What tenuous ties link us, inexplicably, inescapably, to the place of our birth?Is the tree connected to where it was concieved in a seed? a bird to where it hatched?escaping fragrance to the flower that created it? a wave retreating to where it was born? What webs connect us to where we origined-in a dream?What brings me back to Kolkata?Incomprehensible pulls that have no words- to this city of layered grime, a broad placid old river, music born in destitution,unstable, tottering, almost on the verge of collapse, always, and still eternal, evolving.It is 26 years since I last spent a winter in Kolkata. Its a season of black, sooty, chill, that settles physically on your skin, skylines are smoky shadows in the settled, unmoving air that pervades in my days-nights without clarity, walking past huddled shapes crouched around plastic fire-urban refuse is still needed in this city of want, penury.
What is let through this dense, dusty air, are clear notes of music, crisp rythms on tabla, complex, intricate, bouncing off myriad atoms of polluted air, and yet reaching out-outwards in pristine clarity to hold this city together, in intersecting webs of music- all escaping and there by retaining- this city of my birth as a whole.
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