Whispers To The Oblivion ...

I sat by the Mississippi river, my eyes feasting on the changing hues of autumn and my senses enraptured by the cold autumn wind. Out-of-nowhere came a wave of melancholic memories and washed me back to half-a-decade ago when I used to sit alone at the traffic crossing of Rabindra Sadan bleeding doggerels on my little notebook. I remember how the lights of the oncoming traffic on one of the central roadways of Calcutta blinded me. I remember the stares, the smirks cast upon me by judgmental pedestrians. But most of all, I remember how deafeningly silent, unfathomably hollow and terribly lonely it felt even amidst the jostling cacophony of the city.  It awes me how loneliness never left me. Loneliness clawed at me then just as it gnaws at me today. Only, perhaps the blow has dampened over time. It awes me how I travelled thousands of miles to a whole different country to experience loneliness all over again-layered and intense. My heart always restless with the feeling of losing eve...

I am always stuck in a limbo. Yearning for a far fetched world while my feet are tangled into the veneers of reality. As a child, yearning to grow up and be an adult; as an adult, yearning to achieve one shiny object after the other. I wonder why the human mind is designed to traverse from one achievement to another, one place to another, one little possession to another bigger and better. Who indoctrinated us to be materialistic mongers? I have yearned for so many things in life and achieved them or negotiated peace and moved on. What I have yearned the most in life is love. I have never settled with the love I already had for a moment, satiated, content and fulfilled.  I remember, as a child looking at my friends' fathers warmly snuggling, holding and even kissing their children at the bus stop to school, while I felt empty. My mother never had the time to smother me with kisses, or hug me for nothing at all. In fact, as much as I remember the chastising, surprisingly I don't...

'Reclaim the night'- As I sit in my cluttered desk in a chilly lab eight thousand miles away from the city, the people and the culture I call my own, thousands of Bengali women are out on the streets of Kolkata protesting for the rape and murder of a resident doctor at RG Kar hospital.  How do I feel? Claustrophobic. My eyes are welling up, with every bite sized news that I see my friends posting on the social media. A good advice would be to just shut off that source of stimulation and regain the calm. But you know what the problem is? I have always felt terrible like this whenever there is a crime against women, even in the movies. So much so that, it has become like a version of me that surfaces at adverse circumstances like these. It is so emotionally daunting, that I cannot even explain in words. But why are we so fragile and exploitable as women? Why is the world unfair to us? Do we deserve to be just secondary to the world whereas, if you really think about it, we are th...

Most people that I have met in life have found my name intriguing, enigmatic or colloquially what you call a 'jaw-breaker'. Therefore, much to my dissent, my name got conveniently shortened to 'Shreya' or 'Shrey'. It irked me majorly because 'Shreya' is also a different name within the Bengali culture. It felt like an imposition of a person or personality that I were not. Over a period of time overstimulation forced me to accept the fait accompli until, a friend started using the word 'Shree' to address me affectionately. Intuitively, effortlessly and organically I felt like my personality fell in perfect symphony with being called 'Shree', so much so that, subconsciously, I also had started to address myself as 'Shree' soon afterwards. Needless to say, the shift in cultural paradigm as I immigrated from India to USA was vast and diverse. Surprisingly however, it made me cling on desperately to the vestiges of my roots and identi...

পর্ব ৩  শ্রীচরণেষু মা, শীত , বসন্ত, গ্রীস্ম পেরিয়ে তোমার পাঠানো জিনিস হাতে পাই কাল সন্ধ্যেবেলায়; সাথে এক খানা কাগজ।  ভাবলাম হয়তো চিঠি লিখেছো আমার উদ্দেশ্যে, তারপর দেখলাম যে ওষুধ পাঠিয়েছিলে সেই ডাক্তার এর প্রেস্কিপশন মাত্র। অতঃপর মন খারাপ এই হোক বা তোমার আঙ্গুল যে চাল এর ঠোঙা ছুঁয়েছে, সেই ঠোঙা বহু হাজার মাইল অতিক্রম করে আমার কাছে এসে পৌঁছেছে, এই অনুভূতির কাছে অবদমিত হয়েই হোক, চোখে জল এল। এক-দুই ফোঁটায় তাকে থামানো গেলো না ।  সহস্র ধারায় বয়ে চললো সে।  বিকেল তখন পরে আসছে।  বাইরে সূর্য মধ্যগগন থেকে নেমে এসে উঁকি দিচ্ছে আমার পশ্চিম এর জানলা দিয়ে: তার অগাধ কৌতূহল আমার মা এর বিদেশ থেকে পাঠানো দ্রব্যাদির ওপর। সারাদিনের ক্লান্তি বুকে নিয়েও অনেক্ষন, প্রায় ঘন্টা দেড়েক তোমার পাঠানো পাঁচফোড়ন এর প্যাকেট , চালের ঠোঙা, চানাচুর, আমার ফেলে আসা জামা গুলো নাড়াচাড়া করলাম, বুকে জড়িয়ে ধরে কাঁদলাম। এ কি মায়া , ঈশ্বর এ জানেন। এ কি যে একটা মানসিক দ্বন্ধ আমি আগে কখনো অনুভব করিনি। বিদেশের এক ঘরের বাড়িতে, শুধু ভালো পদোন্নতি আর টাকার জন্যে এই প্রতিনিয়ত নির্যাতন।  দুঃ...

The claws are all at me: sinister and ominous, luring me into the dark alleys of my head, where all my courage  and will power lay, stabbed brutally. Their carcasses prophetic  of an imminent catastrophe. And yet, I want to thrive in this hell. And yet, what demon in me thinks  I can defeat the horror? To burn in humane, but to rise again from the burnt is not. The body I carry with me tells me I am human. The soul within, agrees not.

Compliments  in the middle of the office corridor, In between the walk to the grocery shop, At lunch, during work  socials feel nothing short of a long lingering hug- affirmatory and validatory to the peaks of hope landsliding with each little missed deadline and each tiny failure. As apprehension grips me  day after day- Will I make it? Or will I eventually fail? It is surprising how the lack of belief in yourself can make so much space for how others feel about you - your appearance,  your cerebral capabilities,  your creative stint and almost everything under the sun. Compliments to some might simply mean  a few warm words; While to some others it means a whole story- The story that they could never write in their own words.  

Sometimes i wake up  in the middle of the night  on my side of the bed I turn around to find  the other side empty.  I come out of my room  into the hallway  and find it empty. If i were to walk out  to my front porch,  it would still be empty If, out on the road,  still empty I sit in the farthest corner  of an empty bus,  travelling through  empty highways  to a deserted library. They say that air rushes  to  occupy empty space Except everything  now feels like vaccum  My porch,  the highways  and my heart.

Human beings no matter where they go in the world, will always seek home:  in places, in people, in things, and in food. Perhaps because at the end of the day one wants to be vulnerable and yet are loved. We search for a setting where not the flesh, not the bones, but the very soul beneath it is adored and cradled like a newborn, squealing, and needy for love.  As long as I lived with my family, I never realized the worth of home, unless one day, I was out in the wide world, alone, apprehensive, and being indoctrinated by societal norms every single day. The only pockets of peace that I was left with was a 'chosen family': a farrago of strangers that I met, and before I could decide to love or hate them, I was entangled with them like wollen strands in the mesh of a new warm cardigan. I have lived with a plethora of strangers, loved them, held them close in my most vulnerable moments, and then cried bitterly when we parted. After a time, both parties agreed on their fate and m...

We sat amidst piles of memories  And rubbles of hope Savoring our last cup of coffee together  We laughed so hard that I spilled coffee on my dress And then you laughed a little more. ... Even with your back turned to me As you frivolously tucked  your books into blasé Amazon boxes I could feel your beautiful blue eyes  blurring with silent tears,  just as mine. ... Our love is stranded today at the edge of the door It's time to bid adieu "Fare thee well" , I say And then you turn around  to smile ... Flashes through my eyes  those three-sixty-five days of you and me like it was i decade since I had held you close  and then like everyone I have ever loved,  you had to go ...

পর্ব - ২  শ্রীচরণেষু মা, একাকিত্ব বড়ো অদ্ভুত জিনিস।  মানুষ কে বড্ড পাল্টে দেয়।  যে বাবার সাথে এক সংসার এ থাকবো না বলে সাত সমুদ্র তেরো নদীর পারে চলে এলাম, সেই বাবার জন্যেই বাড়ি ফেরার সময় কি উপহার নেবো তাই ভাবি এ দোকান সে দোকান ঘুরতে ঘুরতে।  একটা বয়েসে এসে বোধ হয় মানুষ সত্যিই আপনজনদের ক্ষমা করে দিতে শিখে যায়। বা হয়তো এ সব একমাত্র আমারই বৈশিষ্ট ; রাগ জমিয়ে রাখতে আমি কোনোদিনই পারিনা।  বহুকাল আগে এক বন্ধুর মুখে শোনা কিছু মহামূল্যবান কথা মনে থেকে গিয়েছিলো : মা বাবা তো আর পছন্দ করা যায় না , আর পাল্টানোও যায় না, তাই হয়তো একটা সময়ের পর ছোটবেলার সব কথা ভুলে তাদেরকে ক্ষমা করে দিতে হয়, বুঝতে শিখতে হয় যে মা-বাবা (আর আমার ক্ষেত্রে দিদিও) ছাড়া আর কেউ আপন হয়না, কোনোদিন ও নয়।   যে একা থাকার, স্বাধীনতার জন্যে আমি চার বছর আগে বাড়ি ছেড়েছিলাম, সেই একা থাকাই আজ আমায় তাড়িয়ে বেড়ায়।  মনে হয় স্বপ্নের পিছনে ছুটতে ছুটতে এত দূর চলে এসেছি যে ফেরার পথ ধোঁয়াশা,অন্ধকার আচ্ছন্ন হয়ে পড়েছে।  বাড়ি কবে ফিরবো জানি, কিন্তু মনে হয় কিভাবে ফিরবো তা ভুলতে বসেছি। আচ্ছা মা, মানুষ যা চায় ...

পর্ব - ১   শ্রীচরণেষু মা,  আজ খুব ভোরে ঘুম ভেঙে যায়, কোনো দুঃস্বপ্ন দেখছিলাম কিনা বলতে পারিনা তবে মন বড় অস্থির হয়ে পড়েছিল নিদ্রাভঙ্গের সময়। তারপর একেবারে বিছানা ছেড়ে উঠে কিছুক্ষন যাবৎ কালকের লেখা একটা খসড়া নিয়ে বসলাম ব্লগ এ আপলোড করবো বলে ; করতে করতে হঠাৎ দূর থেকে ট্রেন এর আওয়াজ কানে এলো।  বড় অদ্ভুত এই স্মৃতিচারণের জগৎ। এক ঝলক এ বহুবছর পূর্বে ভাসিয়ে নিয়ে চলে গেলো : ছোটবেলার কথাগুলো, খড়্গপুরের  সব স্মৃতির ঢেউ হয়ে মনে আছাড় দেয়। একটা বয়েস এর পর বোধহয় সবার স্মৃতির কৌটো গুলো এক এক করে জীবনের আলমারির সব তাক ভরিয়ে দেয়।  আর বাকি জীবন টা সেই তাক থেকে একটা একটা কৌটো নামিয়ে পরিষ্কার করে আবার সযত্নে তুলে রাখতে রাখতেই অতিবাহিত হয়ে যায়।  বিছানায় শুয়ে শুয়ে বড় মনে পড়ছিলো আমাদের ছোটবেলার কথাগুলো, খড়্গপুরের স্মৃতিগুলো : আমাদের খড়্গপুর আর সেরকম নেই জানি।  থাকবেই বা কি করে ? যারা সেই ভিটে কে মামাবাড়ি করে তুলেছিল, তারা তো সকলেই এক এক করে চলে গেলো।  ছোটরা পরিবার-বন্ধুদের মায়া ত্যাগ করে কর্মসন্ধানে বিদেশে পাড়ি দিলো আর বড়োরা একেবারে ইহলোকের মায়া ত্যাগ করে পরলোক...

I Sunsets on your bed have never been the same before. I have never seen such beautiful hues of sunset. How surreal it seems when I realize that it is, in fact, the sheen of my eyes that reflects the remnants of the sunlight: the blues, the yellows, the orange, the red, and the lavender. From the windows of your top-floor apartment, everything looks immobile. The silence feels so peaceful, so calm that it's almost unbelievable that only a year ago, ruthless storms have ravaged me. II The tints of the sky reflect through the glass windows of every building in this corner of the town; each of which has a story to tell. The barren trees hold up their limbs onto the sky, tall and proud. Even in their disheveled state, they do not ask for a savior. They are worthy and whole on their own. Fall has ended in a jiffy and harsh winters are en route. Yet, lifeless trees are not afraid to embrace the darkness, for they live in the hope of a certainty: that certainty being spring. I wish the Sh...

I And then this morning came, unheralded. I woke up in your arms and knew instantly that that was where I always belonged. I woke up at twilight and chose to capture this autumn morning in my senses, in my writing, because memory often fails me. But my words are defeated in the battlefield of emotions. I sit at your cluttered desk, with an equally cluttered mind and all I hear is you snoring away safely in the blanket that has witnessed our union, only last night. Is that the safety of your home, or have I become your home? II Emotions run through my veins like wild river currents at this conjecture of night and day and all I feel is your smile widening on my neck, one notch more with every breath. All I see are the barren trees out of the window sill. Smoke billows out in insinuating trajectories and becomes one with oblivion, subzero hit already. Winter reincarnates in Iowa City, but why did it bring so much happiness in my 'skies'? III Spring brought you into my life and aut...

How time flies, doesn’t it? It’s 11 th December again. Life has reversed its gears from happiness to sadness and back and forth countless number of times. I sit at my desk looking at my life in retrospect; it’s almost midnight. Through closed eyes, I see a quick flashback of my life. What I remember distinctly is that chilly night of 11 th December 2013. I didn’t attend Choto dida and Choto dadu’s marriage anniversary celebration because I had to prepare notes for a boy in my class: the one who didn’t budge from not only breaking my heart but also abusing and gaslighting me. Even through closed eyes, I can see all of it, clear as a daylight. The first day we saw each other, the day he told me he had a girlfriend and I stopped talking to him, the day he showed up at my physics tuition and then the last time we ever met when he tricked me into believing that to love means to touch. Ironically, he never loved me, but asked me to prove my love by letting him in through the fragile naiv...

A ray of light seeps through the crevices of my soul, early into the fall, filling my senses with the aroma of Shiuli , and my mind floats in the effervescent 'skies' of hope. And then, out of nowhere, I realize: With someone's touch, my wounds have sealed. With someone's love my bleeding heart healed.

Missing someone is so strange. It gives you a farrago of emotions, ranging from a terrible unrest to a lasting calmness in lieu of a fleeting hope that the isolation will be over soon. I wonder how intensely you must love a person that when you part, even temporarily, a sudden paranoia grasps you by the throat. How profoundly can a woman love a man that the fear of death, of effervescent hearts, natural calamities and even a fear as trivial as changing seasons can occlude your breathing, hinder your living? I had once read somewhere that the way a man loves is different than a woman. A man is quick to fall in love and he either falls deeply in love or not; like an all or none situation. But for a woman in love, it’s anything but binary. It’s an expedition she embarks upon, one day at a time. Somedays in love, she delves deeper and deeper into an abyss of bittersweet mantle of love and in others, she holds herself back, lest her fragile heart is grappled with again. She waits quietly in...

আর কটা দিন অপেক্ষা করলে পারতিস, বেশি নয় মাস দেড়েক.... তুই তো জানতিস আমার সময় লাগে, অত তাড়াতাড়ি পারিনা ভালোবাসতে অত তড়িঘড়ি পারিনা কথা দিতে  আসলে তুইও খুব অভিমানী - আমার মতো  যেদিন প্রথম দেখা হওয়ার কথা ছিল - আমার আসতে দেরি হল বলে তুই রাগ করলি ব্যাগ নিয়ে বেরিয়ে পড়লি,  কলেজের গেটের বাইরে- তুই তো জানতিস আমার একটু সময় লাগে, সময়ে আমি কাঁচা সেদিনও অপেক্ষা করেছিলাম আমি ঝিলের পাড়ে দেড় ঘন্টা,,,, সময় বদলালো, শহর বদলালো তোর আর আমার অন্য মুলুক তুই চিঠি পাঠালি 'প্রেম করবি?' বিশ্বাস কর, বলতে চেয়েছিলাম 'হ্যাঁ' কিন্তু সাহস হয়নি তুই তো জানতিস আমার একটু  সময় লাগে... বাবা বলেছিলেন ভালোবাসা টা 'ম্যাগি' নয় স্তরে স্তরে মসলা মাখিয়ে হাল্কা আঁচে তৈরি, ভালোবাসা টা আসলে বিরিয়ানি আমিও তাই স্তরে স্তরে  তোকেই ভালোবেসে ফেলেছিলাম তবু জানতাম সঠিক সময়ে আসলে সেদিন তোকে বলব। হয়ত পঞ্চমীর দিন ম্যাডক্স স্কোয়ারে  তোর হাত টা ধরে বলতাম, হয়ত ডিসেম্বরে শহরে ফিরে,  তোর পাশেই মিছিলে হাঁটতাম তোর উষ্ণ জ্যাকেটে মুখ গুঁজে  ট্যাক্সি করে বাড়ি ফিরতাম হয়ত তুইও ভালোবাসতিস হয়ত আমিও ভালোবাসতাম। শুধু আর কট...

I met a girl who lost her mother in Syria and her father abandoned her. She left home at 19 to go to college ( or maybe to escape her despondent life, who knows?). She had two sisters, twins, whose destinies were braided together, not in Syria, but in the United States. I met that girl on a bus and much later, in the flow of a conversation, I had asked her with ample hesitation,  -"So, who do you call your family?" -"Anyone who takes care of me" I cannot tell if it was because I wanted to be her family or just my compassion for an ailing friend, but, I took her to my home that night. after the doctor discharged her from the ER. There was nothing fancy at home to offer as food to a guest that night. I had not cooked much that entire month courtesy of my crippling anxiety and depression. Yet, that day I wanted to cook for her. I prepared a simple Bengali meal of bhaat, dal, papad, and fried eggs. I think at some point she told me I can take care of her like her dead ...

I don't want to be happy anymore. I am done chasing dopamine and serotonin. I just want to feel whole. I just want to eat, sleep, go to work, return home and do it all over again for days after days and never feel a thing. It is okay if I don't feel happy anymore. I just don't want to feel empty again, that sudden wave of anxiety, sadness, and foreboding that consumes me when I am alone. I don't want to turn off the lights at night and then stare up at the ceiling thinking why I am never enough for people, and why everyone can just easily choose someone over me...why they can never hurt them but can hurt me, and why I always, always, always lose everything like sand flowing through my fingers.