The radio at the quaint tea-shack next to the bus-stop was playing that old, old Burman classic again. It had been such a long time since i heard that song...
Ruby Roy...I had always mused about her. She is the most enigmatic, most elusive yet the most real persona in literature. She's not Bonolata Sen--that fragment of artistic muse which is unreal, intangible. She's everyone's next door neighbour. The woman everyone knows but nobody can decipher...Every para has its Ruby Roy...women her age gossip about her, young girls are fascinated by her and adolescent boys wait impatiently for Six-o'Clock evenings when she returns home from work. You can see her alighting from the bus on hot summer days... the faint jingle of her nupur echo in the stillness of the afternoon sun.
She smells of crisp cotton sarees and Rain.
And a hint of Lavender perfume perhaps?
She's the quintessence of every woman:hovering like a will-o'the wisp on the edge of the Imagination...caught between the Ordinary and the Ethereal.
She's every boy's first Muse.The pervasive presence in all juvenile romantic poetry.
And She's every boy's first heartbreak...
"Mone pore Ruby Roy kobit'ae tomake ekdin koto kore dekechi/
Aj haye Ruby Roy deke bolo amake,
tomake kothai jeno dekhechi...."
