street carom match

Fifty boys and old men gather around a carom board in the middle of a lane in Badda-para. The rat-a-tat epic carom battle rages on- rat-a-tat, tat-a-tat. Fistful of chalk dust is scattered on the board and the wooden counters slide across the slippery-as- ice board and crash with a deafening roar from the crowd applauding an impressive shot and hooting at bad misses. The street carom champion with a sniper’s aim is a shaking, bearded old man with bony lightning fingers and cataract grey eyes; his hands and face clouded with chalk dust and his face smeared with a child’s toothless grin.

Wonderful Week

Winding down from a thrilling week of work in Dhaka. Working from early morning till evening every day on how to provide community health services to those who live on Chars- tidal riverine marshy islands, which are precipitated out of demonic river currents and are inhabited by thousands of people in tin and wood shacks built on bamboo stilts, inhabited till the islands are reclaimed by the river and dissolve away. Also been working on protecting herders from the loss of their livestock and cattle and a facility for giving out stipends to promising school students in the slums. Huge challenges but a wonderful team of locals to work with and extremely stimulating and satisfying work. Feel like I've done something worthwhile at the end of the day.
Oh and a fantastic home cooked Bangla lunch at work- best lunches I've had for years and years! Been flat-hunting, making friends and feasting on street food in the nights. Tomorrow's a holiday- so I'll work for a few hours in the morning then move to a cheaper place and explore old Dhaka (Adi-Dhaka) for the first time. Durga Puja fever seems to be spreading now. Will see the Puja after years and years...     

Tales from the USA exile

It was somewhere around this time a few years back when I chose to set out on my exile. I remember making fun of my friends when they cried a river before leaving their near and dear ones. Not manly enough I said...real men never cry!! Yet I felt an overwhelming sadness choking me when I said goodbye to my city for the last time. Glanced at the bed I had been sleeping on for a considerable number of years and accepted the fact that I would never return to it anytime soon.

Shortly after boarding my flight I fought that grief by closing my eyes only to wake up to a new land. Soon the sadness was pushed back to being discussed after a few rounds of drinks with fellow countrymen who were as drunk.

Everything has a bright side and soon I saw the bright side of my journey. Not long back I would stare at the sky and wonder what it would be to fly a plane instead of being a passenger in it, look at rapids raging in its full glory and want to jump in them , put on my headphones while playing Need for Speed on my computer to make me believe I was actually driving that car in real life. Today those dreams are no longer dreams and I have fulfilled them all.

Yet today as my roommate vacated all his stuff leaving a huge empty house to myself that lost grief finds its way out of the murky depths where it was lost .

The morbid rooms and empty spaces glare at the lone figure typing away while sitting on the lifeless carpet. The lone person who was once surrounded by near and dear ones whom he could see without the aid of technology ....near and dear ones that are far far away now...

Streetscapes 1

A street in Moukhali- buzzing with Friday afternoon goodwill,
ringing with singing songbird bells
of speeding butterfly red-blue-green rickshaws.
Rickshaws adorned like new brides
with gold-silver paper, sparkles and film stars and saints and shrines and blessings
ringing their way down labyrinthine lanes and cataract blind alleyways
like electrified brides in love
pulling along
their puzzled, perspiring cycling rickshaw-wallahs,
their men.

A kid with a broken leg in grey plaster lies on a roadside bench
Waiting for a bus or a mother or a meal; he eyes
A special battalion commando soldier in camouflage uniform who shares his bench
But doesn’t share his snack, which he bites and chews with un-camouflaged pleasure-
A sliced green mango with diced green chillies and rock-salt, eyes screwed up
In the sensuality of the sour mango- burning chilly- crunching salt inside his mouth.
The lame kid watches the soldier’s guilty delights and the automatic rifle,
Which lies across the soldier’s lap
Like a giant catapult.

Dhaka Landing

From the plunging window of the twisted metal bubble of your aeroplane, you realise that
Dhaka is a life crammed city and a flotilla
of a thousand floodswept villages
scattered on the eroding clay fingers and mud flats of the largest delta in humanity.
The delta city of brown giant python like rivers and serpentine estuaries,
baby snake rivulets and tapeworm canals and
the shimmering blue green of the Bay of Bengal.
The delta city of coconut forests, concrete chaos,
marooned hamlets on riverine islands,
fleets of fishing boats and ferries and
the most beautiful rickshaws in the world.
The delta city which lives, dies and shimmers
at the mangled mouths of sweet rivers
of life and destruction,
a city planning to break out
into the sea.