Pens and Pages

“I am not hungry,” he said with a visible frown on his face.  Tim was a Russian musician who was tired having traveled all the way from Bangkok to Stockholm without proper sleep that day. We both were couch-surfing at Stockholm for the first time, the way many travelers do when they wish to meet new people, and our host was out with his friends for some time. It was a crazy evening and the three of us had gone out but I had to return mostly because Tim wasn’t feeling well and he didn’t know the way back home and partly because I couldn’t afford the club we were in. The clock had struck 12 in the midnight and I knew I was hungry. I am not sure if this is because I am a foodie, a fatso or an Indian but I simply cannot sleep if my tummy indicates it needs something nor can I imagine others not being hungry when I am. Tim was adamant that he’d not have anything, since he was too tired to get anything and too upset with the sudden change in temperature he observed between the ...

It’s funny how one’s life goes through highs and lows But we put some kohl and brush our brows. We someday realize we have no one but foes; So we sit back to paint the nails on our fingers and toes. For that might be the way one can drop that frown, To let not the world and its people pull you down, For I can see my life all blue- the hue I dread But I can change my hair to a better shade of red. I may wake up to find a messy work life But I can neatly braid my hair and pretend it’s all fine. I can find my job dull or whine that it’s not fair But I can take out a magic wand and curl my hair. I may cry all I can, as if I’m trapped in Medusa’s lair But tomorrow I’ll still show up with a confident flair.

My favorite color is the shade of your cheeks wet with drops from the salty sea of your eyes when you are guilty of making an innocent mistake like writing "writed" for "wrote" doubting if you can still write a good quote, calling yourself not a writer even when the pages of your diary are filled with a million notes, even when you die everyday but wake up to write for a theme called Hope.

(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...