Years ago, reading a literary anthology compiled and edited by an English professor from Gaya College, I had an urge to meet him. Since I did not have his address or phone number, I could not make an appointment. So I decided to first visit Rajgir, a pilgrimage center near Gaya, keeping in mind poet Eunice De Souza’s line, “The hills heal as no hand does’, and then attempt to interview the professor.
I boarded Danapur Express from Howrah and after an overnight journey, got down at Bakhtiarpur. A couple of hours in a taxi took me to the heart of Rajgir, where I put up at a Standard Chartered Bank holiday home, its caretaker being a young Bihari priest. The priest and I got on very well mainly because he could recite from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata at will, which was quite amazing.

In this part of the world, we’ve a river to walk by. Ganges is to me what Seine was to Maupassant.
At dawn, when crowd is not, I stand facing it. Steps leading up from the shore disappear under water swelling by the minute. The water-level rises right up to where I wait.

Do you sometimes read your own published work?

No!

An automobile labouring up hilly terrain

The engine going into overdrive

Lying on a hotel bed, the night deepening

Lying upon stretcher, as if in deep sleep, my aunt was brought down from her third-floor quarantine to hospital basement. The sight hit the heart-strings like a shooting stone from a slingshot.

Now there’s too great a gulf
Between him
And everybody else around him.

The muffled echoes
Of the motorized boat
Cruising towards Gandhi-ghat
Had me in its spell

I was on Rajdhani Express, fixated on a book called An Artist of the Floating World, not aware that dinner had already been served, that a co-passenger was trying to attract my attention.

I am a sucker for deliciously scented flowers. If I smell a floral scent drifting in the air, I pause and seek its source. Thus, l came to be acquainted with Mogra (Arabian Jasmine) Honey Suckle (Madhobilata), Tuberose (Nishigandha) and the like. There’s another of its kind I fell in love with during a stay at Aarogya Bhavan in Jasidih, now a part of the state of Jharkhand.
Our journey to Jasidih became uncertain when the morning Toofan Express in which we had reservations was cancelled an hour before its scheduled departure. Our stay for a few days at Aarogya Bhavan was already booked.  So, a few hours later, we boarded another train and arrived at Jasidih quite late in the evening.

Crepuscular rays shimmer around the hummock overlooking the hamlet with its encampment of huts.