"Empty spaces fill me up with holes/ Distant faces with no place left to go...."
Unknowingly, this Backstreet number comes up on shuffle on my phone's music player. I'm unaware. I impatiently push the volume tab higher. Alas! 14 is all that stares back at me. Sealdah can be quite a melee at all sorts of odd hours of the day. The blaring horns of the run-down buses above; the colourful, loud shops below - selling anything from a pin to the most outrageous copy of the latest gizmo. People hollering all round - someone running to catch his train, a tired worker returning home, head buried in his chest, a jewellery-laden, not-so-beautiful boudi tripping on a lethargic street dog. Judging by the screams that emanate, it's hard to decide who's the victim and who the perpetrator. A chivalrous dada kicks the bewildered dog away. The boudi walks away without a look. The dada looks disappointed.
All around, a milieu of people engage in a plethora of such incidents. I walk on. I'm unaware. Damn the headset. Wish the volume would blare louder into my drums...
"I tried to go on like I never knew you/ I’m awake but my world is half asleep..."
The orange rays from the streetlight filter through the overhead web of wires - cable wires, electricity wires, telephone wires, wires grey, wire black, wires thick, wires thin, wires that look weathered and old, wires that appear new and shiny and slick. Somewhere in those wires, the light gets trapped.
The traffic signal turns red. Creaking buses with jostling passengers screech to a halt. A hand-pulled rickshaw slowly ambles its way across the street. By the time it has crossed three quarters of the way, the signal has turned green again. The buses roar to life. A young man on the rickshaw looks nervously back towards the buses, pulling his hands in as they speed past him, almost as if reprimanding him "Bloody loser!"
The Surya Sen Street crossing brings with it a handful of dirty kathi roll stalls and even dirtily painted prostitutes...
"Voices tell me I should carry on/ But I am swimming in an ocean all alone..."
I walk on. Dinner is to be thought about. How easy it is, when things are placed in front of you on a platter. For months on end, dinner isn't something to contemplate on. At the stroke of 10, half a dozen fellow hostelers bellow at you to pause the game of FIFA10 and move towards the mess. Then, you amble across the field with badly cut, uneven grass, crossing a couple of rats that look like they would easily gobble down the average cat and make your way to the mess. Yesterday, I was asked why a mess is called a mess. I do not wish to know. You sit down. Reserve a few seats for your friends by keeping keys there. Symbolic. Then you're served the same food that you've eaten for ages. You hear the customary complaints regarding the food. You worry about how the meal rate has climbed by a whopping 20 paise. You try to chatofy everyone around you to prove some silly point. And at the end of it, you go back to your ward, wondering what to do when you wake up hungry at 3 in the morning (that is, if you've slept by then!).
Today, however, is different. The Pujor chhuti have begun. The mess is closed and the famed cooks of Hindu Hostel have taken unreserved journeys home to Orissa. Dinner is suddenly something to contemplate on. An upset stomach traced to Zeeshan means it's a vegetarian night. The corner shop is open. I buy 10 rotis and a bowl of Palak Paneer. But then, what to do about the late-night hunger. I change the order. 15 rotis and two bowls of Palak Paneer. I await my turn.
"...I pray for this heart to be unbroken/ But without you, all I’m going to be is incomplete..."
The pujas always bring imagination and creativity into the air. A para has erected a gate with puppet idols of various gods hanging at different places. :-) The paneer sizzles in the pan. How the festive season can bring people together. Marx had said that religion was the opium of the masses. An oft-misunderstood and oft-quoted line. For, in Marx's times, opium was not a drug of intoxication, but a medicinal drug that brought relief to the people. Two centuries down, I agree with Marx. Religion indeed heals people's sorrows. Alas! I don't believe in religion. My food is ready. I hand over sixty one rupees and get three packets containing my dinner and "after-dinner". I walk on.
I enter College Square, that famous meeting ground of the Romeos and health freaks and intellectuals and everything else of College Street. The puja pandal is almost ready and brilliantly lit up. A couple of interested gentlemen discuss the salient points of the pandal's design vis-a-vis that at Mohammad Ali Park. I glance back at it. I walk on. The university building stares down at me against the glowing sky. There's a giant bear placed at the front entrance of the square. A handful of boisterous children force their way into its arms and pretend to be scared. Kids! I bend down through the small exit and onto College Street. I suddenly realise it's Good Charlotte that's playing now. Strange. When did the last song end? And when did this one start?
"Give me the truth....give me the truth... give me the truth..."
I mime-shout with the lyrics. The cool breeze hits me. I stop. All I can hear is the music. Suddenly, the world seemed to have turned on the mute button. As GC scream their lungs out, I can't hear a thing other. All alone this night, having just dropped a friend at the railway station on his way home, I feel like I'm in a ghost city. A city I can see, but not hear. I suddenly become one of its many unknown ghosts, wandering the streets like a phantom. The lighting adds to the feeling of being alone in a crowd. A tram passes by determinedly. A Toyota overtakes it. With one last look at this phantom city, I turn the corner onto the street on which Hindu Hostel has, for 125 years, stood. It is deserted. Deserted like it's someone's funeral. All brilliantly lit up. And deserted. The end of the street seems like the other end of the river of the dead. I walk on. GC sings on about the truth...
"So here we are, we are alone/ This weight on your mind, I wanna know.... the truth...."
