Tuesday 15 April 2008

Dry Eye.

It's been six years since i first met 'bho'. Bho during those early days would often show up in that building in Sharat Bose road.Those evenings are unforgettable . Those were the evenings of orange street lights , chalk dust and time and distance problems. The south west monsoon winds brought occasional relief from the muggy heat of April-May evenings as bho sat between us and sometimes made itself heard through the spine chilling voice of Sanjbelar pagol. Summer pranced away merrily to make way for the bile soaked rainy evenings when we learnt all about the digestive system of toad. The Pujor chutti came and walked away.........yes it walked away with Sharat and walked away with 'bho'. But it left behind a longing , a neem green, beesh neel longing for street lights and bile soaked evenings which was to stay with me for ever. Bho showed up again during sheetkal, next year. This time it was to be with me for a little longer. What colours had it in store for me!! Doodhe alta pink , fiery sensual red, flaming orange, piercingly painful bluish green.................. and also sodden,sonda gondho ola ash/grey. Like everything else , like everyone else bho is ephemeral, it is intangible ,it is gullible, it is fallible ,it is............. well i really don't know what it is. So it left me again and literally went to Sat sommuddur, tero nodir par. After my Madhyamik Exams ie March, 2004 i tried to communicate with it. I would go up to the chhad and look up to the stars , at the constellations, at Saptarshi and Orion and tell myself that bho couldn't be as far as they are. So i whispered to them, to bho , to the rustle of the neem leaves during the Spring nights of 2004, looking eagerly forwards to another muggy Summer. Summer arrived with Scalar, vector and Acidimetry. There was also the south west monsoon winds with Chromosome and cell division and there was certainly....... bho .... yes bho again. Bho came back but this time it came back as a weak and timid black thing. All it was capable of was removing a curious blue green toffee from a silver wrapper . JEE dispersed and united Hydrostatics with Nervous system but failed to achieve nobler ends. Nevertheless poison ivy worked it's way. Bho revisited on that fateful day. Twice bitten, ever shy/Your eyes will burn but you cannot cry.

4 comments:

Anoo. said...

it is a wonderful wonderful piece. i strangely feel empty inside. really empty.

kingkartabyabimuhro said...

No, it is not 'wonderful'. Now it seems extremely nyaka and stupid to me.

Anoo. said...

it is not nyaka or stupid you lovable moron. achha kalke you logged out of gtalk just when i logged in!!!!

Jadis said...

For all the ignorant lesser mortals who are most wantonly unable to plumb the utterly obvious depth of this piece, 'bho' is actually 'bhaw', the Bangla letter equivalent to the English 'bh'.
Go figure.










O kingkartabya you are most convolutedly sweet. and so are your posts.










By the way, you have been tagged on my last post. Care to check it out?