Saturday 9 December 2017

Madly Badly Blindly

(A Morning Rendezvous) 

Hello Love
Here I come again to you
Up in the clouds before I descend
I start making plans
Of how I will spend time with you alone
What more will I know about you?
Please don’t be angry for coming after so long
I have a loving family back home
So can be with you just for the fleeting time
You know I love you
So be happy with the little time I can spare
So Love, here I come again.

They say you are old
No longer the beauty you used to be
So how can I be in love with you?
To them I say
I’m not getting any younger either
Yes you are old
But I love you for what you are
Where else will you find a rail car
Built a hundred years ago by the wayside

 

You still retain your old majestic aura O Dear
When I see your regal shadow shimmering in the waters
Every morning you come alive in brilliant radiance
Am happy to admire you from the shadows far away.

 


They say you are dirty, filthy and so crowded
But they’ve not seen the beauty
That lies in your old shabby lanes
How I wish I could bring them to the flower market
The fragrance shall enamor their nostrils
The colours will bedazzle their eyes
The simplicity of the experience will calm their minds.
And the crowds that throng everywhere
It is never a boring moment here
I am never alone in your company Dearie.
Your beauty is timeless and I’m a blind man.

  

I was not born here
Have little of my roots here in your midst
But memories of you, with you
Are there at every step
The Bridge over the flowing river
Used to look so big when young
Yet when I walked across the other day
T’was no more than a few hundred yards
The criss-cross steel structure tells me
Of a complex world above
And the mundane life that goes on unabated below
After years I again saw the Old Taxi Road
That drove me beside the Rajdhani platform
Nowhere have I found such luxury Darling
Little joys, great memories is what you are to me.
Hold me tight, don’t let me go.

 

Wherefore will you get food so good so cheap
Just ten bucks for a platter
Of freshly fried puri and subji
Then try a pot of mishti doi and a vegetable chop
Fills your belly, never empties the pockets
For once the plastic money gets some rest
And I feel rich and happy when I’m with you Love
The love gets stronger, the bond thicker.
You make me forget cholesterol
With you it is just Hungry kya?

 

How I wish I could read and write 
The language of your bards and commoners
Sing your songs of joy and pathos
Someday maybe will learn it
And love you even more.
But I can always be ‘inspired’ when not original
To change a few words
Of a song about another love of mine
Small changes but big difference
To bring out the character that is You.
And that makes me madly, badly and blindly in love with you.

Aye dil nahi mushakil jeena yahan
Zara hat ke zara bach ke
Ye hai Kolkata meri jaan

Kahin tooti building
Kahin ghissti huyi traam
Kahin peeli Ambi motor
Kahin bandh padi hai mill
Milta hai yahan sab kuchh
Aur milata bhi yahan dil
Business ka nahin kahin naam o nishaan
Har baat pe dikhta yahan michheel (procession)
Zara hat ke zara bach ke
Ye hai Kolkata meri jaan

Kahin lengcha kahin sandesh
Kahin phuchka kahin shorsheka dish
Kahin metro kahin thela
Kahin football kahin book ka mela
Kahin  cricket ka Garden
Kahin football ka hai Maidan
Kahin Kali kahin Durga
Yahan puja hota hai har din
Kahin chori kahin race
Kahin daaka kahin phaanka
Bekaaro ke hain kai kaam yaha
Zara hat ke zara bach ke
Ye hai Kolkata meri jaan.

Dear City of Joy,
It is so difficult to say why I love you.
Once your walls were painted all Red
Now they have turned them into Blue
Tomorrow someone may paint you Green
But Dear Kolkata my love for you is true
And I’ll always be in love with you.

SS