Another drawing.

I think I've written for too long and too much. I can't write anymore for the time being! SO instead, I picked up my MSPaintbrush and painted this -

Like?

Waking up from visual hibernation.

A story of the phoenix who's ashes didn't bear another.

I

A lovely night had come to pass,
Some twenty years ago,
A lovely night without a past.
She'd given me a purple rose;
I'd let it fall under a stampede.
I’d let them stamp out its seed

And crush it beyond reparation,

Alone in my empty railway station,

Keeping clean from devastation

On a forgotten, defeated nation.

That night I lied to she who didn’t,

And tied myself to this precedent

Of an ultimate ruin in the end,

Where I drive off the cliff at the crooked bend.

That night I’d cried to myself alone

In my bed before I slept, and gone

Through many painful phantasms

With cages carrying imprisoned orgasms.

That night dragged on like a plow

Edged with razors on my skin

Until my blood had ceased to flow,

Far outdone by its sin.

II

Empty footsteps in buried alleys,
Orange sunsets spent alone,
Putrid rivers in barren valleys
Reminded this young man of home,

Once he woke from his night of sorrow

To a tempestuous dawn aglow

On the east end of the purple sky,

Where the sun did burn the darkness dry.

He dressed himself in canvas clothing

And shaved and combed his hair with oil,

Useless attempts to hide the loathing

He had for life, that in his eyes did boil.

He walked out of his wooden cave,

Cold with night’s chilly breath,

For never did he firewood save

To burn on days of nearing death.

He walked across the burning moorlands

That bore the signs of that stampede

Where, in some long lost grain of sand,

He’d lost the purple rose’s seed.

He walked on through across the grass,

And came across an aged home to pass
The old man in his porch sweeping the brown dust,
As his lonely young wife lay burning in her lust.

He walked into her room and stroked

Her hands, looked out at the trees

Swaying in the arid morning breeze,

And lit her on fire with embers stoked

With newfound passion and fleeting

Fancies, that satisfied, will run away

In an instant, leaving old dismay

To Walk back through the door in somber greeting.

III

What if you hide your love away and forget where you've hidden it?
What if you've tried too hard to be the Back-door Man and are left locked outside?
What if you saved up to your last penny and discovered they’d given it?
What if you see a mother in agony searching for her son and you figure he's long dead since the time you poisoned him with your words?
What if you dream that she makes love just like a woman, and you're still a little boy?

What if you’ve told her not to cry coz you still love her, being the little boy, unawares that it’s your maimed love that makes her cry?

What if you disfigure your being and risk everything on a coin toss, but the postman forgets your address?

What if you follow her casket praying to lord, just to find her alive and yourself dead?

As the slaves of despair make you their playground,

And forget that they were here to play,

The sun bids goodbye to the trees around

The grazed field in which you lay

Pondering on whether you were betrayed

Or just another scared failure,

And you starting wishing that she’d stayed

On a bit longer, till you were sure.

Suddenly, just a bit ahead of the woods’ end,

You see her calling, hands in air,

You run towards her healing scent

And long to brush against her hair

When earthly sorrow stops you still

And slowly drags home its kill.

Amar Shohor.

My name may not be Johnny, but I’m one heck of a walker. And I also happen to have grown up in Calcutta. South Calcutta. Since upper kindergarten I was out on the streets alone, in a sense, when I was allowed to walk to my school, directly across the street, on my own. My two strong feet have been softened to the fields of plain city grass or playing field mud from the paras of Jadavpur; hardened to sun-burnt concrete streets or roughly paved sidewalks in the hidden little boulevards in Golf Green or Jodhpur Park, and shaped upon the very contours of the empty blazing afternoon roads. And slowly as my being grew and began to discover newer and newer things and emotions, to hope for love, to bid for goals, to form opinions and nutritious bonds, I ventured alone, or was led by strangers, to discover new niches and mysterious alleyways and other creations of fantasy rendered manifest only to you by some special places you’ll remember.

I found challenge in cricket fields, scored centuries and smoked biris as reward, and roamed free and rampant over territorial land, hand in hand with childhood friends all integrated into one pulsating living ‘gang’.

I found heartwarming crushes that made me smile and feel happy for enormous stretches of time, and began to roam to Jodhpur Park, a serene and yet earthly environment for a young aroused soul. I sat there for hours and days and years, changing places and intentions for visit – from football to adda to smoking to flirting to seeking refuge from earthly fetters – but remaining ever faithful to the place.

Meanwhile as I grew, my prowling region expanded, and I discovered that dreamy wonderland – the Lakes. I went in there at first like a child discovering a new storeroom, venturing widely and forming maps. I discovered old memories of learning to swim in the Andersons’ club, and new places of captivating fancy among trees in bloom to hidden bushes or lakeside benches where the cool breeze blows. I discovered Central Calcutta, through my admission into the basketball School Team, with weekend-ly trips to WBBA’s courts to practice or play tournaments. Wandering through Maidan listlessly and exhausted, saved by the random fruit vendor who rescues you with ripe papaya, I started feeling at home in the City’s then so myriad faces. Then as I grew, and leapt into realms of internal turmoil and battle, I discovered the Ganga, with the waves like a flowing transparent sleeves on her bare white arm. I discovered the feeling, so deep rooted in every Bengali’s soul, of the rural calling, when lying in a wooden boat with a sing-along boatman. The gentle rocking of the Ganga, like your village mother would rock you to sleep in your little clay hut with thatched hay roof, and the sound of her violently feminine presence around you, send your mind into introspective quests as you battle yourself, cocooned from the world by her engulfing embrace.

As age drew on, I turned reclusive, and discovered a new religion. The temples of prayer were slowly discovered courtesy friends, strangers and sheer courage. I sat back down, happily home, with a heart more stable and a soul more calm. The lakes drew me to them, as I found my nest of solace and beauty in nooks and crannies and iron cannons. In pursuit of happiness, through the new religion, I began to become a hermit for short stretches of time and merge as one with the monsoon soaked Lakes or the sun baked Lakes.

Then with newfound inclination towards the truly technical sciences and humanities, I found myself frequently in College street, passing hours and hours in the burning sun looking for this one promised book that is oh-so-rare. I discovered coffee house, where one could sit and have coffee, while breezing through his old memory albums, to young days with cousins in Central Park or family zoo visits, or Science City or Nicco Park treats from relatives on single digit birthdays, to old English houses abandoned by all but a group of white pigeons and mice and lichen to spare.

You gaze over the books you found and weren’t strong enough to not buy, and order another coffee, as you start to feel, quite strongly, that no matter how affected any future blunder could leave you, this home of yours, your city, Calcutta, shall always hold you to her breast and calm you with her loving heartbeats and make you rise and turn to smile, as yet another day passes by.