Life and Lies of M R Maiti

On the shore  And the night is slipping through my hand  I fall into the sea  Like the empire built on the sand  The song going on in my head is interrupted by the rumble of the crashing waves. It brings me back to the present. Once again, gazing at the distant horizon, I had gotten lost in my thoughts. But then again, wasn’t that the whole purpose of coming here.  It was Subhodeep who had introduced me to this place. A friend of a mutual friend, he is one of the inmates at Sheetal Apartments, Juhu where I am staying temporarily. On my first day here, he did not lose a moment after I stepped through the door to announce that Ajay Devgn stayed on the ground floor. He related the story of some fortunate fellow who had gotten the opportunity to click a selfie with the actor. That evening, he showed me around, starting with ISCKON temple that was located nearby. There I had a Dabeli for the first time. Two of those and you don't need dinner , he told me. From there, a road ran straight

Sometime in 2004 I must have dozed off. But suddenly I am awake. The screen is mostly dark. On concentrating further, I can make out a lake during night. There’s a man lying alongside it, whimpering in pain. Close to him sits a bespectacled boy who is terrified by the dark figures hovering in the air, circumventing the two of them. One of the dark figures breaks from the rest and swoops in, and on getting close to the man drains his face somehow. The man winces in pain. The boy tries to protect him, shooting a burst of light at the dark figures with the stick he’s holding. The figures are deterred for a moment but they double back, one by one, draining both the man and the boy. Just then a silver stag appears across the lake, driving all the dark figures away by its light. And the boy faints. I can make neither head nor tail of the scene. Somehow, I manage to sit through the rest of the movie. Why it is so dark even during the day; must be because of the poor picture quality. There

July 20, 2020 As a teenager  All I needed was  A pocketful of cash  To make my dream come true  To see a man in person  Whose only words I knew  Towering over the crowd  Amid cheers and applause  More than sometimes  Screaming in angst  He was – still is  The voice in my head  For when I open my eyes  The room is empty  There is no crowd  Nobody to applaud  The teenage dream is lost  As he is long gone  But, why dismay  Life ends, ends the disarray  I close my eyes  Words pour out  And for a brief moment  He and I are one and the same  July 20, 2019 Another year and another day have gone by. I am alone in my room, far away from family and friends; as if that had ever comforted me. I pore over the words scribbled before me. Random fragment of sentences, written haphazardly, they don’t make sense. I had jotted it down last year but couldn’t produce something meaningful out of it. I give it another try. After several hours, nothing worthwhile comes out. I throw it away in disgust and ret

A few days have passed since the new session started. And unlike most of the Std. (III) students, I haven’t paid the school fee. That’s why, when the school accountant steps into the classroom, I know he is here for me. “What about you,” he asks me, stopping by the front row. “Tomorrow,” I reply. He stands there for a while as if assessing the accountability of my words. I maintain a straight expression, while he scribbles something in his notebook then moves on to the next row.  “Why did you lie to him,” whispers Pragya, sitting next to me, once the accountant is out of earshot. “You are not going to be here tomorrow.” “But he doesn’t have to know that,” I whisper back. I am filled with a sense of accomplishment having successfully duped the accountant and at the same time, saved my father some money; after all, he is going to need it elsewhere. “Tell me something,” she says after a while. “Do you really want to go?” Do I? I turn around to look at my friends. Abhinav is sitting two ro

Time after time, the waves splash against the tetrapods, down below my dangling feet, not with force but out of a sense of duty. Along with the waves, the sea sends gusts of cool breeze, pleasant and comforting despite the prevalent humidity; the reason why people have thronged this place. I must be sitting somewhere near the mid-point of the pincer shaped sea-front which stretches out in either direction, bursting with luminescence pouring out of hundreds of streetlights. In contrast, the sea is darker. Still, I can spot a few ships far out, looming near the horizon. “You know what my greatest fear is,” I hear my friend say, sitting beside me. Unlike him, I can distinguish between a regular question and a rhetoric one. Therefore, I don’t give a reply straightaway. I let him complete his thought. “I fear that one day I would realise that I am dumb.” Now, I have to jump in. “Didn’t we already discuss this in college,” I start. “We judge others, how everyone else is a fool. Who k

I lay on the floor which is still a little warm in spite of having sprinkled water on the floor in the evening. My eyes survey the sky, riddled with a thousand stars. And a crescent moon, under whose light, I can see the silhouette of the distant hill. I can make out the outline of the temple, situated on top of it. During night-time, whenever there’s a power cut, people rush to take a look at the hill. If there’s no light shining from the temple, then it’s alright, nothing can be done; otherwise, the problem is local – either a faulty circuit board or a disconnected wire from the electric pole – and can be fixed. I see no light coming from the temple. The power must have gone out again. A pleasant breeze brings me the smell of the cooking going on downstairs. It’s summertime and the heat becomes unbearable in the absence of electricity. As soon as dinner is prepared, everyone else joins me on the roof. Ma is serving when a sudden gust of wind blows out the lantern. “Oh, I forgot

Snip-snip, clip-clip Despite its monotonicity, the sound has a certain ring to it. If I concentrate a bit harder, it almost sounds like a well-placed tune. Or maybe I have been listening to it for too long. Nevertheless, the sound has a sense of power because it remains upbeat in spite of the consistent murmur. Then it pauses. A brief silence follows. The boy at the start of the line scuttles to the most demanded chair in the room, to fill the momentous vacancy. A sense of relief is evident on his face. Following this, a wave ripples throughout the line. Everyone takes a few steps ahead and then comes to a stop. Another down, three more to go , I count. The snapping of scissors resumes. The murmur follows suit. My legs ache. I had jogged all the way to the barbershop, after taking a hasty lunch. There, to my dismay, a long queue was already in place. Patiently, I stood at the end. Awaiting my turn, I had spent the past hours shifting my weight from one leg to other, taking se

The Sun casts its rays diagonally at me but the cool breeze wards off the heat. Soon, I reach where the surface is hollow and my feet sink right in the sand, delaying my pace. A thought creeps into my head: Did Gandhiji face the same issue while breaking the salt law? Unlike him, I hadn’t walked all the way from Sabarmati. Two weeks into my internship, I found myself in Navsari, a small town in Gujarat, plying back and forth to Surat on a daily basis and thereafter, making the most of the company arranged accommodation at the guest house. I had already gotten familiar with the caretakers there and during one of our interactions I was surprised to learn that Dandi beach was only 20 kilometres away. Consequently, here I am. Every step I take plucks out a tuft of sand along with it. The sand here has a tint of white, must be the salt. As I progress further, I leave behind a trail of footsteps, small cavities in the ground, their depths increasing continually but the difference between two