Dalal Street

Let us go then to Dalal Street, you and I. It meanders through the island city Mumbai, screams out its dehumanised songs into the sunlight over and over again like parrots. At around 3 pm, it grows naturally wild; you see horny lobos and the hoarse hawks cry. You could almost see their cramped minds delirious with insomnia; hunter lives measured with stocks and shares. The twisted and breathing money crushes them. Yet they survive; smelling blood, bees and women.

At 6 pm, twilight immerses the wild incantations. The animals buy and sell their dreams. The sane sex hour of their lives arrive like a temptress and devours them. They wander and roam; their impatient souls slowly get consumed by the burning inferno. They are afraid that others will haul them across the abyss; they are scared of being left behind as simple beings with empty, disappointed hands. They are always terrified that home and trees and mountains exist, and, they lift the fear of many things into the darkness of their lives and sink into it. 

Their fortunes are recorded in companies. They are especially happy or unhappy, especially greedy or hateful in their hearts. You cannot be against this very important occupation: The story of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and Warren Buffett. Every one of these characters, etched a furrow in the great grey brain of the earth, and we all carry a miniature reproduction of this archetypal brain within us. We like to tell these stories because freedom is now for sale.

Death for them may come early across the graveyards of hollow promises. And, time-worn vultures will pick at their denial. A shroud of darkness may cover them soon because the Street is stacked under the walls of a dying order. To this end, they have spent the last few decades ripping apart the heroes of the past and the usable contemporaries and put together new and ever new material possibilities, manufacturing modern capitalist legitimacies that make the old measures seem redundant. Let us go then to Dalal Street you and I, but, let us not applaud it.

Meghna Maiti

Dalal Street 

Three pm, Dalal Street

Horny lobos and the hoarse hawks cry,

Their cramped minds delirious with insomnia,

Hunter lives measured with stocks and shares,

The twisted and breathing money crushes them,

Yet they survive; smelling blood, bee and women.

Six pm, Dalal Street

Twilight immerses the wild incantations,

The animals buy and sell their dreams,

The sane sex hour of their lives,

Arrive like a temptress and devour them.

Cause freedom also has a price.

Meghna Maiti

House of Solitude


I owe my existence to the house of solitude. 
The room of silence swallows my self-trapped soul. 
And I discover my collective significance. 
I outgrow my individuality.

Wasn't this my destiny and my voyage of longing?

Yet I take refuge in flashes of you.        
In you, the entire consciousness accumulates.


Meghna Maiti

Bob Marley Cafe

YOU all have seen those shacks: There is something strangely lyrical about these small stopovers, veiling the coastline, forcing us to the land of Bohemia by sound and sights, the dull thud and whoosh of waves, the splash of water, and the call of sea pigeons. As the night draws closer, they grow naturally melancholic, even with the twinkling lamps and usual chatter of foreigners. The thought of such shacks takes me to Bob Marley Café in Mahabalipuram, and I can pour out an entire ocean behind my backyard in the deep, intense hours. I can't see the sea-shaken café, but, I can smell the waves, hear the dolphin play by the sea air across the flutes of their blowholes.


For most of our lives, we labour under conditions composed of land, dust and grime, a tricky confluence to keep us grounded on a busy urban soil. We struggle with the wind, rain, the sloppy roads and vindictive souls. We struggle with darker questions that hang in the air; grope for our true selves. In the process, many lose the race. A rare few, perhaps, endure all the way to Bohemia, inside the labyrinthine claw of life; hoping to meet some of these foundering nomads; dip into the blue, clear water of the Bay of Bengal.

And, then, the curtains open for good; the sun burns a sideway lantern on the tsunami-ravaged coast of Mahabalipuram, its melancholy set of white sand, wind-shorn mosses and rock-cut temples. We take it in, reclining on cane chairs, grow stiller, look deep into the eyes of our lovers, dreams occasionally interrupted by the curious eyes of the shack owners, Swami of the Tamil fisherman ilk with Janet, his German wife. There is no fog in the air, yet a vapour lifts, a screen between worlds, and in the blink of a seafish's pulse, we can see backward through epochs. 

The lively eyes of Bob Marley still observes me and then sinks, the blue water closing over his ears, across the imperceptible canvas of blue water and pearly Medusa.

Meghna Maiti

The face of the party

AND then we see in the faces and figures, millions of apprehensions, clear and dark, for their souls lurk deep inside their beings, so that dusk is eternally falling within them. After a stroll back from the garden, Janet was bewildered to find her tipsy guests sitting around the party tables, all with the same faces. It was 12 o'clock in the night. “Did I get too drunk?“ she twitched her eyes as she stared at the frayed lot.


Janet silently proceeded to the living room, her heart pounding against the ribs, body tingled as though she had prickly heat. Where were her friend Eliana and her colleague, Emrick? Wasn't this supposed to be her housewarming party? She quickly slipped into the bathroom, heaved a sigh of relief when she saw her own face. She was suddenly conscious of her maid's presence and regained control of herself. “Hey, Mary. Is anything wrong with me? Why do you think everyone looks the same in the party?“ “Maybe they all are talking about the same things, ma'am,“ uttered Mary as she filled her glass of whiskey and soda.


She lit a cigarette and sat amidst people in their designer wears, driven to excitement with the fancy cocktails and starters, laughing as they exchanged tales of their friends' affairs, foreign holidays and expensive houses, all the things that take them a little ahead of each other. Strangely, no one seemed to recognise her. She felt hot with shame and misery. What snobs! She felt exhausted, sat there for hours, smoked cigarettes after cigarettes, and wished she were dead. She wanted to lift the veil from everyone's face, pry into the silken darkness of their lives and fold their hands over it.


Janet could not take it any longer and stepped out into the fresh, cool garden. As she stared at the starry sky, a great weight lifted from her mind. Maybe she needs to think only about one face and united voices of countless people and even the most mundane one, feel a breath of high song that has no equal.


Meghna Maiti

Dog Days

TWENTY years after they had parted, she spotted his dark frame in the fierce glow of the sun in Mumbai. After the initial sense of befuddlement, she said, “Let's go to Mondegar Café.“
Surprisingly, her lost lover looked younger by 20 years. His sprightly self appeared almost magically, like an oasis to quench the thirst of a weary traveller.

Summer had brought back her lost passion and she felt exhilarated; was eager to enclose the elusive realty in a time warp and stay suspended in her own zone.

She thought, “Is he married?“ But, did it matter if he was married? She sensed the approaching loo, the hot summer storm blowing off the dust from memories of yore. She felt content and happy.

As they walked through the crowded thoroughfare, the sun beat fiercely on the charred road. She saw beads of sweat on his temple, wrinkled eyes, twitched nose and sensuous lips. The intense heat, dust and the scorched earth seemed to ignite the desires of the young and the old hearts.

Mondegar Café lane was populated with sweating people, speeding up and down the road, brushing against each other as they yelled maniacally.

The aroma of barbecued meat, chello kebab mingled with the Mughlai flavours of her hometown Delhi wafted through the burning inferno. In strident white sparks, she saw a vivid face, loving gestures and longing heart, looking into her eyes.

She was tempted to hide inside the icy-cool roadside inn. She saw him slowly merge with the white glow of the sun, leaving only remnants of him in the occasional breeze from gulmohar and neem trees.

Then, perhaps, roused by the sadness in her eyes, a band of pigeons fell out of the sheltered nest, tumbled frantically in the still, sizzling area, sorted out their way and streaked away across the white sky.

She walked into the café and immersed her divine nostalgia in slow sips of chilled beer. Outside, Mumbai in the afternoon turned into a vast abyss, an infernal city full of secret fire.

Meghna Maiti

House Hunting

At the age of 25, the sense of disillusionment with one’s own self is real. So, I was disappointed when the lousy landlord did not wish to extend my lease and asked me to vacate the flat within a week. His son, who earns in dollars, was coming back soon to inhabit the pigeonhole of a place. The smudge on the wall needed to be painted, faulty plumbing repaired and the nuisances of ownership shifted. The baggage of someone’s existence had to be replaced by another set.

As I puttered around my room, sat stiffly on my mattress and surveyed the room, its cheap mosaic floor, the ramshackle bookshelf and cupboard and the arcane dressing unit, all that had become my own, an inexplicable sadness drowned me. It was the sort of place that had shown me the path to independence of mind and character with its exclusionary nature. Even the quotidian extravagances of daily life, which included making my bed and doing the chores were pleasurable because it was there I met with my lost self. Since at my age the sense of self is often blurred, my decision to stay alone in this house for the first time was for both good and bad.

A house broker from the neighbourhood, who is an agent and a part of a big network of real estate chains, consoled me, grinned his lopsided Shah Rukh Khan smile and said, “Don’t worry. Such small things happen in big cities. I will get you the best place within your budget.”

Over the days, I came to terms with my transient state. The cold gaze and unfriendly welcome of landlords did not bother me anymore. I started looking at each home stay as the accustomed rituals and formalities of arrival and departure. Each visit gave way to a larger journey. I was prepared to arrive and go, welcome a temporary imagined future and greet a new identity each time. And in that transition, in between two homes, I learnt to get liberated from the uncomfortable truth that the time would soon come to end the trip.

Meghna Maiti