Drft...wud
SACRED HEART CHURCH ON LENIN SARANI NEAR TIPU MOSQUE
I was an internee then .. i was rushing in that early morning for some ward duties...at NRS HOSPITAL..I popped out of the bus....where the tram rails bend near Tipu Masjid in Dharmatala... duped with early morning sleep...groggy from previous days work which was dumped on us ...every thing was hazy i was working more on an irritable reflex ....it was daily automation...
Me and my buddy maintained the momentum as we hit the road trying to kill the superfluous movement imparted on us by the city's yellow blue wood bus............continued along the rails till it got straight.
It was nearing 6 in the morning and the city was breaking its lull in few peddlers sorting the morning paper, husky vendors of market in lungy..with large round wicker baskets ...milkman returning with rattling tin cans kicking up a slow whirrr in there busy wheels..Two shanty footballers..with torn boots slung over the shoulder were silently debating weather to wait for a free bus trip at the cost of few abuses or trod through to Maidan across the esplanade....
Few paltry writers in some obscure pvt firm with busted file case...zips..dangling in a monotonous pendulous motion from obscurity of wipe out to flush of struggle.. Some unfortunate family men..who has to start early for chores at some distant place were in the vicinity....An iceman dragged his iron trolly to a nearby ice factory raising a tremendous rebellion . It was calcutta waking up as it does every day...A forced automation built in every calcutta denizen.
However this mechanisation came to a screeching halt as i looked up to the person i nearly bumped into with my friend following through.... i happened to land bang in front of
M F HUSSAIN ..
I almost did knock him over.
He was tall, fair & spiny to put it in short....
It was the year of 2000 or 2001 then..
but he has painted himself more then that
He looked like an ageless long green leaf...
ketaki
was a near definition of his stature as i saw him then..
stooping in a remarkable grace........
His eyes were like lens made of a child's marble..that flirted and focused and flirted again as it gazed at the world..something like a squirrel ....in the end as if confused ...ended in a distant gaze that seem to rest on a lover at some galaxy light years away..his brow was curious..his long aquiline nose was like a proboscis of a winged existence...
The whiskers of his beard over the mandible were all white and it seemed soft like the fleece of a Pashmina goat..his face was framed by a jaw that appeared to be hitched up as it ended.. his neck was like an asp. twitching like a pandan in subtle wind rest of his body was wiry as i mentioned before and it was draped in resplendent white of a flowing chikon punjabee the whiteness gushed down his thin legs..tapering all the time on a tight fitting pyjama which was like a skin hugging churidar of young Indian delicate girls who use the excuse to show their sensuous legs.
His bare feet flowed out of the suffocating restrain of that churidar in a large handsome manner and ended in long shapely nails.Which were like David's sculpted masculine marble claws taking root on beaten..calcutta black asphalt..
The only thing black in his hand was a wand or perhaps a brush i fail to remember to this day.
I am today amazed at the veracity of my memory of that brief encounter a decade ago and of my observation of the painter as an ageless green ketaki..standing out in sharp contrast against..humiliation of a mechanized man and his degenerate masculinity at the premise of the street surrounded by minarets of mosque and spires of church.
His mere presence had spelt an alchemy to bring on a vision at the corner of Tipu Masjid which my thousand wandering failed to conjure.
I went forward said hello to him and asked for an autograph...he was a bit awkward at this recognition amidst indifferent mechanics of morning.However he managed a brief laughed at me and said that he didn't have a pen so i gave him mine squeezed from a reluctant medical representative the other day at outpatient hour...I stretched forward my medicine mug book which i always held in my hand back then...
He signed it with a swish..
Oh how ! I hoped ....
he would sketch what i saw just few moment ago cos it was disappearing soon .........much like the morning mist in sun ...
how ever he didn't ...
that made me angry i guess ...
i asked him agitated why wont he make a sketch for me.
at that he stared at me for a moment as if from some minaret in the sky ...
his companion made an uneasy stir...
My friend was slow to seize the moment or perhaps i spoiled it for him ..cos by the time he brought out his book from his satchel hoping for the second autograph the two men were fast disappearing through a thin alley by the side of the mosques minarets ...
My friend by now had is book back in the satchel unaffected and was tugging me by my sleeve as a wood bus bound for NRS Medical college from Babu Ghat was rounding the corner and the hand of the clock on the church's spire beyond the boughs of the black plum trees never had enough to serve me a handsome helping.
..................................................................................................
द्विरददन्तवलक्षमलक्ष्यत स्फुरितभृङ्ग्मृगच्छवि केतकम्।
घनघनौघविघट्टनया दिवः कृश्शिखं शशिखण्डमिव च्युतम्॥
Dvirada-danta-valakṣam alakṣyata sphurita-bhṛṅga-mṛgac-chavi ketakam |
Ghana-ghan’-augha-vighaṭṭanayā divaḥ kṛśa-śikhaṃ śaśi-khaṇḍam iva cyutam ||
The ketakī flower, ivory-white and glowing with the iridescence of a bee, seems to be the thin sliver at the top of the moon that, battered by the thick mass of clouds, has fallen from the sky.
KETAKI
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