Life and Lies of M R Maiti

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