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Winter is different for each of us! The churning continues... sometimes frothy, sometimes dark, bubbling and boiling, slowly, quietly.
Tales are sometimes spilled beyond the printed words. Piu wonders about the bedtime tales that started and travelled to come back again.
Ringggggg.....the bell...tiffin time. The real spirit of the school is felt during that quarter of an hour. The rest of the day is templated and the same!
Let's spare synopsis and for a change let's read it without any clue. The last thing that Dream or his twin sister, Nightmare give is a hint of who is going to come tonight.
Like Boisali's tapestry, families are woven together. In the midst of their shared celebration and lonely wait, Diwali comes and leaves quietly.
Like the marbles, memory rolls back and forth, sometimes sideways only to drop in the tunnel of forgetting. Thankfully some letters are never posted and some memories remain hidden in cobwebs.
PS: True stories can be as Crimson as the one imagined. Trees may not know how and when they may get uprooted. Even the roots deep down and dense know that all it needs is just the wind to blow a bit wrong.
The distance between the wickets doesn’t change. It is the pace of the runner that makes the two ends closer or impossible to reach on time, sometimes.
I don't remember, ever flying!
What do you remember then?
Was always with you, part of a tree and green!
Doesn't everything have a thought, a feeling, an emotion, wonders Piu.
Not everything in life can be synopsised. Sometimes it is a blessing when we can’t! For the daughter, the father turns life into a theatre, full of music and colour, muses Piu.
Most of us have a water body in our memory, be it flowing or still like our life. It shows the time, the faces, even our own reflections. Piu Mahapatra had one which she crossed every year at this time of the year, during Durga Puja.
We choose what to do on Wednesday! Naseeruddin Shah chose to ‘act’ like a ‘Common Man’ one fine ‘Wednesday’.
It was one of these Wednesdays almost half a century back China successfully first tested its Hydrogen bomb.
And there are many Wednesdays, we all choose to do something else! Piu Mahapatra rewinds to the hot April Wednesday when raining jamuns brought glee.
Sometimes, it isn't required to try hard to be a friend. You just wait! Piu Mahapatra rewinds to a childhood train journey and a 'chhoti si mulaqaat'.
Today’s Topic - Family!! Define and Draw!
Piu Mahapatra pays a loving tribute to her Mastermoshai, on Teacher's Day.
The festivals are seasonal just like the fruits. They have a way of getting into our life and each teaches a moral in their own sweet way.
Not all instructions are to be followed till the end and not all have to be what they thought they will be. Piu Mahapatra writes to herself.
The important moments of our lives are more or less same, irrespective of time. It was my mother and then me till my daughter is ready, the celebrations of life remain more or less unaltered.
Hard truth: The little conveniences of life, earn their value when they are taken away from us without much of a notice.
Apni tanhaai kaa auro se na
Shikvaa karna
Tum akele hi nahin ho
Sabhi akele hai
Ye akelaa safar nahin guzaraa
Those LP records, those Puja releases, those soulful songs of Kishore Kumar sung to Gulzar's melancholic lyrics - Piu Mahapatra looks back at the long playing memories, fondly.
We might not have Durga Puja this year at my village! But the celebration is not always about people gathering, the feast laid or the sound of the drums beating. Remembering with love and pride is also a celebration, isn't it?
We remember in bits and pieces and the rest we weave in our minds like an eight legged garden spider and that might be the very reason our memories are such beautiful webs, fragile and vague and yet never let go what it catches.
We had this essay by Robert Lynd on 'Forgetting' in our school days which tried to shade a humorous light on human's mind and his weird ways of choosing to forget. Absent mindedness can truly be a virtue but unlike what Lynd quoted, all men possessing this blessing might not make the best of their life.
A 'wish' is not as strong as 'desire'. Neither 'covet' can be her synonym. When did the dictionary do justice! 'Wish' has the fancy wings of Mohak, fragile and yet can travel thousands of miles to lay theirs eggs on milkweeds.
If you are away from your loved ones, write a letter. Write a letter as long as you have someone to deliver it to. Write a letter if you have an address to reach.
If you haven't lived with them, then you are definitely younger than me!! Piu Mahapatra looks back at her friendly pets, er... pests. :)
Not all postcards reached home. The messages, insignificant, timid sometimes urgent strayed and got lost. It always reached somewhere to someone though. But we are all bounded by relevance!!
Knowing people through their eyes, remembering them, loving them.... because, the eyes tell you all.
'মাথার ঘন চুল যখন, মরূভূমি ছুঁয়ে যায়....’
We might be aware or not, but if we make a video of our childhood, along with the black and white to color images, the jingles will float in. A line or two, promising and alluring, becoming a part of you and your time. So if you belong to 'Maggie Maggie Maggie'🎵 🎵 🎵 time...spare 5 minutes!
'Calcutta', the bygone Kolkata had many Fatimas and Kunjo 'dida's. Like the photo albums, with ivory black thick pages holding little family portraits in four, small triangle jackets, we have also stored fondly in our memory, many such portraits along with their little stories. My mom has still kept that album in her almira and I, in my 'Letters to Myself' during these days of Corona.
You see a round glass paperweight with colorful raindrops trapped deep inside and zoom, it can remind you of Monida, the lil shop owner and his rainbow candies filling the thick lid glass jar.
Oh! Our memories and the weirdest trick they play with us!! A green moths transforms to...come on...let's see if you can figure it out. 😊
It was a different Kolkata, when the not-do-urban middle class families were still flexible to accept one or two single woman in all white-linen sari, as a part of their own. That was a different time. If you belong to that time, come and join the author. If not, that shouldn't stop you either!
Has it ever happened to you, that it was someone else's album, a different time altogether and even the person captured is faintly familiar and yet the surroundings, the shadows trigger memories? If it had never happened earlier, then you are no doubt in a hurry and need to sit down and share your memories with your friends and families.
Colours have different meaning as we grow up. They mean freedom at times and also bindings, bondage.
In this memoir, Piu Mahapatra looks back at a time of her life when crimson was more than just a presence in the colour palette.
