A Quiet World, A Better World

Imagine all the people you ever came across staying back, never leaving your side, a world without goodbyes or heartbreaks, of all friendships and acquaintances retained, of never being through abandonment, of no one ever forgetting anyone or letting go; our lives would've been a bloody chaos. An incorrigible disarray of lives breathing down our neck about their dreams, desires, and apathy. Much like the city's Sunday market strip: an alley thronging with people desperate about their needs, all of them wanting to be heard, to be prioritized; everyone going out of their way to opine, to lend their voices to a political debacle around the corner that had started to amass impetus; everyone in a frenzy, rushing to be elsewhere; an entourage of bodies pushing against one another, hollering, haranguing, never ever having enough of it.

What a pitiable situation it would be, to be living lives without silences in them, without a corner of quiet to pray, to play soft music, to write letters to loved ones or pen verses in longing. If not for anything, let this soothing environment of calm be the justification for everyone who left with or without notice, to everything you held dear but eventually lost in wanting and all the pieces that fell off leaving you hollow. It's alright, friend. That is how it is supposed to be. Only when the contours of a boulder are chipped away that it gives way to a sculpture. And you're on your to being one. Relax. That last failed relation you're grieving about was destiny sculpting a handsome set of eyes onto your soul. Now the light shall reach your blood and you'll know that you had done no wrong. It's all fair. To be left out, forgotten. Every receding wave leaves more than just muddy sand; a lasting silence to sing yourself a song. Embrace it: this fall, the quiet. You’re an art in making. Don’t ever worry. Nothing is ever so precious to be substituting your inner quiet. No love so valuable to be losing your music.

By: Sobhan Pramanik

Diwali: A Realization

It's much more than just lighting the lamp.

In fact, it's the easiest of all - to strike a match and lend the flame, guarded in the cave of your palms, to an oil-slicked wick curled in the hollow of the earthenware. That's it. The lamp comes to life, its muffled-yellow sheen encroaching upon the dark, like weary ocean waves closing around rocks, catching our appreciation altogether, our love.

But that's not all - the oil, meanwhile, would be quickly depleting in the lamp; the wick, burnt to its half and the flame a disfigured leaf of orange walloping perilously against the wind. It would die any moment and, so here's the larger consideration, the better understanding to courtship that is to be espoused: one of us has to keep checking on the lamp, responsibly, from time to time, with a fresh wad of wicks and a cup of oil, to keep it glowing; to keep us going. It's not as easy. And unless we are truly committed to keeping vigil - our sincerity consolidated, our loyalty upheld, our faith unwavering; until we learn to hold onto things past their initial epiphany without losing zeal; let's not light one.

By: Sobhan Pramanik

Oh! Poor Man

What's hugely distressing, sardonic and unpardonably hypocritical, and in all probability is leading our society down helpless despair and imparity is, where a happy looking man in neat, ironed clothes at work, carrying lunch boxes packed with delectable, sumptuous food is attributed to being blessed with wonderful and loving wife; is, on the contrary, audaciously endorsed as a disciplinarian with so-called high morals, when she starts panicking of being late with a meeting extending beyond 8, afraid of being rebuked; when she never makes it to team dinners at swanky hotels, skipping glittery evenings of lavish cuisines and flowing alcohol, lying of ill health or responsibilities at home, reprimanded by 'the man' and in-laws; when on a shopping spree she unwillingly racks away that exquisite one piece that held her just right at the waist, with plunging shoulders giving her butterflies as she turned to the trial room mirror, feeling 21 all over again, complaining of coarse texture in a rather fine material, half imagining the scalding parallels that would be drawn at home afterwards.

Well, why do you think we even need feminism? The fact that one needs to be handed out pre-set rules about how they must interact and go about human beings of a particular gender, speaks galore of our incompetency as a community. The fact that one has to probed in the eye with demands of equality only goes to reveal our lopsided idea about a perfectly balanced society. In other words, feminism, like a bottle of disinfectant, is more for us, men to wash clean their vision, redevelop and align their deranged ideals along the common line of humanity; shifting their fulcrum of prejudices to the centre of this see-saw, of what could be an egalitarian world. More so for the poor man to know that freedom was never so little, so tameable as to be crushed in his fist. It had always been a milling two way street and the only way forward is to stop and make way for others. For everyone. To live.

By Sobhan Pramanik

Fools, Flowers and Falls

I remember keeping your rose in an empty beer bottle on the bedside stool, as I got home that night. Passing the stem through its mouth and withdrawing my fingers, letting it drop. Its petalled bulb coming to rest against the rim in a soundless thud.

I do not know why I did that. On other days there would have been no bottle at the first place. Having never realized sense in the idea of a person dutifully showing up at my door and asking for a bagful of garbage, I personally took the trash out first thing in the morning, without anyone's asking, to a designated bin in the lobby for it to be picked from there. And likewise, with that habit, went the bottles too, emptied overnight in desperation. But that morning I was getting late, and so it all stayed in.

Though I fell in line with my habits soon, that bottle with your rose in it never quite left its place. Not that I didn't want to, but I never remembered it was there. Until all the petals had fallen dried, their hue drained, their fragrance faded, their purpose lost; and that once green stock, reduced to a mere wilted line of black against the thick glass.

May be there always is a thing called conscience that we choose to not pay heed. May be we all do know what awaits us before it really unfolds. Perhaps not the whole picture but that slightest of inkling, that undeniable tremor of vibes at our throat is always there, unlying, through everything. But the hazard in love is that it wants to get to the bottom of everything even when it’s a bottomless pit, and the imminent fall, its doom – seeking clear answers out of grave silences and be broken as ever; awaiting warm goodbyes from the unwelcoming who departed without a trace; and for everything there was to wither and lose fragrance before giving it all up. Love, in its quest for truth, wants as bad to be wounded as it wishes to triumph.

May be it wasn’t sheer nonchalance after all that I left the rose there that day. May be we were destined to not happen: like the beer I solemnly chugged, knowing well it won’t get me drunk.

© Sobhan

Just Hugs

Let's just hug each other to sleep tonight.

No, don't get me wrong - I am not saying you're unattractive or that you don't turn me on. Trust me, my feelings belong to no one but you, moored to your soul like sail boats at the harbour from being blown, for you to cut me loose with your own hands and row me ashore. Nor do I possess any dark desire for someone from the past either. If there was a way to click and save everything I see once I close my eyes, you'd know that as the heat starts to radiate from my loins, up my stomach and to my heart; I see just you. I see just you in colors of your skin crawling upon me: a fever under your chest, your areolas ripe; and our mouths submerged in the unsaid. That pinched wedge of skin on the inside of your thigh throbbing warm under my kneading palms where Ester bit you once, as you tried to bathe her on a cold day; and our pelvics pressed, like a cornice in rain, dripping lasciviously into each other.

But tonight, let's just lie hugging each other, shrouded by the dark, permeated by the music of falling rain. Your head on my chest and my fingers doodling upon your collarbones. Tonight I wish to pursue you in quiet. Like the sun eventually rising on a storm-wrecked island: in complete silence, with the sea at rest. I want to count your breaths on my fingers and fathom the infinity we have spent loving each other. I want to lie sans any space between us in a tight embrace, feeling the breeze in your bones to decipher your guileless nights, wrapped in spewing demons or flowering meadows. To see how your hair slides off your face as you turn in sleep, like a wisp of wind passing, your lips gently parted.

Do not misunderstand me, but tonight I needn’t our desires seethe, for the greatest depths are touched only in great silence and the truest loves often realized without the wanton striving to fuck.

Let me just hug you, so I can touch your whole without any sound and still hear the loudest echo of everything that we are.

© Sobhan

The Bookcase

I love sitting hidden between the doors of my wooden bookcase. 
In fact, when I am too unsure about picking a new read or simply feeling worn out by the chores of a routine life, needing a deliberate escape, I do exactly that: pull up a chair in between; the doors hanging from the hinges by my sides forming impenetrable walls to the most private, quietest, thought-inducing space I can have to myself, and sit with my legs crossed on my lap, smelling the musky odour of its rain-fattened timber, pulling out titles - read, unread, half-read; and turning over to stray pages to catch the story midway, off guard, littered in passages of wordy brilliance. Like impishly walking in on your woman dressing at the mirror and running your cold fingertips down her moist, bare back, evoking a love that is to remain a secret between them, like the lost reader's existence in a sea of books.

By - Sobhan Pramanik