[A poem inspired by Basu Chatterjee’s film, Chhoti Si Baat (1976)]
The rosรฉ afternoon embroiders its lenses
Into Cafรฉ Samovar’s glass, as an apprentice of experiences.
A brine-heaved breeze counts and apportions
Preliberal coins in bohemian pockets.
Porcelain verandahs still keep European names,
Like flowers squeezed and flattened
In bootlegged translated romantic yellowbacks.
The feeble chuckle of diners and windchimesโ
the future canvases of small domestic grimes.
Trains hush and hoot and tremble and trundle,
Spilling out suburbs like the bundled letters we hide
From new acquaintances. Boys with station-scarred faces
Reading newspapers sideways by the Wheelerโs stall
To look literate and tall for photographs. The irate
Arabian Sea exhales to saturate an economy,
Whose fears are presently dissolved in the clink of teacups.
Creases on her saree map the route to Nasik
On his palm. His eyes have room for only her knuckles.
Men in checked shirts trade silences for ceramic plates.
The cafรฉ with its large-veined balcony-plants hones
The new idiom of nuclear homes; and the old bones
Of the city whisper to its Gothic statutes and mildewed inns.
The feeling is indescribable. It is still like a manicured fountain;
Like wine that leaves an ephemeral stain on fragile glass.
It haunts and rejuvenates. It lingers like a remembered smear
Of smoke that you seek out on a bleached polaroid.
… dedicated to the memory of Indian actor, Asrani (1941-2025), who starred in Chhoti Si Baat; the iconic cafe that the film’s scenes are set in was the erstwhile Cafe Samovar, in Bombay.
Photograph Courtesy: IMDB and Basu Chatterjee’s Chhoti Si Baat (1976)
Arup K. Chatterjee 