Bali's Letter

Bhai Bali,

Eto dine ai prothom toke chithi likchi gorar dike proyojon hoyeni, ostoprohor shate chilam
jokhon alada holam tokhon proyojon hoito chilo kintu lekhar kichu chilona,
…mone pore tui bar bar jigesh kortish, desh ki, pishimar desher bari ar mukuler desher bari alda kano, bihari babu je desher kaj koren she kon desh

Tor shonge charachari hobar pore shei chinta amai boror bhabiyeche re,tor ar amar modhe baire onek omil chilo tobuyo amra shoi patiye chillum, besh chillum dorjee para streeter antarpure shetai chilo amader rojkar jogoth

… jodi desh bolte chash tayo bolte parish…..omon bairer amon miliye mild mishe niye thaka ei desher itihashe notun na, tai amra notun kichu korini bali, tBole ontorer mile bole ki shatiye ki kichu chilo na ,…..chilo , sonsar korar shad, oije bollum oi dorjee para streeter antarpurer baire amra are kichu dekhini,tai amder dekha ekta manush ke niye dujonai se shadh metate cheyechi, tate shadho meteni are amader chotto desho bhenge tukro tukro hoye gechi

Curzon shaheber ain jodi phole , tahole ekhon theke ami are tui dui alada deshe thakbo, shei dui deshe boshe jodi amra jodi eto diner nijer apoman, dukkho are bonchonar kothai shudhu bhabi tahole toe amra age thekei har mene nilum

ashole desh toe moner modhye bali, antorer jug konodin amader modhe jodi theke thake, jodi sheta ekbarer jonnneyo mone rane bishash kore thake, tahole curzon shaheb amader ki jobdo korbe..

jedin oi dorji parar street theke kashite gahte giye daralum she din janlum shottikarer deshe kake bole…shekhane heshel uthon , khorkhori er baire birat jogot….she shudhu boiye porechi re are bhebechi golpo kotha….

mahabharate ache Abhimanyu mayer pete theke mostto beer hoyechilo, tor paytay je shontan she roj tor shate ganga snan koreche, dohai bali she chelei hok are meyei hoke t..take kabol oi dorjee para streeter do talar badi te , atke rakhish na, dekhish shatyikarer desh kake bole shei toke ekdin bujhiye debe..….

iti, tor,

Chokher Bali

Rabindranath Tagore

Dearest Bali,

This is my first letter to you because we spent our lives within the same space all the time, so there was no cause, and when we were estranged maybe there was the cause, but there was nothing to say.

Do you remember asking me, constantly yearning to unmask the identity of what a country was? Why Pishima and Mukul were separated within the same land, the one country? What was this idea that Bihari Babu loved and fought for?

After you left me, I struggled to unearth the mystery of this state of being. We had such conflict in our desires from life, but we somehow managed to create this sense of camaraderie and satisfied indulgence, in that house on Dorjeepara Street, hidden away in our universe. You could say that was our nation. An all encompassing existence with people of conflicting ideas is not a unique facet in our heritage, and we didn’t change history with our relationship. But, looking back, I refuse to believe that our connection didn’t transcend culture and phenomena.

This sense of understanding was our own as was the desire to experience the fulfillment with our love, but we didn’t, we couldn’t see past the walls of the sanctum on Dorjeepara Street. We were blind to the world beyond our own. Thus, our dreams were built within the only man we saw, we knew. And so they fell apart, fragmenting to our self absorbed renderings of what was real, what was possible.

If Lord Curzon has his way then our lives will unfold in separate nations from now. However, while belonging to these disparate lands, if we live with our unfulfilled pasts, feel maligned and wander insulted and lost in each others memory, then we’ve lost everything to begin with.

The real nation lives within us Bali. If we ever belonged to that connection of wonder that is love and if ever our relationship was beyond our bodies and words, then Lord Curzon’s actions will break against us.

I unraveled the idea of a true country the day I wandered past the walls of Dorjeepara street and entered Kashi. It was a world beyond the possibilities of our mundane and static womb, one that loomed beyond the rise of the doorstep, past the stairs, down the street. A place of wonder, I had only read of in epics and thought of as an unreal fantasy.

In the Mahabharata, Abhimanyu became the greatest warrior while still within his mother’s body. The life that has breathed in you, bathed in the Ganga with you will be your guide on this journey. My only request to you is, let that child – man or woman, explore this universe, past our chains, our boundaries and our reality of Dorjeepara Street. I promise you, one day this child, will open your eyes to what a nation really is and can become.

Yours,

Chokher Bali

Me

Dreaming behind a lock

Some of us are older,

Others search for age,

Making time over,

“I am”, said the sage.

Is it looking for never?

Or finding sometimes dull,

Now laughs forever,

I am still waiting for the “gull”.

Half people look around,

Open pockets in exchange,

Eyes open to sound,

How do I estrange?

Words don’t belong to us,

Over the clouds to there,

An un-ending circus,

Of the ever masquerading bear.

My songs are smoke colored,

They search for a clock,

To nail within a memory,

And dreaming behind a lock.

Eleanor Rigby's dangling conversation.....

The 60s in the USA, defined the way music could affect politics. However more subtly and almost by making it too honest – they were the most stark portrayal of degenerate value systems. A clarion call to the sloth infused masses , that had reduced freedom to a noun. After the relative security provided by the second world war , a sense of suitable and often shrouding calm had spread over the allied nations – specially the middle classes of USA and the UK. Smoldering under the surface of white picket fences and industrially produced fairytale suburbia, was the dissension of lost wonder. People atrophied into a state of such candor less exchange , that layered realities settled in like thick dust covers over unused emotional tomes. It was the perfect soil to sow the seeds of revolution. And systemic change came from all actors. The most powerful ones were sung. Poetry became an intrinsic salvationary craft which overwhelmed even the political hegemony with its probing portrayal of honesty. Within this atmosphere hundreds of words were born and killed – some among them stuck around, like residual dirt which not even religion or media could wash away. In my opinion the two greatest proponents of this movement came from the Beatles and the pen of Paul Simon.

Eleanor Rigby
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ?

Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people


Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near.
Look at him working. darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

Eleanor rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father mckenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
The Beatles

The Dangling Conversation

Its a still life water color,
Of a now late afternoon,
As the sun shines through the curtained lace
And shadows wash the room.
And we sit and drink our coffee
Couched in our indifference,
Like shells upon the shore
You can hear the ocean roar
In the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

And you read your emily dickinson,
And I my robert frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what weve lost.
Like a poem poorly written
We are verses out of rhythm,
Couplets out of rhyme,
In syncopated time
Lost in the dangling conversation
And the superficial sighs,
Are the borders of our lives.

Yes, we speak of things that matter,
With words that must be said,
Can analysis be worthwhile?
Is the theater really dead?
And how the room is softly faded
And I only kiss your shadow,
I cannot feel your hand,
Youre a stranger now unto me
Lost in the dangling conversation.
And the superficial sighs,
In the borders of our lives.
Simon and Garfunkel

These songs did more than capture the decayed and hollow structures that now represented middle class life. They provided a caveat for the futility and overt sense of function that had crept into every element of life – from religion to literature, from the theater to marriage. It was as if a whole generation had suddenly lost the primary cause to be a part of anything meaningful. And within this rather hypocritical yet favored existence, the fundamental power of society had been handed over to the political and economic hegemons who then molded our values. It was a disease which they disseminated – from prognosis to decease. From within these two vehicles of mobilization came the empirical awakening , that was a part of the revolution which defined the 60's in the west as being the harbinger of the systemic change which ultimately replaced the way we live in society.

Love Letters

I really love you....I just felt like I hadn’t said that to you enough lately. I need to appreciate you more - celebrate you more. The one thing that truly matters in my life - is learning how to love and you are the person I am trying to learn that with. I feel like I need to work harder at elevating my life to this process. We have grown up in such cold societies that we' have this concept of short changed love, we get satisfied with so less because we feel as if , its better than nothing but it shouldn’t be that way.

I should learn to love you, as an act of wonder, as lyrically and neo as no other act on earth, its not a challenge, it’s the "only path to awe”. My love for you is definitive in deciding how I carve my state of being within a system of excellence - its gifts are so treasured that maybe I am not even ready to accept them

But I have to try, try to overcome even more walls, unravel even more maya - to get to an unfiltered notion of being in love with you: a storm like magical homecoming for the most real parts of me that should, and I think do, only exist to share this space between you and me; to create a universe, so complex and mystifying that it transcends social reality

I mean, if that isn’t religion - I don’t know what is......