The Rain Kissed Eyes

It is one of those rainy nights of Kolkata.
The city almost trembled in the storm now drenched in the rain.
And as the ripe evening slowly transformed into night the shades of the city became strangely quiet.
Almost an eerie silence came to reign.
Like an unexpected visitor on the road the last tram stopped and the bell ringing as if to notify the symbol of life in the roads which are prominent for hassles and hazels.
Instead a strange vapour of rain illuminating in the air.
The wind though inviting with her body full of wet droplets just like a woman coming out all wet with only her gown covering her naked body.
The gown can cover all but not her fragrance.
Here too the winds spreading in her own the scent of the night.
I walked through the known roads.
Through those streets where I shared all my emotion from childhood to my youth.
The very street knew when I first wrote my first poetry.
The day when I first kissed my love.
The night when I lost my father.
The moment my first poetry published.
Also those innumerable moments when I walked through it with different emotions..sometimes of sorrow sometimes of deadly struggle..sometimes again of dreams..often in a mood of unexplainable shades can be termed as daily chores.
The street knows me all.
And then the lane.
The street lamps though in the haze of rain now glowing in a sudden excitement of seeing a known face.
The shadow of the trees kissing the street lamp.
The shadow of twinkling lanes falling on pitch coloured road often broken with a perturbed map of open potholes.
From where the rainwater now swirling in.
The trees looking green.
Fresh.
The known houses of neighbor all with windows closed or half open.
There is hardly any sound.
Except the roaming stranger.
The rain.
The sky though full of clouds.
Lightning flashing in regular intervals.
Beside the tea stall of Tapan the row of garaged rickshaws.
One rickshaw puller sleeping within the shade itself.
The street dogs sheltering in some cosy place.
No cars moving.
No bus.
The last tram has gone.
As I am the last passanger of the last tram.
There is my house.
Just a feet away.
But I stopped.
As my eyes fell upon a different picture.
For the first time I am seeing a man sleeping in the verandah.
Where every day at what hour may he dozes off sitting.
With his begging bowl.
Bairagi!
We call him by that name.
I started walking again but turned back.
I can see that in this different night when the whole city came to standstill struck by torrential rain and thunder a man..who never managed to sleep..has found his most treasured gift..
The sleep of the night.
And with each drops of rain kissing the trembling eyelids of the beggar Bairagi it looks like the rain has given him back
Almost a comfort and a break away from all his pains and troubles..
And may be..
The homeless shelterless Bairagi seeing his long accumulated dreams through the soft touch of rain!
I only uttered slowly..
'Sleep Bairagi..sleep!'