A NARRATIVE : LIFE AND TIMES IN BOMBAY

 LIFE AND TIMES IN BOMBAY

My schooling had begun in the small town of Jalandhar, where life was comfortable and familiar. When my father was posted to Bombay, I was admitted to a missionary school. The class had sixty students. Then came our teacher—a tall, strongly built Christian woman of Anglo-Indian origin. She carried herself with confidence and authority, and her presence immediately commanded the attention of the entire class. I remember standing there nervously, clasping my hands and looking at her. I was in Class IV and could hardly speak English. Most of my classmates spoke English as if it were their mother tongue. The teacher did not want to embarrass me. Let her take her own time, she seemed to think. I did not have the courage to tell my parents that I could not cope with the school. I could understand only a few sentences of what my teachers said. In the middle of the night, I would lie awake, dreading the next day. In that moment of great personal pain, I withdrew into myself and nursed my pain in private. I tried to find a way out. The growing silence within me could not remain unnoticed by my father. He was a strict disciplinarian but also an extremely sensitive man. Slowly, he tried to build my confidence. After a hard day at work in a city like Bombay, he would sit with me and translate every sentence of my schoolbooks into Hindi, the language known to me.

 Things began to change, and gradually I found myself becoming part of the mainstream of Bombay life. One day, the teacher gave us a very difficult English grammar assignment for homework. I finished it at night before going to bed. Our class teacher was very strict. The next day, she checked the notebooks of a few students in the front, middle and last rows. None of them had completed the homework in such a short time. She was furious. She shouted at the entire class and ordered all of us to kneel down after class for half an hour. We were then to complete the work before going home. Such were those days—strict teachers . Seeing the teacher's temper, I did not have the courage to tell her that I had already done the homework. So I too knelt down. While everyone else was hurriedly completing the assignment, I sat quietly. After some time, she came over to me with a stick in her hand “What are you doing?” she demanded. I quietly showed her my notebook. She looked at it. The work was excellent—completely correct.

“Oh, my girl! Why didn't you tell me?” she exclaimed. “Go, go home.”

I reached home late. My mother was worried. Father's office was about fifteen kilometers away, and those were the days when telephones were rare. Mother had been waiting near the colony  gate with my younger brother in her lap. When I told her what had happened, she too scolded me for being stupid.I said nothing. That night, my pillow was wet with my tears.

We lived in a rented house in Dockyard Colony. The house consisted of just one room, which served as the kitchen, bedroom, study and drawing room—everything in one. Life in Bombay was hard. My father had many responsibilities, and a major part of his income went towards supporting his parents. Yet he was determined to complete his ICWA. After dinner, which was usually at about seven o'clock—a habit typical of the hills—he would sit down to study and continue late into the night. The tube light was switched off, and a small bulb hanging from a wire provided light over his books. The room was small but neatly kept. There was a hospital-type bed on one side, with a row of utensils and groceries kept underneath. Two buckets of drinking water stood beside the stove. On the other side were two old trunks containing woolens and other unused articles. The trunks were placed side by side to make a makeshift bed. A bedsheet was neatly draped over them, its sides tucked in with safety pins. At night, this became my bed. During the day, I kept my bags and books there. My mother  cooked on the stove. Sometimes, after returning from school, I had to stand in a queue for kerosene oil. It was not an easy life, but it was our life.

At the age of twelve, I began travelling alone by local train. My school was far away. I would cross the vast Dockyard Colony, cross the main road, pass over the railway crossing and then board the local train to Bhandup .I had received some training for this journey. On the first day, my father accompanied me on the train. While returning from school, he told me to get into another compartment and meet him at the station. I often lost my railway pass. My mother kept a two-rupee note in my pocket as a spare. Somehow, on the way back, I would manage to make up for the lost pass.

 One day, I travelled in a first-class compartment with a second-class pass. That very day, the ticket checker caught me. I looked at him and said, with all the confidence I could muster, “The second class was very crowded, and I would have been late to school.”I don't remember what he said after that, but I remember the fear in my heart.

 Bombay was drenched in the monsoon. One day, the class before lunch was Hindi. I watched dark clouds gathering outside the window, and, in the blink of an eye, it started raining. Tan, tan, tan—the school bell rang. The children ran towards the canteen. It was a canteen maintained by the schoolchildren. Crispy, hot chili-and-onion pakoras were being fried.

 I opened my tiffin and was disappointed to see a plain parantha and some cold green vegetable. I searched my pocket and found five paise. I ran to the canteen“Could I have a pakora, please?”

The tall boy in charge, who lived in our colony, laughed. “You can't have a pakora, but you may have some Kuchur Muchur.”Kuchur Muchur were the small, crisp bits of fried batter left floating in the pan after the pakoras had been removed. I took a handful of Kuchur Muchur in my little hands, rolled them into my chapatis and sat alone on a deserted rock to finish my meal. The boy did not give me any chutney. The other girls enjoyed their pakoras with tangy tamarind chutney served on paper plates.

 That evening, I was playing with my friends when the canteen boy came over and began teasing me. “Do you know what she did in school? She purchased Kuchur Muchur—the bits that would otherwise have been thrown away. Anyway, it is a gain for us. We earned five paise from the waste ”. My little heart stopped for a moment. I felt as though I had been accused of theft.Even today, I remember that feeling.

 My school dress was already three years old and was on the verge of tearing. One day, as I was getting into the train, it came apart at the back of my shoulder. It was the twenty-fourth of the month, and father’s  salary day was still several days away. On the second of August, I quietly approached my mother. Papa was preparing for his ICWA examination and had to pay his examination fee. It was going to be a tight month. My mother stitched it—and re stitched it again—until there was no more she could do

Amid the strict discipline at school and at home, there were two beautiful things that I enjoyed doing. We had a very big hall for our drawing and painting classes at school. Lots of colors and paper were available to us free of cost. The drawing teacher was an extremely talented person from West Bengal and a very warm human being. He encouraged me a lot. I spent hours drawing and painting. I became so absorbed in it that I often carried my drawing sheets home. Whenever my father returned from the office, he would find me drawing and coloring. My parents worried that my growing obsession with art might affect my studies. So, in the next class, I was asked to take music instead of drawing. Music, theory classes which I detested!

 The other source of joy was learning French from our beautiful and delicate French teacher. I loved her classes. But French was not to remain a part of my education. My father decided that learning the local language of the state  was more important than learning French. He was right. So I learnt Marathi , the local dialect instead. .Looking back, I sometimes wonder what might have happened if I had continued with drawing or French. Life, however, had other plans for me.

 Life in Bombay was tough, and our resources were meagre. Yet those four years gave me something that has stayed with me to this day—a collection of memories of struggle, small joys, embarrassment, discipline, courage and discovery. Bombay taught me to adapt. It taught me to travel alone, to manage with little, to face unfamiliar situations and, above all, to find my own way in a world that initially seemed too large and too difficult for me.

 Those were difficult years.

 But they were also the years in which I began to grow.

-Pankaj Mala Bhattacharya

A Narrative : THE LITTLE GIRL

 The  Little  Girl

(Illustration created with AI assistance.)

As I walk down the lanes of memory, I often encounter a little girl walking beside me. She is not quite the girl I remember myself to have been, and yet I know her well. Perhaps she is the inner me—the one who resisted orders, questioned pursuits, and quietly went her own way—while the outer me learned to say yes to almost everything that life placed before her.

I was a serious little girl, more thoughtful than playful, more observant than joyful. I wore my long pigtails and a frock whose hemline had been let down and stitched up so many times that it had acquired a patch or two. Ours was a small, uncomplicated world where things were bought because they were needed, not because they were desired.

   But little girls have their desires.

Whenever I saw girls of my age walking about in high heels, I longed for a pair. I imagined the sound their shoes would make as they walked—tak, tak, tak—and somehow that sound seemed to me the very sound of elegance. One day, the road in front of our house was being repaired. There were drums of tar lying about, and tiny chips of stone were scattered across the road. Looking at them, I suddenly had an idea. I picked up several pieces and carefully chose two that were almost identical in size. Then I took off my plastic slippers, smeared tar on the stones, and stuck one onto each slipper.

                               And then I walked.

                                 Tak! Tak! Tak!

There it was—the sound I had imagined high heels would make.I was wonderstruck. Delighted. Exhilarated. For those few precious moments, I was no longer a little girl in patched-up clothes and plastic slippers. I was wearing high heels!Perhaps this was the beginning of my lifelong fascination with shoes, slippers, and sandals. When I was well settled in life, I had a whole collection of them. But with age, my feet began to ache, and finally I decided that I would rather flaunt my comfortable Kolhapuri slippers.

Shyness was another companion who stayed with me for years. I was shy of crowds, shy of people, shy of unfamiliar places, and, at times, almost shy of the world itself. Yet there was another side to me. If someone made me feel comfortable, did not nag me, and created a warm and welcoming space, I could talk for hours. Perhaps that is why, wherever I went, I created a little world of my own—a cocoon in which I could observe, listen, think, and quietly be myself. I was always fascinated by the thoughts and ideas of others. I listened carefully, absorbed whatever I found worthwhile, and then tried to make it part of my own journey. I did not always follow the world, but I was always willing to learn from it.

   Then there was the night.

I have always been a nocturnal person. While others seemed to come alive with the morning, I found something strangely comforting in the stillness of the night. During the day, I preferred to keep my curtains drawn; at night, I would open them and let the darkness in. Winter, in particular, awakens something in me that I have never been able to explain.Every year, when the sun begins to set on one of those not-quite-cold winter evenings, when the skin first begins to feel dry and the air carries that faint, unmistakable touch of winter, I am overcome by a strange emotion. It is difficult to name. It is not quite nostalgia, not quite longing, and not quite sadness.

It reminds me of the mood of Wordsworth’s The Solitary Reaper—of a traveller somewhere in the mountains, suddenly hearing a song from a distant land and being moved by something he cannot fully understand. There is a peculiar sense of belonging in that feeling: the feeling of being drawn towards a place that is far away and yet somehow familiar. Perhaps I understood that feeling long before I could put it into words.

 There was nothing particularly glamorous about me.

I could admire women in stiletto heels, their elegant saris falling perfectly around them, their long hair gathered into graceful chignons, their faces enhanced by cosmetics, their beauty sparkling with diamonds. I could look at them with genuine admiration. I could appreciate all that glamour without ever wanting to become part of it.Because when it came to myself, I preferred my favourite faded purple salwar-kameez, a thick cotton dupatta thrown casually over my shoulders, and my trusted Kolhapuris on my perfectly feminine feet. My short hair was usually tied into a little bunch at the back—a hairstyle that probably had no recognised name in the vocabulary of hairdressers. A bag hung from my shoulder, more often unzipped than zipped. Inside were a few books related to my work, a pen or two, and several handkerchiefs that somehow found their way into the bag every day and remained there, day after day, without ever being taken out. I was myself.

Rumi, the great mystic poet, said, “What you seek is seeking you.” I have often thought that I am not much of a seeker. I have led a quiet life, never chasing after too many things or searching restlessly for what may lie beyond my reach.But perhaps I have been seeking all along—only in my own quiet way. I have sought comfort in the night, wonder in nature, companionship in books, beauty in simplicity, and meaning in memories. And perhaps, without my knowing it, these things were seeking me too.

Maybe that is why, even after all these years, I still find that little girl walking beside me. She reminds me that some of the most precious things we seek do not arrive from outside. They grow quietly within us, waiting for us to recognise them.Perhaps the little girl was never lost.

 Perhaps she was simply seeking the woman I would one day become.

- Pankaj Mala Bhattacharya

Rains and Memories

 

La Nature, mon Bonheur

( Nature, My Happiness)

At sixty-two, I sometimes feel like one of those old deodar trees in the hills—weathered by storms, yet still quietly alive with memories and the will to grow.

Nature, in my thoughts, is not merely scenery. It is almost a living character. Having been born in the hills, I have always felt a deep connection with it. At the tender age of twelve, I wandered through the forest near my paternal grandparents’ house, holding my grandmother’s hand as we went to collect small twigs of dried wood to light the fire in the mud chulha, the earthen stove traditionally used in village homes.

I have always believed that the hills have moods, forests have their silences, and even rain carries memories. Growing up in a small village in Himachal Pradesh taught me to observe patiently—the changing colours of the sky, the fragrance of pine after rain, and the quietness of a small railway station. Nature has always given me perspective. It reminds me that life does not need to be rushed in order to be meaningful.

Even now, at this age, when I sit in my balcony with a cup of tea and feel that I am experiencing a little piece of heaven when heavy rain falls outside—provided, of course, that all my family members are safe at home. Yet, during such moments, my thoughts often wander to the stray animals who must face the rain without shelter or food. Then I remind myself that nature, in its own mysterious way, has given every living creature instincts and abilities to survive. Nature is perhaps the greatest teacher of all, teaching us adaptation, endurance, and survival.

I have created a small balcony garden where I grow herbs, flowers, and other plants. Over time, it has become a tiny ecosystem of its own. Often birds  come  to my balcony, build  nests, and lay eggs . I regularly keep bird feed and water on the balcony, and the lively chatter of birds at dawn has become the most luxurious alarm clock I could ever possess.

Sometimes I feel that I have recreated a little fragment of the forest in my balcony. Perhaps I would never have thought of doing such a thing had I not experienced life in a small village nestled among dark green forests and hills.

During such quiet moments, my thoughts often travel back to the heavy monsoons of my childhood, when I was a student at Swami Vivekananda High School in Mumbai—the then Bombay. The image of rain that lives in my childhood memories still fills me with a strange thrill, even today.

I remember coming home from school drenched in rain, jumping through flowing water, and sometimes even soaking my shoes in the muddy streams that ran along the roads. My brother would be ready with paper boats, and together we would set them afloat, watching them drift a little distance before running after them to retrieve them.

These were among the simple joys of childhood.

Both of us would be scolded for getting wet, only to repeat the same mischief a few days later. And then there are memories that belong not only to the eyes but also to the senses—the aroma and taste of the hot, crispy fries my mother prepared on rainy days, after we woke from our afternoon siesta and waited for my father to return home.

I have always had a peculiar fascination with rain in all its moods and colors: rain falling upon the black asphalt of city roads; rain on dusty, unpaved paths; torrential downpours and gentle drizzles; rain shimmering in the sunshine; rain over rivers and the sea; trains travelling through sheets of rain; and the tiny bubbles rising from the earth as raindrops came pouring down.

But it was not only the rain that fascinated me.

The gathering clouds, their restless swirling, and the countless shapes they formed after the rain had passed always held a special attraction for me. I could spend hours watching them, allowing my imagination to travel wherever they led.

These childhood enchantments remained with me through many phases of my life. Yet now, sometimes, I feel that the magic is no longer quite the same.

I wonder whether age has quietly taken something away, or whether it was simply the ways of the world. Whatever it was that stole a little of that enchantment from me, I know that it took something immensely precious—something that once made every rainy day feel like a small miracle.

Perhaps this, too, is part of growing older.

With age, we realize that time is not infinite. We begin to understand that our energy cannot be devoted to everything and everyone. We become more selective about what deserves our attention, our emotions, and our time.

And perhaps this is where nature continues to teach me.

William Wordsworth saw in nature the power to “chasten and subdue.” Nature, for him, was not simply beautiful scenery. It possessed a moral and spiritual force. It had the ability to humble us, calm us, and lead us towards deeper reflection, moderating our wild emotions and quietening our pride.

In William Wordsworth's famous poem, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey” he is  reflecting on how his relationship with Nature has changed as he matured from a reckless young boy into a thoughtful adult.

"...For I have learned

To look on nature, not as in the hour

Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power

To chasten and subdue."

I understand this more now than I perhaps did when I was young. Nature has not taken away all my childhood enchantment. Perhaps it has merely changed its form.

The little girl who once jumped into rainwater, chased paper boats, and watched clouds change their shapes is still somewhere within me. But now, with her aching bones, she sits quietly on a balcony, surrounded by plants and birds, holding a cup of tea, watching the rain—and understanding a little more about life.

Like the old deodar tree, I may have been weathered by storms.

But I am still alive with memories.

And perhaps, even now, I am still growing.

- Pankaj Mala Bhattacharya

Poetry: The Lost Child

 

 

The Lost Child

 

I read your thoughts upon your face,

Your life's tale told with quiet grace.

You forged yourself in many folds,

A shield against friends, well-wishers, and foes.

 Yet no one knows

The warm heart that beats

Beneath the armour that conceals it.

 I too did not know,

Until the day

It melted through your eyes.

Then I discovered

A heart that was

Like a lovely little wandering child,

Who brings home, at evening mild,

The thorns and flowers of all the wild.

And from your whole life,

This much I know is true:

Your flowers and your thorns,

You bring them all with you.

-Pankaj Mala Bhattacharya

 

 

Poetry : Bound by Time

 

Bound by Time

 

“I am bound by time,” they say.

Have they ever seen me

sitting at night,

in a room without a fan,

studying till midnight,

sweating profusely

through the hot summer months?

And when, at last,

I put away my books

and lay down on the floor

in another room,

where my entire family slept

beneath the old ceiling fan

whirling miles above me,

I would imagine

what it must feel like

to lie on a bed

with cool air flowing over me.

And I decided—

someday, I would.

So I began making timetables,

drawing up schedules,

planning every hour,

telling myself:

Study hard.

Work hard.

Achieve success.

Get good results.

Get a job.

And I kept making schedules.

Then I entered

the vast world of college.

There were no tuitions.

My subjects were tough.

Nobody in my family

had ever ventured through them.

I knew only one thing—

Work.

Work hard.

And work harder.

That is how I grew.

I planned.

I studied.

And I kept making schedules.

again and again.

I walked long distances

to save money on transport.

I treated myself

to a ten-paise ice cream

while my friends enjoyed

delicious one-rupee

milky chocolate bars.

I watched them,

but I remained focused.

I worked.

I planned.

And I kept making schedules.

newer and firmer

dividing my days

into carefully measured hours.

Even the time

I spent with friends

after school, after college,

was allotted—

not because

I did not want to be with them,

but because I feared

the misery of losing time.

Every hour had its place.

Every moment had a purpose.

Every dream demanded its share.

And now they tell me—

“I am bound by time.”

Perhaps I am.

But they do not know

how I learned to live by it,

how I stretched every minute

until it carried me

a little closer

to the life I had once imagined

beneath that old ceiling fan.

They see the clock.

I remember the girl

who watched it

and refused to let

her dreams

run out of time.

- Pankaj Mala Bhattacharya

GSI Field Diaries :In the Lap of the Brahmaputra

 In the Lap of the Brahmaputra

( My thanks are  due to  my  Ph.D Guide and Senior  colleague in GSI , Dr. J.R.Kayal professor emeritus, Kolkata, for    providing valuable insights  while writing this article .  This write up  is based on experiences of the GSI team at Northest  Region of India , a highly Earthquake  prone zone in India )

Having finished our seismological work in Shillong, we made our way down to the Assam Valley along a winding mountain road. There was a nip in the air, a touch of winter. From Guwahati, our jeep sped along Highway 31 towards western Dhubri. The broad road, surrounded by greenery, passed through a vast valley dotted with hills, rivers and dense Sal forests. The journey through the hills was especially beautiful.

At around eight at night, we reached the Dhubri Circuit House. Its beautiful flower garden and decorative illumination made it look like a magnificent royal palace. The Circuit Houses of the north-eastern region were well maintained and equipped with all necessary facilities.

I woke early the next morning. As I opened the window, I saw the sun rising from the Brahmaputra as though wearing a radiant crown. The previous night, I had gone to sleep with the river beside me. During the monsoon, the Brahmaputra can be terrifying; but on that winter morning, it appeared vast, serene and majestic. In the distance, the Garo Hills of Meghalaya rose beneath a veil of clouds, solemn and meditative.

I was completely absorbed in nature when my subordinate called out, “Please get ready. We can go out for a little while today.” Our staff had arrived almost two days earlier by air and had set up a camp in an open field near the Circuit House. Four folding tables, comfortable chairs and breakfast had been arranged under the warm winter sunshine. After breakfast, we were ready to cross the Brahmaputra and begin our observations of the earthquake aftershocks.

We reached Dhubri Ghat, just beside the Circuit House, hired a small motorised boat and set off across the glittering waters. For nearly four years, I had been carrying out research in this region. I had often seen the Brahmaputra from the air and travelled along the highway beside it. I had always felt its presence strongly and imagined it as something vast, powerful and frightening.

Soon we found ourselves in the middle of the river. Salmara Ghat, on the opposite bank to the south of Dhubri, was nearly two hours away. The boat did not always move in a straight line; at times it travelled eastward, westward or southward.

Countless sandbanks stretched across the river. The newly formed chars were dazzlingly white, like vast plateaus of sand. On some of the higher ones stood small settlements with thatched huts. As we crossed them, a large steamer approached from Salmara, carrying jeeps, cars, lorries, cattle and goods across the river. Office-goers, fishermen, boatmen and labourers all moved across the broad waters.

The boatman, whose weathered face bore an intelligent expression, told us about the settlements on the chars. During the monsoon, many of them are submerged or washed away. The Brahmaputra is both their protector and their destroyer.Standing on the boat and looking in every direction, I felt as though we were crossing a vast ocean. The white sails of the boats looked like paintings. I was reminded of the famous Bengali song *O Nadire Ekti Katha*, sung and composed by Hemanta Kumar Mukherjee, a poetic dialogue with an endless river. Sailing across the immense Brahmaputra was an incomparable experience. Touching its cool, clear, light-green water with our feet gave us a strange feeling of purity.

After travelling nearly twenty miles by water, we reached the shore. Porters helped us unload our luggage, and company vehicles took us further. We travelled nearly eighty kilometres along dusty roads beside the Brahmaputra. Shops, government offices and small houses lined the way. Our destination was a small brick house near the riverbank, surrounded by tin-roofed cottages. We carefully observed the houses, the people and their daily lives.

In Dakshin-Nalaram, part of the Mananlal-Bangla region, most residents were poor farmers, fishermen and labourers. After finishing our work, we stopped at a tea shop. The shopkeeper’s wife warmly served us sweets and tea. Curious villagers gathered around and asked where we had come from. They told us how floods had changed the landscape and how the river had gradually shifted closer to their homes. Their stories revealed both the immense power of nature and the resilience of the people who lived beside the Brahmaputra.

On our way back, we again halted at the Dhubri Circuit House. That night, the river’s ebb and flow seemed endless. People gathered outside, talking about the tides and the mysteries of the river. Under the moonlight, the blue waters shimmered, whispering of nature’s eternal rhythm.

The more I saw of the Brahmaputra, the more amazed I became. Flowing through the heart of Assam and carrying the waters of countless Himalayan tributaries, it stretched vast and majestic from east to west. We spent our days beside this immense and mysterious river and returned with countless memories and a deep affection for it.

At times, the Brahmaputra seemed as terrifying as a demon; yet its vastness and boundless waves filled me with joy and a sense of purity. By the time we left, I realised that, without even knowing it, **I had fallen in love with the Brahmaputra.**

-Pankaj Mala Bhattacharya

Poetry: Acceptance

 

Acceptance

 

Last cloudy night,

I lay down to sleep,

But my thoughts ran deep.

The clouds shared my pain,

Yet nature sang in rain.

The unspoken questions,

Callous, pseudo-suggestions,

Battled within my mind.

Answers would I ever  find?

Should I rebel?

Should I compel?

No, life is not a battlefield

Where one forces the other to yield.

Life is a pilgrimage, they say,

Accepting roses—and the thorns it  brings along the way.

Forgiveness is not a license to surrender;

It is a great strength, not weakness.

This insight wiped away my tears,

Calming all my baseless fears.

With the advent of dawn,

And another sleepless night gone,

I relished the warmth of the sun,

And found the courage to embrace myself again.

 - Pankaj Mala Bhattacharya

 

 

 

 

 

Narrative : The Rhythm of Stillness

 

                The Rhythm of Stillness

(My thanks are  due to my friend  Dr. Soma Sammadar , Professor  of Chemistry, Lady Brabourne College,  Kolkata for providing valuable insights while writing this article. Soma herself a cancer survivor is relentlessly working for stray dogs through her NGO Doddaden foundation. She vaccinates, sterilizes and feeds about 100  stray dogs , furry babies as she calls them  ,  in North Kolkata.)

The Rigveda often speaks of the universe as a wheel whose rim, spokes, and hub represent the rhythms of existence. One famous hymn (Rigveda 1.164) describes:"The wheel with twelve spokes revolves without aging."The twelve spokes symbolize the months of the year, while the unmoving hub suggests the eternal centre around which change revolves. This is a beautiful image of attachment and detachment:

The rim is constantly moving.

The hub remains still.

A person may live on the rim, busy with life's duties, while remaining inwardly cantered like the hub. Wisdom is not escaping the wheel but learning to live from its hub. The Rigveda reminds us that life is like a great wheel. Its rim turns ceaselessly through time and change, while its hub remains perfectly still. Human wisdom lies in learning to participate fully in the movement of life without losing the stillness of its eternal center.

Modern physics, though speaking a different language, hints at a remarkably similar paradox. Light is neither merely a wave nor merely a particle; it possesses both aspects, revealing one or the other according to circumstance. Likewise, we are called to embrace the flowing, relational nature of existence—loving, serving, creating, and participating in the world—while simultaneously remaining centered in the unchanging awareness of the self. The moving rim and the silent hub are complementary dimensions of the same reality.

Nature, too, quietly teaches this truth. Consider the humpback whale. The  whales  spends nearly its entire life immersed in the ocean, yet it cannot live without periodically rising to the surface for breath. It dives into the depths, returns to breathe, and descends again in an endless rhythm. Human life follows a similar pattern. We immerse ourselves in responsibilities, relationships, and emotions, but if we never return to the inner surface of stillness, we begin to feel as though we are drowning. A quiet breath, a moment of silence, or a pause for reflection restores the center from which we can re-enter life's depths. The Humpback whale does something even more beautiful. They  carry that breath back into the ocean and turn it into movement and song. Their songs are learned, shared, and constantly evolving, sometimes traveling across thousands of kilometers in what scientists call a whale-song revolution. Our lives, too, are a song to be sung…

 -Pankaj Mala Bhattacharya

Narrative :Nymerah

 Nymerah

Nymerah is a fictional muse who embodies the coexistence of light and darkness, serenity and celebration, day and night. She symbolizes the meeting point of seemingly opposite worlds, serving as the quiet axis around which life's larger narrative unfolds. Nymerah is the spirit of twilight—that fleeting, luminous hour when day gently surrenders to night and the resonant sound of the conch shell fills the evening air. Twilight is neither an ending nor a beginning; it is a moment of quiet transition, where two worlds briefly embrace each other in harmony.The twilight of nature mirrors the twilight of human life, especially after the age of sixty, when one steps away from the routines of professional life. For those accustomed to the rhythm of nine-to-five responsibilities, retirement often leaves an unexpected emptiness. Yet that emptiness is not a void to be feared; it is a sacred space waiting to be filled with a quieter, more loving purpose.These years invite us to pause and look back with gratitude—reflecting on the lessons learned, the joys cherished, the mistakes accepted, and the people who shaped our journey. They also offer an opportunity to give something back: to society, to nature, and to those who walk behind us. In doing so, we gradually prepare ourselves for the soul's final journey into eternity. 

Nymerah reminds us that old age is not a season of decline but of awakening. It is the time when the noise of the world slowly fades, allowing us to hear the whispers of the heart that have always existed beneath the distractions of everyday life. In these later years, the time that remains often feels more precious than all that has gone before. The bucket list grows shorter, not because dreams diminish, but because priorities become clearer. We realize that time is not infinite and that every remaining day deserves to be lived with purpose, intention,grace and forgiveness. It is no longer necessary to devote our energy to everything. Wisdom lies in choosing what truly matters, forgiving  , and discovering fulfillment in a life that is simpler, quieter, and more deeply meaningful.

Perhaps that is what Nymerah ultimately teaches us: twilight is not the fading of light but the gentle union of light and darkness. In the same way, old age is not the closing chapter of life but the season in which experience ripens into wisdom, action softens into compassion, and the soul quietly prepares to return to the Infinite.

- Pankaj Mala Bhattacharya

   

Poetry : Saudade

 

Saudade

                    Those were the sentences,

Curated from fragments of life,

Beautifully crafted each day with care,

Tracing the contours of her world—

Its joys, its fears, its lingering regrets.

 

Those were the sentences.

They became her windows to the outside world

When she was confined to her home,

Accompanied by aching joints of age

And her beloved garden.

 

Those were the sentences.

They began as imperfect sentences,

Yet slowly they created a vast landscape,

Populated with childhood memories, familiar places,

And lives that gradually took shape.

 

Those were the sentences.

Within them one could hear a congregation of voices,

Weaving relationships and memories

She would rather leave undisturbed.

She guarded those memories carefully,

Rarely letting her defences fall,

Yet allowing the reader to glimpse

The very heart of her world

Through five broken sentences at a time.

 

Those were the sentences.

As they travelled from pen to paper

They gathered silences,

And sometimes misunderstandings

Which The writer never intended.

 

Those were the sentences.

They were never merely a means of communication;

They became a record of silence,

Of hesitation, and of desire.

Their fragmented style

Created an unexpected intimacy

With the reader,

Who quietly accepted the task

Of piecing the puzzle together.

 

Those were the sentences.

They never found the hands

For which they were written.

A month has passed.

They remain unsent—

Suspended between silence and speech.

And in that unfinished journey,

Saudade still breathes.

 - Pankaj Mala Bhattacharya

21.07.2026

A Narrative : The Buddha's Departure

 

The Buddha's Departure

 

( When Siddhārtha left the palace in search of truth, he departed without bidding farewell to his wife, Yaśodharā. History tells us little of what she may have felt on that night. The reflections that follow are entirely imagined, inspired by the silence that history leaves between its recorded events. This narrative is an imaginative attempt to give voice to that silence in our own time .)

 Everything was quiet.

The setting sun entered through the window in a gentle stream of amber light, resting softly upon the stone floor. She sat in her usual place by the window, watching the evening unfold. Outside, the playgrounds and the entire city had begun to surrender themselves to dusk. The treetops and faraway temple tops glowed briefly in gold before slowly fading into shadow. Along the pathways, people walked silently, their long shadows stretching behind them. From the playground below came the faint, fading laughter of children. Somewhere in the distance, the low sound of a conch shell lingered for a moment before dissolving into the twilight.

She had always loved this hour for reading and writing.

The sunset filled her with an inexplicable blend of peace and loneliness. There was comfort in knowing that the same sun was descending everywhere—over villages and cities, mountains and seas; over strangers who would never know one another, yet who all shared this single departing light. The last rays, trembling upon the leaves of the swaying coconut  trees, possessed a beauty beyond words. She often wondered why beauty seemed most moving when it was about to disappear. Perhaps that was why she loved sunsets more than sunrises.

And with every sunset, her thoughts returned to Siddhārtha—the man who  one day become the Buddha.

She remembered his quietness, his gentleness, the depth of his silence. She had believed that such stillness could never be disturbed, that a man so inwardly calm could never be restless.

But one night, everything changed.

The silence she had trusted gave way to an unrest she could neither understand nor name. He seemed already to belong to another path, another calling. Without anger, without accusation, without even a farewell, he chose to leave—not merely the palace, but the life they had shared.

He departed in the dead of night.

Why?

She had never found an answer. Was he seeking freedom? If so, freedom from what—or from whom?

Every evening thereafter, she returned to the same window. She watched the sun sink slowly beyond the horizon, waiting… 

  - Pankaj Mala Bhattacharya