আমার ভিনদেশি তারা.

this segment refers to a song close to my heart.

it was my song before i had a name.

it will be mine long after my name is no longer mine.

I.

এন্ড্রোমিডা

boxer distance mane ki janish?

i have evidently not heard of it. bolo ki

it is to keep just enough space between the opponent, so you can strike, but their counter does not reach you.

the mathematics of it, i do not understand. but then again, i am bad at mathematics.

similarly, to tackle such people, you are to do the same. leave just enough distance so you never receive the attack. a tactful aversion.

i smile. nimbooz khabe ?

-

there used to be this miniature nokia phone that dadan owned. besides having a series of games you could play only once as trial, it had a number of videos of me. one with pigtails and a puffy frock that made me look like a walking loofah, one in a culturally appropriated chinese attire, doing even more culturally appropriated karate signs.

the wallpaper was me grinning in front of the cream exit door.

the ride has ended too fast, and i don't have enough money to go again. so i sit cross-legged and i watch others ride the same ride. 

i do not tell them how i feel. i displace the anger at my oblivion towards those enjoying the ride. no you find out how it feels. nobody told me !

-

there are many ways in which i can be hurt. 

the ugliest is to throw rocks at my nest.

a nest that is stronger than any house of cement. 

a nest that has welcomed all the wolves that asked for rest.

a nest rebuilt every time an ingrate is houndish.

a nest i come back to every winter.

nijer haat e chabi rakhte hoy

kisher?

shob situation er. onno chabi diye khulte cheshta korle dorja khulbei na

i laugh

accha tai naki

he still carries a comb for his hair.

ei shonai bhalo hobi toh ? 

nods without much comprehension

thik kore bol

accha accha accha thik ache

kotha dili kintu buro didun ke

uff 

i don't like to be reminded of expiry dates.

i find them irrelevant.

hya dilam dilam.

:)

i am the furthest from religion but i still keep the god she asks me to keep in my bag.

-

II.

সিগ্ন্যুস 

i cannot write very well about her. mostly i end up writing about myself. perhaps it because i have not met anyone more different.

more exact to myself.

she is more kid than i am.

and i get really sad when i write here. usually i am better at painting.

in the car when i am really tired i put my head on her shoulder and everything anybody has ever said disappears.

and she puts her hand on my head.

and she sings.

-

she watches me unravel slowly. like the ocean. 

i come undone in waves.

i love you

?? ew okay 

:)

-

Sometimes, when you watch the water flow, hear the birds chirp and sense the trains passing by, you know all that is to be known about life.

hmm.

The book opens with “Upstream,” a lyrical piece where Oliver recalls wading upstream in rippling water as a child while her parents remained downstream. As she moved further and further away, some steps easy, others requiring great effort, she realized that she enjoyed being lost because she could feel her heart opening and opening again. That opening, and “the sense of going toward the source,” informs the rest of the book and her life journey because, as she writes, “I do not think that I ever, in fact, returned home.

She recalls wading upstream in rippling water as a child while her parents remained downstream. As she moved further and further away, some steps easy, others requiring great effort, she realized that she enjoyed being lost because she could feel her heart opening and opening again.

when i was very small i used to be very afraid of dying.

an occasional existential dread, as one experiences.

very afraid that perhaps in a life after this,

i would never find my way back to my mother.

i didn't really care about anybody else.

the other day

i saw the box with flowers

it's strange for an orphan to see her home

so what is this love that does not let leave.

is it even love

i never responded to these. i never knew what to write back.

i think however,

the orphan finds a home everywhere she goes. any place she feels happy in. 

when the wind changes, she travels westwards for a fresh sky.

if this love does not let leave.

this is not love.

love always lets leave.

- bed e boshe porte nei because sensory memory theke short term memory te jawar shomae sensory memory collects all sensations. best to replicate them (sit on table) as it will be when the memory needs to be recalled

- i like you.

:))

I will ask baba and ma to run run run, close to the speed of light, or better still put him on a spaceship, and i will stay on earth. He will grow 4 months older and I 40 years and then he returns on earth and we do wordle in an old age home

and Rhea asks didun, Didun, can you run at the speed of light and she says in a tired smiling sweet voice, ekhon aar pari na 

And we are like omg, kokhono tumi parte

:))

Maybe you and I will write a book together some day. What is lost in translation tell me

can't put a finger on it. something feels unsaid. amio bodhoy bujhte parchinahoyto tai it is lost in translation,to live as a feeling and not as a fact.

Btw am I invited to Ayan s bday party

:))

Next flight in 1 hour

pls dont die

Okie.

:))

Strange slow and silent are the days here, mamma. 

Starts with waking up with sun pouring in through the window, you draw the curtains and there is a busy station already at 6, reminding you to go about your day.

Middays at work is a quiet sandwich at a local shop sometimes a warm soup or a latte to go with it.

Dinner at evening s at one of the two restros, my favourite being the Chinese one where at 9 all the staff sit down for a dinner themselves like a family, at the same round table. 

Night is a long warm bath,  not a shower, with night jazz on for as long as time and music flows and I don't feel very sleepy. 

And then I sleep.

Do you like quiet and stillness? 

I so do. Unapologetically now.

me too ma. me too.

:))

Don't answer the telephone ever

Or week over anything that breaks

weep? week?

alright ma.

won't weep. won't week. 

:))

Heeya Ma, sometimes you have to look further, away from peoplenesses, to find your place.

If you feel there is one, if you want to find it.

Else there is a life like million others. Crowded lives. Not lesser, but different. Maybe not one that will fulfill you, knowing what your mind longs for.  

The lives with  beginnings and surviving and then endings. Seeing whatever is visible  looking no further, experiencing whatever comes along the way and accepting destinies, existing mindlessly with senses

ah.

i cried while writing this.

this might not be very substantial to readers but just a note here.

-

III.

উর্সা মেজর 

what if im not good enough

for ?

for anything ?

then you can be kind. 

and when you find the things you are more than good enough for, you can be great and kind.

-

if i ever have a daughter of my own, i will tell her that she was not my firstborn.

when asked what i would name her, i was not sure.

when i was very young, i used to carry around a baby doll. even as a 9 year old i fantasized about writing a life. 

as i grew up, the fantasy diminished. i was no longer interested in the domesticity a child or a family had to offer. 

if even for a second i was, that was the closest to my childhood i had been taken to. a little unfair.

she often satisfied my preadolescent requirement for a familial home, rather than a doll. and then she became a doll i occasionally liked brushing the hair of. 

the change involved in growing up can be excruciating.

-

আকাশে দূর রাতের রং বসলেই দেখা যায় আমার এই নক্ষত্রমন্ডল 

কালকের আকাশের প্রসাদ না দেখতে পেলেও, আমার নক্ষত্র মন্ডল ঠিক দেখা যায়। 

বাকি সব তারাগুলির নাম সময়ের সাথে ভুলে যেতে থাকি-

বলতেই পারেন আমার পড়াশোনায় মনোযোগের অভাব ..