Soliloquy............

The dusts have settled down. The storms in the tea-cups have blown themselves out. The last note has been played out. The last delirium has been sobered out. The places have been taken. The history has drifted away, the Coming is looming large and the moment is drab. The times they are a changing, Bob.

And so I will doodle. With lazy fingers typing away fervently for that spark, for that ooh-la-la, for that word of eternity. For that esoteric phrase, the lure of the grandiloquent, the tag of the Known. The flags have been hoisted here. The fire and the works are being sunned out. And Peter, Paul and Mary, I am more than five hundred miles away from home, hearth and heart.

It is tough living the two lives I live. Of the dank and the chic. Of the vegetable and the flesh. Of the clamour and the monologue. Of the dream and the desire. Of the slave and the master. Of the time-zones and the synchrony. Of the freeway and the dustbowl. Of the belonging and the wishes. Of the accent and the vernacular. Of the dissemination and the rooting. Here I am, this is me, and I am not liking it, Bryan.

Two of my friends have died long back. I have condemned to oblivion many. Many have gone away. I have hurt a lot. Got scarred. Loved, lost, loved (?), loved (?) and blissed in the order written. I lost my voice of shouting. The pen that helped me scribble those drivels. That currency which never let me rue the past. That vodka with lime that let me loosen up. That shirt which witnessed blood-letting, getting my first job, my drifting away and ashore. Someone across the oceans loves me a lot. John, can I borrow that 'You fill up my senses' line?

Maa is getting old. So is Baba. And Anjan Dutta. And Suman- Kabir and Chatterjee. And people are growing up. They are getting married. Procreating. Stopping being virgins. Not in the given order. Somedays my city will stop menstruating for me. Breeding for me. She will have crows' feet, bad breath, cracked heels and arthritis. I will stop getting back. The eastern winds will stop blowing. People will speak Parseltongue, or Hindi, or Punjabi, or Dogri, or Awadhi, or Tamil. And I will have recurrent dreams of not getting my last Bengali sip, Pratul.

I will have kids. Cosmopolitan. Spic-n-span. Behaved. Groomed. Measured. Pippetted out. Calibrated. They will not cut classes. They will not kiss in the rain. They will not let their tears flow at the dead of the night, hunching over no God of Small Things. They will not spend lazy, useless evenings of marijuana, strums, uncertainity, warmth, silence, sunset, ripples on the water, taking off the shirt, plunging in, feeling like mermaids. What am I doing? As we grow up, the tears too dry up, right Mr. Hall?