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The Nineties’ Thing
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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
Cycle of Cliches A Lot Can Happen Over Coffee
A Lot Can Happen Over CoffeeIn the airport smoking-room, the monochromatic images evaporated into the spiralling clouds of smoke just as Junali’s voice struck my eardrums, “Where are you lost? Hullo!”Her hazel eyes, almost popping out in wonder, her lips gaped like O.“Disbelief.” came out impromptu, after a long, deep breath. I didn’t have to care for my English pronunciation anymore. Courage had killed the inhibitions with my spoken English, long ago. From struggling with my sha and cha sounds to being a Voice and Accent Trainer before being promoted as a Training Manager in an international Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company, for me, it’s been a worthwhile journey so far in terms of spoken English. “Disbelief?” she repeated after me.“Yes…a…world…of…disbelief.” I couldn’t resist the insane spurt of thoughts, uttering every word with a deliberate slow pace. Looking straight into her eyes! Without a blink! With a half-smile!“Hmm.” She said with a sigh and too
Cycle of Cliches If a Writer Falls in Love with You, You Will Never Die
If a Writer Falls in Love with You, You Will Never DieWe walked into the smoking room, lit our cigarettes and settled down beside each other, leaning against the wall. Conscious of the presence of other people in the room. Conscious that time was running away fast. The large display in the lounge in front of us shows the time: 04:12. She said she would leave for the departure gate in five minutes. She hated last moment boarding.“Next week I will head back home.” She said, taking a long drag from the cigarette she had lit up.“Next week? But you’ll reach today itself.” I assumed that Delhi is her new home.“Oh no, no. I don’t live in Delhi anymore. Just dropping in there to catch up with old friends.”“Oh ok. Then where do you…?”“On the other side of Luit,” she cut me off. I didn’t quite get her.“Just kidding…that line just popped up.”On the other side of Luit – it was the opening line of a poem I’d written thinking about her. It was a sad poem. Of hopelessness and
Cycle of Cliches Rushdie in a Nightgown
Rushdie in a NightgownI call out Biswa and a few others in the playground at the top of my voice, but it seems that they can’t hear what I’m saying.I’m saying that I don’t want to bat at number three anymore, and I don’t wish to play for the club too. I have made it to the national team, I have got the blue jersey with Number 4 and my first name embossed on it. I’m going to open the batting with Sachin. It’s, kind of, I want to say goodbye to all of my teammates before boarding the bus to the airport in the big city…but all of them vanish in thin air, leaving me with a trace of fear! I wonder if I have just seen ghosts. How can real people vanish?And then I run towards the bus stop. There’s a big tourist bus with huge glass windows and navy blue curtains waiting there – a video coach that’s going to play ‘Jigar’ once the bus starts moving. Halfway through our journey, the bus stops at a restaurant for refreshments, and I feel I can’t keep going all the way waking up other
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
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