Bus-Stop

Your destination is approaching and you're peeking out of the window. You know you've got to get down. But you somehow don't. You stay immobile as if you're protesting against yourself. You don't have the will to move your ass and leave the bus for good. Maybe you're too elated to have finally 'earned' a window seat and you don't want to relinquish it. Moreover, you don't even care that if you fail to act within the allotted 30 seconds, you'll have to get down at the next stop. And commute back home. However, the countdown begins. Kolkata’s bus service, like time and tide, stops for none. You keep looking out of the window, staring into the nothingness that makes you travel between this point and that. You don't even know anymore what is nice and what's not nice. You don't expect anything interesting to happen to your existence. Your friends from school are yet to stare out of the window. Or maybe they are better off in some other place where humanity is not humiliated in overcrowded public transports. You are one of the zombies now and you've accepted your future. You're probably never going to walk and explore or stand and stare. You've learnt that your life is going to rattle on the public roads within the periphery of this godsmitten city. You'll never escape the loud throes that engulfs everybody on this island of chaos nor will you ever travel alone again. You'll always be in the company of strangers who smell worse than you. They'll be called your co-passengers and they shall fight for those imaginary seventh seats that lie in front of them. With such fellow-morons around, perspiration will become your act of silent defiance. You must surrender yourself to make it or else you'll be left behind. On the bus-stop. Outside the bus. The city is not to be blamed nor are its inhabitants. If you really wanted to break free, you would have. By now.

Lost in Words

I keep revisiting my childhood; not because I have an eidetic memory (which I don't, anyway) but because some of my finest days dwell deep down in my past. They weren't colorful as such. They weren't poetic either. They were rustic for a while before getting fondled by urban chaos. Despite all that, they had an innocent charm about themselves. Or maybe I'm thinking too much and creating images that weren't there in the first place. Its fine, I assume, to ponder from one thread of long-forgotten incidents to another. The trouble, however, begins when you start living more in your yesterdays and stop looking forward to your tomorrows. We are part of an age where imagination is dirt cheap but petrol, shit expensive. So one has to think twice before choosing their mode of transport. I prefer mind-traveling. After all, our generation is way ahead of its time machine. To be honest, I don't know what I'm writing here but the voices in my head suggest that it's OK to be lost in words. Nobody cares what you wrote but people care far lesser for what you haven't.