I have lived long and much of that has been lonely. There have been moments of immense pleasure and moments which have slipped by and have been recollected much later—sometimes with grief and mostly with happiness.
Thirty years is a long time. My grandfather, Sukanta Bhattacharya, was a poet of decent repute by the time he was eighteen. He, of course, died when he was twenty-one. Keats died when he was twenty-six and he had written his odes—the greatest specimens of lyric poetry in the English language— by that time. So had Shelley and many more.
This brings to my mind that I can no longer be particularly useful to myself and to the world around me. That in itself is not a disturbing thought. But what is discomforting is the idea that I shall continue to be so and degenerate and become more useless—for my parents, friends, employers –and that is unnerving.
But then there have been moments of unending cherish: taking my parents to the Darjeeling hills; spending a vacation in the rains with a dear friend in a mist laden forest; listening to my teacher sing live for a private audience in Darjeeling, being hosted by my teacher on several occasions, and many of those ocassions were fraught with gloom and ennui, even at half-a day’s notice; walking in the rain after I got my first job—I happily waded through water logged college street and went to meet a friend, a sixty-year old radical. I also remember walking with my father to a nearby park and sitting on a bench as someone sang Tagore’s Krishnakali Ami Tarei boli—it was a Suchitra Mitra rendition at the local community centre. I remember my first trip to Puri and the first sight of the sea. I also cherish my first sight of the mighty Kanchenjungha. I was on my way back from work. It had rained for some time and monks were playing badminton in the fresh sun. I turned around near the Governor’s House and lo! There stood the mighty Kanchenjungha. I would see it again many times but the first unexpected view has no parallel.
I have had dinner with Gopal Gandhi and lunch with the thespian Feroz Abbas Khan. I do not earn pots of money but I do decent enough. And, yes, I’ve been in love and that took me to Ram Kumar Chattopadhyay’s place and to Geeta Ghatak’s place. She sang on my friend’s request—Je ratein mor duarguli. My hair stood still. I had the privilege of being taken to Goethal’s library by Professor Rohinton Kapadia—a great teacher.
But nothing takes away from me my birthday wish—to die quietly in my bed and to die soon. I wish that my reader’s watch this lovely Colin Firth film called A Single Man. The Prufrockian idea is taken to its logical conclusion in this film. Speaking about the film and its hero George, its director says: “His inner world and his outer world are connected, and the only thing holding them together is the polishing of his shoes, the scrubbing of his fingernails, the perfect white shirt. If he let go of that, he would collapse. There is an enormous part of myself that is like that.”...
I recall reading Yeats’s An Irish Airman Foresees his death last night after everyone was asleep. Here is the poem, once again:
An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.
