When the sun set, the sky looked like the ribbed edge of a beach, sand which the waves had lapped at as the tide ebbed.

Would you choose a cause over power?
I don’t know.
Over life?
Probably not. No.
Why?
I would rather be darkness than a point of light.
Darkness prevails, and the night lasts longer than the lightning bolt.
Yes. But, speaking in your own brand of cryptic utterances, the comet burns in the sky for only a few days, but its memory endures for much longer.
He laughed. Yes, he said, but you see the comet against the darkness. It suits the night to let the comet be seen.
So why aren’t you the Sun? It is bright, and it is forever.
You’re forgetting entropy. The sun must die, too. Only the night is forever.

Can you see the sun in the water? In that patch?
Yes. What do you think that shape in the middle of the disc of the sun looks like?
You mean the cloud?
Yes.
I don’t know. A wolf?
Yes. A wolf.

He looked at the water, choked with the water hyacinth.
Is that a flower?
No, he said. It is only paper. Only paper.

“No. You have no self.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is like… um, you know, like they say people wear masks, right? You know, modify their behavior according to the people around them?”

“Yes?”

“Well, you don’t just wear masks, you transform, you know, transfigure yourself into these completely different people.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ok. Look at this. You know, around thatha-patti? You have a Tamil accent. A Tamil accent, for God’s sake! And when you talk to some of your friends from college, you have those slightly elongated vowels, you know, that just hint at a Bengali accent. And when you talk to your old school friends, you have a very distinctive Hindi accent. And when you talk to me, and to some of your friends, you speak flawless English. What is that?”

“What is what?”

“This. Your… your chameleon reflex. Why do you have this obsessive need to blend in?”

“I don’t have an obsessive need to blend in. Most of my friends at college laugh at my Bengali, which they shouldn’t, because it’s almost perfect, but it is like the standing joke. So you don’t call that conformity, do you? If I was so good with accents, I could have faked that, right?”

“ No. You don’t care about surface stuff like that. You wont fake a Bengali accent, but you will adapt your English accent to put them at ease. Your stance, your expression, your entire um… ethos, you know, it… just completely changes. Fundamentally. I bet you are brisk at your college, and you stand around like the rest of our relatives at family things, you’re this joke-cracking, funny-thing-saying person around your friends, and I’ll bet you walk around, drawling slightly, and being consciously oblivious of things, like the JU people, when you go there.”

“Oh, come on.”

“No. You know, your blog?”

“What about it?”

“You know your writing is fantastic, right? It is wonderful. But have you ever written anything personal in it?”

“Sure I have.”

“No. No vague allusions. Something definite, something about what you are feeling, or something?”

“Well-”

“No. You haven’t. Because your blog is not an outlet, it’s a mouthpiece.”

“Oh, come on. I’m just not that much of an exhibitionist.”

“Ok. Have you ever written anything personal? Something so visceral that you couldn’t bear to let anybody see it? Ever?”

“Well…”

“See. That’s what I mean. It’s like you’re always watching, and you project to people what they want to see. And you are good enough to do it. You’re like that ‘Pretender’ guy. You are put in a situation, and it’s like a new, complete, fully-fleshed, made to order personality leaps to the fore. Its no illusion, either, you manage incredibly detailed personalities, you know, with… with depth, you know? And I have no idea how you do it.”

“Oh bullshit. People are different around different people. I’m sure you don’t act the same way around your teacher and your best friend.”

“Yeah, but I am the same person. My thoughts, my opinions, for God’s sake, my accent doesn’t change!”

“So you think I let myself be swayed by any argument? I beg to differ.”

“No. You argue really well. That’s what I am saying. You can argue any side of a debate. It’s just what I’m saying. Whatever the argument is, you can conjure up a personality that believes implicitly in it. You see?”

“Oh, blah. I refuse to listen to this scurrilous nonsense. Go study or something.”

***

“So that’s what she said to me.”

Silence.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“As in, I’m still waiting on the oh-no-of-course-nots, and the words, that like soothing balm ease a fractious spirit.”

Laugh.

“Well??!”

“You know, she’s not completely off the mark.”

“Oh, come on!”

“No, just think about it. You do do it, you know. Switch personas.”

“Yes, but so does everyone else.”

“Not to the extent you do. She is right, you can argue any side of an issue. Convincingly, you know. I can’t, I believe something, I can probably come up with some views from the opposing camp, but with you, it’s...”

“Yes, that just means if I put my mind to it, I debate well.”

“I don’t know. Ok, tell me this. Of the different personas, you say you put on like everyone else, which is the real you?”

Pause. "What do you mean, the real me?"

“There. See?”

“No, I don’t ‘see’!”

“Sometimes I think the real you is the poet, and sometimes, I think it’s the goof. But I can’t tell, either. Because you can’t tell. Its like you are under the spotlight, always, in your own grand opera.”

“Ok. That’s it. This conversation is over. I’d rather go talk to the dog.”

He saw a lot of graffiti on the streets when he was out the other day.
Much of it was political, some of it was not.
R----- loves P----, one said. He was standing next to it for a long time, and he wondered if it was R----- or P----- who had scribbled it on the wall with chalk.
A bus roared across, and it spat out a gout of black smoke, which flirted gracefully with the air into which it dissolved.

***
I saw a woman crying in the street, yesterday. Not out loud; quietly, you couldn’t tell if you weren’t looking very carefully. She wiped away her tears as soon as they appeared at the angles of her eyes with a crumpled handkerchief, which teased her eye-shadow (or was it mascara?) out into a dark stain.
She was walking quickly, with short, hurried steps. There was a worried looking man behind her. When she was waiting to cross the road, he came and stood behind her, and when she started walking again, he almost didn’t follow. He hesitated, I saw it in his face, the desire to walk away. I know that expression. And then he walked off after her.

***
He was walking with her past New Market, when he nodded at the Globe theater, and he said, we shall go in there one day, and I shall kiss you in the friendly darkness, and ten years later, when it is some large, anonymous retail outlet chain, or a sparkling clean McFood, or McCoffee outlet, we will be able to look at it and say that we knew this place when it was big, and crumbling, and dusty, and had a soul.

***
The streets leave their own graffiti on us.
Dark smudges of grime, heavy smoke that lingers in our nostrils.
The loss of our ability to make eye contact.
And the way girls walk in a crowded place, guarding their breasts with their arms.

***

As he wakes up, the first thing that he thinks is that it is too warm. It's much too warm for winter. He feels feverish, [Flash: malaria, Pel-Ebstein in small print at the bottom of the column to the right in his textbook, someone-saying-low-grade-fever-in-the-evening-is- tuberculosis] almost like it is too warm inside his body. He needs to think about it for some time before he sees that it is actually the blanket that is too warm. Or maybe it's the heavy lunch [Flash: Specific Dynamic Action of food, protein has the highest value] that he had before he fell asleep, or maybe he constitutionally produces too much heat.

Maybe they could write that for his epitaph, [Flash: visual of tombstone, bluish-grey, and the opening credits of "Six Feet Under"] they could write that he was warm, and he was nice to sit next to in winter.

It is dark already, and he can't see the window slats any more, it must be five, no, six, maybe? [Flash: Bart Simpson on a skateboard.]

He smiles, and thinks, man, you are completely colonized; American culture is so very [Flash: Mcdonald's Happy Meal, the cover of his copy of "The Great Gatsby"] intrusive.
There's absolutely no connection, but he is suddenly glad that he's half and half so he has an excuse for not being an angavastram-wearing freak who is conditioned to think that rice and curds are some kind of panacea [Flash: someone's voice floating, smiling, over the phone, saying, "'Panacea!' You're such a nerd!"] on the one hand, or some freak vociferously defending the relevance of Rabindrasangeet today [Flash: Someone in a Kacchha-deowa-dhuti saying, "Bengali Culture is the greatest in the world; Exhibit-A: Rabindrasangeet."] on the other.

He will brush his teeth when he gets out of bed. Then he will go play
with the dog.
He turns over, and falls asleep.