Sometimes some event just make us stand in front of our-self. The “me” that we buried or just get hazed and lost with the time come to us to meet us. And that’s where the commotion started–what I was, what I am now. Many a time this worked as the catalyst of the drastic decision…
Color of Waiting is…
We left the past to be past; the last few months seems to be a dream, and now when we wake up this also seems to dream of that dream. The tree that had to die for looking at the eye now a hole, (where) the electrician works on the pole to let the rooms…
National Poem Writing Month 2020: Day 30: Samsara or Livin’ in the Surrealistic Time
A surrealistic chiaroscuro painted the time. Time will change is a known thing–from ante to post and post to ante over the meridian. The present will become memories and the past will record them in its bosom–blue and dark. Future will be the magician looking for the bunny in his hat till the dramatic music…
National Poem Writing Month 2020: Day 29: Lassey, My Guardian Angel
(I have no reminiscent of yours, only some scattered shorts or bits) Dida used to recollect you as a pup who resembles a cub of a wolf. And you are looking through the open leads of cane basket with your wet nose protruding out. She also used to recollect you as a big wolf who…
National Poem Writing Month 2020: Day 28: Camphor
in memory to my Dida… The morning was the amphitheatre and the room was the stage. I opened my eyes and alert to the voice clear and coming closer. It’s Sanskrit. She’s chanting the hundred eight names of Krishna. Her voice now can be heard outside the window. Listen, Hush. The window a rectangle with…
National Poem Writing Month 2020: Day 25: Hymn of the Apparitions
The sun cracked through the cloud that is gray making the blue of the sky gray like long dead moss at the parapet of the roof of this house. It is standing by the road–once unimportant, now a important one. The history dictated down the old teethless mouths denote the street an unnamed one traversing…
National Poem Writing Month 2020: Day 24: Slurp
It all started with the pungent yet sweet smells of the buds in the lazy winter noons or ascending long evenings. It all started with thuds and thuts on the roofs; they were young and unripe; they are sour and sweet– You can have it but don’t be ashamed of the smacking that follow. When…
National Poem Writing Month 2020: Day 22: Leave It to Batman
I am a wolf who’s learning to howl, I am a duck who’ll swim if its flood. The sun of February at the west casting orange on his bearded face as he ate the leftovers of the hotel. The newspaper he was eating on telling arrival of a new virus in China. He smiled and…
National Poem Writing Month 2020: Day 21: A Bit of Still
First stanza of Pablo Neruda’s Poema 15: Me gustas cuando callas / Poem 15: I like for you to be still Me gust as can you call as I pour as carellessly around you, like my eyes that look, at me via nothing to look at. Peace quiet lose as you say it have a…
Red Blue Gray: A Note from the Author’s Desk
The journey name National Novel Writing Month had ended few minutes back. I end up writing 28,529 words (including the headings). This one will be not much of a novel but big-story or novella. 30,000 words in average is needed to be consider it as the proper novella. My story is not completed one. There…
Red Blue Gray: Day 30
Fifty or sixty years it would be. In these years the safe-house of the king had grown into a popular jail. The British used to send off the rebels here who are of high importance or might have some information. The village leader had grown old and his son had become renowned spy. He had…
Red Blue Gray: Day 29
Chapter 4 Gather around all. Today I am going to tell you the story of a prison. This one you need to hear. Come on, come on. Who wants to hear a story? Young man you seem to be much older than other. But, you remind me of someone. This story doesn’t have that one…
Red Blue Gray: Day 28
Chapter 3 The Curious Case of the Mr. Cannibal Concluded? Staff Reporter Kolkata, 14th February: For last few months the city has been stricken by an unknown killer. We already know few of the cases that he was in. He used to abduct the girls who had crossed sixteen, and then after killing them, method…
Red Blue Gray: Day 27
That year it was raining a lot from the start of the onset of the monsoon. I can still hear the howling and whistling of the storms and hail that each wall of the prison was making. Sometimes deep into the night the prison used to come to life. The shouting, the wailing, the pleading…
Red Blue Gray: Day 26
Time started flowing slowly and steadily. Most of the freedom fighters were released while few those remain were either murderer or burglar and there was this old gardener—Mehboob his name was. He had no-where to go; his family was killed by some British officers while trying to kill him by putting fire on his hut….
Red Blue Gray: Day 25
For the first few nights I could not sleep. I used to remain awake so that I do not dreamt of the tantrik or I do not hear the voice. Whole day I used to remain busy in the procession and speeches to ask the youth to stop the violence. But, as night used to…
Red Blue Gray: Day 23 and 24
Chapter 1 My time is up as you all will say. These days the scenario has changed completely. Getting to the high is only climbing the stairs is a lie we all know. In this world you have to have the heart of the devil because ripping off the soul is not the work of…
Red Blue Gray: Day 22
They are going to close the jail within the end of this year. They are thus disbursing me from the duty I was assigned. Now I have the choice to remain on the field or can take up a desk job in headquarter at Lal Bazar. I all need to let them know what I…
Red Blue Gray: Day 21
I cannot keep that place out of mind. And I don’t recognize me when I think of that place. It is always someone who speaks instead of me when I think deeply of it. It feels that the palace comes in to life and speak through me. The darkness of that place pushes me to…
Red Blue Gray: Day 20
16th May, Night I don’t know how this diary comes with me. I can recollect that I have left it locked inside the drawer of the table. Then how does it come with me I cannot understand. I am already feeling light at my heart. It just seems I was being living in some suffocating…
Red Blue Gray: Day 19
The instruction now though stands on no-stand. The order that the letter carried was to kill the spy. The higher official ordered me to make the death look like it’s an accident not an intentional event. Now, I understand what they had said in the telegram on that day when they said—FOLLOW LETTER (STOP). I…
Red Blue Gray: Day 18
12th April The whole surrounding seems to going out of mind and sense when a storm strikes. To-day is the second day the storm strikes here. The whole process starts with increasing darkness as the noon started to turn to early evening. The azure blue sky started colouring itself into grey. Then an hour or…
Red Blue Gray: Day 17
20th March The jail seems to be a popular hideout for the government who when if wants to conceal one’s identity or presence. I had received this letter of a guest we are going to have in today two days back. He is a spy from one of our neighbouring countries. The letter that came…
Red Blue Gray: Day 16 & 17
2nd March Mr. Sekhar Das Gupta handed me all the duties and responsibilities. Now I have to be the jailor of this god forsaken prison. I already hate this place for being so silent and nothing to do nature. But, at the same time I am liking this place. There was need for some to…
Red Blue Gray: Day 15 & 16
Oh Prabhu, what do you want…why are you not taking me…take me with you…I cannot live like this, anymore…not a bit of meat…I cannot live without having flesh for so long…tell me what do you want…have I committed sin…do I need to penance…or you need atonement…say Prabhu what do you want to say…what do you…
Red Blue Gray: Day 14
What a horrid dream I had last night. There’s this tantrik with big matted beard on face and peak of bun of his head. His eyes were closed and he had the voice like that of brontide. And he was chanting like spring breeze sounded when it pass through the leaves. And he was sitting…
Red Blue Gray: Day 13
Day 3 Third day and no food or water. Mahatma Gandhi had survived surviving for 21 days. I cannot recollect the name of the freedom fighter who had survived over a month. Then there was a political leader during this period; he had starved without water and food for 31 days to stop the violence…
Red Blue Gray: Day 11 & 12
vii Day 1 I’m now thirty years back from the time. That is it is 198-This diary was brought up by this cat—white and fluffy ball with two different colour eyeball, blue and hazelnut. It is the one who show the diary. He just banged his head on the girth underneath the bed drawing my…
Red Blue Gray: Day 10
I tried to kill myself. Not once, but thrice. Every time I tried I fail. I had arranged this long rope by bribing the guard. I put on the rope through the hook of the fan and standing on stool I wore the noose and hanged myself what my feet was touching the ground after…
Red Blue Gray: Day 9
vi This little book is such a beautiful thing. It had been hidden under the bed at the gap of the frame. They have freshly coated the wall so the smell of the paint is still there. They have clean the chamber and decorate it with a fan and a light. Though it’s October but…
Red Blue Gray: Day 8 and 9
When the moon shines on the bed in the full moon night it made remind of my mother. It made me remind of a night when I was a boy, we—me, Ma and Chutki—used to sit down at the veranda. Chutki was then only two or three years old and me five or six. Ma…
Red Blue Gray: Day 7
— The cell is haunted I think. At certain nights someone kept on repeating a chant. And this happened when the moon is new. In the darkness the cell seems to be come to alive. There is one who roams around the cell. My mind says it was the breathing of the old cat getting…
Red Blue Gray: Day 6
~~ [Here I am omitting most of this man’s entry.
Red Blue Gray: Day 5
iv a This floor has two names—the Haunted Corridor and Solitary Confinement. The second name is the perfect name for this floor.
Red Blue Gray: Day 4
6 This floor is the most vacant one of the building. There’s a cat—an old tomcat—roaming and now sleeping at the corner. He has a one eye while one eyes he had lost to a fight. He was once a white but now a dirtied white one. He shares the meals with me and other…
Red Blue Gray: Day 3
… 4 (Red) I am not a good person. The habit of gamble has been injected by my father when I was at teen. Being paralysed from attack on the heart, I used to be his representative whenever there is a game. He used to whisper into my ears which card to throw and which…
Red Blue Gray: Day 2
ii (Blue) Never realized silence can be such a blissful thing as well as a cursed one. How long I am here I do not know. After changing four to five cells I have been thrown into here. The others say there is a ghost that lives here. Ghost? Just think how a story gets…
Red Blue Gray: Day 1
At first it just seems to be a dirty rotten cloth that was red in its own days as a rose should be. But now it’s just the dull orange one like a monsoon clouded setting sun. The rope that attached it once was a shoestring; knots at various points and chewed or slashed at…
2nd Year…
Last year after attempting two years in National Poem Writing Month (held in April annually), I thought why not give a chance to the National Novel Writing Month (held in November annually). So, I had participated in it. And my laptop breaks down after I crossed the 25,000 words limit. It was half of the…
