Trespassers on Dreamland

We are allowed entry…they are not.

On my way out of the adorned main gate of the City-Centre mall, SaltLake, I chanced upon this bunch of rag pickers loitering lazily beside the polished shops. Nothing except their eyes looked bright as they searched for an uninhibited entry into the unknown that lay beyond that gate. They felt beckoned by it. A little girl stood beside the gate, picking her nose, and eyeing another girl walking smartly with her mother by her side. The dirty rag picker girl dropped her hand to her side, craning her neck to gaze at the other girl walk in and mingle with the colourful world inside. Her group suddenly started moving away unwillingly. The security guard was shouting abuses at them and shooing them away. They looked positively frightened but took their steps hesitantly. Smiling and talking amongst themselves, they seemed unperturbed by the guard's constant complaints. Perhaps they were used to a reception like this at the gates of all such cosmopolitan dreamlands. Their soiled clothes wore testimony to it. They stopped a little near the huge glass-paneled Sony showroom screaming 21st century sophistication with a number of LCD TVs showing hues of an untarnished rosy life. They peered in, their noses flattened against the cool glass. Another stream of abuses came from the guard and they were off, chattering away happily. These fragile glass walls...the impenetrable walls of the fortress of dreams…But they had found a way to pierce its opacity, peering through it with their bright black eyes. As they left, their freshly blown breath and their hand prints remained on the otherwise clear surface of the glass door. But I knew they would be wiped away sooner or later.

--Jayeeta Mazumder

Calcutta in its varied moods

...(More Calcutta Pictures)

--Sarit Ray

The Ganga

Smitten by the sun's golden rays
The wavy waters giggle on.
From a distance, I see with my brows pinched together
The lone man on a thin boat, as he glides away.
But I hear no humming music in the air
And I wonder why poets wrote so.
Thousand million footsteps of lovers
has the shore borne
Their traces have been wiped away
And no one complained.
I stepped onto the launch ever so gently
The familiar smell of the city air struck my nose.
I saw familiar faces squirming.
I saw the bustling busy Howrah Bridge.
The waters underneath clapped in the breeze.
The puja flowers swam hesitantly on it.
They didn't stop though, a I had thought
They flowed to reach the desired destination.
I looked up at the clouds painting the sky mysteriously
But was unable to figure out a specific pattern.
I looked down to find the faces of those happy lovers,
But I met with a muddy reflection of the muddy sky.
When I touched the other side of the river,
I turned back and felt as if it beckoned to me again....
I give in, and I go back.

--This is my city that struggles and never stops,
that looks beautiful in all its muddiness,
that never stops beckoning me
as I willingly plunge into its luxurious lap
Ah! this is my city...the city that breathes and is alive.

--Jayeeta Mazumder