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Like a Free Bird
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Cycle of Cliches Missed Turns
Missed TurnsNineteen days ago, I was greeted here, in the same airport, with the concerned and impatient voice of Jahnobi over the phone, “Have you reached?” Junali’s full and wide smile and the whiskey-dipped lines written for her transformed into a maze of eerily quiet corridors in in the main building of Gauhati Medical College Hospital. Every minute counted during my hunt for the single occupancy cabin where my mother was admitted. Even after a running-around for about ten minutes, following the directions of the old man sitting at the May I Help You counter, I was, kind of, lost in the maze of alleys, corridors, staircases and closed rooms in that mammoth building. “Yeah, reached, but kind of lost. Where’s the cabin?” I asked her. I wasn’t sure whether Jahnobi expected an assurance of my presence, or if she was just reminding me of the urgency – every moment can be the last moment“Just ask someone which is Ruplekha Baideu’s room. People know that she’s here.” I could
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
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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
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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
Cycle of Cliches Bohag
BohagI should have put on the windcheater jacket before coming out of our apartment in Guwahati. A full-sleeve tee shirt wouldn’t have been bad either. The morning breeze in the terrace felt a little unsettling after the comfort under the blanket. It had been more than a month since winter was officially over. For those who wore sweaters in March were taunted as kaso – tortoise. Cold-blooded animal. Among my acquaintances in Guwahati, only Birinchi, the fast bowler in the local cricket team I had started playing for that year, wore sweaters in March. He would always be shivering while fielding.Now, it was April. It had rained the previous night – the first showers of the year – and the breeze carried with it the scent of petrichor. For the first time in a while, I wasn’t startled awake from sleep. It was a gradual waking-up. Someone was playing the Pepa – the buffalo hornpipe – and the tune was gleefully calling everyone around to join the merriment. As the drum-beats joine
Cycle of Cliches Pursuit
PursuitSummer brought in heat alongwith hope. The heat and humidity in the city cursed by recurring power-cuts was suffocating. In Tezpur, trees around our house offered shade and kept us cool with intermittent breeze even when the mercury soared as high as 40° Celsius. In the six hundred and fifty square feet railway quarter where Ma, Nisim and I had moved in Guwahati had no trees around. There was an adamant stillness in the air. The heat felt more with every passing day owing to a pursuit that I hadn’t chosen, but had been pushed into.That was the year when my intellectual prowess was to be tested against the best in the state, and in a broader sense, with each one of those in our country who either had chosen, or were prodded like me, into that pursuit. It was like war-time preparation. Everyone who knew me, wanted me to win it for them, and for my own self. The success of High School Leaving Certificate exams were to decide, as it appeared then, all our successes there
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