Some nights give that validation of life slipping through our hands. Being loved and its constant reminders can be tiring, ironically painful. That subtle tinge of dissatisfaction with myself that I feel like a throbbing nerve as people bid their goodbyes to me. That strange feeling of being suddenly important to people who have known you for years. Of relationships done and dusted, suddenly weighing down on your side. And those old unfulfilled desires to which you are still so insignificant. Life is full of such exquisite ironies.

Love always adorns itself in mysterious quicksands. How much of it will remain when I slip from the pedestal of this American Dream. Of some of it, I am sure. For the rest there is that quintessential feeling of cautious hope that I associate so closely with all my life and the way I have spent it so far. Thus when the weather falls I can only pray for friends to remain this way and for the scope of that hard-to-achieve salvation.

Suddenly the unsurity of this pedestal, of being loved and revered, appears to be humility. Perhaps this is growth.

Perhaps I wont get too carried away.

America, hoping to finding pieces of myself that would unfold greater strength, restrain and new capabilities.

Suddenly conscious that the possibilities offered to life, no matter how varied they might look now, will ultimately converge down the line.

Wherever it leads

Ever since Boston rejected my application for a Masters in Creative Writing I have been deliberating over my next piece. It will not be appropriate to say that the idea of what to write on kept escaping me and resulted in this overstretched delay. It will also be inappropriate to say that the decision from Boston has made me feel awfully inadequate about my own creative capabilities. If nothing the professor from Boston left me a nice heartfelt message that, if I am to quote, highlighted more on their 'being dense about my good work' and how there can never be a failure, success or ultimatum to one's passion, only rehearsals. Of late there have been many such instances where nice and kind people have regretted more on their inability to receive me than on mine to be worthy of their invitations. Overall the penultimate month of college life has dealt me with the good, bad and ugly cards to set parameters for the next two years of my life, hopefully in New York. Now that my academic self has somewhat resolved itself it gives me enough time to look back and channel parts of it--- perhaps some gathered wisdom or an embarrassing anecdote shared with Avin on a lazy afternoon--- towards my creative self.

For those like me who feel it as their duty to write, feeling, falling and remembrance come to be necessary exercises. So while my creative outburst was moving towards its culmination, there were ample moments of standing by the balcony ledge, smelling the dusty afternoon sunlight and very often looking at the faces around you, wondering how you managed to be in this wild rumpus in the first place. As I move forward trying to make sense of all the spirited mornings and disillusioned nights, a strange feeling of being old keeps coming back. With that, fortunately, I feel a little wise.

My college life has been a sort of marriage, not particularly a satisfied, monogamous one. My ideas of becoming a writer, like the other lover, was in such active participation to increase the confusion that it was difficult to not feel exasperated at the limited prospects of a less loved monogamy.  For me writing was a challenge that I could never live up to. The very vagueness of the idea of good writing seems attractive enough to be chased and ultimately achieved. There is a deep heroic in this sort of success, like those glorified tales of an underdog conquering an otherwise dissatisfied life and rising over its ashes. On another thought it was perhaps led by those poignant covers of beautiful poem books where the evening sun peeping through half open doors can easily be personified to hope, inspiration and whatever drives one ahead. An insatiable quest for life's one true purpose, increased self-awareness and quotes of Susan Sontag could only make this forced juxtaposition of me and some unimportant college assignments so mundane. All I waited for in these years were uninvited mango showers, months of July and the sense of liberation that came with the wind.

 In the last four years I have also been overtly conscious of the love I possess for my cities. I have written many times before about Calcutta and how it was to grow up in a city stuck between an unparalleled urge for progressiveness and medieval nostalgia. But in the light of emotions I have recently gathered I felt my puny essays would feel the strokes of chords they had previously missed. I love Calcutta for almost everything. The technicolour hoardings looming over the busy Bypass road on a lit up evening, the smell of soil from my backyard garden, Tagore house and ever-busy phuchka-walas delivering in lightning speed one of the most refreshing snacks there could be. Then there is school and first friendships, my best friend and her crazy antics. Then there are people who basically constitute the very essence of my existence. Durga pujo, Deshapriya Park, tanga-wala rickshaws.

And wooden shelves of Oxford.

Calcutta to me is an unfinished poem that has shown signs of growth, courage and resilience yet has left enough room for whichever ending you want it to be. Its incompleteness is, in fact, a rare generosity. Yet there are moments in love that require lovers to drift apart, to grow away from each other now that they have grown too much into each other. Its about fluttering in whichever way you can, even after your roots are largely intertwined. The need for distance, for this sabbatical from love seems so essential for the very love to exist. That is what i feel now as I move about the city roads. The weight of the city soaked in memories, increased in manifolds, on my back telling me to slip out of its hands, to not let the moss grow beneath my feet.

I remember Rushdie's quote at this point with a slight uncomfortable anxiety.“Travel was pointless. It removed you from the place in which you had a meaning, and to which you gave meaning in return by dedicating your life to it, and it spirited you away into fairylands where you were, and looked, frankly absurd.”

I speak in second person with myself while discussing fears which in the light of day find no logical validation. Then the mild breeze of summer evenings whisper in my ears, 'Necessary Travels'!

  I truly hope life continues to offer me moments of such subtle wisdom and whatever braveness is required to keep performing a catharsis of this sort.

Looking forward to useful introspection, windy nights, periods of undisturbed privacy and friendships that will pull me out of them.

Twenty miles between me and home.

Twenty miles, the sailor thought.

Before there'd been nights he had fought.

And even when it was comfort he sought

A bright diabolic sun is all he got.

And many a night gathered and ended

Many a swords he picked and defended

When every brick of his prison fell

To let cold wind to his prison cell

Rains he got there waiting for him

Warm, not cold, to his skin they seem

He knew not how he walked the leagues

Until he saw vines of grapes and figs

With a scent of woman he had long known

In every morning that his life had shown

From the castle window where he cried and played

So close now, he could hear as garden leaves swayed

Yet closer he walked he found fear and pain

Not joy but risks of losing it again

Home with just dead leaves coming to his way

Yet home has never seemed so far away.

The evening sky is more blue than black. Patches of blue and black, dissolved in a suspension that tries to touch a passer-by every time he looks up. The mist and his hat--- their edge is where he finds his sky. What lies above is the eternal illusion, of the hope to it, and of the despair. 

December has her own appeal with neon lamps and cold winds and hot cakes. But its the cold wind I like and the adequate tension that scatters inside me, through its slightest of touch.

Cold winds and those descending holly leaves....

Cold winds and the saddest of sunlit skies....

Cold winds and the crisp of old books....

Fall comes and I turn back one last time. From February reds to the moist days of June, from a love soaked July to a gentle birthday hymn, only the looking back is all that is there to it. To look back, only, to look back. Cold winds cut inside and meet my nakedness.

What do you find when you look beyond a valley? Homes that are not yours. Children that are not yours. Happiness that is hardly yours. And unhappiness? In that you have had your primal share, to some extent, to some fraction, even though it has retained its ingenuity. The passer-by was there. The mist kissed his hat, it left its immense presence on him. But what formed its weight? I stood above a valley and knew what did form its weight, the mist and all that were above it--- the possibility and its inherent limitlessness. They touched him right there, inches above from his reach was the sky. I knew. Only that he did not. He looked up to find only distance.

One of these days we made love and realized how two people fit into each other. 

First came together all that were alike--- a lip for a lip, a hand for a hand. Patiently they met each other, greeted each other and melted into each other.

Then came their unique waywardness---- one's brevity guarded by another's longer legs, one's open emptiness filled by the density of another. Thus came together all the impatient ones.

And at times in sudden hinders of reality when the lips parted, we wondered how a moment can be so complete yet so brittle.

In downward eyes I thanked pain. I thanked for it let me know it, endure it, conquer it. In the end it came down to the inches between our lips. And all I could think of in that opportune moment was what had once been above the passerby's hat.

The cold winds had remembered how I became a woman, in toss of coins not in elaborate exchanges. That was its misfortune as well as its beauty. The tomorrows have been mostly penniless. Yet on the days when the cold winds came to seek you out within me, I have felt very rich.

There can be no true happiness without pain. That is the irony of it

Khelaghar

~প্রিয় নলীলাখ্য বাবু ,

আঘাত আর ক্ষতর মধ্যে বোধয় একটা তফাৎ আছে। আমি নাহয় ডাক্তারি জানিনা, তাই গুলিয়ে ফেলেছিলাম।আপনি শুধরে দেবেন তো।আঘাতের চিকীৎশা  করতে আপনি বড় ব্যাকুল ছিলেন। আমিও হয়তঃ আরোগ্যের লোভে  ব্যাকুলতা  প্রশ্রয় দিয়েছি।কিন্তু সেরে যখন গেলাম তখন বুঝলাম যেটা মিলিয়ে গিয়েছে আদতে সেটা ক্ষত।আমার আঘাত ততদিনে তার নিজেস্য আঁধারে এতটাই গুছিয়ে সংসার করছে যে যে তাকে তাড়াতে গেলে আমার আঁধার, আমার হৃদয়  সহসা বড় নির্জন হয়ে পরবে। আহত কে যে পুষে রাখতে চায়, ব্যথার শাস্তি তার চিরদিনের।আপনাকে সেই ব্যথার সাথে জড়াব না। কেবল এইটুকু অনুমতি চাইছি যে সময়ে-অসময়ে প্রয়োজনে-অপ্রয়োজনে চিকীৎশার ছুতোয় যদি আপনার সখ্যতার দাবী করি আপনি অপ্রসন্য হবেন না।আমি সারা জীবন কোনো কাজের জন্য কারর কাছে ক্ষমা চাইনি। চাইতে হয়নি আমায়।এই প্রথম চাইছি আপনার কাছে।এই প্রথম চাইছি আপনার কাছে। আঘাত নিয়ে বেচে থাকার অনুভূতি আমার চেনা, এবার ক্ষমা নিয়ে কি করে বেচে থাকা যায় সেটা শেখার পালা। অপেক্ষাই জীবন। তারপর সত্যিই হয়ত কুসুমবনে তরী এসে লাগবে একদিন।

সেইদিনের শুভেচ্ছায় 

আপনার অনুকম্পাপ্রার্থিনি 

হেমনলিনী~

Dearest Nalilakshya Babu

Perhaps there is a difference between ache and wound. I am hardly a doctor for which I had confused the two. But you are. So you should have corrected me, shouldnt you? You were very eager to heal my ache. And I too, in my greed for recovery, was more than happy to let you indulge in your eagerness. Though at the wake of my cure I realized the one that has been wiped away is only the wound with its scar. My hurt has by then so neatly built its home in its darkness that removing it would only make my heart and its own darkness lonely to a great extent. She who wishes to preserve her ache has been destined to be punished with pain. I will not engage you with it. However, if I ask for your friendship in times of need or perhaps whenever I wish to recover, please find it in your heart to extend that with some gladness. Never in my life have I required someone's forgiveness. Never have I met with that need. But today, for the first time, I ask yours. I know the feeling of living with my ache. Now I need to learn the feeling of living with forgiveness. To live is to wait. And perhaps someday the boat will really arrive at the bank of my garden.

With my heartiest welcome for that day.

The seeker of your forgiveness,

Hemnalini

Without conviction

Since Mrs. Ghose has said all that I would have wanted to say:

Why the Aarushi Talwar case is a rape of justice

At the heart of the CBI's case in the Aarushi Talwar-Hemraj Banjade double murder is a perverted patriarchal fantasy. The CBI and Noida police are convinced that 14-year-old Aarushi was having an "affair" with 45-year-old domestic help, Hemraj. It was, after all, because of this "affair" that father Rajesh in a fit of rage, on seeing Aarushi and Hemraj in an "objectionable intimate position" killed them both due to grave provocation. Ah, the lurid fantasies of the porn-suffused brain! The deadly mix of lascivious prejudice and moral puritanism that grips our mind when we think of "young women" these days. The automatic suspicion of endless orgies and extravagant nudity with which a brutally patriarchal society gazes at a "modern" young woman's bare arms, clothes and lifestyle. How excitingly value-less these young are, whisper the puritan-pornographers in vicarious glee.

How have the police reached this conclusion of an "affair" between Aarushi and Hemraj? After all this is THE fulcrum of the case, this is THE fundamental pivot on which the entire case turns. Is there any evidence of this fundamentally important "affair"? None whatsoever. Has the CBI in these last five years been able to produce any neighbour, friend, family, observer, and local domestic to help corroborate their story of this so-called affair? No. Do the local chowkidars or maids say Aarushi was having this "affair"? No. Do any of Aarushi's friends believe she was having this "affair"? No. Has any local help caught a glimpse of this "affair"? No.

What an efficiently well-hidden affair it was indeed! The 14-year-old girl was wicked, fallen and obviously very clever too! Must be those T-shirts she used to wear - never trust young girls who wear those tight-fitting T-shirts and smile invitingly into the camera! And since she was below the age of consent it wasn't an affair either, Hemraj was in fact committing an act of rape.

The police, CBI, courts and media remain convinced of this "affair" because in the khap panchayat of our minds, where sexual fantasy combines with misogynist prejudice, minds in which lustful males perpetually couple with nubile young things, where a growing young woman is first and foremost a sexual, promiscuous object, in this prejudiced mind, Aarushi is the 14-year-old Lolita who is defined primarily by her sexuality. Male journalists covering the story drool at the subtext of the story - there is such sinfully exciting frisson in the newsroom from the saga about sex-and-a-14-year-old schoolgirl!

At a notorious press conference - and I used this word advisedly, as that press conference was nothing short of notorious - held by IG Meerut Range Gurudarshan Singh on 12 July 2008, IG Singh simply could not remember Aarushi's name. Sometimes he called her Anupama, sometimes he called her Anuradha. Yet he announced in ringing tones to the public that the-girl-whose-name-I-can't-remember was having an affair with Hemraj and this is why her father killed her in an "honour killing". IG Singh provided a verdict before even the evidence had been properly collected. In the policeman's mind Aarushi is not 14-year-old Aarushi, she is a Sexually Oriented Young Woman of The Modern Era. She Wears Jeans. She Wears Sleeveless Tops. Thus she has affairs. Who cares what her name is and what the facts of the case are? Who cares what the evidence is? This is how it is in the world of "posh" and "influential" people.

The media, which functioned as the trumpeting cheerleading B team of the police and CBI throughout in his case, excitedly bought the police version, male journalists privately sniggering about the posters on Aarushi's walls.

Post Nirbhaya, as we confront the violent narrow-mindedness and hatred that exists in our society towards "modern young women", the attitudes and prejudices of police, courts and media towards Aarushi have been nothing short of revolting, downright nauseating.

Read the Aarushi-Hemraj case in detail and you will see that the police and CBI have absolutely no case. There is not a shred of evidence against the Talwars. There is not a shred of evidence that Aarushi was having an "affair" with Hemraj. In fact, her friends have suggested that on the contrary, Hemraj was a father figure to Aarushi. Throughout the case, while CBI has brought 39 witnesses, the Talwars have not been allowed to call their the 14 other witnesses they wanted, they have not been allowed to call for forensic slides, narco test details or post-mortem reports.

The CBI refused to provide Touch DNA tests to the Talwars because they were apparently too expensive. It's almost as if CBI and courts are hell-bent on convicting the Talwars, even without evidence, in some crazy cuckoo-land-protective zeal for the dead Aarushi who, over-sexy and promiscuous as she was, unfortunately earned the wrath of that bearded bulldog dad. In an earlier article I had written about the stereotypes about the Talwars that have been created by the media.

Why are the courts and police and media so eager to hunt down the Talwars?

Because in the khap panchayat mentality of our law enforcement agencies, the Talwars and Aarushi have become symbols of the so called value-less society which we crave and condemn by turn. An unassuming hard-working dentist couple, who after long hours of work, slept like logs through that hot May night like so many exhausted professionals do, living in a small flat in the suburbs have become symbols of an "upscale" "elitist" society dominated by alcohol, sex, and "wife swapping"" lifestyles. Anyone who defends the Talwars, in the eyes of the police, instantly become identified as members of a society where "posh", "influential" people run homes of dark depravity, where scantily- clad daughters prance about with domestic help where a frivolous "party circuit" seeks to protect each other through expensive lawyers and well-connected friends. Dominated by crime serials and Bollywood images, today investigative agencies are liable to see even a bottle of whisky in a house as nothing less than a mark of a House Of Sin!

In the Talwar case, this caricature has led the CBI to imagine that is fighting a people's war for morality. The CBI and courts, in their own self-image are thus idealistic revolutionaries, up against this privileged class, fighting the war of the public against a depraved aristocracy, this is CBI and courts cast in the role of peoples messiah!

May god save us from such messiahs? Question the CBI about the Aarushi case and you get immediate statements about lifestyle, influential people and shady goings on involving bottles of Ballantine's and Sula. Incidentally, the CBI court which convicted the Talwars believed that after the double murders, Rajesh Talwar drank a bottle of Ballantine's whisky, a bottle of Sula wine, a bottle of beer as well as two litres of Sprite and remained none the worse for wear. Nobody got even a whiff of all the booze on him the next morning!

In fact, Rajesh, for the CBI, is an ogre of monumental proportions who slays his daughter, slays Hemraj, drags Hemraj to the terrace with superhuman strength and then consumes vast amounts of alcohol. What on earth is such a man doing being a dentist? He should be a mafia don!

Read the court judgements on the Talwars and you will find lengthy, flatulent sermons on the depravity of society and value-lessness of the freaks of nature who inhabit the world these days. Our law enforcement agencies are clearly watching far too much TV.

The emphasis is always on moral and social perceptions, rarely on facts and evidence. The television coverage, the frenzied pictures and the crazy headlines have transformed the Aarushi-Hemraj case from one that should be based on fact and evidence, to one based on perception, moral judgement and bloodthirsty public opinion baying for punishment of those "elitist" people seen to be polluting our society. The highly coloured, distorted copy produced by newspapers is primarily responsible for this murder by perception, this rape of truth.

I have followed this case since it broke five-and-a-half years ago. I write this piece in self-reflection and in introspection at what the salacious and sensationalist media coverage has done and the manner in which a media witch hunt has served up to the gallows, two people who, I believe are innocent. All of us in the media need to introspect at the manner in which we have covered the Aarushi story. We need to ask where the gloating glee over the sexcapades of 14-year-olds, feverish whisperings about enraged fathers and "cold-as-ice killer mothers", has led us. In the race for TRPs, and sensationalist headlines, we are all part of a massive and scandalous miscarriage of justice simply because of the preconceptions we have chosen to revel in.

The first team of the CBI gave a clean chit to the Talwars and instead seemed to be accusing the domestic help. In the polygraph, brain mapping and lie detector tests, the Talwars showed no deception and no knowledge of the crime. Krishna and Rajkumar showed deception. The first team described Krishna as aggressive, disloyal prone to lies and deception.

The first team proved, on basis of sound reconstruction tests that you could not hear what was going on in Aarushi's room from the parents' room particularly if the noisy air-conditioner was on. It was proved that neither of the Talwars woke up to switch off the internet at night as the internet router goes off and on through the night, and the CBI did not include router activity in its closure report. But for some inexplicable reason, in September 2009, the first team of the CBI was suddenly changed. Why?

Consider this: In 2008, a CBI investigation officer, Anuj Arya approached veteran journalist Nalini Singh. Nalini runs a Nepali channel. Arya asked Singh if songs were playing on her channel between 11.44 pm and 11.55 pm on the intervening night of May 15-16 2008, the night Aarushi was killed. Nalini checked her FPC and found that indeed songs were playing at the time.

Arya then provided the name of the song and asked if this was the song that was playing. Nalini once again checked with her producer and confirmed yes, it was the very same Nepali song that was playing at the time. This was the same song the CBI officer had heard being hummed by Krishna and the other helps in the narco tests. If all three were humming the same song, was it not logical to assume they were watching the same song together on TV and thus were present in the room where there was a TV, namely Hemraj's room? Does this not support the conclusion that there were more people in the flat other than the Talwars, Aarushi and Hemraj, given that Hemraj's room which had access to the flat has an entry from the outside too, so there was no need for a forced entry?

A crucial bit of evidence was suppressed by the CBI. The blood and DNA of Hemraj was found on the pillow of Krishna, recovered by the police. Why did the second team of the CBI describe this entire finding as a typographical error?

The Noida police say they were forced by Dr Talwar to look for Hemraj in Nepal. The police said Talwar refused to give them the keys to the roof, a "refusal" later cited as an attempt to mislead the investigation. Why could the police not simply have broken down the roof door if they had been determined to search the premises in a professional manner?

The first CBI team found no evidence of the so called "surgical weapon" that had supposedly been used to slit Aarushi and Hemraj's throat. The first team of the CBI recovered a khukri from the house of Krishna. The first team claimed that if there is one weapon that can inflict both a sharp injury and a blunt injury, that weapon is the khukri.

An energised public opinion and a crusading media are in the mood to take on the high and mighty. These are times when abuse of domestic help and tortures inflicted by the rich employers on poor staff are chronicled every day. Who hasn't seen those shocking sights of middle class family parties at restaurants while a skinny maid stands by the door struggling with the spoilt-brat infant?

Too often the rich get away, employers get away, and poor servants are left carrying the can for the misdeeds of powerful employers. This is often the truth. But it is also often NOT the truth. We have to honour the truth by not letting the truth become a formula. We must honour the truth by not letting the truth become a lie. The truth is not a morality of play of rich vs poor. The truth is not a street theatre about evil employers vs vulnerable domestic helps when both are media creations rather than real people. The truth is to be established, case by case, irrespective of class, creed, caste or community. The truth is not reliant on who belongs to which social strata. The truth must be supported by evidence. The truth sometimes goes against public opinion. The law must uphold the truth even if it goes against public opinion and the prevailing climate.

Today Tarun Tejpal stands charged with sexual assault because nobody can refute the glaring evidence of the letters, emails and apology. But the Talwars have been sent to jail on no evidence, on cover-ups and on suppression of facts. They have been carried to jail on a swelling tide of media frenzy, public opinion, and the khap-panchayat mentality of pornography-suffused puritanism which is the hallmark of our law enforcement today.

It's time to switch off our pornography-suffused puritanical gaze in the Talwar case. It's time to stop fantasizing about the "affairs" of 14-year-old schoolgirls. It's time to stop demonising busy working parents as homicidal representatives of a "swinging" lifestyle. It's time to stop attacking those who defend the Talwars as English-speaking Marie Antoinettes who oppress servants. Social class and caste are not determinants of legal guilt. Moral judgements are no substitute for facts and evidence. The Talwars themselves re-opened the CBI closure report as they wanted a fair investigation to find their daughter's killers.

As a society we owe the dead 14-year-old and the dutiful Hemraj our commitment to the truth. Three words must animate the courts and media now as the case goes forward: evidence, evidence, and evidence.