Letters Scattered in Blood

That was the time of plain old pen and paper. I was writing from the morning, a job i had to complete. Sahaj came to me quite a few times and returned frustrated, that i cannot participate in his games. Finally i came to a blank, moments that are so usual while writing, everything is there in your head, but the link between the letters and those thoughts has somehow lost. All this time Sahaj was coming there and going away, full of fear of what his mother told him, "Don't disturb pisha". He called me 'pisha', a minor variation of 'pishemashai' in Bangla, the spouse of the 'pishi', the sister of his father. And that 'pisha' too did sound so queer. Firstly, because his mother, from Nepal by birth, spoke Bangla with an altered accent, and even that Bangla too Sahaj was yet to learn, he was only three or something. He spoke a working mixture of soft-uttered Bangla and English words, quite often in incomplete sentences.

I was sitting there, with my tired and absent eyes hanging over the window grill, and the thoughts around the Jibananda Novel 'Malyaban', which i was writing down in the form of an essay, still looming there in the air, while he came near me, without my notice. And all of a sudden i got startled when he said, "Pisha, vowr ands vaar daahty", with a soft 'd' and soft 't', meaning to say, obviously, "Pisha, your hands are dirty". With a startled look still in my eyes, i saw, there were so many ink-stains over my palm and fingers, obviously some problem with the pen that i did not notice earlier.

Around two decades have gone by, almost the length of time that I have not seen Sahaj any more. I miss him. A void, silent, speechless, still full of so many reverberations that strike my skull from inside my head, starts infiltrating me, at times when i remember him, when i hear someone talking about Bhubaneshwar, the place where he lived with his parents, when the last time i heard about him. I know of that feeling and i take care, i start thinking something else, that mechanically and that stupidly, and somehow, it works. Sahaj goes away from my head, with his parents, with his 'pishi', the son i had with his 'pishi', every one, every context, every moment, when i start thinking, say, how many cigarettes are left there in the packet, or, is it a long time i have not gone to the loo.

Just that image remains. A chubby three year old face, with eyes like marble balls immersed in rich oil, looking, or better, glinting hither and thither, and fixing questioningly towards me, and a voice so pungently acidly cute, sputtering out, "Pisha, vowr ands vaar daahty". 'Sahaj' means simple and innocent, and yes, so 'sahaj' he was. But all these years, this question with that image returns to me again and again. Yes, Sahaj, my hands are dirty.

And what can be more true than that for any writer from Calcutta, after Singur and Nandigram. Whatever i write, it is full of blood, and dirt. Whatever.

Anything that i write is sheer dirt, and blood.