My best friend, Shrirupa Sengupta (see picture) has refused to follow my blog because she thinks I have not been completely honest with my writing. She is harsh critic but an honest one, and so I write this to please her, and convince her to follow my blog:
Sometimes the mornings are pregnant and the nights mean nothing. Sometimes we begin to write a note and then feel that it's so pointless. For, we are all like those creatures in Beckett's novel: crawling through the mud, meeting briefly, and not being able to communicate.
Words are redundant: what I want to say will always mean something else to you! So, "Do not ask what is it?/Let us go and make our visit."
How does one write poetry when one does not have the time to be lazy? Why does one have to suffer because one is a musician in a country where everyone is deaf?
The big city is always more beautiful than the small town. The big city does not confuse you, if you are a big city person. If you are small town person, you are sure to get lost in big city. The big city does not smell of rose gardens, it smells of the arm-pits of a bitch. It smells of the bed sheets in your friendly, neighbourhood brothel. It smells of the public urinal under the bridge. It smells of the rotting corpse of the junky on the pavement.
How does one write poetry if one does not feel the roads of the big city burning holes in the soles of your shoes, when you walk? Small town poetry smells good — of rose and tulip gardens. But that's all that it smells of. If you are not in the middle of the strife. If you don't see your comrade shot through the eye. If you don't smell the cold sweat on your spine on a hot day. If you don't taste the blood of the man you have killed. If you are not torn to shreds by the sharp nails of the woman you have raped... What have you done?
The big city is not beautiful! It has never been beautiful! It is ugly, it is obnoxious. It is a whore feeding her infant with dirty nipples.
The big city is a monster... It will eat you. So beware!
Why would you want to go away from here? Do you not feel sick if you have to? We are the big city people. This is what we do: We throw Molotov Cocktails at each other for fun and games!
Remember that scene in Mahanagar? Siddhartha lying prone on the hostel bed, and talking of the double edged sword named Calcutta? The city's a bitch--it won't let you go and it won't let you stay.
ReplyDeletebig city also tries to tell you that you are one among many.. how negligible you are in the vast crowd of people trying to get an auto rickshaw or a bus.. the so called big city dwellers, pretentiously happy in their nuclear families and 10x12 rooms, anonymously happy with their unpopular personal achievemnts, basking in the glory of being a big city dweller in front of people of the suburbs and migrant birds .. yes its a bitch and it makes you a bitch too...
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