Dibyendu's WallScript

A solitary man lives with his idea.   At the beginning of every month, I would see him—emerging from Beniatola, carrying on his head a mountain of books. He was nearly seventy, his hair the color of dry jute stalks, dressed in an age-worn tunic, a half-burnt bidi dangling from his lips. Behind him trailed three or four young men, radiant yet burdened, each carrying cloth bags filled with books.   Thick, white-covered volumes—five hundred copies printed, three hundred retrieved. The rest still lay hostage in the press, released only after the old man had signed bonds and advanced money. Those youths, unknown to us, were each given fifty copies to sell; with that money, they were to buy reams of paper for the next issue.   These were men without country, time, or property in our eyes. What they carried upon their heads was not merely printed matter but the sum of their pains, struggles, and wounds. Society had cast them aside. Their only great gift was to inscribe words in ...

Those who were once near, Have drifted far away. Yet none have come closer From a distance. Though it calls out, No response echoes back. All around, only the waves of time break— — Nirendranath Chakraborty   With the southern wind swelling its sails, it stirs with a grinding sound. A faint tremor runs through the electric wires, sharpening the steel blades with lightning speed. Beneath deserted bridges, trains thunder and fade, and over this noise the mercantile winds drift from the suburbs into Calcutta.   Steel rails stretch through dust and mud—within this narrow confinement lies its existence. Slow, ponderous, burdened with the weight of antiquity, it cannot match the pace of this unruly city.   This is an age of momentum, of kinetic power. None wait for the ones who lag behind. In this city, the fallen cannot drag others down with them—everyone rushes forward, colliding headlong or slipping back, sometimes frozen like despondent boulders. Motion is life; stillness i...