Monday 28 December 2015


If you live in the southern part of the city or its suburbs, where the languid marshlands are rapidly usurped by boxes made of mortar and concrete, and travel in auto rickshaws for daily commuting, you must have sat in my auto-rickshaw. I drive an auto-rickshaw for living; like thousands of young men of the city, who left their school, midway. I ply between two important squares of south Kolkata. If you are curious to know which one is mine, I`d suggest to take a note of the catchphrases written on the hind screen of the autos. Most of them are littered with cheap and clichéd slogans; but the one with “Love is a quivering happiness” is mine. It`s the only auto rickshaw in the city to bear such a beautiful quote. I doubt if any auto driver has even heard it. Whenever I read the line, a strange sensation rises in my heart; a pleasant but perilous feeling as if I were standing on the edge of a precipice and watching a descending cascade tumbling down into a great depth, which will eventually take me along, crashing into a whirlpool of scattering silvery flakes, the droplets catching the resplendent splinters of the setting sun.

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