Hiralal-er Biyer Aage Ekta Kobita

Kon hashi ta kothaay haashi, ulto-palta birombona.
Bus-er bhire hothath dekha buuk-er khaajer uttejona.

Udor theke pitthi hoye uttejona golaa-e othe.
Ghamchi ami, gilche aamay kolonkito toshok-khana.

“Biye-er porei meye-ra emon pichon theke mutoye keno?"
Aar kota mash, tarpore to kol-tola te aar jabo na…

Chobi ta ki chena gelo?

Prithibi-te Maash Khaanek

Bristi hole shwopnoneer-e hurhuriye jol dhoke,
Nachte gelei achhar khabi, shamle dhori mon toke.

Baranda-r dorja khana pokko haather surgery.
Kaada jol-e paa dubiye raatri jege paayechari.

Rosh paayi na bhaath-er fyan-e, rosh paayi na bisna-te.
Rosh-er khoj-e shukno manush, nidra chhanchi majh-raate.

Aar jonmer jomaano beesh daag enke deye shorir-moy.
Sheera-ye sheera-ye beesh dhelejaai, hoye jodi hok bishokkhoy.

Raat puriye bhoshmo kurai, raat furaleyi ondhokar.
Ondhokaar-e huul futiye, jonmacchi barombaar.

Reality continues to ruin my life...

Help! Help! Aliens!

They kidnapped my homework!!

Wish they'd take me too...

.

A slushy snow ball.

Aim tight! No! Look behind you!

Demented Snowmen!!

.

This planet can be

Magical , but only if

You have a tiger.

.

very many thanks to Kriti for the awesome link.

A Month Of Love

Things are happening.
A lot of things are happening, even as you sit on your ass and browse through the internet and wonder where all the love is.
Love is. It simply is. And if its not, at this moment, making your life or breaking your spine or rendering you useless or giving you ideas or giving you the flu or laughing in your face, then you are probably the exception rather than the rule.
Love is out there. Doing things. And never more have I realized it since the last one month, when nearly all of my close friends have come to me with some love story or the other. So, names weirdly changed, this is what I have brought for show and tell…

My friend Sash, after years of bugging me to introduce him to my girl friends, has finally found love, in the avatar of a beautiful South Indian girl. His only problem- her family hates him, because he is from a different state and a different caste. My advice to him is to be thankful she is South Indian and not Hariyanvi, or her brother would be coming after him with not sarcasm and disdain, but a butcher knife. Good luck buddy.

The Gothic Angel, a young lady I admired immensely for her very noir style of writing, her dark, dark humour, and her love of morbidity, has stumbled out of the dark and damp into a sunny field of poppies that love can be. Being a very talented person, she expresses this new discovery deliciously, in poems and prose. But I hope she is still morbid. It would be a great loss to the world of blogging if she loses her sense of irony.

Happy, has fallen in love with a girl who is much younger than him and who doesn’t love him back, and he has been, I’m sorry to say, acting like a goat for the past many months. His Lolita has him twirled around her fingers. This week, he found out that she has been lying outrageously to him about most things. But he will not believe. No he won’t. I just want him to know that I’m really sorry all this is happening to him, but he needs to take charge of his own life. People can take advantage of you only as far as you let them.

The grasshopper, who had been ditched by his girl several months ago, insisted on staying in touch with her, contrary to my advice. He said he could not live without her, could not fall out of love. Well, it was fine till one day her new boyfriend picked up, and told him to bugger off and stay away from his girl. GH spent the next few days reeling with shock, humiliation, and misery. Let this be a lesson to all of you- never call up people who have ditched you, unless you want to invite them for your wedding.

My friend Kit lost her boyfriend of 8 years in a very avoidable accident. She was telling me one day on Gtalk about the doubts she was having about their relationship, and whether he was really good enough for her, and how she knew several people who liked her who were smarter, better looking, and more sensitive, and also how she really fancied a guy at her office. Well, he checked into her account that very evening, and went through her chat history. Well, you can probably imagine the rest of the story. No amount of groveling apologies could rescue their relationship and induce him to stay. Kit is today a very humbled, very lonely, very miserable person. Moral of the story- do NOT share your password with your already insecure boyfriend.


Nirvana’s love story is straight out of Ekta Kapoor’s worst nightmare. He loves this girl and she loves him back, but she has been in a relationship for the past eight years, and though it has been long loveless and dead, she cannot leave him because when she was a child, her mom left her dad for someone she loved and now though she respects what her mom did, she does not want to follow her footsteps, and she loves her dad a lot and her dad loves this other guy and blah blah blah bleggghh. Don’t worry, none of this made any sense to me either, so I told him that the only way for him to swim out of this psychological quagmire is to hire somebody to have the girl’s first boyfriend picked up and castrated. I even offered him the number of such a ‘somebody’, but good advice is never appreciated. Sheesh!

Closer home, LGL has shifted to a new city, a new job, and has moved in with her (same old) boyfriend. And she is a much wiser little girl since her last post.

LGL is wiser by this grain: A stuffed bunny will take five minutes to wash, but 2 days to dry..

What The Hell Do YOU Know About Heartbreak, Little Girl?

She used to say
It’s so girly to cry.
So I’m trying not to.
Trying.
Not to.
Cry.

She felt like home.
She felt like the mountains and the forests and the rivers back from where I come.

And you tell me, Little Girl, to make a nick in myself and let all my sorrow leak out.

What I’m trying to tell you, Little Girl, please listen, I’m not lost.
I’m not lost.
I’ve only lost my map.

For my friend the Grasshopper who cried all summer.

Photograph by Bokom.

Hagrid's Parents?

This is Hagrid's father.

And this is Hagrid's mother.

So riddle me this Batman, How does Mr. Hagrid Sr. get his wife pregnant???

Drawings by LGL, according to scale and the descriptions provided by JKR.

My First Fireflies

Rejoice, all ye faithful. She has returned.

And all of a sudden
I cannot see their faces anymore.
Though I can still tell them apart
By the sound of their laughs.

Treacherous ink has leaked
From the dying sky
Into the silent waters of the lake
And has smudged the trees
Into shapelessness.

From inside the sightless blue,
Some people we can no longer see
Are strumming a happy song.
One of us lights a match.

And we notice that
A nightful of jaded specters
Have turned into glowing cigarette ends
Hovering up
And down
And up.

This is when they come.
One.
Then two.
Then some more.
Till the tar is speckled
With tiny flying children
Holding lanterns,
Rushing out to play.

And finally,
Four weary delinquents
Get down to the serious business
Of making a plan for tonight,
In the shower of fireflies.

This is for Anik, Joy and Hasi, in memory of a deliciously lazy evening.
Photograph- The Lake, Kolkata.
Its good to be back.

A Clarification, and a Blue Fantasy

Despite the fact that I haven't even started packing my contraband into my secret contraband compartments, and the time for my departure is slowly drawing near, I am writing to clear up a ridiculously embarrassing misunderstanding.

Several people who have read my LAST POST have written to tell me they hope I have a delightful holiday with Aniket ( of Melody of Dissonance). Some have congratulated me on finding such a great guy. One reader expressed overwhelming joy that the authors of two of her favourite blogs are seeing each other.

While I certainly wouldn't want to debate the fact that Aniket is a great guy, apart from being a dearly loved friend, not to mention my arch-nemesis, methinks a clarification is in order. I am going on a holiday with Anik, my best friend, lover, and fiance. Anik is a name by itself and is NOT short for Aniket.

But this idea that Aniket and LGL could go on holiday together has ricocheted, as ideas tend to do when they unwittingly enter my brain, into several Blue Fantasies, of which I am sharing my favourite.

Blue Fantasy Scene of LGL and Aniket Going on Holiday Together

He stood at the very edge of the cliff, his face orange in the sunset, his hair blown back by the deafening wind. He turned towards the car and called out- "What a beautiful view, come and see! Such a place is worth dying in..."

She got down from the car and walked towards him pensively. "I'm so glad you think so, sweetheart.", she whispered.

***

She sat in the car, nursing the drink he had mixed for her, listening to his favourite CD. He had gone down without a single shout. Proud. He had always been proud. Pride comes before the fall, she smiled as she thought.

***

They found her at the wheel. Rigor Mortis had done its job and left. She was still smiling.

Holiday

Anik and I are going on a holiday to the city of our birth. We will spend the first three weeks of June doing things we haven’t done in a long time. This includes visiting many of our dearest friends, loitering for hours at roadside tea stalls, sipping cup after cup of lemon tea near the Lake embankment, foraging for old books in the second hand book market, perhaps catching a good play or a movie, getting drenched in unpredictable monsoon showers, smoking weed on the banks of the Ganga, maybe chartering a rowboat and playing rock bang in the middle of the river, eating too much street food for our own good, getting more body parts pierced, getting high before having to meet uninteresting relatives, getting sloshed in the middle of the day at some disreputable bar, and ambling aimlessly along unfamiliar alleys while languidly indulging in some socio-political debate .

Among other things, this means that there will be no posts on Rivers I Have Known for the next three weeks. I will, however, be reading all your posts, though I will probably not have time to comment. I promise to be back with lots of photographs, poems, experiences, observations, and Anik-dotes.

Take care of yourselves meanwhile. Will miss all of you. Will miss Cat’s foray into the world of fiction, Deepa’s adorable creations, Karen’s paintings with words, Sweta’s world-wise observations, Kriti’s plaintive rants, Joaquin’s musical expeditions every Thursday, Goirick’s bitter-sweet nostalgia, Jason’s maggot-kissing photos and spooky psychopaths, Aniket’s sometimes innocent sometimes sinister stories, Anirvan's passion-play with words, Priyanka’s utterly libidinous poems, Crafty’s unbelievely cute crochets, Mahesh’s heartfelt stories, Sawan’s poems that are sweet and sad at the same time, Margaret’s earthy poems, Atanu’s beautiful use of words, Amit Das’s homesickness, Amal’s daring experiments, Arnab's ruthless murderers, Quaint Murmurs’ funnily sad interpretations, Preetilata’s strange way of looking at life, Pradiptaa’s collection of amazingly good poetry, Sucharita’s little angels, Sarmistha’s tongue-in-cheek annotations, Amit's lyrical hindi poems, Smitha’s comments on my favourite books, Kirti’s well-aimed advice in her letters, Shubhajit’s ventures into darker and darker cinema, Sagorika’s sparkling poems and prose, Sakshi’s bizarrely funny experiences, Satan’s Darling’s acrostics, ….’s deadpan humor, Chriz’s very gross and very hilarious essays, Nikhita's bitchi rantings, TFL’s dark tales, Gagan’s love’s labour losts, Cherry Blossom’s photography. Amith’s adventures, SSQUO’s oddities, and all the other magical blogs that I read. See you guys in three weeks time.

Hasi, Bokom, Shila- am really looking forward to meeting you guys.

Happy Monsoons.

Ciao.

Oh- by the way, because of the recent cyclonic devastation, we have decided to scrap our plans to hit the beach.

Watercolor by Dilip Chitre. Photograph of Watercolor by LGL.

Random Mean Things Spoken To Me By Men Who Once Quote Loved Unquote Me

Alternative title to post- And Those Were The Last Words He Ever Spoke...

“You are a very, very nice person, really. I just wish you were, you know, better packaged.”

“You know, I would love to introduce you to my sister, but you need to lose some weight first or she’ll never take me seriously. She ‘ll think I’m having her on.”

“Just having read a lot of books does not make you a lover of literature.”

“Erm, is that cellulite?”

“I wish you were even half as beautiful inside as you are on the outside.” (To see what brought that on, read this)

“I don’t want to hurt you. I love you! I just think a deoderant would do you a world of good.”

“Woooh, I really need to teach you how to kiss, baby.”

“That is one uncultured girl.” (Ok, this from a bloke’s dad)

“She’s nice. But you have to keep aesthetics in mind when you choose a girl.” (Another dad)

“Whoa! Biceps!!”

“You know, if you let your hair fall to your face maybe you wouldn’t look so bad.”

“Did you stop growing in fifth grade?”

“Sweety, its ok you don’t have any talent. I still love you”

“Florentino Ariza was a pussy-whipped loser” (eight years on this still makes my blood boil.)

“I’ve never hidden anything from my mother, and it pains me that I now have to hide the dirtiness of your past from her now” (the dirtiness refers to the fact that I had a previous boyfriend)

“I’m not trying to change you. I just want you use the goddam fairness cream. Please? For me?”

Painting by Dali

A Moth In Love

A moth falls in love
With a playful tongue of fire.
What is love but death?

To my dear, dear friend the Moth- Take the plunge yaar. I'll be waiting around with a sponge and a bucket of ice in case you get singed. :)

A Love Song For Bhati

Bhati doesn’t know me.

Bhati wouldn’t care.

He looks in my direction

And all he sees is air.

His eyes are burning beacons

His eyes are so alone.

As cold as morgues at midnight

As motionless as stone.

Bhati doesn’t know that

A bird inside me tries

To home towards the beacon

Of his lonely, lonely eyes

He’s a quiet man, is Bhati.

But not one you can ignore.

In that solemn head of his,

Bhati keeps a silent score.

But I hear a thousand echoes

For the words he cannot utter

Like he’s at one end of a tunnel

And I’m standing at the other.

They branded him and caged him

They rubbed him raw and red

They roasted Bhati on a spit

Till his charred ol’ soul was dead.

But I would rain upon your wounds,

I would set you free,

If you’d only let me, Bhati,

If only you would see.

An Acrostic and A Milestone

A writer can only

Hope for people to read and
Understand what she writes.
Nevertheless, it gives a very
Definite high when she
Realizes that
Every single silly thing she writes
Does manage to find a

Few people who think it’s interesting,
Or funny, or sad, or
Lovely, or outrageous, or plain
Ludicrous. So today, this writer,
Overwhelmed by her
Wonderful fortune in finding such an
Eclectic, weird and fun bunch of
Readers, would like to
Step down and bow in gratitude.

Twelve Hours With A Highway

There is something emancipating about being in a bus that's doing 140 kms an hour, on a highway that rolls on through deserts and mountains and shrub forests. The place you are leaving behind had no bars, the place you are heading to promises no extraordinary freedom, but still you feel like you are escaping, you are breaking parole, you are rushing headlong into adventure.

As your bus scurries like a terrified ant in and out of one of the world's most ancient mountain ranges, Gilmour and Wright sing in your ear-

Ancient bonds are breaking,
Moving on and changing sides.
Dreaming of a new day,
Cast aside the other way.
Magic visions stirring,
Kindled by and burning flames rise in her eyes.

The doorway stands ajar,
The walls that once were high.
Beyond the gilded cage,
Beyond the reach of ties.
The moment is at hand.
She breaks the golden band.

Every ten kilometers or so, the sky changes from sunny to cloudy to rainy to furiously sunny. The scenery changes too. Sometimes you see fields where mustard will perhaps grow later this year. Sometimes you see villages in the distance, and goatherds sing in some weird dialect as they guide their wards home alongside the road. Sometimes you see a lonely chimney that puffs black smoke into the yellow sky. and sometimes the desert takes over triumphantly, and you see nothing but miles and miles of unfriendly shrubs and thorn flora.

If you are lucky enough not to sleep through it, you might also get to see the sun set on the Aravallis, and a purple pall descend over the heated desertscape. Then impenetrable darkness, and sitting amidst twenty odd strangers sleeping fitfully, you are left with your own thoughts. You ponder upon the directionlessness of your life, and why everything is so scary, and how things change so fast and never go back to what they used to be, and how it's okay, it's always okay. And they still sing to you, those two, of burning bridges.

Bridges burning gladly
Merging with the shadows,
Flickering between the lines.
Stolen moments floating softly on the air,
Borne on wings of fire and climbing higher.

On A Wooden Bridge

It's not yet too late
To wash my skin clean of you.
The water beckons.