Existence

You can capture a landscape

With the longing in your eyes

Don’t frighten it, give it a little warmth

Droplets of youth will embrace you

Even in the premises of dust

Trust wasn’t there to be found

Yet you’ve blended the blooming nearness with

Kohl dripping down around

Hold it there, stay a poker-face for a while

A beginning initiates another

All my wounds have nakedly desired to

Unfurl your unharmed desires

My dear, it’s obligatory that we

Keep our heads high, when

The sky is reaching down to us

 

(Translated from the original in Bengali by Tapas Ray)

Distance

Let this sunshine, which lightens my face

Be transferred upon another

Let the grudges of secrecy

Take a feline plunge, and hover

The many pieces of my existence

Take wrinkled strolls along the river-bends

Only to meditate, and unite

Echoing the hopeful trends

Here, the crops just sown

Challenge the heights of the sky

The swarming colours, here, untie

Themselves to move to a new high

And, the cooing of the rail engine

Numbs all senses, and distance akin

 

(Translated from the original in Bengali by Tapas Ray)

Love’s Labour is not all Lost!

Where whenas death shall all the world subdew,
Our love shall live and later life renew.
                                                           — Edmund Spenser
 
How can one not write about the ever-changing, ever evolving expressions of love while discussing the changing face of Kolkata? When you are 20 something and belong to the Gen-RDB, romancing love seems to be the best way to understand the soul of Kolkata.
                                                    
While one can see the city is stretching its arms with extended towns, malls and multiplexes, flyovers and skyscrapers…One can feel the city is gradually opening up to the uninhibited and honest notions of love and public display of affection. It is such a relief that you rarely attract frowns nowadays while taking a stroll together on the street or sitting intimately in the gardens, which, until recently, were still taboos among us. What is more heartening is Kolkata could be the most liberal among Indian cities when you discuss homosexual love.
 
Some might say the haste and hustle of the new millennium have ripped love off its coyness, innuendos and veiled mysteries to make it insipid. But I strongly oppose them. I believe the green stretch of Maidan still looks greener, the traffic jam at Belgachhia crossing seems bearable, the waterlogged lanes of Behala do not bother us anymore, the dustbowl of the Book Fair adds to our complexion…Kolkata still seems beautiful when you fall in love.
 
Kolkata makes you cry when you say goodbye to your love at the Terminals.
 
Kolkata makes you feel blessed when you travel in the last metro home with your sweetheart. And then we all know, Love’s ‘labour’ is not all lost in Kolkata.

Oktoberfest in Kolkata

Goethe Institut/ Max Mueller Bhavan, Kolkata organised Students’ Oktoberfest, a miniature Kolkata version of the world’s largest beer-festival, on its premises. The Oktoberfest is a two-week festival held each year in Munich, the capital city of Bavaria in southern Germany, during late September and early October. Around six million visitors gather in Bierzelts (large beer-tents) to enjoy the specially brewed beer for the occasion. There had been a number of thematic workshops for everyone at MMB such as film shows titled “Glimpses of Munich”, Oktoberfest quiz, crash courses on the Bavarian dialect and music to tune up a perfect prelude to the main festivities. The party kicked off with Dr. Reimar Volker, the Director of MMB and Mr. Jürgen Fischer, the German Vice Consul in Kolkata tapping a keg of Bitburger beer and declaring “O’zapft is!” (“It’s tapped!” in Bavarian).

The kegs were tapped. The beer was poured in huge mugs and soon revelers to be seen swooning to the peppy notes of BayerischeBlaskapelle (the Bavarian Chapel music played on the trumpet, accordion, tuba and clarinet), performed by Brandkobl-Blosn, a Bavarian Brass Band exclusively flown in from Munich for the occasion. The members of the band, wearing the traditional Lederhosen (leather pants worn by Bavarian men), charmed everyone with their exuberance and energy and as a result, all gathered to lip-sync the beer-song “Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit!” meaning “A Toast to Happiness” and it lit up the atmosphere. With delicacies like Würstchen(sausages), Käsespätzle (cheese noodles) and Kartoffelsalat (potato salad) to gorge on and a Mass (beer-mug) in every hand, the countdown to Bengal’s own “Oktoberfest” (the Durga Puja) would surely have been merrier to some of the citizens!

The Unseen

I seek around identity among the

Collective sounds of the Earth

Yet, I wish to remain unidentified

The sky unveils even more, as

I cross Purnia, come undone the

Beauties of nature, with its

Verbose sceneries

It’s a new night, under a new sky

And it’s a new you

Sitting at the borderlines of

My known world,

Seduces me the world unseen

Calm and good

 

(Translated from the original in Bengali by Tapas Ray)

Resentment

The dawn is effervescent

The morning fog is in self-love

The pomp of the pristine white is all around

The sun finds a little break

From monotony

Never felt the urge of being with the ‘me’

Even amidst the sights and sounds

Now, feeling it – strongly

The soil calls out to the horizon

The sky obliges, all in obligation, perhaps?

The Heaven and Earth unite to make the dawn

More pleasant, pleasant yet static

The morning markets pose a threat

To farmlands, calm and coy and unresisting

Every day, each day

Can the grass still sing?

 

(Translated from the original in Bengali by Tapas Ray)

Magnitude

When words reach my aged feebleness

They seek youth

Words deceit me with

Cunning directions, whenever I put my foot forward

After much jiggle of heart

Words do not care, even if they

Devour me to the last morsel

Words play the newly-wed bride, with

Uninhibited demands, and attain

Beauty of sobriety

After each marital break-up

Self-hate creates addictions sometimes

Addictions go skin-deep, with subtle femininity

… Thus chant the sages eternal mantras 

 

(Translated from the original in Bengali by Tapas Ray)

Legacy

Take a glance at

The solitary flower

Red and brave

Braving the harsh winter

Keeping the valley, otherwise dead, alive

All have gone home

After taking holy dips

Ask the river as well, to

Take a few dips within, as

She has gathered no less moss

I keep awake, as the

New Year arrives

Colours and expressions

Become demure

Amidst these cold waves

What we need now

A desperate plunge, as we’re

Caught together face to face, and the

Fisherman is pulling his

Fishing net

And… let us seek light under this raw sun

 

(Translated from the original in Bengali by Tapas Ray)