The Sister

Pia and I share the good stuff about being siblings, sans the crabby fights, sans sullen silences, sans even the clothes, shoes, and hairpins. We share affection that is easy; secrets that are uncanny; boyfriend issues that are past their prime, songs that are ours. We share without relenting, without giving in. We grew up in different cities, had different lives, but Pia and I were bound together by something irreplaceable - an invisible thread that had for yards a zillion missives unwritten…missives of stories of sweltering summers in Bengal; of Toffee - her big bowl, her red brush and steel comb; of me having more dog hair on my pullover than hair on my head; of my big failures, my bigger triumphs…Pia has it all wrapped up her curious curly hair, her podgy palms and her trademark “talk to me”. However, our interludes today are of a different kind. The threadbare Enid Blytons have been replaced by hoity-toity décor magazines. Our missives are not unwritten anymore; they are typed furiously at all odd intervals on slippery android phones. Our banter though is still mad, sparkling and our foibles several. Perhaps, Pia and I are similar…but the sameness is exhilarating.

To Calcutta...from her errant child

The autumn breeze envelops me. The season is wrapped in nostalgia for it brings back the hum-drum of Kolkata...its wayward streets ending at right angles, punctured by frippery in blushes of red, festooned with rows of colourful paper strung on wires - a trail to follow perhaps for my aching heart. The first sight of the day, the sun shining gently on the expanse of the park in front of my home is an every day reminder of the disquiet that is amiss; the exhilaration that is adrift. Calcutta, her scent is fast fading. Her songs, I now listen to on YouTube. Its lilt no longer fills my mornings. Its drumbeats don't reverberate in the corridors anymore. I still can't read and write in Bengali. My vocabulary is sparse, at best modest. I do not know more than ten songs of Rabindrasangeet. I have read Srikanta in English. Fourteen years of schooling with English as the language of etude and a mom who was an army kid and did not grow up in Bengal are the most glaring reasons of my ignorance. The genuine reasons are indifference; inattention...tedium even. I seldom made a serious, concerted effort to be unlike myself. A lot is lost now: friends...memories...delightful winters, what is also lost is my disregard for her, for it is only she who knows of the childhood irreplaceable, the follies unmentionable...the unforgettable interludes with the most beautiful lover. The colours have faded, fade they will still, but autumns in my life shall only belong to Calcutta.