Avik's Story

Mom didn’t cry yesterday, nor she lowered her face and rubbed her forehead with palm in a vain way to stop tears. I touched her feet and she kissed me. I told her goodbye and requested to have food in time, to exercise a little and to walk in morning or evening. She nodded, and she repeated everything to me. It was our thing. A very old ritual. I nodded, and I was waiting for that moment when she’d cry or hide her tears. Back days, I begged her innumerable times to stop that embarrassing thing, and that I wasn’t going anywhere dangerous or something and I’d call her every day. She didn’t stop. She told that she tried but couldn’t. But today she was smiling, while waiving me goodbye. She was SMILING! Was I disappointed? Was my importance to her fading? Did she stop missing me? Or, was I uncomfortable for being in a total new thing? While waiting at lounge in airport for a delayed flight, I couldn’t stop from thinking. It started in ancient period. I was a shy kid at the

Kolkata has been always kind to me. My first job, first love, first pot and first drunk walk through the tram lines. First time, I appreciated being alone and in crowd. First time, I kissed a girl and took her to my room only to shiver when she undressed herself. Kolkata beholds a special place. Good or bad. Precisely, that’s the reason, it always claims most of my vacation period. That’s why I roam through busy corners, lazy bi-lanes, old buildings and oldest subway train. I watch fantastic movies and savor Bengalised snacks at cheapest price and stop by the tiny tea shops, where I find the both budding and ageing locals with unbelievable political insights dissecting Bengal, India and World while sipping tea from a small clay pot. But nothing compares to the orgasmic satisfaction of sniffing the dust of the old books in College Street, whose past owners live inside the pages. The humbleness of those books and arrogant sexy looks of new ones, the cool breeze on the banks of

The moment I woke up, I felt content. My memory lane was open and there was a clear passageway between the long lost electromagnetic pulses from hippocampus region and my eyes. I was there, in the very room, where I had spent most of my childhood. The room, whose every wall had distinct color, whose balcony gave this wholesome picture of the quiet and motionless village, houses roofed with inclined brick tiles, and the old trees, still alive. The furniture had changed, but one or two of them from my childhood period survived. A wooden almirah with decorated glass and carved with peacock imagery stood at corner, now contained with extras of the house. Extra blankets, extra bed sheets, extra everything. And there was that bed. Massive. Made of mehgony and with modern comfy mattress on it, it certainly took most of the pride. But everything else was replaced. The light was new, the others furniture were trendy, the balcony got a makeover with glass panes and all. Only a primordi

The day started as usual. Alarms snoozed tirelessly for hours, from five in morning and when finally I left bed, it was seven thirty. Took some water. Went to bathroom. Brushed yellowish teeth. Greeted to the couple-friends in other room, who came last night and cooked delicious chicken. Skipped bathe and dressed the same clothes of last day. Put on shoes, dirty from last evening’s surprise mud , near metro station. By then, it was already twenty past eight. And I got a call from  Taniya . I thought first, I’d pass. See, I had no time. But then I decided to put her through earphone to avoid future confrontation and there she was, with dizzy but warm voice still longing for bed and blanket. While Delhi was getting hot and humid, Mauritius being in other hemisphere was colder. We spoke semi-formally and then I asked about the little devil, who was supposed to be asleep till now. I wanted to see her just for once, before going out for a shitty day. I did a video call. She w

Dr. Jerome Motto, a psychologist wrote about a guy in his thirties, who jumped to death in 1970 from the infamous Golden Gate Bridge, which often termed as a marvel of technology, but a social failure. The reason was haunting. Deeply haunting. The guy wrote his suicide note, or rather ‘life note’ as below: But no one smiled at him. No one. Even witnesses told their accounts later about how the guy waited on the railing of bridge for hours till sunset and kept smiling at random people. I remembered late writer Sunil Ganguly too wrote about the incident in his famous travelogue on Paris “Chobir Deshe, Kobitar Deshe” (In country of Paintings, In the country of Poems), while pointing towards the relative heartlessness of crowd. I know, in this world of unreasonable earthly madness, this surreal act of lunacy sounds silly and immature. Maybe empty to many. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the pain and hopelessness of that poor guy standing on the verge of death, putti

‘Okay. But I don’t know Chinese. How can I know Chinese? I know Hindi. Can Hindi work?’ I fumbled to explain. And then she laughed. I was in this line in Airport in Mauritius preparing for check-in. My time with my two awesome pagliz had ended surreally. At very last moments, while Vedantika cheered with us with her adorable water bottle, we like two good-old friends opened Tequila and had three shots with lemon and salt. My taxi was waiting outside. And it was raining. I didn’t want to come back, but sometimes we are out of options like the wasted rain drops over the glass of speeding car. Sometimes we can just held hands and pretended to be grown-ups. And we did that, in taxi, in waiting hall, and even when we stood in the line for collecting boarding pass. She carried my trolley. Her eyes as usual were mysterious but poignant. God! I already started to miss her. We miss more when we get more. And then it happened. We were in front of this check-in counter. A young pre

I remember Ojha Sir of Vajiram used to say in class, ‘Do you know how to recognize common men? Just ask them the solutions of the most impending problems of India. They will have the same answer. How to solve Kashmir? Send Army and kill all. How to tackle Maoists? Send Army and kill all. How to check growing militancy in North-East? Send Army and kill all. How to deal with Pakistan? Send Army and kill all.’ And then he used to pause, and announce little dramatically, ‘And when you find them, just do not debate. Because you cannot win. Just nod and leave.’ Whole class laughed. They liked it, because they knew it was true. Or, as it was an IAS preparation class, power-dreamy students pretended to understand with their temporary open-minds. Whatever. Surfing Facebook is fun, because only here people can’t pretend for long. You open a person’s profile, don’t go for the ‘About’ section, rather look into his/her sharing patterns, you definitely get a hold of that pers