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