We were sitting under the lyre tree. She and I. There’s still an hour to go before the poetry-reading session.
“Most poets”, I said, “render their poems looking at the page. But you recite your own entirely from memory.”

He’s a queer freelancer. Nobody asks him to meet unsung people who excel in some form of creative arts. He goes on his own. Often cash-strapped, yes.

An evening rover roams hither and thither among the hollyhocks. There’s a grey-green deodar cedar, its base circled by a seat where I sit, listening to bo-ko-ta-ko of an Indian cuckoo hiding in a full-leaved tree.

The train was speeding along at helluva pelt. I was in conversation with a fellow traveller.
What’s your pastime, I asked.
Spotting the planes in the night sky.

After the guided walking tour of both Andarmahal and Bahirmahal at Itachuna Rajbari Resort in Pandua of Hooghly District, we headed towards its garden café built much in the Santiniketan mode, dim-lit and surrounded by trees of rare species. By then the cicada song was in the air along with a strange honking of an unknown bird. As we were about to place an order of jhalmuri, fish fries and masala tea, the deep mellifluous sound of a flute took us by very pleasant surprise.

He’s a perpetual outlander. Whenever cords of insecurity throttled him, he’d track the movement of the monster on a paper-page in his favourite haunt.
She’d no lean-on for emotional support. Her past wounds still wide open, it’s beyond her bandwidth to deep-dive into another affaire de coeur.

Skirting the edge of open-air lawn at the summer house appareled in oaks growing at an angle, sat the participants.
Compère’s voice floated in the air: “This afternoon we’ll begin by quoting from memory most memorable lines from Classics. The mike is yours.”

An animal-advocate was on his way to a forest-resthouse when the rain came down by the bucketful. It grew steadily darker.
A truck menacingly appeared round the narrow mountain-bend. While making way, he slipped; fell into the void.

The camel was couching in the thin grass, when its keeper helped her on with the climb.
The dromedary then abruptly rose, first on its hind legs, jerking her forward into a heap, then on its forelegs, sharply tilting her backward.

When I stepped out of the actor’s abode, I was in a daze. I understood why Lean chose him for A Passage to India. Seeking to soak myself in his surroundings I sat on a bench overlooking a cemetery nearby.