Pens and Pages

(Article written for 2017 issue of The AECian, Assam Engineering College) When Professor Satyajit Bhuyan asked me to write an article for The AECian I had absolutely no idea what I’d write on. What can I write for the magazine I was an editor of some four years back? What do I write for its readers that they haven’t read before? Having found no specific answer to these questions I sit down to write just the way I blog – pouring my heart out. When Bhuyan sir mentioned “The AECian”, it took me back to 2013 when I had worked relentlessly for it. At those times the students would write articles on paper, instead of MS Word, and submit it. Imagine the pain of first decoding someone else’s handwriting and then editing it, not to mention, the typing and re-typing required by the publishers. I remember having a discussion with Bhuyan sir regarding changing the submission method so that our writers submit soft copies making it easier for both the parties. Our tech-savvy professor welc...

For those of you who haven’t met me in person, I must, before writing about the miseries of wearing a bitch face, write why I say I have a bitch face. I am a plump woman with a round face and I vividly remember my batchmate at MDI, Nikhil, claiming that my “default face” is similar to a sad smiley, which implied people who didn’t know me would find it difficult to approach and talk to me. Similar were the thoughts of my Capgemini FLP (Freshers’ Learning Program) mate Alakananda who had said that if one sees me from a distance one gets the impression of someone with an attitude of arrogance. When a person is not smiling, it is quite understood that the person is either thinking something or listening or doing anything but not smiling. When I am not smiling people ask me, “What’s wrong?” I remember my first job at Capgemini when our senior Sashank would complain out loud, “ye ladki roti kyu rehti hai?” And since he would not give much opportunity to me to reply, I would jus...

Words engulf him The way he gulps his scotch One glass after another. He grabs his pen And writes down his love Pages after pages. He passes a smile at me At times when he isn't bothered About how he looks When his teeth is shown, When his hair is uncombed And she passes him by. He writes a note for her Without reading The stories I've to tell. He asks me, sometimes, As he drops his note In her old letterbox. His thick eyelashes flutter, A gulp in his throat, Drops of sweat  On his forehead, He fumbles as he utters, "Have you written anything new?"

I am often taken back to the old corridors of our previous house - the one that saw us grow old. Its windows would let the fresh air in that would blow over our text books, those trophies we won in school, the notebook our father kept- the notebook he had kept for future knowing not that the internet would soon take over and maybe obliterate its value. He would keep newspaper clippings safe of the featured poems written by my sister and by a younger me, unaware that soon we would go so digital we would lost count of the URLs that would hold pieces written by us to be lost forever and maybe, found again someday. It’s funny how we talk of nostalgia these days when we would still have a lot of photographs capturing our smiles, the places we visited, the fun we had and the people we met. For me nostalgia would sometimes take me back to those days when we used to run around in the house - all four of us, the smiles that were not captured by any camera, the m...

Five years back on this day I wrote my first ever blogpost. So, despite the fact that I haven’t written much after I returned to India from my Euro Trip, I decided to celebrate the 5 th anniversary of my blog with another blogpost. And although it’s been a month that I am back here, memories of Europe remain vividly etched on the canvas of my mind and I fail to not reminisce them every single day, every single night. Some of the questions I faced when I returned (and I still face sometimes) were about how much I spent on the trip, more so because I was the one who had managed to spoil three cellphones and one laptop during the trip. But besides these major damages there were minute disappearances that kept on happening with my trivial belongings. Surprisingly, I felt happier when I lost my clothing items since it implied that I had to carry less in my baggage during the rest of the trip. Here’s a list of items I lost during the Euro Trip and the places where I lost them bec...

I let you go like some old habits of mine- Checking your Facebook profile every minute I touch my phone, Reading our old messages for signs that would tell you don't love me anymore, Putting a burning cigarette in my mouth every time I thought of you, Exhaling the smoke every time I realized you aren't with me. But such are the habits that do not die- You come back to me one more time, You collide with me on a busy street on some Saturday morning, looking at someone else's photos from that phone in your hand; I let you go like the wine of Venice I swear I would never drink again, I let you go like the promise of never writing a poem again Yet I hold a new bottle of wine dearly in Vienna, A few blank pages and a new pen sit by my side in the cold nights when I would sit in a train and try hard not to think of you. But such are the ways with thoughts- When I close the doors, they find a new window to come in, Rotten like the smell of the dried fish you used...

I always thought it was to my disadvantage that I can never hold back my tears when I need to. I have cried in places I swear I wouldn’t. I am the person in a movie hall who cries whenever the protagonist is in a bad situation. I am the person who is going to cry when you tell her something bad about your own life. And if I don’t, in front of you, I am going to run to the washroom a little while later to let the tears flow, after patting my back for holding them for a while. Reminiscing the conversation and crying later just before sleeping is my thing to. I have lost the count of the times I have cried in the presence of someone I wouldn’t want to show my sensitive side to. But that’s me – 25 and still a crybaby in situations of frustration, anger and sadness, with no consideration to whoever is around me. I remember the time I cried in Venice in front of two guys I just met that day and two other guys I had known only from a couple of days. But that’s a story for another day;...