Rambling on a summer night

A lot has changed since my last post… For starters the city… I am back in Kolkata.

I sit in my room… 1’o clock in the morning… the AC droning softly… the summer night outside; very quiet; the Kadam tree still standing upright and silent, the occasional rickshaws lazily going by, their wheels whirring loudly, breaking the silence of the night... this neighborhood is quiet, barring a distant din of late night TV shows.

I think of this time of the night in the other city… Coming back late from work… ordering late night Pizza delivery (which continues to be the only hope for us bachelors in alien cities)… sitting down in the hall, on the cane chair… switching on my favorite corner light… pouring myself a drink… lighting a smoke… playing David Gilmour on the I-pod… every action so known, so repetitive, so lonely, and so personal… In another half an hour after finishing my first drink, I would switch to a livelier Billy Joel, go stand near the window… feel the sea breeze on my face… watch cars zoom past on Juhu road, their headlights shining like little golden fireflies… the sleepless city…

I guess, I have always found a certain kind of a pleasure in living in the past (which doesn’t mean, I hate the present)… I have always longed for things which have left me or which I have left behind… I have always let little strings from yesterdays tug away at my heart. So, now that I sit in my room, filled with memories from my childhood and books from my adolescence, I can’t help but think about going back to my room in Bombay! Going back to the writing desk, where I hardly ever sat down… to the shabby sleeping mattresses (though I confess, I’m happy sleeping on a bed after three years!)… To the large orange cushions… the white electric kettle… the cane pin-up board (with photographs of the ‘Mumbai-family’ on it)… to 1201…

Also very strangely (and yes, I must say this), I never thought, I’d miss my office so much… I miss my cubicle at the corner (1D21)… my little white board (where every afternoon, I’d scribble a few lines or draw a strange face)… the coffee machine in the corridor… the cigarette shop right outside our office. But most of all, I miss the people. I miss M (one who used to sit diagonally opposite to my cubi) and M (who used to sit in the next cubi), and P (the crazy one!)… and P (the Boss!). I miss my band, and practicing with them after office… and I miss our magazine ‘W’, which I had a ball of a time, editing and being involved with… Our hastily planned pizza parties… the aimless loitering in the canteen… I miss Gateway Park.

Well, and then comes the hardest part… my friends. And the times spent together… The crazy nights… The brilliant-est conversations… The madness… But that surely calls for a separate post.

For now I must leave you with these lines, which has been playing in my head for quite sometime now:

What shall we use

To fill the empty spaces

Where we used to talk?

How shall I fill The final places?

How should I complete the wall?