Beside the street, narrow lane. It was made visible to me, only in dark. For some of us, it was a real silent corner, good for bypassing the humdrum of the city. Time passed well with pot and chasing the hole, with rabbit and other dreamy petrifactions. Time was bifurcated; it took the shape of many, not being one with itself. This was certainly enjoyable, as couple of hours took shape of a whole decade. Everything stopped, and then lethargically began, stopped again. Except for the dark faces of us, no image was visible. As if, someone has put a knife to torn apart all the images out there to be grasped and put into our cognizance! Ah, cognizance! Too good a word to be thought of at those haunting places. Even the boredom was so acute that tearing apart everything would be too much to think of. Though I can’t deny, some of us thought that also. The biggest trip was to look at each other and then at ourselves, as if unbelievably we were still there, yet nothing will get us out of those dark corners, at least in this life. There was violence, quite rampant. It was the dark shadowy tree that lay just outside the half damaged wall of the open area we used to sit. There was nothing living in the tree, in moon lit hours, it look ghostly. Its shadow would fall on us, watching it, our boredom was multiplied. Time was visible, encapsulated hour by hour. It was stretchable, as if one hour was equal to thousand days. Things would just not move, even our bodies resembled this cosmic boredom with no interlude. The space itself was so mesmerizing and yet filled with such cosmic height that time occurred only through it, the underworld. Young R., my friend, presided over the half judged establishment. The law enforcement people knew of this where about, but they won’t dare to break our spell. Some broken prodigy would sometime sing out of compulsion to break the silence, his song added to the silence of the place. Nearby there was a half broken factory gate, that was the only entry. The factory was closed then, for more than a decade. It looked like a palace, as if some princess resided there, who would also be like the queen of hoodlum, who rode her chariot through madness and violent eidetic consumption. Was there any knowledge out there, waiting for our cognizance? It was unfathomable boredom; it was a sea where magnet like time seduced us to that place. Time passed, with insoluble image, yet the very image was put aside, for a time, together with elopement.
I visited the place a few years back. There is a children’s nursery school now, and also I have learned, the factory has reopened. No more encroachment there for being at one, unburdened.
* I am indebted for this nomenclature to my professor Soumyabrata Choudhury and Kamala Harris.
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