The call of my city

This time when I entered my house I had a strange feeling. A feeling of loneliness trying to engulf me as if. The rooms where I could always find either my father or my mother roaming about, had suddenly become lifeless. My mom and dad were out of town !

I realized how lucky I am to have my parents. A shelter to live and some faces to look for when I come to this house. People whom I have not cared for so consciously, suddenly started appearing very minutely in my thoughts. There was just silence and all the furniture's were giving a blank look at me. My mom was not sitting with her newspaper there. My father was not watching the TV. No food was waiting for me at the dining table. Although every part of the house was same, but all I could feel was gloom everywhere. Inside as well as outside me!!

This city suddenly started showing me many pictures etched so deeply in the lane of my memories. The short old tree at my previous playground was clearly telling me "Look I am also 26 years old like you, and I have been a witness of the journey you have been through".

Yes a journey by the roads, that started from walking to take the school bus, to cycling  for the tuition class, and now driving to make ends meet fast. And everytime I crossed him, he looked green, alive and as if silently waving me a smile !

What has changed I asked?

Nothing, neither the playground, nor the trees, nor the quarters behind Gurunanak street, nor the bushes where often the cricket ball used to hide. And every little memory that started from that ground pierces through my mind and I slowly find myself in a state of melancholy.

This melancholy, I still identify, in the afternoon of the summer, back in my school days. The voice of the cuckoo enchanting a mysterious spell, reminding me of the gloom before the exam days. I see a pile of books staring at me, and my mind struggling to stay with them. The big mango tree outside my window taking away most of my attention, and someone inside me just did not want to study. The piercing heat was telling me a story of grief and pain, and something that my bookish world could never relate. 

And I can still feel the same way while I murmur the lines "Dupurer khamoka kheyal, bhanga taash purono dewaal." A song by Chandrabindoo, a Bengali Band which used to play the songs, that I could so easily relate.  (I have given the link at the end of this blog, for all who wish to have a pinch of the afternoon nostalgia with me!)

Situations have changed now, but the gloom of the afternoon is a mystery that I am still lovingly carrying in my heart.

My city has its own blanket of silence that is so subtle, yet profoundly alive. Every sound of the bird can be identified, and the depth of the green beside the  roads, tells the story of my childhood beneath the blue sky.

What has changed I asked?

Yes my age has changed, my body has taken its own shape and my mind has gone through a vicious cycle of the deadly sins, which we all are a victim of. Behaviour, thought patterns and accent has changed.

But is it all that we are made up of?

I don't know the answer to the questions my mind was raising, but I could feel that I was tired of the mask of adulthood that I was wearing.

My trees in the park were calling me like a very old friend, and I wanted to run and hug every one of them, because they were the only living silent memoirs of the child within me.

They had seen me grow, they had seen me cry

They had seen my joy, when I sang on the fly.

They had welcomed me when the sun was in the sky

They had sheltered our love when she felt shy.

They have kept my secrets locked inside

My friend, they are, my friend of pride!!

My city was trying to tell me something, perhaps a very old story of how it came to life. Of the times when it was all a jungle and then one day, Mr  Bidhan Chandra Roy decided to give it a name as well as a form. My city, Durgapur, was born.