Gone. The colours. The crowds. The cheer. All immersed into the Ganga with a subdued splash. Until next year, the dhakis must wait. Until next year, the strings of lights must dim.
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The storm of activity that was Durga Puja, only 4 days after, is already a fast fading fantasy.
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Post-Puja Kolkata is a very different city from pre-Puja Kolkata. It takes a night like tonight and a rooftop like this one to notice.
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Central Calcutta is not particularly good to seekers of inner peace. There's just too many motorcycles for that (mine included). The roof of the house that my grandfather built, however, is stubbornly resistant to the chaos of the narrow streets 4 floors below. The hullabaloo of the street is not totally absent from this concrete rectangle of respite, but is peripheral enough to be insignificant.
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The very air is different. A delicious chill has descended and the first pleasurable shiver of winter now has everyone's undivided attention. The soul sapping humidity, especially of September, has left for its short annual retreat. Normal conversations seem quieter, more intimate, of easy laughs and of cozy comfort.
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The myriad masjids surrounding have gone quiet, their booming loudspeaker boosted azaan calls for the day fulfilled. The streets have already carried their quota of evening rush hour traffic and now will entertain only the occasional motorcyclist going full tilt.
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Yellow street lights compete with their newer white cousins to light up these same lanes that have turned in for the night. LED TVs, the 'new' thing to have, display their multi-colour capabilities through distant windows.
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Packed together as the buildings are in this part of Calcutta, a domestic scene or two of mother & daughter cooking or a family eating dinner are hard to miss, beautiful transient paintings hung, it would seem, on other buildings' dark walls.
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The moon is full, it is Lokkhi Poornima night. Tonight, the goddess of prosperity, aided by the cloudless sky, is casting her benevolence, ethereal silver light on every rooftop and balcony, near and far. The absence of sound is a quiet of the ear. This, its existence surprising in a city of 14 million, is the quiet of the eye.
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Quite disturbing it is, a beautiful night like this, for those given to being affected by such impractical things. Somewhere in the depths of the forest, I imagine, a wolf howls to that strange orb in the sky. A student dawdles in his balcony, ignoring his study books which like the streets, are well lit but abandoned. The moon, after all, affects much more than just the ocean tides.
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From the Salvation Army hostel three buildings away, the faint plucking of a guitar. It's hard to make out the tune but not very difficult to take a guess. Sad or sweet, we do not know, but quite likely to be a love song.
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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.in/2015/10/rooftop-reverie.html]
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