Letter to Heart

Dearest Heart,

So many have belted out lists of songs for you and your condition, so many more have bled along with your beat, and the rest have just had an attack. As for me, I remember my Class IX exhibition in which our group had done a live demonstration of a goat's heart. I was not particularly keen to open that little thing in and out, and the now-Vet took it up willingly. I was also quite bored of repeating the same procedure over and over again, so I had just been the passive member of the group, just watching you, and taking notes on feedback and doing random useless errands.

Do you remember those endless conversations I had with you in those silent stares? Do you remember the confessions I made and the stories I told you? The many plans of life I could never muster the courage to tell anyone else in those two days and the excitement on returning from someone else's experiment? I remember. And I also have not forgotten how you helplessly kept listening. Even as you frayed out and SB regularly moistened you, you looked at me and kept listening. You were so bored of SB showing off your four chambers.

Thank you, heart. Ever since, I have held you in high regard. And thought that all my happiness and tears, desires and fears rest in those chambers. Till about early this year. I am sorry but I came to believe that you are just a pumping organ, and all those essentialist matters of love and belief rest solely in the mind. I feel bad for you, and how your image and brand value deteriorated and how I made myself be consumed by that new learning. I paid mind more attention and there is nothing to substitute the new conviction.

However, this letter is to allude to the aspect that even though you are just a pumping organ, you still get this letter while I don't get any. I have written several letters over a short span of time, and headlessly I feel that they reach and are read by the addressee. I, on the other hand, neither receive nor get a reply. Now tell me dear heart, who won? The head that felt or the heart which had none?

Within and without,
K.
 

Fizz

While in school we had four houses -- red, blue, green and yellow. Each house had to stay back after school per week for class cleaning which would include sweeping, re-arranging desks general dusting and the grand task of cleaning the blackboard and keeping it ready for the next morning with the date and a moral/phrase written on it. I was, for some privilege, assigned with the last one six days a week, something really royal you would say -- chitchat with the house girls as they cleaned the classroom and finally get on to do the thing I liked most, scribbling on the blackboard. On one such day as I ran out of phrases and went out for 'collection of material' (to gossip with a group of juniors), I came back with the phrase "anger is one letter short of danger". For the whole of next day, each alphabet of my own handwriting somehow radiated through the air and reached my head. Made so much sense, that phrase.

I am angry today. Very, very angry. From quarter to four. Just as the time ticks closing in upon that moment when you are about to touchdown on the best moment of the day -- 'going back home' -- you are called upon and thrust with a responsibility of improbable proportions. Horrendous. I am so angry that I am silent. And all through the goddamned evening my head has been an explosion of expletives which I am unable to express. I am more or less in control of the situation, I always am good with handling responsibilities, but I cannot rationalize the need to cosmetize a simple occasion. Pointless pressure trickling through the institution, which is why not even one individual looks happy.

So much incidental anger is really bad. I am so full of it that I haven't been able to quite enjoy the evening, or appreciate the rest of the things happening around me. It is dangerous. So, I thought let me once channelize it out, and I wrote. I am already feeling lighter. I love that scene in Jab We Met where Kareena instigates Shahid to tear off his ex's photograph and later, he, in a similar manner makes her blurt out invectives towards the man who betrayed her.

But dear readers, anger is a bad thing, really. It is contagious and doesn't do any good. Next time you are angry remember this post and my sad face and gradual turn of events and the brilliant smile that they eclipse and, do not be angry. Text me, dump it on me, take it out on me. I will listen and let you be. Then you can return to your business calmly. I will too, now. 

Few of my Favourite Things

Slam books, I took them so seriously! And I love my Koffee with Karan sessions as intensely too. Let me tonight ask my friend to type in some slam book like questions here, which I will answer. Should be fun!

 

Her questions are in italics:

 

1. If given a private aeroplane or a car at your disposal, to which three places would you be heading first? Why?

 

This is intensely difficult. Shit. I have always wanted to visit Warsaw (Poland) for some weird reason, so that; and ride into Budapest and Amsterdam :D Basically, the whole of Europe beginning Ireland. God, I am dying at having to make these choices.

 

Bhutan. Again. And again. Ladakh, Sikkim, the Himalayas.

 

Afganisthan. Do not ask any further.  

 

2. If you are stranded in a lonely island what are the essentials you would miss?

 

Preferred company, drinking water and good coffee in a good coffee mug.

 

3. How do you want to be remembered?

 

As someone who loved with all her heart whoever and whatever she loved. Laidback, yet responsible.

 

4. Cheap, fake brand with style quotient intact? Or a simple posh original?

 

Simple, posh original. One IWC v/s many Guccis or fakes. IWC wins hands down.


That was some slamming of the sensibilities. Will write again, back is breaking...with all that choice making. Far from Maria and her list of favourite things, but favourite nevertheless.

 

 

Letter to Waves

Can one imagine a letter reaching you? Let me make that possible. When I was a school-going, growing girl, I once asked my mother, "What does my name mean? It sounds so unique!" It actually sounded as terrible as a misfit. She informed me it means someone who has 'long, beautifuuuuuul hair'. Huh, the irony. While at school, I had possibly the most unimpressive haircut and the most disastrous sense of style, ever. Well, mistake. The most unimpressive haircut and the most disastrous sense of style were miserably imposed upon me. I felt caged, like obedient, good girls do. And my name just added to my sense of injury.

Those were sad times. Eventually, I grew up away from my parents for a short and very impressionistic span. I felt like a bird, trying various flights -- of fancy, of delight, of wrongs and of many missions. I developed my own sense of trend and my experiments with my hair. I grew it, and cropped it close. It finally has come to terms with my casual handling and become carefully wave-y and nice. I like it, quite. It is not loud, yet distinct.

It always manages to tickle the happy hormones when cut. I got one today. Have been feeling hopelessly sad with the end of vacation. I went to this place which was out of my comfort zone. A cottage per se. Green chairs, yellow tables, elongated neat space. I got a shampoo done. It felt like having the muscles of my back relaxed, the neck and shoulder unknot their tension. And then I was handcuffed with the protective gear and put to scissor point -- that tentative moment of complete surrender. The woman asked me what I wanted. I replied, 'make me appear happy'. She was taken aback I think, so I changed to 'make me appear youthful'.

Khanchh-khanchh-khanchh. There is something about a sound that reassures that the rest is going to be fine. Like the gradual change from first to second gear. A rhythm confirmed I was going to be fine in those unknown hands, in that fantasy land of little known mirrors. I think she did a good job. The untamed waves are back to their choreographed best, and I fell light enough to surf on them! I must say I rather like this quote from Woolf's Waves, "I am made and remade continually. Different people draw different words from me."

I am made and remade continually. How beautiful. How beautiful because it is so true. As true as the change that comes with a haircut. If only momentarily :)

Happy hormones activated. Thus, remade.
K.

October 27th, Happies.

Sylvia Plath. I do not know what emoticon to follow up to this name, a simple smiley, an exclamation, an ellipsis. I think I owe her an entire lifetime. Her suicide does not sadden me, nor does her betrayal anger. Her failure makes me a smile a bit in fact. And her poetry, oh her poetry...episodes of life through the window of mind. I have a strong belief I know her, personally. I do. I also believe I love her in a way she would love to be loved. Perhaps I know her because I feel her, I understand. She does not come across as someone I should read and feel the power of the language. Only with her it is so that I enjoy ruthlessly, images come alive. There is a connection uncanny, even she cannot deny.

 

Birthdays never mean much to me. The celebrations come across as rather unnecessary. But on this one day I wish that you were alive and I made you a lunch or dinner and gifted you a notebook and a bottle of ink. And spend some time cooking you a nice lunch or just share a fulfilling cup of coffee, play with your children and listen to your many heartbreaks.

 

Happy Birthday, Sylvie. Your suicide does not sadden me because I know exactly why you did so, nor does your being betrayed anger me, because I know what happened thereafter, and your failures, they just brought out the diamond from graphite. And your poetry, oh your poetry...episodes of life through the window of the mind, they help me survive. Eventually, if you were alive, I may not have done anything of the above, but may be I would be the one who would help you do it nine times by now...You do not inspire or encourage, you live along, Sylvie. Thank you for being. One tight hug.

Letter to Backlog

Hello,

An accumulation of uncompleted work or matters needing to be dealt with.

Two weeks back, on my return from Bhutan, I self prescribed myself a list of things-to-do on this blogspace itself. As goes with me, most of them have been unattended to. To add to it, today is a Sunday which would turn to a working Monday after about a gap of four weeks, which is a blessing some would say, and I would differ. The backlog is mind boggling and I cannot believe the ease with which I just spelled it out. I am sure if I could come out of the 'Tomorrow-is-Monday' sorrow, I could kill them all with precise elan, but no. The sloppiness of one unattended work over the other is choking me right now even as I write this.

I have about 200 college scripts to check by 28th of this month, and college magazine and college quiz and college syllabus to be looked into with immediate effect, an editing file to be completed at my earliest, I's wedding cards to be arranged, and most importantly, a thesis which needs to be returned to. Amongst other things like loan approvals and petty indulgences.

I know each of the above is doable still, if only I shirked away my dutiful procrastination. May be I will. It is just this that tomorrow doesn't interest me. Nor the day after. Or the next, until it is about 3 30 pm of Friday. And this is so wrong. I think it would also be wise of me not to be expressing such disgust and melancholy so openly, but I am not a very effective undercover person. I wish tomorrow meant availing the local train to BGC with BRC and sharing tiffin with SM and the Dadas of that staffroom. God, I do miss the Dadas. That used to be so funny, reading them -- each like a chapter of the same book of disappointment!

Anyway, I must stop writing. This is addictive, type-therapy. Perhaps curative too.

Sighing,

K.

Letter to Ink-Mother

Hi Ink-Mother!

Remember the last letter I had hand-written to you? Let me remind you. It was at my friend's. She was teaching something, which I had intended to learn and quite obviously in the middle of the lecture a doodle got the better of me and a coconut was produced. My friend being the one with a terrible health karma, was suffering from something around that time too. So I decided to offer a genuine prayer to you so that you would cure her back to the pink. I was so happy having written the letter that I believed you would actually read and do the needful. In fact, if I remember correctly, I ended the letter in a rather matter-of-fact manner with 'do the needful'. I do not recall you having blessed her with your best, but she pinned this letter on her soft-board and gave the letter a recognition which could only be competed by your reply.

O L D  L E T T E R

With the same belief I type to you today. People are making such a hullabaloo and painting the sky with sparks in your joyous celebration. I will just spill the ink. Earlier I had even written out a Facebook status wishing for a job of writing letters. I believe I could even gain the hypothetical crown of 'Lady of Letters', I would be so good at it. Ink-Mother, as the sky is lit up tonight and will reduce to a fuse by the dawn, only the faint smell of approaching winter and diffused crackers would be the remnants of other believer's grand rejoice in your honour. I, however, would keep writing and keep you alive in my belief on cursives and fonts.

Just answer me once, Ink-Mother. Answer.

Yours in ink,

K.

Letter to Fridge

Hi!

You must be cold? Does it make any difference to you though that people use you for your coldness? How different it is for us when we decide to become cold for a tiny little time. Just to prove a point. But you lucky you, you are loved and lived with for that. There is a sense of preservation in you, so contrary to the essence of living. Do you thus feel special?

I sometimes think about you, how you must be missing the male touch. I mean, we women are always around you, complaining, fishing, wondering. But the man? He just comes to collect his beers and the occasional bottle of water. We even deck you up with souvenirs of our travels, they do not even consider! I would love to see you blush with his contact.

Me? I know someone or someone's house is as own as mine when I can go up to you without your owner's permission. Feel beloved, dear fridge, you are. I love the comfort of looking you up and soaking the chill when I am actually warm. You static thing, such a beauty of binaries you are. 

I do not know why I thought of writing to you today. Perhaps because there is a nip in the air, perhaps because I saw a man linger a little longer than a moment around you. Or just because I long to be you -- cold and unfeeling.

Without you we would die managing the problem of plenty. I will go back to you, fetch the besan ka laddoo which I shouldn't be having, and leave you this. Someone thinks of you. Happy Diwali. You complete my home like many others'.

Thank you,

K.

Lights, Pages, Action!

The Diwali of 2009 was the worst ever. It even superseded that Diwali in which a tubri burst into Baba's face. I have thus shunned Diwali in the most religious manner possible. I become this anti-social, non-friendly, irritant person, much believing that I was a dog in my previous life -- sound irks me that much. This Diwali was also going the same, my mother is out of station and I am doing the watchdog service on my father and have deliberately not been meeting R, R & I. Keeping to me and my grief of a fast approaching end of vacation.

At about 6 pm, my friend casually sent me a WhatsApp of a link, which said that a book we had co-translated about two years back is really available on the virtual market. I waived it away even more casually but when I did click on the link and saw that doodle appear on the phone screen...I could never have imagined the joy I felt. This doodle is special. It was done when I was working in JNU, in tears most of the time, bundled inside room 30 of Yamuna Hostel. The first person who saw it surprised me with her gaped appreciation. She insistingly kept knocking on my door that night which remained closed for two days and only smelt of smoke. I was speechless too. Smoking and doodling and smoking some more.

Cut. 2012. I bravely let it be featured on the cover of the first book which would be published, even if only translated and not authored by us. It is not the fact that the book is out in the market, it is certainly not the fact that our names are on the cover, but it is the doodle which flew from room 30 and is flying the open sky that alone makes it a well-lit Diwali. I am also happy with the title which I suggested and thank my co-translator who voted for it. The doodle speaks that, Soulful Tales.

Have a look:

http://www.amazon.in/SOULFUL-TALES-K-SENGUPTA-SANYAL/dp/8176170771/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413994659&sr=8-1&keywords=soulful+tales

Composition VI

What I am in today, like most days.
Two Minds.

D O N O M O N O

Sweet Tooth

I always consider myself more Assamese than Bengali. My first responses are mostly in Assamese, if not the convent-fostered English, and I am bred in the laahe-laahe syndrome. A certain sense of tranquility reigns my life, almost to the point of bringing it to devastating turns, for myself and for near and dear ones. The sound of the raindrops on tin-roof, the length of the tea-garden greens, the bihu-bonfires -- the more I think of it, the more I believe in the goodness of Assam.

Having said so, let me tell you a true story. Last Sunday, October 12th, I returned from a ten-day tour of Bhutan. I had some of the loveliest local meals and drinks -- Ema Dasi (a curry made out of some onions and loads of red chillies boiled in local cheese, to be had with red rice) and Ara (an alcoholic drink made out of corn). My companion, LK, is a strict vegetarian and tee-to-taller. But the nicest thing about her was that she never objected, rather sometimes she insisted I have a beer or two (Druk makes good lager). And then there was this nice thing about us, mutual bonding. I actually enjoy veg-food, she was for waterfalls and me all for mountains, making us a wonderfully weird team. By the way, we share the same birth date.

So, we reached home inside 10 am and L was delighted with the Bengali spread of luchi-chholar dal. She had a flight back to Chennai at 4 pm and was to report to the airport by 2 30 pm. Around 1 pm, lunch done and Bhutanese stories exchanged with other friends, L suddenly remembered she had to take home Bengali sweets and we made a dash for Sen Mahasay. She is one sniffer of a woman and realized this was not the store she took her sweets couple of years back from. One thing should be mentioned here, earlier this year she gave up sweets -- for the tenure of a year.

We cabbed it two blocks down to the nearest VIP Sweets. By this time my hormones were dancing wildly inside me and till the little moment which it took for me to cross the road to the glassed shelves, the sweets literally cried out at me. The boy behind the counter was handling L's order very idly, perhaps because it was lunchtime. L daintily asked for a Kheerkadam and being the sniffer made me taste it. She ordered five packets of eight sweets each. That was the moment I became Bengali. The pleasure after the first bite in to the mishti was magnificent. It was like melting into the arms of the lover after a long time, like you were born to be there.

And then I gladly agreed to taste the rest of the sweets in lieu of L. I was actually feeling bad for her with all the orgasmic sounds she had to encounter. So finally I suggested a spoon of Mishti Doi and convincingly explained to her that it is a milk product, not a sweet. The delight on her face after that spoonful was impeccable. Her order hiked up to two kilos of the same. It was like siblings going to the local fair and hitting the balloons to win a teddy home. A joint joy. Enchanting. Only people with sweet-tooth can feel the necessity of half a bite of a sweet post lunch or dinner. This was it.

That afternoon with my Bengali emotions grounding the flag over the Assamese nostalgic one, I relished the sweet victory of the genes.

Letter to Teachers

Respected Species,

As I sit to blog, the internet connection conks off. It is very disabling. I will just write now, like I used to before the day of an examination, when I was in school. Random Thoughts -- big things they are. When I was in school I had never anticipated this day where I would be on the other side of a classroom's table. The idea kind of sucked, for lack of a better word at the moment. I never had the hots for any teacher. Some were really good (not speaking of their knowledge in the subject), and to an extent mildly attention arresting, if not inspiring. I strongly believe all teachers disliked me, and plotted to figure out a way to spank me. There was something irritating about me being a student who wouldn't allow a teacher the scope to complain as far as fetching marks were concerned. I was always content and not much judgmental about who taught how. I guess I was genuinely disinterested in studies. I do not remember as any class being exceptional; I just couldn’t concentrate for the entire period. But my mother, oh my mother, she was damn demanding and competitive. She insisted on grilling the concept of being within rank ten in any given class. It was painful. I am thus, heavily amused even as I write, how I happened to the profession of being a teacher.

They were just that, a thing I would never become. I actually thought they were stuck-up women, whether the young ones just out of college, waiting to be married off, or older ones having a lot of free time being the wife of some doctor earning a fat wallet. In plain words, they were boring. The tuition sirs were a more exciting chapter -- worth having fun with, a crush upon, or simply depending to gather a way to get the marks. Yet, now that I think of it, they were just that too, something I would never become. I always saw this profession as restrictive. I would on a given school day look out of the class VI window and fly with the aeroplane and believe I would be a pilot, till I was detected with myopia. I would yearn to be an MBA not knowing what it would entail, a Lawyer because I believed I could talk and the list was a serious long one of eliminating one into the other. Solid reasoning led me to believe I could be just about anything I wanted to be. An artist, a chartist, an entrepreneur, a drummer. Or, just be a writer I thought and be everything.

How naive every distant planning seems now. A series of un/fortunate events led me to become what I am today. It is a skill I developed, to teach. And I think I would have liked to sit in my class for some days. But how long can skill win over natural talent? I think I am blessed with the fine art of savoring the beauty of procrastination and believing in 'nothing can be so fulfilling'. And anyone for the respect? Not until I was at University. You could well say I have lost out on life by not having that 'one' teacher in life you look up to from time immemorial. I did fine, I would say. I had books as my teachers and buddies, the Enid Blytons and Sidney Sheldons. I learnt about lemonades and multiple-personality disorder.

I have great friends in people who are teachers, and I have absolutely nothing against the clan. But I really feel sad when students write to me that they had teachers who turned out to be a constant trauma. I dislike people like that, who cannot tolerate a little lack. Not that my dislike makes them any less. They must be great, and I must be unlucky to not have one good enough to inspire me to do what I like. Have you ever been with children? They are great teachers. The connection is back and I will publish this. It is funny that on days when I type a letter, I say I will post it :)

Many Meanderings,
K.

A Special Letter

My love!

I know I owe one to you since the time I began the series of letters, but I just wished for a day like today. Where the words would simply wield out of me. You -- I first came to know of from the Mirror. What a terrible fish to know at such a tender age for the sake of petty things called marks. Had it not been a good one I fear I would have shunned you too, like Arithmetic, or Social Studies. What made you, you?

You reappeared in my life at a time of utmost turbulence, not offering a solution or solace with your words, but the sense of familiarity -- like a known smell, or a fond memory -- you did blanket me warm. It was therapeutic to know someone else went through worse, and made the best out of it -- wrote it out. One by one, I lived your language, your confessions. Those powerful poems, the simple stories, them blatant entries and of course the gripping sketches. And The Bell Jar. Perfection is boring, so you made the distortions poetic.

And you stayed on. Thus began our journey of togetherness. You are a mean woman, you know it well. I don't understand how you manage to make your garland of appreciators dance around your fingertips! You wreath a dictate of desire to read more, know more. And we linger. To die along.

Sylvie, of the many mistakes I have made in my life, one of the greatest has been selecting you/your works for my thesis topic. I am cruelly biased. How can I distance myself enough to be critical? There are unbearable tears and ambitious smiles. And then there is the deep fear of a supervisor versus the deep love of the author. I am shredded in the attempt to balance my love for you, and my inability to work on you. I am sorry Sylvie, I failed the supreme academic in you.

But in moments when you help sail my wobbliness in spite of sparking wires inside my head, and bring forth a mad articulation in stammers and whimpers, I understand we won together. For only mad women love each other in a way only they can understand, and only mad women survive the madness writing their way out. Your insanity tones down mine, your insanity keeps me sane. As I grope for meaning when I read you I fail to understand how you found any. Perhaps finally you didn't. Oh how you loved Sylvie! You created that brand called SPecial.

Do you miss this world? The agonies and ecstasies of love? Do you know I know you Sylvie? Course you do. We met in the Mirror.

With you,

K.

Tonight

Tonight I am sad.

If I were Pablo Neruda, I could write the saddest lines.
Were I Pablo Picasso I would draw the strangest lines.
But I am neither
I am none.

I am aligned
With my smile

Like ink
It wears off.

Empty Space

I spent the entire day at a dear one's place today. At another's right now. I had almost decided I would not blog tonight, but I got tagged in a post on Facebook by someone who knows this thing called 'doodle'.

 

At D's place I began doodling on her pillowcase, her bedcover, her kameez, her arm, her palm, her wedding invite proof card, a currency note, her hot-water bag and a whole series of things would go on till her husband did not say aloud that all writing instruments should be kept away from me. At the place I am in right now, oh do not ask me. The staircase wall, the softboard, the books, the many nightwears...everything has a stamp of me. Only, she is still angry with me having designed a bit on her white phone today! But SM wasn't. So that kind of settles the score. My aunt had once allowed me to colour her wall when me and the cousins were bored that evening. We did a good thing out of it. And have ever since been in love with walls. Just lately I was dying to colour one of my own walls and bugging the mother of the same, till she gave up and finally procured a kettle and said, 'colour it!

 

The general notion thus is common everywhere, since childhood. Any kind of pen/cil, colour should be kept away from me in an endeavour to keep things unscribbled and undoodled. BGC staffroom still has the coasters and paperweights made and doodled by me.  My very kind friend, G, mentioned that she is going to rip my house off all the white notebooks and give me a bunch of lined copies for me to be able to attempt to complete my thesis. I cannot tell you how caged the very thought made me feel. I love G but I hate lined notebooks.

 

Would you believe me if I said empty spaces call out to me? Would you believe if I said I do not intend to make a mess of scattered pieces of paper? Would you like to join me once? I love listening to all that you have to say, only I would need something to keep scribbling, doodling. Do you find it disturbing? People have said I may be suffering from OCD for that matter. Oh well, everyone is, more or less.

 

There is too much emptiness anyway. 

Letter to my Friends

Dear Friends,

Before you begin an outrage about the possibility of qualifying as the addressed (given your humility) I would like to clarify on who is a friend. Simply put, someone we like and enjoy being with. Someone who puts us at ease. Someone we share a mutual affection with. OK, now that I know you are sufficiently convinced, hello. You have been inexplicably unassuming and made me feel so humbled that I rediscovered myself. You have made me believe that happiness is pristine and simple. You have made me uncharacteristically dance-step-tipsy and level-headed about joy. You offered yourself in the most giving manner I have ever known, made me feel good, do good, be good. Your quiet way of loving enormously is the tenderest I have known and strongest I have felt.

B H U T A N

It has barely been couple of days and I already miss mouthing my morning Hi's at you with my outstretched arms. I miss watching you play hide and seek with the clouds through the day. I miss the hues on the paddy field and the red chillies on the silver sheets. I miss those enchanting twilights and I miss staring into your dark outline having adjusted my night view. I miss falling asleep like that (mostly in my specs) discussing endless silent thoughts with you, courtesy the lullaby of the passing river.

I close my eyes and there you are, playing as if yesterday never got over. I think I am having severe withdrawal symptoms. I miss everything about you and what they made of me.

I miss you, miserably.

K.

Prescription

General disgust with everything. Craving sugar. Unnecessarily cranky and ill-behaved. 

Rx,

1. Majestic memories seeped in soul. Refresh, four (or more) times daily.

2. Blog about Bhutan. Once every week * four. Or, blog daily.

3. Thesis - Chapter 2. Once daily / Correct 200 scripts. Once daily (divide proportionately).

4. Work on mobility. Once daily.

5. Swallow Travel & Living while editing. Once daily.

6. Plan next trip to the mountains. Effectively, each moment.

#EatPrayLoveDream