Sunday Feature by Samik Sen

Orhan Pamuk once again. As I pore over the pages of The White Castle once again, the evening gradually settles down upon the terrace of the next building. Something tickles my back, an ant perhaps, perhaps the past that has lost itself like a refugee from East Bengal inside a city of selfish faces. I remember faces, not faces, but a darkness that is trying to chissel out some faces from it’s own hollowness. I am a man who is stuck in a traffic jam and as I waited eagerly for moving forward, the road that has been crossed keeps on pulling me back. One step forward means two step backwards. Come on, Comrade Lenin knew that’s not a strategy but the basic helplessness of man.

Life constantly keeps on bringing me back to old neighbourhoods. The books I have forgotten or have passed on to hands that still dare to hold the pink of budding roses, do not let me go. In my dreams I totter back to the petals I have torn from the life that is trundling on with me. The petals stink and I hate the freshness of a morning, a dew slipped from the flower…