Of Change, Long Homecomings and (the lack of) Bookstores

“It’s been a long time since you came around/

It’s been a long time but I’m back in town…”

 

Yes it’s been a long time since I sat blogging. And even longer since I blogged from the comfort of my blanket in Shillong, with a mug of coffee by my side. Compiling all my posts together from previous blogs on Blogger, Tumblr as well as that flattering refuge of small-time writers, Facebook Notes, into this present blog has certainly been personally fulfilling. Reading some of my older jottings, I could form a picture of the last three years that I’ve spent between Shillong and the promised land, Calcutta. ‘Promised Land’ of course is a very relative term, and I’m sure I won’t find too many people in Calcutta sharing my optimistic view of their city. However, to a Northeasterner who doesn’t have a Scheduled Tribe certificate nor any skills in sports or music to boast about, but with ambitions the likes of which can be called acceptable in today’s times, anything west of Assam sure is the Promised Land.

So three years it has been, or soon will be, and change has become a constant. Schooldays now seem more and more remote; a distance that was very much discernible the first few times I returned home. Little things, silly things even, here and there, and the town you realise has moved on. It’s one of those chauvinistic feelings of being betrayed although it was you who has done the betraying. So I find that anything longer than two weeks in Shillong begins to irk me. Two weeks is the safe length of time, when you are enjoying all the pampering back at home and the odd chores are voluntarily completed and the lonely walks make you appreciate the scenery and the cold wind on your face. Day fifteen, and the pampering is a tad too obsessive, the chores all at the wrong times, and the walks suddenly missing the laughter or even the silent company of a friend.

A weekend left to laze through, and then I’ll be taking that train back to hungry mornings and the delight of flipkart deliveries and underground rides and examinations  and graduations. And lou!

Moments into that journey, Shillong, you will be missed. The Shillong of my boyhood, but no less, the Shillong of my anonymity.

P.S. Dear town, please get yourself a proper bookstore that sells more than textbooks. The looks on the faces when I mentioned a certain writer today were bizarre.

دستانے عجیب (Dastaan-e-Ajeeb)

The evening sun, glowing like an edible disc of flaring yellow low in the horizon, shimmers in the green water. A bridge of white on which I stand, and another winking up from the lake. Waves lap up the rickety white wooden pillars slant into submission, supporting the bridge, uncomplaining in their misery.

The bridge creaks under my footsteps, like olden generations groaning under the apathy of the present.

A solitary drop falls on my shoulders, quickly dissolving itself into the fabric, leaving but a grey souvenir of remembrance behind.

Rainclouds loom from the east, advancing like godmen dancing to chase the sun down. And meekly, silently the sun retreats down its melancholic western journey. And the battlefield abdicated, the evening takes a turn for the funereal.

As menacing grey vanquishes melancholy yellow, a chill sets in, like so many Dementors round the corner. Pine trees bow their heads down pensively like angels suddenly reminded of past misdeeds. The cold wind withers their barks and a fall of leaves fleetingly flatters to occur.

And then the Tandava begins. The hail first hits the road, marking out the curbs and sloping down the verge. Then the calm of the waters is broken by rude pellets of icy water and hail.

Standing on the opposite bank, I see the megalophobia-inducing wall advance towards me like Shiva himself dancing his way across his worlds in a mesh of creation and destruction.

And with a blast of numbing authority, He dances past me to the rhythm of the clouds, to the rain making love with the lake, to the trees weeping in shameful nostalgia, and to the grim chill in the air.

Orange Evenings

The fire burning in the tiny angiti,
Tiny hands stretching out to the warmth,
Sitting hunched on end
Like children around a tale-granny
Warming oranges, glowing oranges in the fire.

The warm sweet juice bursting forth
In one’s mouth, the seed cast aside
And the home was such a warm, sweet place
And warm, sweet was the cold
And the heat.

Cardiology

“I open my eyes, I try to see/ But I’m blinded by the white light/ I can’t remember how, I can’t remember why/ I am hee..re tonight!”

So sang Simple Plan half a decade ago. You must be thinking what’s with me and punk lyrics. I wonder too. It’s a wonderful feeling when you think that an artist has composed something especially for you: when you turn the last page of a novel and go “Hey, that sounded familiar!” or when a stanza from the latest national chart-buster resembles your oh-so-modest life. It’s a wonderful feeling. All through high school, I thought I had a secret deal with Green Day to write songs for me. And when the vagaries of love showed its face in subsequent years, Good Charlotte seemed to fit the bill. I found it uncanny – the regularity with which their songs came to mean something more than just a collection of emo lyrics to me.

But then came college, and life was good and busy. Intellectual even! Punk took a backseat as Floyd, Nirvana and GN’R took centrestage. I was expected to appreciate the ‘good’ music. Not that I didn’t like it. But then, the lyrics always spoke of somebody else. It wasn’t too difficult listening to Denver to imagine golden countries and brilliant sunsets. Or to listen to Floyd and dream of smoky Sherlock-Holmesque living rooms and a life bordering on the surreal. Or to sing along with Axl Rose and feel a wonderful high. Or to listen to the songs of a Bengali bard and feel the rustic tension in the air. But somehow, they were never about me.