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Rushdie in a Nightgown
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Cycle of Cliches Insights
InsightsThat night Nisim left me sleepless with a couple of insights. In his Bermuda-shorts and white vest, he lay by my side curled up like a cashew-nut under the quilt, snoring through the night. The first one was this:The greater your intelligence is, the louder you snore.In the other bedroom, there was our father, who snored louder than Nisim. And our father, as you might have guessed it by now, had far greater intelligence than Nisim. In fact, his intelligence soared so high that Ma had to make a makeshift bed in the kitchen every night to spare herself of his torturous, unconscious existence. Biswa also snored and I have experienced his torturous unconscious self, whenever he stayed over at our place in Tezpur. Although he always denied it, until recently when his childhood-sweetheart-turned-wife, Nitumoni busted it.Now see, I have three of the most intelligent people I have ever met in my life proving the universality of the first insight.But then, that night i
Cycle of Cliches Republic Day
Republic DayThe Republic Day, I believe you are aware, is that auspicious day of the year in which the world’s largest democratic bunch of people come together to commemorate and celebrate their geo-political existence. That year, the occasion altered my geo-political, emotional and relational existences for the rest of my life quite unexpectedly.For the first time in six years, I wouldn’t have to go to school with Deuta for the Republic Day ceremonies early in the morning and could sleep till eight. Thanks to the Bandh that The Organization had called! From all the bandhs that I have experienced, I have developed a definition which the Social Studies teachers may teach their students. This is, by the way, from the perspective of people who are to comply with it. It goes like this:Bandh is an involuntary act of complying with threats/demands/proposals of complete shutdown of businesses, offices, schools, colleges, transport and everything that are, kind of, important for
Cycle of Cliches Feeling ‘At Home’
Feeling ‘At Home’I discovered this story in Deuta’s black leather-bound diary.Well, we discovered it: Nisim and I. To be frank, my friend, Biswa, may claim to be a co-discoverer as well, because of his timely presence during the discovery. This story is my personal contribution to the folklore I take pride in – the folklore of Kamarsuburi.Like any other folk-tale, in any part of the world, this has evolved through and enriched by the tradition of oral-storytelling over a number of years. My paternal and maternal grandmothers had their own versions of it, my mother her own, which at times, was quite in conflict with the versions of my grandmothers; there were bits and pieces of it that Nisim had passed over to me, just as people in our vicinity, during casual conversations, had passed on certain controversial parts of it. Those controversial parts, for the ease of your understanding, my dear reader, I will call rumours. This story, by virtue of being in the tradition of a
Cycle of Cliches Language is Power
Language is PowerI write from the crematorium, but this definitely doesn’t make my story more readable than the others. It does make me an attention seeker though. That I’m in a flow, which, by the way, is also my desperation, only means that I fear of losing sight of a juicy plotline for my friend’s screenplay, and perhaps a few of your pats on my back. And finally, when I reveal this ebb and flow of thoughts to you, it doesn’t necessarily mean I have fooled you through the hooks and cliff-hangers of a narrative, which apparently doesn’t seem to go anywhere. All I want to assert through these revelations here, is that, language is power. Well, only when it is understood.These revelations are with a purpose: to make you understand a language which you might otherwise care less for, and thereby remain bereft of its unfathomable power. As for my mother, she is still maturing with the smoke wafting to the blue sky overhead as a shroud of air-pollutants. That is how string of m
Cycle of Cliches Breath-taking!
Breath-taking!“It’s like a bowl,” said Nisim as we looked around the parts of the city visible from the terrace. He formed a bowl with his fingers and the palm of his right hand to describe Guwahati, our new home, “Plains surrounded by small hills and the mighty river, Brahmaputra, flowing by it. Quite like our town,” he added.“We should go to the hills, someday,” I suggested. Back in my mind, a blurred image of a hilltop cottage, with a full-view of a blue river came alive. Deeper down, there was a prompt: it’s there, in one of those hills. The hills weren’t too far, as they seemed.While entering the city, we passed by a road which I felt, would hit one of the hills head on. But, the road glided by the hill, took a turn and met another road – a busier one – which passed alongside the river for a while before meeting with another one. The river was almost dry, following the rainless months of winter. The white patch of sandy beach stretched almost to the middle of the riv
Cycle of Cliches Roots
RootsWithin a week of moving to New Guwahati Railway Colony, Nisim had found a place where he could go for badminton practice – hall of an unused Railway warehouse which could house two badminton courts, enrolled himself as a member of Vivekananda Yuva Kendra, one of the social welfare organizations next to our quarter and discovered many other exciting places on his way back from college. He told me he would take me to all those places someday.I wished I could make friends as easily as Nisim could. It was through Nisim that I got introduced to Birinchi, Rajib and quite a few others who played cricket at the Bihu Field. Birinchi was the same age as Nisim and as I got to know they came across each other every day at the bus stop while going to their respective colleges – Nisim, to Cotton College, and Birinchi, to B. Barooah College. I had seen Birinchi bowling and he seemed to be the quickest among the fast bowlers playing in the field. It was only when I faced his bowling,
Cycle of Cliches Sunset Dating
Sunset DatingThat every sunset brings a promise of a new dawn sounds like an overstatement, or perhaps Emerson forgot to add to a chosen few at the end of his famous saying. In the evening when Deuta was killed, somewhere in some jungle in Burma or in some small town in Bangladesh, the bosses of Mikhail Phukan, Samiran Kalita and Matlif Ahmed would have hailed them as the new heroes, as the true sons of the soil, because they had freed their Paradise of one apostate of their revolutionary decree. Five years down the line, per the growth model of The Organization, these three sons of the soil would have either returned to the mainstream or got encountered by the Joint Forces. If they had succeeded in cracking a deal with the Joint Forces for their return, they would have led respectable lives of businessmen or political touts with a gun for self-protection and the coveted prefix – Surrendered – in front of their heroic names. On the other hand, if they had been encountered,
Cycle of Cliches Milestone
MilestoneEvery sunset brings a promise of a new dawn, but the promise doesn’t entail a guarantee that the new dawn will be the one you always want to wake up to. After sunset, when darkness engulfs everything, you may try to light up your surroundings with fluorescent bulbs, tube-lights, candles and other means of artificial light, and yet suffer from a terrible sense of shrinking to nothingness and feel like a lonesome string of monologue, a disjointed design of the alphabet, a feeble anecdote of clichés. The way I had felt when Junali had disappeared from the colony.The next evening, I stood by the railway crossing for a while, at the entrance of the colony, watching express trains pass by in speed, goods train shuttle to change tracks and make their way to the yard, people and vehicles moving from one side of the crossing to the other when no trains passed by and the railway gates were opened. Every passing moment shrivelled me to the point that I didn’t want to see any
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