Posts

রকি

-
Image
  রকির চাহনিতে আজ কেমন এক উদাসীনতার ছাপ লক্ষ্য করছি । সে বেশ কয়েকবার বাথরুমের খোলা দরজার দিকে এগিয়ে যাচ্ছে, এবং কিছু যেন খুঁজে চলেছে । পর মুহূর্তেই তার দৃষ্টি চলে যাচ্ছে আমার দিকে। সে কখনো বিছানায় উঠে বসছে এবং তার কিছুক্ষন পরেই দেয়ালের পাশে রাখা স্টাডি টেবিল এর তলায় মুখ লুকিয়ে ফেলছে। এরূপ চঞ্চল খুব কম দেখেছি রকি কে। ও কি ভয় পেয়েছে তবে? অবশ্য, ভয় পাওয়াটাই স্বাভাবিক। আমি, আমার ল্যাব্রাডর রকিকে নিয়ে দুদিন আগেই বেড়াতে এসেছি সমুদ্রের ধারে এই ছোট্ট শহরটিতে । অবশ্য জায়গাটিকে শহর বললে ভুল বলা হয়,আবার ঠিক গ্রাম ও বলা যায়না । এখনো নিরিবিলি থাকা কিছু জায়গার মধ্যে এটি অন্যতম । তবে গত তিন চার বছরে যে হারে দোকানপাটের সংখ্যা বেড়েছে, এখানকার প্রকৃতিও ঠিক ততটাই অসহায় বোধ করেছে হয়তো। আমি পাহাড় এ যেতেই বেশি পছন্দ করি বরাবর। কিন্তু রকি কে নিয়ে কোথাও সেরকম যাওয়া হয়ে ওঠেনা। খোলা আকাশের নিচে বিচ এর ধার ঘেঁষে ছুটোছুটি করতে ভারী মজা পায় রকি । এই পেট -ফ্রেন্ডলি হোটেল টাও বেশ পেয়ে গেলাম। তবে চেঞ্জ এর জন্য আমাদের এই ভ্রমণ হঠাৎ বাধার সম্মুখীন হলো। হোটেলে গতকাল রাতে হয়ে গেছে এক নৃশংস খুন। সকাল থেকেই লেগ
Post a Comment
Read more

Winter

-
Image
Winter never really arrives. It spreads. Slowly, in the wailing of gradually descending columns of chilly air emptying the streets as it gets darker. Out by the smog hugged shanties on the highway, in the dead of night the first pot of milk tea boils on blue flames. The bright yellow fire started by a homeless man is shared by few patrolmen, intercity drivers, and daily labourers. Winters don’t differentiate. Over the years, it has always found a way to show that everyone craves for a bit of warmth. Yet, for all its gloom, winters compensate fairly too. It brings with it blue skies and a sunshine that splashes Nature with a burst of colours. Orange and yellow marigolds, butterfly shaped pansies blooming against the backdrop of a green garden. Winter is about an afternoon siesta on the terrace, blessed by the 3pm sun, a cup of hot chocolate by the fireplace, in the evenings, at a remote hill station bungalow. Winters are more quilts and blankets than hoodies and jackets,
Post a Comment
Read more

The Longing for a Home

-
Image
  To the ten-year-old boy fleeing from his war-ravaged motherland, with palms clasped on both ears, home is anything strong enough to resist bullets. A silent prayer for the mortar to hold firm. Home is an idea rooted in our deepest longing. It changes with time, shifting its shape like a river that adjusts itself to accommodate land during its age-old course. To many of us, homes are tugs at our heartstrings from which often oozes the warmth of a sun-kissed winter afternoon long lost in time. A safe space protecting smiling faces in old photographs, broken toys, and their missing parts cushioned with dust; pieces of paper with names in it and yellowish tinges at the corners, ones that broke hearts, and others that divided families. And yet, when I asked the eighty-year-old widow the meaning of home, her frail fingers pointed towards the gloomy white sky. Her lips moved to curve the lines on her face. Her home was tied to a person. Maybe, homes are immune to Death, too. You may
Post a Comment
Read more

Summers in my city

-
Image
  Summers in my city feel like entering a kitchen, burners operating in full whack the onset of which leaves you dazed, pegged back to a corner, scurrying for an escape under your umbrella, inside four walls or somewhere in the hills. Summers make my city its own ring, throwing a heavyweight’s punch each time you step in(outside), leaving you groggy and drained of will and power until you feel all the fluids in the world isn’t enough. Summers in my city are idle, lazy, like songs under the ‘old is gold’ category playing away on minimum volume as you draw your curtains for an afternoon siesta. Summers in my city resemble a monster’s breath of fireballs engaged in occasional, dark, dusty, spark -flying evening bouts with the ‘ Kalbaisakhi’ (Norwesters); but, never really leaving. Summers in my city are the no-nonsense kind, not indulging in dilly-dallying in the streets. Summers in my city are about compensating the absence of a beach with a river, and the boat rides
Post a Comment
Read more

Songs

-
Image
Songs somehow find a way to stay with us. Some obscure entities in the present having their neat rhythms burned on cheap DVD’s, locked inside unopened drawers. Not played often but right there if needed; just like the chestnut-coloured suitcase containing the toys from your childhood hidden away in a damp, dark corner; the thin lines tracing back to another lifetime. There’s a song for every occasion. Anywhere you go. Whatever it is that you might do. Some songs that are stuck inside your head forever regardless of the language they were originally written in. I have often likened their melody to molten chocolate cakes; only this time it oozes out memories through lyrics. They are not just words bound by music, but a trigger for days long forgotten, stowed away in the back of your mind. The first time you walked through snow on a solo trip, that song that always played on the radio at the tea stall, the one you cannot remember no matter how long or how hard you hum, the song that a
Post a Comment
Read more

Losing

-
Image
  Losing creates space. Imagine, losing a thing you have treasured forever; a book, few photographs, the feeble plastic table that couldn’t bear the weight of your expectations anymore. Suddenly, there’s space staring at you. Space, you are not accustomed to having. Space, your eyes haven’t adjusted to yet. It works the same way with people. All relationships have an expiry date.   Only the way it ends, differs. Any feeling with the slightest bit of warmth in it comes with the fear of losing. That, one day, things will cease to go back to how they were. You never get to know when would be the last moment, the last day, or the last time. So, you embrace denial as your coping mechanism, hoping that a next meeting awaits. Familiar numbers in your contacts list do not send vibrations through your phone anymore, people you have walked many a mile with, now resemble silhouettes from another lifetime, and in this dreaded pandemic, even a ringing phone strikes fear in you. Marquez had
Post a Comment
Read more

19 : Elements of Liverpool's title-winning campaign

-
Image
1. Change : 8 th October 2015 is as important as 25 th June 2020 in the lustrous history of Liverpool football club. It marked the beginning of the end of a curse that had cast a shadow on everyone associated with the institution. That day, the Kop had welcomed Jurgen Klopp to his new home. 2.         History : The trophy cabinets, although a reminder to a glorious past, had, unfortunately, become our coping mechanism. Such had been the devastation from under-performing. So much of Liverpool Football Club had been about its history that it needed someone to finally tell us to get rid of that backpack and unburden ourselves. Only then, could we look forward, together. 3.        Patience: When the wheels have been set in motion, it takes time to pick up speed. For a football team to function as seamlessly on the pitch as the top sides do, there needs to be a right balance struck at every aspect of game management imaginable, most of which are controlled behind the scenes. ‘Please gi
Post a Comment
Read more