April 17, 2022
Some images from my recent travels
November 7, 2013
How do you feel when you’re on an airplane, traveling somewhere far away from home? Do you still care for the window seat which once made you supremely excited? Or do you just ask for the seat by the isle, when you check-in, so that your frequent trips to the loo are smoother ones, less bothersome, less annoying? As your airplane journeys towards the west, do you feel bothered when one of your less privileged co-passengers in the middle-row leans towards the window by you, armed with his sky-blue compact, attempting to make best use of the golden light amidst the sea of blue and white enveloping the airplane? Do you curse him silently? Do you silently smirk at the middle-aged lady exclaiming at a high pitch, marveling at the beauty surrounding you all? You ask yourself if what is being admired is really so marvelous a scene and try to think about the last time you exclaimed in joy, marveling at something which bedazzled you. You can’t remember such a moment, can you?
As you cruise through the darkness of the night, heading Rome-wards, the darkness around you is interrupted frequently by road-signs, gleaming cheerfully, caressed by your cab’s headlights. Ikea waves at you from a distance, like a lighthouse far away, promising you of your approaching destination. Rome at night is like a dream. Or perhaps, any city at night is; when the cities are naked, stripped of her robe of people that clings to her at daytime. The beautiful chauffeur in her mid-fifties serenades you in her sonata of broken English, showing you the wonders of Rome as you pass by. You roll down your windows to catch the fresh air, which soothes you and freshens you up after the daylong flight from the city of your heart, the city you call home, the city of Calcutta. As you pass by the Vatican, as you make your way towards your hotel by the Piazza della Repubblica, you are mesmerized by the beauty of a city in slumber: a masterpiece of sorts. Tell me honestly, didn’t it shock you, seeing a different Piazza della Repubblica, hustling and bustling with life, the scene you beheld the morning after? Wasn’t it all so different from the desolate dreamy city of the night? But isn’t it rather strange that you fell in love with both the two selves of the city, just like one dearly loved his wife, his mistress with equal passion, in antiquity?
Opposite your hotel, a row of little bookshops attract your attention. Bookshops heavily pregnant with old, second-hand books, bookshops full to the brim with discs, old books and new discs punctuated by new, virgin books. Old books have always attracted you, haven’t they? As you cross the street and rush to the bookshops smeared with graffiti, as you rummage through the books with hopes of salvaging something precious, your eyes fall on the rows and rows of DVDs up for sale: HARD, someone has scribbled on a piece of brown cardboard, atop one of the rows. As you attempt to leaf through this lot, endless streams of pornographic films overwhelms you. As you walk to the next bookshop in the row, another few rows of such videos greet you, each waiting to be yours at €3. As you again dig into more books, you suddenly find a Warhol book in the midst of it all. Warhol’s Queens. After a bit of negotiation, you return to your hotel carrying the milk-white book, as happy and proud as that little boy of your favorite Cartier-Bresson photograph.
When you reach Vatican in your Green Line bus, a green sticker pasted onto your chest, a green earphone plugged into one of your ears, following the beautiful woman holding up her green umbrella, amidst a sea of tourists all following their guides in groups, the guides holding up umbrellas of different hues for her group to follow, you are suddenly reminded of a quote shared with you by a dear friend, from the Geoff Dyer book, Working the Room:
“Tourism is the march of stupidity. You’re expected to be stupid. The entire mechanism of the host country is geared to travelers acting stupidly. You walk around dazed, squinting into fold-out maps. You don’t know how to talk to people, how to get anywhere, what the money means, what time it is, what to eat or how to eat it. Being stupid is the pattern, the level and the norm.”
Your Green Line mates are divided into two groups; your heart sinks when your beautiful guide asks you to follow a grumpy octogenarian with the airs of a mathematics teacher. ‘All in line, all follow me! Don’t get lost! Listen to me on your headphone, especially when you get lost!’ As you pass by the marvels of Musei Vaticani, a distant cousin of the Stendhal syndrome somehow creeps in. And then, out of the blue, you’re inside the Sistine Chapel. Tell me, my friend, how did you feel about being in the womb of the Sistine Chapel, a marvelous wonder of the world? I know, I know. You won’t say anything about it because there is nothing left to say about it. But won’t you tell me about the occasional hissing of the guards, commanding you to remain silent inside the chapel, which echoes inside, which somehow makes marveling at Michelangelo more beautiful? Won’t you say anything about the Pietà? Or perhaps about that uncouth Indian male in his middle ages, a sparkling Nikon dSLR bouncing on his paunch, in a newly purchased hat, smelling of Pan Bahar, exclaiming at the sight of the Pietà, ‘Aare, yeh toh woh lamp-shade wala statue hai! Oh look, the lampshed-like statue!’
The evenings in Rome are splendid, aren’t they? Much of it, when you’re not going to and fro are spent with the young men from Bangladesh who’ve made it to Italy by the road, selling scarves and stoles by the street, the colorful silk scarves fluttering happily in the cool breeze of the evenings. On your first day, weren’t you surprised that you would end up speaking more Bangla on the streets of Rome than when you’re jaywalking through Calcutta? Isn’t it a wonderful feeling, to be able to speak your mother-tongue in a land far away, in another continent, across quite a few time zones? But why is it wonderful, a feeling? Is it because you long for home? Or is it simply because of the surprise and the fun of speaking Bengali everywhere in Rome, of all places? Why don’t you tell us all about Rubel, the young man in his late twenties who has already spent three years in Rome, after arriving here by road: a perilous journey with dangers strewn everywhere. ‘Oh, you’re from Calcutta!’ he had smiled, ‘I once worked in Jamshedpur for three months, before I set out for Europe! This is so wonderful a place, no one bothers you unless you bother someone; you can be in peace here. I even have a beautiful girlfriend and she loves me so much, she works in Florence, we meet once or twice a month. She loves me a lot, more than the love I have for her.’ Rubel takes out his mobile phone from his tight jeans, swipes on and on until finally emerges a photograph of the two, together: in a sunny beach, the sands white, Rubel and his partner smiling at you, at the camera, the blue sky an apt background for the matching orange bikini and orange trunks, as if straight out of a David Alan Harvey photograph. An elderly British gentleman passes by with his partner, planning tomorrow’s trip to the Colosseo. Rubel darts ahead, catching up with them, the scarves dancing cheerfully in the breeze, ‘Scarf, madam? It’ll look beautiful on you! Only €5!’
As you walk from the Piazza della Repubblica towards Stazione Termini, you meet a few dozen more young men, with whom you stop occasionally to talk. As you think about actually writing a piece about these men, now your friends after four nights of being in Rome, as you dig deeper into their lives, you are surprised to find out that many are from the Madaripur district, where your grandfather had spent quite a fraction of his childhood, the same Madaripur he talks about whenever you visit him, as the two of you journey into his childhood, into those moments of joy spent swimming from one bank to another, accompanied by Kalu, his faithful canine companion. In the few days in Rome, a visit to the Termini Halal Food, a joint by the station, run by a band of friends becomes your nighttime destination. Being open till 1am, it is one of those places where food is available cheap and hot, where beer is chilled, where you are served with extra care, with extra affection, for being able to speak Bengali, for hailing from familiar terrains. As you dig into your biryani, young men interact behind you, about business not being good, people not buying enough scarves. A man excitedly talks over the phone with his mother in another land, in a raised voice, enquiring after his abbu recuperating from the stroke. Men are violently playing football on a television screen atop you, kept on mute. The lone girl with tattoos all over her body, her hair pink and face riddled with piercings, her head resting on her hand, plays tiresomely with her fork, a plateful of shish kebab in front of her. A young man from Nigeria stares blankly at the wall, his eyes full of dreams, his steaming biryani awaiting his attention. Jahangir Alam, in his late forties prepares to depart at the end of his shift. ‘Take care of my friend from Calcutta, okay?’ he asks his colleague at the restaurant, as you two bid each other goodbye for probably the final time. You walk home. The chairs and tables outside your hotel are empty, people have left. In one corner, two homeless men have fallen asleep, a blanket sheltering them from the rainy night ahead. Boscolo’s lobby is empty now. The piano man is no more, neither are the men and women losing themselves to his melody. As you head towards your room, you hear the sky groan. By the time you reach your room, strip yourself off the stinking socks and wash yourself off the tiredness, it has started pouring. When you wake up the next day, it’s still raining. Rather torrentially, like in the depth of the monsoon back home. Armed with an umbrella, you head out for another tour of Rome, in search of more relics, in the quest to experience more of what is needed to be seen, and to find out where Keats had breathed his last, where Gregory Peck had been smitten by Audrey Hepburn. But rain comes between you and your plans. And suddenly, right outside your hotel, you behold quite a wonderful sight: Rubel, Sobuj and all their friends are out on the streets sporting colorful ponchos, selling umbrellas to anyone in need. Umbrellas are selling like hot cakes; the whole city it seems is using umbrellas peddled by the Bangladeshis. It’s electric: the rain whitening everything around you, the young faces of the men sporting big smiles and the cries of excitement, of joy, ‘Ombrello! Ombrello!
The tour of Italy in 2013 was sponsored by ICICI Bank - a prize for winning their maiden photo-contest involving the account holders.
June 1, 2014
A decade ago in school, around this time of the year, when monsoon finally brought happiness back to Calcuttan hearts and students to school after the endless imprisonment that the summer vacation was, I foolishly told a school friend on whom I had a crush for quite a while that I was madly in love with her. When, quite sensibly, she told me she hated me, I ended up writing what I thought then was a very important novella: a work dealing with adolescent love, an inspiration, I thought, to all those who were as unfortunate as me or even worse. I even searched up on the net about whether any sixteen year old ever won a Pulitzer or not and how to send my work to them. At that time, of course, the Pulitzer mattered to me the most, for two of my favorite authors had won it, Harper Lee and Jhumpa Lahiri. The Booker wasn’t of too much significance for Salman Rushdie had won it and I never understood a word of what Midnight’s Children was all about; I also had a Haroun and a Sea of Stories which was as incomprehensible, gifted to me by a loving aunt on my sixteenth birthday. So anyway, when that friend of mine said that she hated me, I spent four days away from school locked up in my room, typing away on Microsoft Word, my password-protected novella: Sohan and the Sea of Sorrows. The book was divided into two parts: the first part was all about me moaning and groaning – first, as my protagonist imagines himself making love to her (and thereby making love to himself everywhere in Calcutta), then later, in pain, heartbroken – and I carried on textually crying for so long that after a point, I thought I can’t go on any more.
In the first half, the protagonist narrates his wonderful life: in school, with new friends, in a new class, with voluptuous teachers from whom flesh spilled as if out of a bucket full of water being carried away home from the public tube-well. Then the young protagonist meets the dusky girl of his dreams, his friend’s sister – and to him, she’s almost like a dreamy unicorn, flying every afternoon from the corridors and into his classroom during recess with a magical smile. One fatal day, she asks the narrator if they can go on a walk. And soon starts off a unique friendship, which one day leads to a passionate kiss in the rear end of the school – his first ever kiss!! – and it will always remain the happiest day of his life, my protagonist assures the reader. He’s on Cloud nine; everything seems to be magical, beautiful, dreamy. Until of course next day, the gravitational forces of rejection pull him down when she calls it quits. And thus begins forty pages of agony until my tired fingers can’t take it any further. At this point begins the second part on a fictive night when the protagonist decides to go toss his life away for he can’t bear the pain anymore. He remembers how as a child he drowned when his parents enrolled him in swimming classes against his will; thus on a night of monsoon, he decides to jump off into the Dhakuria Lakes, when there are not even the policemen patrolling the desolate area looking for copulating couples and randy johns. He leaves home quietly, walks up to the lake, then decides to sit down and ruminate about the beauty that life was, before it was messed up by his merciless sweetheart. He is lost in thoughts, when suddenly someone sits down beside him gracefully on the concrete bench. ‘Do you mind if I sit down for a while?’ asks a woman in perfect English, dressed in a saree, carrying a black Samsonite backpack. He nods.
‘What are you doing so late in the night, dear?’ she asks.
‘I am sitting here, thinking about wonderful times…’ he replies.
‘Thinking about wonderful times, huh? Why, what’s wrong?’ the lady enquires, ‘Are you upset somehow? What happened, tell me? I am like an aunt of yours; you can trust me with your secrets. Go on now, tell me what happened!’
‘The love of my life…she dumped me…I can’t go on anymore…’ my protagonist breaks down in tears.
‘What the hell! You can’t go on because you had a breakup? Goddamn kid, don’t respect nothing! Wait till you hear my story!’ the woman flares up.
I was in my Mario Puzo phase, so were all my dialogues. My protagonist wipes off his tears with his hand, then asks, ‘What’s wrong with you, auntie?’
‘My husband, he was having an affair with this whore in his office, that sonfabitch! So I left home yesterday…’
She weeps silently, then burrows her face on my protagonist’s chest as he comes closer to console her. She goes on sobbing for a while; her long nails pierce into his back in agony, her warm tears making his sweat-drenched shirt a little damper. When she calms down, my protagonist looks into her kohl-blotched eyes and says, ‘Cheer up, auntie, all’s gonna be okay, just hang on for a while…’
‘But I can’t! I can’t! Have you seen this? Here, look!’ she says and unzips her backpack. What my protagonist sees turn him green, then blue. He gasps to breathe and runs and runs and runs until home to immediately scribble down the last chapter in his unfinished novella which was formerly supposed to remain unfinished.
‘The stinking chopped-off head of a mustachioed man, it will always keep haunting me in my dreams…’ my protagonist finishes my parabolic novella, ‘Tonight, I just learnt the most important lesson in life: that life is valuable, not to be tossed away, particularly over unrequited love, ever!’
The goldfishes, they’re mostly still, quiet, wriggling around once in a while when they’re running out of patience. Guppies will be guppies, they’re darting from here to there like crazy. All of them, the pair of graceful goldfishes and seven little guppies, they are packed in a transparent polythene bag half filled with water, the open end tied with a black rubber band, the fish bag resting in a plastic bag Sanjay is walking with. It’s not even ten, there is still quite a crowd outside Ramakrishna Lunch Home: not Madrasis though but Bengali families suddenly in the mood for dosa and idly. Cars pass by. Golden light seeps into the plastic bag, the fishes suddenly glistening dramatically. Sanjay’s son will turn two, tomorrow. He’s been thinking hard about what to gift his son, though with a tinge of annoyance. Will his kid understand the value of an expensive gift at so tender an age, he wonders; isn’t gifts now meaningless after all? But then, something must be bought, gifted. He’s heard from his wife, his father-in-law is gifting the kid a gold bracelet. Can you imagine! A gold bracelet! In no time will the kid outgrow it and then, it’ll be rotting away in the almirah for forever, wasted, forgotten. In any case, his wife will never let him sell off the bracelet ever, there will be a huge fight if he does, there will be a lot of cursing and crying and all hell will break loose. During annaprashan, the baby’s weaning ceremony, Sanjay tried to sell off some jewellery the child was gifted, in order to settle the huge bills – after all, an event where more than two hundred people are invited is no small event – but then, his wife exploded in rage; there was so much tension in the household that his sixty-something mother had a mild stroke. Ever since then, he always feels a little jittery prior to these social events.
He walks down Southern Avenue: by the overcrowded Kali temple full of devotees who throng in hordes on Saturdays. During his school days, Sanjay’s father used to be associated with the communists; theirs was a catering business and during political events in the neighbourhood, they’d be assigned to prepare khichdi and alu dum for hundreds of people. Once while present during one such gathering, he had heard some political leader saying religion was the refuge of the weak and the timid; strangely, after all these years, this fragment of that speech has remained with Sanjay somehow. Now, while passing by the Kali temple, he wonders whether all these people are really weak and timid, these men and women and children, young and old, handsome, ugly and beautiful, are they all weak and timid? He walks on, past the mothers waiting for their wards under the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, past the men and women buzzing around the phuchka stalls, past the restaurant whose interiors are being done – seems like they’ll be opening a KFC outlet very soon here. And then, there is a little bit of peace. The sidewalk stretching from the Ashoka Building to the Vivekananda Park is usually desolate most of the time during evenings; he breathes a sigh of relief to be away from the crowds finally. Suddenly, his phone thrills its electronic slice of the lovesong Chura Liya, ‘Yes, yes, I am here! I can see you!’ he answers, then hangs up. He can see her now, yes: a familiar silhouette by the Vivekananda Park.
Eight months, or was it a whole year, since he last met Sagarika? It’s been a while, yes. When they met at Nandan while cruising, six years ago, she was strikingly beautiful: tall, taller than him, she was chubbier than him too; she was dusky and had a bottom all her friends envied. Did they actually envy her, Sanjay never learnt, but her bottom was the butt of all jokes; they said she’d get into trouble having an ass like that, the ass that’d get any man on his knees. During parties and get-togethers, she’d wrap herself up in a dark saree and in the midst of everyone, so many faces, so many queens; all eyes would be on her for she carried herself in such a gracefully sexy way that one couldn’t help but look – or gawk – at her. And she loved being the center of all male attention. She also had a facebook account where she’d post her photographs once in a while – in a dangerously revealing chiffon saree or in a faux-leather dress or perhaps a photograph of herself sitting like a queen on a lavish hotel bed, motioning invitingly with her finger for the viewer to join her, the white sheet clasped at her bosom sheltering her nakedness. She had countless followers on facebook – she was the queen of all transwomen – she was desired like crazy. But things are different now, she’s not what she was once, after being diagnosed with tuberculosis last year. All across her face, you can see dark spots and marks, her shinning black tresses which would once dance with her every move, they’re no more; all she’s got now is a dead pixie. Her eyes, if you look into them carefully, are the eyes of someone whose days are numbered: they’re sad, they’re lonely, there’s no twinkle of hope in them anymore, somewhat like the eyes of an Irish Setter living way beyond its life span.
‘I’ve been waiting for almost fifteen minutes, where were you?’ she whispers, walking to him smilingly.
‘Umm, got these for him, the house can do with an aquarium full of fish, I hope.’
‘I see the fishes. Where’s the aquarium?’
‘Asked my brother to pick it up. Tell me, how are you?’
‘Better now, better. Listen. I’ve got this for him, a very little something. Tell them you’ve got it done yourself, okay?’ she says, handing over a brown paper envelop to Sanjay.
‘What’s in it?’ he asks.
‘Open it, see!’
From within the envelop, Sanjay pulls out a print, the size of an A4 paper. It’s a collage of photographs. Of his son. Spanning from his new-born days till now.
‘Downloaded the photographs from your facebook profile, isn’t it beautiful?’ Sagarika chuckles proudly, pleased to see awe in her Sanjay’s face.
‘Care for some tea?’ he finally replies, looking into her eyes.
‘Are you mad, I am already late. You better run home now, bye!’ she says and hurriedly crosses the road walking towards Safari Park, crickets chirping everywhere.
Any moment now, any moment, some outrageously long sedan will pull up by her side; Sagarika just hopes that this wait, it won’t be endless tonight.
