Convergent Lines

A strange feeling swept through him as the car drove past the familiar gates of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. The sun was about to set and the mellow chirping of birds filled the crimson late evening sky. The car drove through the newly laid roads, past the famous landmarks and all-too-familiar turns and finally stopped at the gate of the newly renovated guest house. Aniket stepped out, took off his shades and looked around. A gentle breeze had started to blow. He closed his eyes for a moment and inhaled deeply.  A strange aroma filled his senses, something that he always associated with this place. What was that smell? He couldn’t tell exactly. He took his small trolley bag and rolled it along to the reception.  “Your name, sir?” “Aniket Bhattacharya” “Room S4” It had been ten years since he last came here. Or rather, ten years since he had left this place. He still remembered the day when he finally left the campus. He remembered how a small c...

It had been raining since late night. Sritoma woke up to the sound of mellow rumbling of clouds and rain drops whispering outside the bed-side window. The incessant rain through the night had metamorphosed the sultry summer night into a cool and pleasant morning. Sritoma, 15, stared outside the window with sleepy eyes soaking in the flavor of the early morning rain. “Toma! Are you up yet?”, Anuradha’s voice from the kitchen brought her back to reality. The morning was supposed to be beautiful, but instead it seemed shrouded in gloom. A lot had been going at home since the last two days. Dadu was ill, very ill, more than he had been all these years—compounded by his whim not to be taken to a hospital and “left to rot”! Finally, they did manage to coax him to a nursing home, but by then he was too weak to protest. And then there was this man….“Come, get your breakfast dear! How much longer would you take to get out of bed?”. Sritoma pulled herself up. It was a virtual holiday. It had...

It was a strangely eventful last weekend, one of those that just urges words to form in your head, turn into sentences and knock wildly until you finally let them out. So I guess I’ll have to put down what went through, or at least the part where it all began—my trip from Lausanne in Switzerland to Kaiserslautern, a small town in the middle of nowhere in Germany. It was going to be my first experience in the Eurail and I was excited for more reasons than one. The first leg of the journey didn’t disappoint at all, from Lausanne to Basel, the two and half hours left me gaping out through the gigantic window panes as the train sped past the Swiss countryside. The pristine beauty of the scenery around was unprecedented. Meadows rose from the railway tracks and climbed up the mountain slopes which seemed a stone’s throw away, and the vast expanse of verdure was interrupted in between with lakes and streams gushing by. The small stations in between were quaint with and vividly colorful wit...

Testing times, and it’s been pretty busy; lots of thoughts wandering my mind—disorganized and diverse, fighting for space—I’ll let them make their own music… Yesterday was bhasha dibosh (language day). I couldn’t resist writing the Bangla expression, because the essence of this day is so emphatically linked to this language. It was in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) that a great movement was started in protest of Pakistan’s declaration that Urdu should be the official language of East Pakistan as well. This movement was unique in its objective, no material gains, no bridges to be made, no factories to be shut, no wages to be increased, just the fundamental right to speak the language of your choice, the language of your birth—which is so innately ingrained in each one of us. Bangladesh hosted the opening ceremony of this year’s cricket world cup only a couple of days ago, and in a country that owes its birth to this language, what more fitting way to begin the auspicious occasion ...

Another semester gone by, in the usual uncompromising way that leaves one to wonder whether it was indeed four entire months it had lasted! But this time, not without a couple of delightful intermissions—decorating memories like wild flowers on the barren highway. Midway through autumn, after three colorful days of Durga Pujo it was time to set off. On the road and in the air, with my parents and my uncle, a week and a day on a much-expected sojourn in Kerala. From Kochi to Allepuzha, it was a soothing, if not unforgettable experience. The smell of history in the streets of Kochi, the untainted verdure of Munnar, the serenity of the backwaters—the waves of new sensations left a handful of pretty sea-shells to savor. The prettiest of them all, the one with the shining pearl, was Kanyakumari—the tip of India’s giant ankle that is worthy of its crown. First up there was a visit to the much venerated temple of Kanyakumari. The smell of its damp, old walls, the incessant smoke from burn...

October is here, and so are the Commonwealth Games!! It is arguably one of the best things that has happened to India in recent years—yet it just can’t seem to find a way out of the headlines, and for all the wrong reasons! When was the last time the front page of your daily newspaper did not sport a story on how the games have turned into a scheme for generating “common wealth” for a select group of individuals? So, given the situation, what can I, an educated young man, far away from the disquiet and the controversies surrounding the games do about it all? Well, at least I can think, and often it is at this basic level that people falter—when things happen thick and fast, they forget to think. So I was thinking… and the first thing that became clear to me was that the media has made a meal out of the entire thing. I mean it’s not that one should shut his eyes or turn a deaf ear to all the audio visual evidence in support of everything that has been going wrong in the Games. It’s just...

This has really been a long time coming. I say that not only because I’ve been thinking about it for a long time now, but also that I’ve been filling up my personal diaries with thoughts and scraps of imagination that could easily have fitted into a personal blog. What kept me waiting all this time was perhaps an overwhelming sense of possessiveness towards my own thoughts and feelings. My writings have always been very close to my heart, as honest an expression of myself as only a few people closest to me know about. Now, after 3 years in college, having experienced some of the good, bad and the ugly and having seen a little bit of the world, my heart tells me it’s time to let go. To let go of those painted butterflies I have been holding in my palm for long—now I think they are strong enough to fly! I am not a religious person, although there are certain things I worship—poetry is one of them. Poetic expressions are everywhere, but most of all they are in your mind, intertwined in e...