one of those mornings when...…
Browsing Tag
memories
no one other than my parents and grandparents perhaps loved me the way she did when i was two and three and four… traces of that love, that favouring, lingered well into my twenties and more. the last time i saw her i was around 38, and her eyes still rested on me gently. tubu mashi of no e-88, duliajan, our next door neighbour. who’d babysit me anytime, who would cry with me if i cried for my parents, who…
Many many years ago, so many that I no longer remember how many, I remember writing an essay for my school magazine. During a train journey, a thin little girl had sung while holding her infant brother in her arms. The coins that people threw into her tin bowl had held strange haunting music of their own. I must have seen beggars before, but this girl had felt real. Real enough that I had written about her. My teachers had…
a wail rose up in the calm late afternoon air. the tail end of it came stalking into the room with the plump little girl, who threw herself on the bed, burying her face in the cushion lying on top of the carefully covered pillows. the wail turned into a smothered whimper now, though as far as the calm of the afternoon was concerned, both had the same effect on it. “oh ma, why’re you behaving like that? what’s the…
everything is complex, nothing is without its politics, yet when the voice you know so well does its familiar lilt and stretch and sound segues to the next hit song, or you seize and peruse the toy that’s just popped out of a toothpaste box, that joy, that spike of thrill, there’s no complication in it. no politics either. which is why perhaps the mind grabs it all and puts it away in a safe place, knowing one day, it’ll…
cap pistol (remember those?), rahul dev burman, new clothes, midnight movies, razia sultan, drumbeats, ghugni, exams, flowers in my clasped hands. the one with ten arms comes to my mind on many things. she’s been around for a long long time, quite taken for granted, part of life. to be worshiped, to be gazed at in awe, to be surrounded by noise and joy, to be danced and acted before, to be rejoiced with food and friends, to be prostrated…
“unpalatable to the lord of death! first among the monkeys!! you’ve seen five feet of the snake?? burnt face, extract of low stock!!” jomer oroochi! bandorer ogrogonno!! shaaper paanch pa dekhecho?? mukh pora, bodjaat!! the swear words flew fast, interrupted only by indignant breaths, equally rapid. the frail old lady’s voice got more stentorian with each word, the affront in it resounding. “return them this moment! return them now, i say!” she bellowed, her small frame shaking, her chest…