Pepper & Green

Surfing through the narrow lanes
The dusty streets & crowded window panes
Honking motors fill Chowringee Lane
Cotton sarees & Rabindra music
Still form the backdrop of Kolkata strain
From somewhere I smell Pepper & Green.

Blazing loudspeakers & shinning posters
Conjure the neighbourhood streets
To a political battlefield
Cars & buses & horses & trams
Are what bubble on Park Street jams
On a noisy evening filled with fish curry smell
The ‘phuchkaas’ invite the crowds on the side streets.

The bustling traffic quiets down
To the concert music of Ray festival
”Nandan” waiting to be decked up
For the maestro’s (Tagore’s) birthday
Dressed up in anxiety & glee
Part of the city peeps out to Hugli

Early morning is fresh with the new catch
Fishes, crabs, squids & prawns
All decorated near the sidemarket of Howrah
Decadence & panache is what fills the painter
Who stands freezing this all on his canvas
The moment melts to office hours
And rushes to a quiet afternoon.

Sun sets peacefully near the Victoria Memorial
When the Queen’s Road fills with tourists
Flip-flopping on horse carts racing through the Red Road
Is the reminiscence from the past galore
All settles to a quiet night
But Howrah never sleeps

As the city drapes a new blanket
Of an intermittent laughter
Tickling from the street side dwellings
The beetle breaks in the (beetle) cutter
Of an old Bengali home
While a classical song
Pulls the city hum to a quiet slumber
The city still feels like Pepper & Green.