As I have always spoken that every thing has two sides to deliver, if you expect always good things from a certain object which has always delivered right things in the past, then you should probably give it another thought. Just like that if you get depressed with a common shock or illness, then you should probably reconsider the truths they make you see when you fall ill, or you just lie at your home thinking about the rest of the world, and about life and also about human fate, how do we get attracted to the place we belong, and how our lives get complicated with the more and more offerings of the recent world.
I realised there were a lot of ‘get well soon’ wishings on the day I updated my current status on the social site in my profile. Now this is the problem with getting some famous. Think this way, if only I had kept a low profile on my writing side, these things would never happened. I could have said that day at ease that I do not owe any blog, and I do not write at all, as I had said to 'S', that I hardly read stories and novels, as she has turned her face away from me now, and I can once again fancy about the offerings a love could. But once again, that was another thing, and this writing thing, is so different. As it is said, that “No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlesticks, that they which come in, may see the light.” Now I did not find any reason to hide the candle in a bushel, that’s all, after all, I am no Athena.
My head suffered from a pain, and the cold and cough from inside, they were all coming down to me, at the same time. The whole day I spent before my laptop, either staring blankly to the ‘yellow pages’ or going to the ‘My computer’ and then once again coming back to the ‘Desktop’. The evening proved to be some fruitful, as I managed to do some of the BRM tests (I still don’t know what is the full form of BRM, it’s just that I’ve started doing these because they seem to be interesting and thought-provoking) with my wristwatch around the pen and paper.
I dropped my head on the pillow when my mobile said it was 11.38. It was the famous ‘Janmastami Puja’, and the sound of Dhol and Khanjani kept coming from the nearby Hanuman temple. I tried to see the blind boy who comes and sits here under the lamppost every night, but as I found out, he wasn’t there tonight. I clinched to the railings of the windows and kept staring outside. Now as I say that I keep looking outside, you would probably get wrong information that perhaps from the window I look, there are some beautiful sceneries which can be seen, but that will be so untrue. It is actually a window of a flat which resides nearly opposite to a long road, but as previously stated ‘nearly opposite’; there are not a lot to see at all. But this is the very window, where I sat and wrote stories like ‘Another rainy day’, ‘A love, forgotten’, and others. So it’s kind of favorite place for me to sit and write. The lamppost stands at the left corner, the main road passing down, and the closed room of my favorite neighbors, the Punjabi family, who does not live there any more.
Now this has been a frustrating thing. How much the Punjabi family meant to me! I remember how I introduced them in one of my stories, ‘The no-private room’. I feel I should copy the whole paragraph from there and quote the thing here. So here it goes:
“Beside the road, to the opposite side of my room, lives the Punjabi family; my favourite neighbour, and it is a nice job for me often to watch them. They have two cars, and both the cars shout like bulls, and the little boys at the road shout at them. But, you can curse them, laugh at them though you can’t help but love the two daughters of the Punjabi parents, the same two girls aging between 18-19, who were the popular topics of the boys’ talking in the town.”
And now when they are gone I can do nothing but watch the glasses of the windows of their rooms. I watch the lamppost standing in the day, in the half-light of evening and in the darkness of midnight. I look at the third floor of a nearby house, which is under construction. But after a certain period of time, they all seem to be boring. Yes, yes, a writer gets bored sometimes.
I remembered the entries I wrote under the heading ‘Thoughts of a wanderer’. The whole thing was based on my visits to the lake places and Southern Avenues, and the experiences and considerations I made there. I remember how I discovered her place, how I discovered her ancient home, and how I discovered her, out of nowhere suddenly at the previous Puja. But for once again, I have become the thing I was. S-I-N-G-L-E. This whole loneliness thing, it is kind of a creepy thing in itself. I mean, I am kind of a sick and habituated in it. Like, I am dying to fall in love once more and this time, for real; and yet again, even if a girl comes to me and asks me out, I am going to freak her out by saying, that I am so sorry and it’s a matter of fact that we should not hang out at all, because we have our responsibilities to take care of, and all that nonsense. And why the hell am I talking about nonsense? Have I forgot about the phone call made on the 1st January, 2007? Anyways, that is past.
Right, anyways, it is midnight, and today is 15th August. I don’t think I am the right person to talk about the gravity of the day at all. But, just reminds me when I was in N.C.C (Navy, to be specific) in our school, back in Narendrapur, we used to do a lot of things on this day. But the past days are gone now, today is not real, and the future coming ahead, is going to be as hazy as grey (apparently, grey means death, doesn’t it?). So I close the writing on a note where I see a few plants surrounded by steel covers, with the following thing written all over it: “This is our city. Please raise your voice to stop pollution. Plant and preserve trees”, a few people sleeping in the footpath with their sheets on (yes it is New Alipur and still, people from the nearby slum comes out at these footpaths for a good night sleep), and with the silence all over the colony. Just as a matter of fact, I saw two monks passing the road a couple of minutes ago, as they stared astonishingly to me and I continued to neglect them; childhood habits.
So it is 1.00 A.M now, and as I also need a good night sleep, coming out of an Influenza, I would not risk anything at all now, so good night and all, and yes, always remember that the darkest hour of the night came just before the dawn. Someday, you will understand the inner meaning of this. Chao.
- August '09
For reasons unknown, the protagonist sounds like Holden Caufield.
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