Last Christmas
written by: Moinak Dutta
Christmas always evokes a pied beauty in me. It makes me sing songs at uncanny hours of the day (‘Last Christmas’ being the one most prominent, apart from ‘Let it snow’ and one highly romantic and love-laden song from a Hindi flick).
It reminds me of a tour to a place one December end where I chanced to celebrate the day of the arrival of the babe with the local people, at a chapel. The chapel was decked by tiny bulbs covered by colorful paper. The village, a hamlet, had a population then perhaps not more than one hundred and fifty. Hence the community was close-knit and the celebration had been humble and homely.
Another year, at Bow Barracks, Christmas brought to me a lot of booze, cakes and the sweetest kiss I ever received straight on my lips from the girl for whom I fell. The evening had been dreamy and the night most enchanting. There had been a group of singers sitting in the courtyard of a house, singing merrily. Their half intoxicated voices creating music and rhythm in my inebriated ears.
The smell of cakes, pastries, chocolate, wine, flowers, lipgloss, apple pies, muffins, roasted turkeys, all come together, in Christmas, making me the most vulnerable creature, susceptible to love, longing and nostalgia.
Christmas would invariably remind me of another thing, a particular couple, albeit fictional, Jim and Della and the Three Great Magi. Every Christmas gift that I would give or receive, would remind me of that story of O Henry.
- Three Love Poems - February 14, 2022
- Notebook - February 26, 2019
- Last Christmas - December 17, 2018
