of shared silences than shared conversation. My last communication with him was about 2 years back, when I had asked him how things were and he had replied, 'Sitting in my office making faces at the walls.' I hear from common friends that he has not spoken in a long time, to no one.

Sometime back, I met a fellow writer over a social networking site. We would sporadically exchange notes on what we wrote, talk of absurd things that had no connection with each other, forming a strange but happy bond. One fine day, he disappeared. Ultimately people disappear is what I have come to understand, whether you like it or not they do, perhaps because they want to or because they have become like blank pages with nothing written on it, not even the wish to write. Out of the blue, I receive a mail, I'm well and writing a book about trees that speak to each other. I write a long mail back.

A few evenings back I walked on a road and I saw stillness again. An old woman, she sat on the pavement. Still. Orange saree, a black petticoat, red bangles, silver anklets. I had almost walked past her when her face registered and I walked back to see her again. I've never seen clearer brown and more tired eyes, wondering if years of neglect and indifference had rendered them inscrutable like the Bangalore skyline,where everyday is a yesterday and a tomorrow. She looked like the high priestess of elegance somehow, lover of cigars, an imperfect life? She gave me the shivers, though I wanted to sit next to her and ask, 'how long before you're gone still too?'

When Begum Akhtar wafted in..

By some odd calender description
tonight,
you and I were supposed to talk.

I stretched a little finger,
into a daunting charcoal emptiness..
Begum Akhtar wafted in
from the corner of a window,
high above.
Tonight, her voice sounded tired.
I looked up,
from where
Raag Desh had caressed
for some time now.

The Begum seemed quiet,contemplative-
lonely as my disquiet sky
vague as her ghostly horizons
and yet she sang,
like a poet's fruitless lines
resignation in every line,
ecstasy in every glimmer.

-© 2013 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

A tea tale

'Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage'...somewhere in between it became poetry. And so, 

When you were hungry
I felt parched.
Sprawling in the winter sun,
I peeled you
seedless and juicy,
lingering in the sauciness
over a parched skin.

A dry throat,
and a dry tongue later-
I dunked you
in my tea,
warmed by a ravishing Orange sun.

My cells exploded
my blood screamed,
as I drunk your drunkeness-
You stayed,
embedded in a thousand and one cells.

The tea flushed out,
a book ended,
you and I,
we Facebooked.

( Picture from the Internet)

© 2013 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

Memories of November

My land now far removed
where innocence died,
and you flourished.

Yet the smells remain,
clinging and never forgotten.
Like snakes twirling in toilets,
bent on proving their sterileness
cohabiting a space so dense-

In the Bulbul's twitch,
of Luit and its silence
of dogs and stray cats,
wandering in, like love.
Leaving you and coming back-
strays, forever straying.

Of headiness of April rains,
of the naked austerity of Patkai,
the unknown languages of streams,
of the red earth-

there
I lie scattered.

-© 2014 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

( Photograph courtesy Bhagyajit Bhuyan)