Thoughts and Excerpts

I grew up listening to different mythological and fantastic stories. So, naturally, I used to love imagining my surroundings to be filled with magic, have a life and a name.

There is a corner near my house where the winds are stronger during storms, due to it's structure. That place was called The Windy Grotto and was home to wind spirits, who used to come out to dance during storms.

There was a huge tree in one of the corners of out local park. We ( me and my best friend ) used to call it the Spirit Twig. We built up so many scary stories around it that we ended up scaring ourselves.

There was a patch of really overgrown garden with a little pebble path leading upto a little circlet where a solitary grapevine grew. That place was our absolute favourite because of it's sheer fairytale harbouring potential. We named it the Whispering Hollows.

A family of cats lived in a secluded spot near our houses for a while and that was enough time for us to call that spot Cat's Cradle, a mighty empire of cats.

As a Bangali, the dawn of Mahalaya is nothing less than pure magic every year. And the excitement peaks from the night before.

I always spend Mahalaya in my Grandparent's house. Either I stay the previous night at their place or I run to their house even before the sun rises ( they live very close to my home ).

The thrill of running through the dark streets just as the loud speaker comes to life with Birendra Krishna Bhadra's voice is indescribable.

I can never sleep on the night before mahalaya. I keep looking at the clock every five minutes. When will it be 4 AM? When will I hear the first strains of Chandipath?

I sit with my grandparents and listen to the radio. And it must be a radio....The radio cannot be replaced by a CD or something. There is an old radio which is an Integral part of my Mahalaya. We sit, listening to it and sharing stories about the gods and goddesses. And sometimes my grandparents indulge in memories of their childhood.

I go through the various Mahalaya TV programs as well. Same story, every year, yet the same thrill.

If a letter cannot be sent to someone because of an error in the address, if the recipient has passed away or any other reason, then the letter gets stored here.

It is located at the corner of Dalhousie Square East and Dalhousie Square South. It’s a 120-feet-tall bell tower, oddly without a clock and built in a very classic colonial-era British style of architecture.

Earlier the letters used to be burnt and articles were auctioned after being kept for a year. Nowadays the letters are shred and the articles are auctioned after getting permission from the postal authorities.

I’ve passed by this building a fair number of times. Fo a long time I wasn’t aware of the history or purpose of this building. However the visuals never failed to fascinate me. Despite orchestrating one of the darkest phases of Indian history, the British did leave behind some impressive works of architecture. Looking at the building feels like looking at a page in a history book. Even more so, after learning it’s purpose, the morgue of the unsent letters.

The firework is a brilliant, dazzling kind of love...It burns with the passion of desperate kisses on bare neck...Of glorious declarations of love. It looks beautiful. And then it fizzles out. Leaving nothing but a trail of smoke and an image burned into the brain.

The campfire takes long to burn fully. You need to collect the firewood, light the spark and tend to it till it burns properly. And you need to keep it alive. You need to observe. Start poking it when you see the fire going down. Collect more wood. Blow carefully at the embers. You'll feel the heat slightly more strongly while tending it but the fire will keep burning. This fire is kept alive with efforts and it in turn gives you warmth and protection from nature.

When two people who light up fireworks fall in love they have a dazzling affair. A galant show, a whirlwind romance. Then they burn out, leave that engraved memory and move on to light up the next firework.

When two people fall in love to tend to the campfire, they feel complete. They feel home within the wilderness. When the fire starts to dim they go out to collect firewood but always return to the hearth. They stay.