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Distant Realities
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Cycle of Cliches Beyond Binaries
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Cycle of Cliches Like a Free Bird
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Cycle of Cliches Missed Turns
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Cycle of Cliches Touchdown
TouchdownWe will have our respective touchdowns today – Jahnobi at 6:30 PM British Standard Time at Gatwick, and I at 6:30PM IST in Pune. Nineteen days have elapsed since I am away from my workplace (you may read Karmabhumi). I have no clue how my team members are performing their daily rituals of chanting “Thank you for calling…”, “I understand your concern, however…”, “the options that I can give you are…”, “I apologize for the inconvenience…” to appease a bunch of unknown, unseen, fatally wronged, over-promised and under-delivered voices and names on the other hemisphere of the world, trying their guts out to get the best possible solutions to their issues. It’s not easy, going through these iterative bouts of supervising all these computer-screen-facing, headsets-clad, wretched souls engaged in those precarious rituals. It sucks the blood out of the brains and when I return to my flat in the morning, all I desire is a sound, undisturbed, dreamless sleep. When I wake up in
Cycle of Cliches Songs and Stories
Songs and StoriesI write from a cremetorium and I swear by my origins that this story conforms to the unwavering loyalty to clichés.I am aware that the cremetorium is the weirdest of places to write from, for that matter, anything, let alone a story, but I can’t be tardier than what I have been all this while.Eighteen years is a freakin', long time to stay on one story, isn’t it? I wish tardiness wasn’t in the list of my genetic inheritance.Here, at the cremetorium I become the famous singer who crooned his best number sitting by the bier of his dead sister. It wasn’t just a dirge for his sister, but a delicate and gradual unveiling of a story. A story of drawing rainbows, of playing under the sun, of a heart burning in sorrow and another entranced by indelible moments of joy. The famous singer’s song was his story.My story, by the way, is my song.And the tapping on this laptop keyboard is my beat. With each tap, I see the song shaping up as the dirge for the event.
Cycle of Cliches Insomniac
InsomniacFor one hundred and four hours I’ve lived like an insomniac. And then they became irksome. Insomnia as well as the clichés.Irksome to the extent that I felt compelled to pick up my laptop while sitting on the hearse van to this crematorium.You are not the white-robed in persona Christi on the other side of the confessional, and I’m not looking to get my sins absolved or my actions validated by telling you this story. I’m not trying to quench your stream of curiosity as well. I’m just trying to flush out the solidified lump of a yearning settled in the left corner of my brain. One hundred and four hours ago when I was sitting at the airport lounge in Kolkata, waiting for my flight to this city, Guwahati – my adopted hometown – this yearning wasn’t a lump. It was an acidic fluid running through my veins. It left a burning sensation wherever it passed through, like cheap whiskey leaves when it goes down your throat. All I was doing then was listening to Chester Be
Cycle of Cliches Nico-Tar Urge
Nico-Tar UrgeThe small, six-by-four smoking room looked like Delhi in a winter morning.Smoggy.Smothering.If not for smoking, nobody would like to be there even for a minute! Worse still, there weren’t any chairs to sit. Trust me, with all the drowsiness and fatigue, I couldn’t stand more than a minute.Men drowned in their smart phone screens, cigarettes tucked between their fingers, welcomed me with as much indifference as I sometimes show to people talking about binge-watching web-series. The only aberration in the room, was this woman, standing far opposite to the entrance, with her gaze fixed at the wall to her right. Holding a pack of Marlboro Gold and an iPhone in her right hand, she was staring at the wall-mounted electric lighter. Her Hamlet-like dilemma, I thought was: To light up the next one or not? Curse my stealthy, sluggish, perverted eyes! Wish I could stop them from measuring her up! I slid my left hand into the pocket of my jeans for the packet of
Cycle of Cliches The Nineties’ Thing
The Nineties’ ThingPehla nasha, pehla khumarNaya pyar hai naya intezarKar lu main kya apna haal, aye dil-e-beqararMere dil-e-beqarar, tu hi bata…The first tipsiness, the first hangoverThis is new love, new waitWhat do I make of myself, O restless heart!My restless heart, you tell me this.Do you remember the tragic heart-break scene which followed this song in the movie Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar? The scene, when Anjali finds her beloved Sanju engaged in a celestial lip-lock in the aesthetic privacy of a derelict hill-top fortress? Do you remember, how many times you might have watched that same scene, each time, risking a scandal of a life-time? How many times you might have fanned your hidden desires of having such moments in your own life too? When I had watched this scene for the first time, I was in the eighth grade.By the time, I saw Junali for the first time, and that was two years later, the desire had already reached its zenith and the mo
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