CONFINEMENT

The itchy feeling is all over there in the body and in the brain too. If I look at the brain and the body separately it becomes easier to confront them. In any kind of isolation due to the physical limitation, it is essential to consider the brain and the body as separate entities to survive the sudden attack of pain. It is necessary to stop the vain carrying the painful trauma before it can hit the thinking pad. But now it is itching all over my body and the brain. Looking at it closely makes it clear that the limbs are getting tired; the pain vain is paving its way up through the spine, little above the nose and in between the eyebrows through the left side of the face.

Many ideas, to be specific many lines came in the mind, the untouchable subject inside the body or the brain (to me the heart and the mind live side by side under the chest; symbolically so). But interpreting those lines for the mortals like me is the toughest task. I am no thinker, neither a good writer that it would be a cakewalk for me. Though they would suggest nothing is impossible so efforts should be made to transcript those thoughts or the lines.

Being detached from the outside world has its advantage, even in the middle of growing insecurity and inhabitation, of introspection. I am crowded. Crowded with many lines, printed and otherwise, here and there, crowded with the passers by, the lady evening walkers, the kids learning to cycle, the teens refusing to carry the friends for it would be risky due to the consumption of alcohol, the construction workers reminding me of the matuas cooking their food at the end of the day in the little garden they used to stay. There are plenty. The hanging mangoes in the trees around, the bird reconstructing its nest after the storm --- all become the neighbours in need.

The bell rings thrice since morning. And that is it. The known faces surround the existence. Then there is the most beloved. The touch is missed everyday. Still stealing the moments of happiness carries a new element of bondage. We live for the others. We make our life for thee. Like the perfume in the air, the caring heart is touched too often even though the distance remains. Then nothing continues for long. The routinised life bores one. Sometimes the self turns out to be bigger than the love. The soothing comfort tells the tale of agony. The blood shoots up again.

Is not it the beginning of a new chapter? The provocation of a new life draws one out of solitude which is a precious gift. Explaining the same thing, the same pain and the same remedy is the reason why the silence should prevail. The silence should beget the new beginning gradually taking the cue from within and moving forward with new hope.

Behind the dark cloud, there is always a silver lining. The dawn will follow the dusk. The morning has to be merrier than the night.

CONSPIRACY

On a Sunday afternoon when the sun was setting in, I was crying like a mad sitting on the bed in our room. Everyone was consoling me to stop me from going crazy. I put my face in the pillow trying hard to cope with the pain of India’s defeat to Pakistan in Sharjah (also for the embarrassment of crying for a silly cricket match). No, the agony of not-even-a-10-year-old didn’t reach the Shastris, the Gavaskars, the Kapils or the Azhars, but that moment perhaps represented thousands and lakhs of cricket lovers of our country of that time (I don’t exactly remember the day or the year; but it must be late 80s). That was the passion called cricket which I learned to understand when I was five or six.

Now I believe Cricket is nothing but conspiracy. I have been sticking to this belief for last two decades and whenever getting a scope, propagating it too. My friends hate me for looking down at the game (or an entertainment show?) called cricket. I can’t help it. Things, for me, changed probably during the period of match fixing scandal that rocked the cricketing world. Even now it appears to me that everything is pre arranged in this game. My interest in the sport has come to such a state now that I can’t tell the names of the 11 players of the Indian cricket team. I don’t repent. These recent talks about match fixing in the IPL 2 doesn’t bother me for the same reason.

Money, to be precise big money has spoilt the gentleman’s game in and out. Those days of white shirt and trouser, white gloves with red marks on the fingers, the red duce ball, and the wooden coloured wickets are all gone. The days of five slips and fast (not medium fast) bowlers are things of the past. I may sound orthodox and conservative talking like an old man, but I still romanticize cricket with those days in mind. I looked at it as a sport. Now I look at the game as entertainment as it has changed its colour over the years becoming popular but losing character.

Still, to tell the truth, I was getting back some sort of interest in cricket these days for a man called Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Keeping aside all the cynicism about the game, I love, like crores of cricket lovers, to watch Sachin play. I watch him with awe. The determination, dedication and discipline in a player are rare. He comes to the field with all of that and turns out to be an icon in everyone’s life everyday, irrespective of his cricketing virtues.

Today I was hurt to see none discussed about his dedication for the game instead we all discussed when Lalit Modi, one of the living symbols of degeneration of cricket, would be show caused by the self-proclaimed moral bosses of Indian cricket. The man with six stitches on his hand came out in the field, led the team (though they lost) not for money, but for the game itself out of a passion. But LM was more important than ST. Don’t blame media for this, rather blame the cricket administrators who have turned the game so murky!

Today once again I was relieved to be reassured of my own theory ‘cricket is nothing but conspiracy’.

Ps: You are free to interpret the word ‘conspiracy’.

VISITORS...ONCE AGAIN

Hey I didn’t meet them for a long time. My friends in sleep have started visiting me again. They are hilarious, they are funny and at times they are scary too. Last night they had come in. I don’t know why I was staying in that big house with a complex architecture. My friend Himadri and Amitava had come calling. Himadri was there by evening. So we had a proper dinner and went into sleep chatting. We discovered in the morning that Amitava had come in the middle of the night and found his way in a couch left in the balcony. He slept there until we came out in the morning. An old man who goes to pick up flowers from the neighbourhood every morning alerted us.

No it didn’t start there. I had gone to my school to cover the recovery of explosives in the garden at the back of the junior high or senior basic school. It is the garden where we used to go to search for the ball after someone hit a sixer in our days of T-20 or T-10 and the caretaker Achchhalal with a long beard, red eyes, and dirty cloths holding a garland of key used to be after us. But today I was late. My cameraperson reached the spot much earlier and shot all the visuals. The moment I reached the spot, I saw the explosive experts coming out after, may be, a meeting with the management or the teachers of the school. The hard-news-TV-reporter habit prompted me to hold the mike in front of the ‘chief’ who gave me the exclusive and explosive byte slamming the school authority for lack of vigilance and safety. I jumped on my feet. I shouted at my cameraman to immediately feed it through the OB van (couldn’t find where exactly my OB van was parked in the school). I asked him to send the ‘chief’s byte’ only. But what was this going on? I was on one part of the big school ground and my cameraperson was on the other part shooting something. I called him loudly trying to tell him the urgency to break the news. Doesn’t he know we live on such one liner breaking news! He was reluctant to send the ‘byte’ only. After all he had put in his effort to shoot so much of visuals of the explosives. He thought of shooting more ‘establishing’ shots. But I was in a hurry to break my news. This was the same old confrontation. It was not to be like this between us though. Is it the ‘punishment’ for the reporter coming late in the spot? I called in my input desk and give them the chief’s reaction asking them to break it. I had the byte. ‘Please take it and call my cameraperson to feed it’ was my plea. Oh no it was a Saturday full of programmes on the channel. There was no immediate scope to take the byte on air. I was disheartened.

No it didn’t end there too. My sister came in with a story idea (Now I don’t remember the idea though; may be on the handloom workers). She spelt out the idea. I jumped on to it finding another story in it. She left the room. I followed her asking for more information to make my story. It seemed she was not eager to divulge more. Right! She might have thought I would steal her idea and do the story. Trust me it was not my intention.

Then came the moment of the sleep. Mamata Bannerjee came visiting me. This is for the first time she entered into my home. We were busy discussing some problem about some pilgrims somewhere (again I have lost the link). You know who could solve the problem. Forward Bloc’s Ashok Ghosh. She asked me to connect her to Ashokda. How could I tell her a ‘national’ reporter doesn’t keep the phone number of a regional political party handy! Who told you that you are a national reporter? Don’t you remember your boss telling you are a local reporter like any other stringers reporting out of the villages of Canning in South 24 Parganas! That didn’t make any difference so late in the evening as I was frantically looking for the telephone number of Forward Bloc office. At last he came in my help. A good old senior friend of mine, Rabida, (I don’t know how he appeared in the scene) took out his tiny phone book from his chest pocket and handed me the number. I dialed the same. Now a new trouble emerged. After keeping me on hold for a few minutes I was told Ashokda had gone to the room on the top floor and it is not possible to transfer the line to him! Aaare Didi is sitting here to talk to Ashokda and you are refusing it!!! No it can’t be connected. Didi left my house.

Many others followed. Now a football match is going on inside my head. Everyone is kicking the ball and the ball is hitting on the walls of my head. I opened my eyes and suddenly found that the first rays of twilight filtering through my windows. So many ideas are kicking inside trying to come out. The good news at the moment is they have started revisiting me.

THE NEW BEGINNING

You never know from where the inspiration comes in and motivates you to sit down in front of the laptop to revive an old habit. In the middle of so much of physical pain and tropical heat, nothing seems right. It becomes so difficult to do one thing at a moment and continue doing that till its logical end. Nothing --- browsing through the virtual pages to the real ones, surfing the channels on the idiot box, lying on the bed, listening to the radio ---- nothing seems peaceful enough. Irritation bugs the mind and the body. The isolation is nothing new to the soul. It happened earlier and it has come back once again. It is time to make best out of it. No work makes one more hungry?


But this time it has to be different. The old habit should be renewed with this old kind of ‘isolation’ creeping in. It should be nurtured and given a sweet home to stay in. The soul should be guided towards to goal. The goal has to be scored. The pain is moving up from the joint which was once described to be the source of all strength. The little insects moving here and there, even though the room is dark, are annoying. They can carry the bad virus out in the world.

It is a promise to come back and tread the path on regular basis. Take one step at a time and move up. You never know from where the inspiration comes. Go back to the story of Ekalavya. Did he also follow the same path? There are so many unknown faces around us or the know faces do not know what they are doing to a person they don’t know much. Here lies a wonderful mystery. This is high time to cherish this mysterious plan and move up and up. The goal has to be scored.