Now that you are gone
I try to make a search
Of you in your works,
Your writings, diaries, scrapbooks,
Your memorabilia,
And how I find you more
As a product of that time turbulent,
When people had lesser earthly hankerings
And more of camaraderie,
When the air had all the fervour of revolution,
When eyes of you and your peers
Had all the dreams of liberation,
And hope ,
For those half fed, naked, starving humanity,

Ah, those were the times,
When you wrote on walls ,
Slogans and songs,

Till hurried steps of black boots
Came like hoofs of nightmare
Through sounds of gunshots
And mist,

Time that got changed too,
And when peace came
It had wreaths
Upon its breast,
Of doomed youth,

Now that I see those pictures,
Sepia , grey,
How I get carried away
To those times,

How can I get the smell
Of smoke, tar, tea,
How in blurry eyes
Your youthful vigour
Do I see.

Father

Writing something about you is like
Trying to make a swim through a sea,
Through wave after waves of memories,
The first distinct smell of you
Had the that peculiar mix of tobacco and shaving cream,
The first distinct touch of you had been to feel your palms a bit roughened,
And to feel how those lines on them had withered the ups and downs of time-
Partition, independence, state of political instability, carnage , emergency, flood of seventy eight , hartals, strikes, lockouts, bandhs,

Then your smile , never too loud,
Just a sweet candid one, 
And your angst - silence spreading over clouds of even more silence,

Your writing hand curved and sparkling
Your fountain pen dipped in ink - your poems and stories, your sessions of debates and discussions , Marx , Lenin, Engels, Tagore, Vivekananda, Aurobindu- all turning like lively figures standing before us as if saying their words,

Your recitation of poems ,
your acting at amateur theatre- glittering dresses, swords of tin,

And then ' Krishanu' and literary adda over cups of tea,
Mail posts arriving with your name printed  all the way from foreign shores,

You teaching me cycling one spring day
You cooking special dishes,
you drawing a beautiful sketch of a train passing through the curves of hills,
You taking us to evening show of a flick - shown for charity -  A Satyajit Ray masterpiece- an adaptation of Ibsen ,

Now as time has moved with its winged gait,
And as age has come and sat like a philosopher queen
Just betwixt us ,

How I just think of you
As a tree old
With stories written on its bark.

The leafless chinar

In the shade of chinar tree
Like two birds who had flown over a sea
The boy and the girl gathered quiet
Drenched softly by the fading twilight,
The girl coy and a bit terrified
By shrill buzz of gunshots bright
Whispered her fear and longing too
To her man, her hope, her beau,

'Don't you anymore join those men
Who are fighting for years and dying in vain'
The girl with tears in her hazel eyes
Pleaded to the boy with whom she has ties
Of love and hope and all those little things
Which amidst despair only joy to her bring,

'I know how much you are worried about me
But as long as there  is this chinar tree
We will come here every evening , dear,
Why those gunshots you falsely fear?'
The boy told the girl putting his palms on her cheek
As the evening slowly turned dark and bleak,

Suddenly they found some shadowy figures
Circled around them with fingers upon triggers
' Who are you? What are you here doing?
Don't you know there's a curfew this evening?'
A man from the group shouted in a voice gruff
His face looked poke marked and remorseless , tough,

The girl shuddered and was about to cry
The boy was thinking of  a fitting reply,
He searched for the pin under his vest
Unhooking which he could put all to rest,
' Run away , you, my dear, my life...'
Saying this he pushed the girl and made a dive
At the man who few moments ago made the query,
A blast deafened all and in the dust all got buried;

The girl who was pushed away to a safer side
Soon after the dust settled found how the blinding light
Had taken away all including her man,
Strewn like unrecognizable parts upon the land,

The girl shouted in horror and grief
Under the chinar tree without a leaf,

Many years after the incident the tree
Remained standing  leafless like a forbidden memory.

That tree

Things had changed greatly
I say , since we have left our summer days
And went to farthest shores, away
From our home town,
Still once in a blue moon
When anyone of us happen to pass
By that park surely
Even in the dark he or she
Would  find that tree
Which we made our companion
Upon whose branches we had swung
And sitting upon them how we always looked at the distance
Finding the lazy motorboats gliding on the river
Or a bunch of workers going home in the noon day heat
Walking briskly,
And those chimneys which stood like grand towers
Belching smoke which went up to compete with clouds,

So many other trivial things how we did notice
Amidst our games of hide and seek
Or mere gossip,

The day would wane and before we would return home
We would take a leaf or a bloom
As pretty little souvenir,

We picked them
As we picked tales too,
As we sought our summer refuge
In the big tree.

Smell of lavender

Coming back from work, Sreemoyi was sipping her evening tea, sitting at her favourite spot- the window of her bedroom from where she could see as far as golf course which appeared like a lonely but distinct patch of greenery amidst the buildings of the city.
Come evening, when the city would deck up in shimmering lights and far away when the bridge over the river would dress up in tiny dots luminous like a beauteous damsel in a flowing gown, Sreemoyi would just look at cityscape as visible from her window. The window to the world outside.
If it rains she would try to sit there for awhile till Riddhi would come home.
Despite being married for eight years, her marriage to Riddhi had not brought any child to her lap. She and Riddhi could have explored other possibilities but with the passage of time , the eagerness to bring a child home had died down considerably. Riddhi being always busy with his office tours thought it to be quite suitable not to extend the family further barring they two. Initially she had implored Riddhi to explore other possibilities , from medical to adoption . But she had noted how Riddhi had accepted their destiny and how he never showed any utmost sincerity on his part to make a family proper. So they had lived so far like two persons sharing rooms , living together, doing their respective works, a married couple. Sreemoyi also perhaps thought it a way to lead a life without hassles of bringing up a young one.

But the season of rains brings in sometimes a slight tinge of melancholy, specially when she is alone in the flat with no works to do at home.

The season which makes the world greener, fertile and colorful, makes her often to think of her past.
Just like this evening.

Sipping tea and playing with her strands of hair by her fingers she was looking absentmindedly to the scenery outside.
It had rained heavily in the afternoon. Now  the rain having receded, a cool breeze was blowing. Sreemoyi suddenly thought she got a smell of lavender.
Lavender was the scent of body powder that Bodhiswatta wore in summer and early monsoon afternoons.
After the final class at the university when they would walk side by side till the main gate of the university campus, sometimes the whiff of air would bring the scent of lavender from Bodhiswatta.
Sreemoyi recalled how one late afternoon suddenly they were caught unawares in a storm followed by heavy downpour. They took shelter in a makeshift abandoned tea stall near the gate of the campus. That evening the rain kept them waiting at the shop for half an hour almost. That evening brought them closer. They talked, laughed and chuckled. The warmth of their bodies standing close and wet brought strange feeling in her. In Bodhiswatta too. Sreemoyi could never forget that curious sparkle in Bodhiswatta's eyes.
That evening which opened new vistas for them apparently could have been a really memorable one , had love blossomed in them .
But even before it could have bloomed proper, Sreemoyi's parents brought Riddhi, an executive engineer working in a multinational construction company.
Bodhi was still a student then with his widowed mother and two sisters to support by meagre means of giving tuitions to students.
A private tutor can never vie with an executive engineer.
Bodhi called his quits.
He started avoiding Sree despite her pleadings.
How miserable she felt then.
Oneday out of agony she even insulted Bodhi calling him a coward and a loser.
But Bodhi being Bodhi only smiled. A helpless smile. A heart wrenching smile.

Then suddenly he disappeared.
Literally he disappeared. After the final exam Sree went all the way to Beleghata to Bodhi's rented house. His mother and sisters were there and they informed Sree that Bodhi had left the city looking for a job.
Sree was given an address. A postal address.
Sree wrote at least three score letters before her marriage to Riddhi. No reply came.

Seven or eight months after her marriage, one evening, Sreemoyi was returning home from work. Riddhi was with her too.
At an eatery near Russel Street, where Riddhi stopped his car to takeaway some food home, Sree got out of the car and was waiting on the pavement before the eatery.
She noticed someone looking at her.
A man simply clad in a white shirt and grey trousers who came out of the eatery stopped a few yards before her to light a cigarette.
After taking a puff he just looked at her.
At that precise moment Sree's eyes also fell on him.
Bodhi!
She thought she was seeing ghost of Bodhi.
The man neither smiled nor moved. He just kept on looking at her, quite strangely with a certain air of idiocy.
Just then Riddhi returned.
As Riddhi asked Sree to get into the car, she looked at Bodhi through the corner of her eyes. For a moment she thought she would ask Riddhi to wait a bit. She thought she would call out at Bodhi and introduce him to Riddhi. 

Riddhi was already at wheels, the engine was purring.

'What are you thinking?' Riddhi asked her, finding her standing near the door , somewhat perplexed. 

Bodhi had taken a walk by then through the pavement.

The neon light that flashed the name of the eatery in sparkling orange and red had drawn magical patterns on the pavement, on people passing by, on their faces, backs. 

Sreemoyi noticed then how the neon sign made wonderous patterns on Bodhi's white shirt. 

Sree was suddenly taken aback by the ringing of the bell at the door.

She glanced at the watch.

How she had spent two hours sitting at her window thinking of non sensical things.

Riddhi had come home.

Sree rushed towards the door, cursing that smell of lavender.

Oft I long for

Oft I long for that sweet late evening
Of a delicate aromatic spring
When you took me to your home
And gave me that ambrosaic potion
To drink and savour all night,
To feel how the buds wake up after being kissed
By first rains of the season, freshened,
To get that first hint of heaven
Reaching which one can only get the calm
Spreading all over one's mind and soul,

Oft I long for that memory enlivening
Which took me to find the hills and valleys and bushes
All gradually becoming a part of me,
As if I have been given a strange fulfilment
A view of the world so savoury
That can never ever leave me,

Oft I long for you
And when I do not that do
I perhaps dream of mountain streams
And leaves green drenched by sparkling drops of dew.