Of Dreams and Despair

I scoured the sky for a slice of unblemished blue.

But, I was left marooned in my every bid.

I breathed to the depth of my soul for a waft that bears the touch of a fairy.

But, ended up gasping for breath.

I learnt to listen to the words of silence.

But, I was exiled every time in an agony of dying dreams.

I drank the hemlock to put to rest my frayed nerves.

But, it left me parched and half-alive.

I’d spotted her in a crowd of scores years ago.

She stood like an angel, adorned in an azure opulence

That had sent the late-autumn sky rushing for cover.

The flippant breeze tore through her golden locks

And, gently touched her lips that put the rose in shame.

The crimson rays of the setting sun kissed her satin skin.

There was music in the air and grim had disappeared. 

She chortled like a torrent, giggled like a toddler.

She was a healing touch to my bruised soul. She was an end to my hunt for life. 

I touched the wall a thousand times that she had leaned on

And, envied every soul that she spoke to.

I read volumes to stock my words for the encounter I was living for

And, preserved every piece of paper where I scribbled her name.

I spoke to her from the dawn to the dusk and through the night

And, I gave her all the gifts that I wished to give.

Though she was never around for me.

She was grooming herself up for a better bride and a brighter sunrise.

Oblivious of the sundown on a wasteland of dreary dreams. 

It's the ball that does the talking!

“Hola Messi! Buenos días!” I shouted. A smile returned from the other side. For a nano second,
it seemed, he paused. Were my eyes seeing things? But, lest I could wish, tenga un gran partido hoy (have a great match today), the legend was gone — in step with his team for lunch.

It was 10 past 12 on Friday and my day was made.

I heard a whisper from behind with a tap on my back: “Es muy tímido (he is very shy).” That was Martin Castilla, a journalist from La Nacion, a newspaper published from Buenos Aires. Besides being one of the most renowned football reporters, Martin has something unique to his credit. He was the first journalist to interview Lionel Messi — when Messi was no one.

“Messi no necesita hablar (Messi needn’t talk). La bola lo hace departe de él (the ball does it for him),” Martin paused as we began discussing his experience of seeing the under-17 footballer turning into a legend.

It was 2004, when Hugo Tocalli, who was then assisting Jose Pekerman, coach of the junior Argentina team, first told Martin about the young Messi. “He couldn’t believe that someone from the Press had come to interview him,” Martin said, recollecting the day he met the teenager at the Argentina Football Association headquarters at Ezeiza in Buenos Aires.

“His movements with the ball were amazing. He had that ‘crack’ factor in his game,” said Martin. One can’t help wondering what makes Messi so special in a land of legends like the Great Diego Maradona. “Messi is more a Barça guy. He is giving his best to the club that helped him become what he is today,” Martin referred to the support that Barcelona extended to Messi for his treatment with a hormonal problem. “If Messi is still the guy-next-door, Maradona can only be worshipped from far.”

As we stepped out of the hotel, we saw a large crowd in front of the Salt Lake stadium. Tickets were being sold at a high premium and passersby were asking each other if there could be a spare ticket to the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “The entire city is covered with posters of Messi. It’s awesome!” Martin was visibly astounded.

“What is Messi’s view on Kolkata?” I couldn’t restrain my curiosity. “I feel really sorry for him,” Martin said. “Él es muy popular para salir a tomar el pulso (he is too popular to step out of the hotel to feel the pulse of the city).”

Somewhere there was a tinge of sadness. Imagine a 24-year-old confined to his hotel room because the world-wide fame and super-stardom demands it, while a world outside goes delirious: “Messi! Messi!”

The life between

Between the dawn and the dusk
Between the heart and the husk
Between the summer and the chill
Between the ocean and the hill
There are a thousand cherries
They cry till they die
The red fades in mid-day heat
The whisper turns into bitter bleat
Agony finds a deaf ear
Pain leaves a dark smear
Tears vanish in flooding rain
Life yet chugs on like a dated train

Dead or alive, b'day shines

What if bin Laden sends a birthday invite to Bush? Will there be an e-card in return for the world’s most precious head?
But why an e-card? Why not a bouquet of 50 red roses and a wish for long life scripted on expensive handmade paper from the White House?
Bush doesn’t have the address, stupid. Then how does he have the email details?
Come on. The US president would reply to the last alert from al Qaeda.
Laden celebrated his 50th year on earth — the planet he aims to paint in blood — today. Newspapers across the world were flooded on Net with the news. But there was a difference.
Those where the sun rises later wrote in the second paragraph, if not in the intro, that the West doubts if its villain was alive to cut the cake, but those who maintain a diplomatic centrist stand in line with their geographical position, were teeming with wishes scripted under a thin veil to save a US glare.
Let’s for once, believe that Laden is alive. More than his birthday Saturday made the US a laughing stock once again. The world’s most dreaded man showed how he romped home with an unbeaten 50 defying the most publicised manhunt in history.
The US and the coalition claimed to have turned every stone in search of the fugitive on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border till, intelligence analysts say, it went cold in despair.
The US believes Laden was killed during its assault on the rugged terrains of Nooristan and Kunar, but it still can’t forget the dead man’s birthday. Any news on his death is still worth $25 billion.
Let’s imagine the US is right and Laden has been stumped before his half-century. Does it help the world with a sigh of relief?
If Laden is lost, Bush isn’t. If Laden is hated for the deadliest act against civilisation, can we spare Bush who played the butcher across the West Asia?
Dead or alive, the Laden lair in the Taliban bastion, however, will keep off from a birthday bash today, according to an Islamic portal which strongly backed the Laden-alive story. The fundamentalist sect that he follows — it’s called Bida — doesn’t greenlight birthday celebrations, the portal said. It fears the fun and frolic would invite western contamination.
Poor Osama.

Life amid dying dreams

The other day I woke up with a broken dream. I scurried into the loo for a splash on my face to hit back on the earth that’s dear yet dreaded. I gazed for long into the reflection of my face on the mirror. Long enough for the dripping water drops to vanish.
I was perhaps trying to repair the broken threads of the dream to make it complete.
But I failed. Perhaps, dreams are destined to die, most often premature.
We tread the path of life probably because we are tasked to do so. We meet people and we get distanced — probably because it is previously decided. We enjoy someone’s company and we part — blame it on the destiny again.
Then what can we do at all ourselves?
We can make bombs. We can wipe out large swathes of life with the press of a single button.
But we can’t restore it because we are not programmed to do so.
By now, pressed under incoherent thoughts, the broken threads of my dream have started fragmenting. They won’t take long to vanish, I know.
Dreams born and die like this. Days follow the same track. We keep moving, nevertheless. A relentless process of breathing continues unabated till the final call.
We call it survival. The survivor is the fittest, thus spake the scientist.
But are we, all those claiming to be the survivors, alive? Are surviving and being in life the same?
I beg to defy.
We are all dead, lost in an abyss of darkness. We feign to be alive and we die every time our dreams suffer a death blow. We die with our dreams but we, the Homo sapiens, can shrug off the death knell to our dreams and wake up to weave new dreams.
Why? Perhaps, we still look for life in dreams.

The Nepal bell, an echo decades later

It’s been over a decade since the people of an apparently forbidden terrain woke up and broke out of an administrative machinery that had once spawned many a dreams for them.
Eighty years ago, when the storm struck the stifling autocracy of the tsar and brought the advent of a new age with the promise of food for every stomach and hope for every heart, a gasping nation breathed afresh.
But, did their dreams come true? Did it help the cash-strapped republic in fighting with an inflating vacuum of wealth?
Perhaps no. And, that’s why when the frenzied mob pulled down the towering symbols of communism and uprooted the theory that they had been living with looked so horrid. It had triggered a racing pulse among statesmen across the world — no matter Left, Right or Centre.
The people’s rage had questioned the very integrity of a system. It had shaken the foundation of an administration that was perceived to be the way out of a life crammed in the fascist rule.
In 1917, Russia had perceived communism as a relief from the feudalistic and monarchical misery. In 2006, nearly 80 years after the Bolsheviks shook the world, Nepal displayed the rerun of a similar wakening.
It’s the people of this small nation, too insignificant and obscure being sandwiched among two superpowers — India and China — and tucked away in the lap of the Himalayas, who suddenly burst out in anger sending a jolt to the world’s impression of the country.
Nepal is not just the haven of junkies and a small Las Vegas away from the hustle and bustle of America. It treasures people who can raise their voice and shed their blood in support of democracy and tear apart the all powerful king.
But, for Nepal — transition from a democracy overthrown by the king and then again back to the people’s mandate — what lies in store?
Revolutions get crushed and enemies change.
How is it to be shifted from a king to a band of rebels whose cousins in India are hated for their bloody vendetta and visionless violence? What good holds the Maoists-led seven-party alliance for their people?
Even before the scars of the war against the king dried up, Nepal’s rebel leader, in tow with an Indian Leftist, couldn’t hide his hunger for the top seat.
The country is soon to face its people’s mandate. No one can say what the elections has in store for the community but a fear is evident — people are scared to realise that they have been duped twice.

Rendezvous with a maths peddler

One Saturday, after a half-day office (then I used to scribble for an advertising group), enjoying liberty, I planned to go hunting half-priced books on Free School Street. It is the stretch in Calcutta where the wise usually hang around collecting reagents for complex reactions of intellectuality that the trite like me can hardly comprehend.
On the usual route to the destination, I came across this piece of writing. “Put up any problem of mathematics and obtain quick solution,” read the piece of paper stuck on a board behind the man sitting bang-opposite St Xavier’s College on Park Street.
The board attracted cursory once-overs, curious glances, and even quizzical frowns. But passers-by did one thing in a body: they moved on without missing a single step.
An unknown nosiness stalled me to read the script subsequent to the headline. To my surprise, I discovered a price chart, offering rates charged for solving individual mathematical solutions for standards ranging between Class VII and post-graduation.
I was interrupted in the middle of trying to fathom the subject. “Sir, may I introduce myself to you?” — the humble appeal caught my attention. Parash Nath Sharma introduced himself as a post-graduate in mathematics from Patna University and he was ready to solve riddles of mathematics and statistics of any standard.
With an ambition to develop his career in academics, Sharma left his scope to join the ancestral livelihood through agriculture. “I wanted to be a teacher but there was no job for me in Bihar,” Sharma lamented. “Calcutta is a big city and am sure there are better chances here,” buoyancy reflected in his bucolic English.
To make his living, Sharma adopted this method, following some of his native folks’ advice. His atypical way of income fetched his some yields. “Two gentlemen have asked me to give tuition to their children,” the maths peddler said.
The episode was certainly one of the weird ones that I had ever encountered. Lost in thoughts of the meeting, I headed for a nearby refectory. Busy on a contemplative cuppa, I recollected the optimism that was vivid in his eyes.
I traversed down Park Street several times after that but I never met Sharma again. And, I could not ask him the complex equation of life to be simple yet happy.