A Heartless Apology.

I ran over your dog today.

Little pup frothing

With infantile excitement,

reduced to a subject, mute and immune

to your desperate cries and rants.

“Thou art the greatest heartless,

Man that ever walked!”

-You screamed, and let

my chest welcome the pounding,

of your distressed fists.

Dazed,

By my own inability,

To feel and be felt,

I let my eyes wander,

And my vacant mind to ponder,

Upon a suitable make-believe,

Apology.

When,

A foreign heart,

Strangely familiar,

Tucked carelessly among,

 Your tidy belongings,

Waved a silent greeting;

And the crests, around

an eerie black hollow, in my chest,

curled up in non-anticipation,

of anticipation.

The pounding continues.

-Palash

April 2012, Lumding.

Notes on some days past.

The past few days have been unnervingly busy for me. With a new festival called “year-ending”, we so have to compulsorily celebrate, I am almost beginning to wonder if it’s April 1^st when we should be wishing each other’s happy New Year.

Nevertheless, a lot of snippets of news have passed by in the recent past. Some of them; I wonder, could have a more profound impact in the geo-political and cultural space we occupy and breed ourselves in, at least more than bits of information on why Aishwarya’s baby doesn’t have Abhisek’s eyes and etc. I couldn’t help not referencing some of them below:

• ·         Government spooked over an un-informed movement of two Army units towards the capital.

Good. At least there’s something that can spook this government. Nobody wants to live in a country under a coup, but with literally lakhs of crores of rupees flushed down the toilet in scams; and the government seemingly unfazed (read PM) by it all, it’s good to know that there might have been something going on that stole the sleep of those scumbags.

• ·         Mamata strong-arms Congress into rolling back passenger fare hikes and axing the Railway Minister.

The equations are simple. I am one of your largest coalition partners. It is principally because of me that you get to milk the country. The Railways is a traditional hunting ground for us coalition partners. You screw the nation for all you want, we just screw the Railways.

On a more serious note, I have been personally processing railway freight bills (for transporting petroleum products across to our customers) for the last one and a half year now, and in this period, they have been increased by almost 40%! It makes me sad to think that at this moment, some dumb bloke, who just travels 5 times a year by rail, but uses petrol or diesel almost daily, is happy thinking he has saved 200 rupees a year on his train journeys. Not for a moment wondering why the heck is his fuel bill going up and up. Or perhaps why that stupid goods train across the tracks gets to move ahead while his passenger train just eats up time on the station. That’s Rail-politics for you!

• ·         CIL to sell coal at prices below market-rate to private power producers.

It’s only left for someone to shout out loud that something is seriously, seriously wrong here. CIL is one of the few remaining jewels in the government’s crown. And we are getting to see it mortgaged. To cash hungry, power starving industrialists. There’s no market like a free market. But a market must have its framework of rules, its ethics. That’s where the government decides it’s time to get blindfolded.

• ·         Cow eats answer sheets of Class X examinees of SEBA.

Someone please stuff a few of those cow-eaten rolls down Dr. Himanta’s mouth. Students are already devastated, and no one would like to hear his banter for even a second more.

(- Though all of the above items in bullets are true, the lines following are my personal statements only. Not to be taken even for a moment on a sentimental note. So what if you love Didi? You still get to be my friend!)

-Palash

10th April'12, Lumding.

Silence.

The word itself has got unnerving undertones. Like something that was meant to happen but did not. A subtle manifestation of somebody who just ceased to exist. A wisp of feeling that got trapped inside, like a fresh twig of a sapling caught in the roots of the big old oak. It would perhaps be months before it got a chance to have a peek outside.

Silence is the music of melancholy.

On a more unassuming note though, silence always has had a sound. Kalam’s words resonate here: “There’s no darkness, it’s just the absence of light”. There has never been silent stillness; silence is just the absence of perceived sound. 

I hear a sound when the agile lizard ticks to warn its prey. But the sound of its soft scuttling feet rubbing on the walls escapes my ears.

I hear a sound when the elated frogs croak an ode to the monsoon.  But I don’t hear them catching many a lazy fly.

The chime sticks in my room cling and clang against themselves when a gust hits. But with the breeze blowing and rubbing against them, I hear nothing.

Such is the sound of silence.

A world of activities goes on this way in the world around us, encased in an ocean of calmness. Free from perception and the pollution from perception.

As time treads on the mill, more and more noise builds up walls around us. Take a day, a time out, for shutting down the noise, scaling the walls and just plunging, free-fall into the well of silence.

"And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence”  (-Simon and Garfunkel)

-Palash

Tale of a Wallpaper

It is all about wallpapers. No, I am not talking about the papers you plaster your rooms with.

And yes, I am talking about a desktop wallpaper.

Starting right from the "in-built" classic range of choices, to jaw-dropping pictures of my favourite bands, movie-stars & exotic locales; each one of them has been a tried and tested choice to give me that perfect dose of  welcome whenever I revive my laptop to sink into after a day of hard labour at work.

Few weeks back, I came across a photo of my school taken from where Angshuman's home (school mates would know) used to be. From where we so religiously used to sneak into the playground for a game of cricket every evening. It was a nice clear shot, and I wasted no time in downloading and making it my desktop wallpaper.

Now, there is a thing with wallpapers. Everytime, your browser hangs, or your media player crashes, you have to bear infinite seconds of  "staring into the wallpaper" before normalcy returns. And in the last few weeks, I have had to do that a lot.

At first, it was just a click of my school and the playground. Then, I began thinking- "There's no one about in the field. What if there was one of our football matches going on? With two iron pillars in the fencing on each side being the goal posts? With everyone doing nothing but just running and running after the ball? With some die-hard enthusiasts attempting beckham's free-kick, only to find it landing on the games' teacher's bums?"

Slowly, and amazingly, I found that each time I opened my wallpaper, wisps of life were breathing into it. I began to see us sharing tiffins sitting under the bokul tree. I saw us running helter-skelter after a stray ball hit a bee-hive in the water tank nearby. I began to hear our noises in the corridors, infinite little pockets of sound so not in harmony. I overheard the principal scolding a boy with skinny knees for dragging his feet and making that "ssssoosssooo" sound on the slippery floor.

Nostalgia was something different. This rather, was a routine. And a little game I got to play (each time my net connection gave me the finger). Each day was something different. Yesterday, we lost in that rumaal-ball catching game after tiffin. Today, a bee's poop stained my blazer. Tomorrow, we are going to practise on that on-existant stage for wednesday's drama.

Bewildering, but it was a sea of memories that that wallpaper of mine aroused in the last few days. I just hope the candle will burn more longer than ever this time around.

*(And those two lizards on the wall continue to fight over who gets to eat the bug)

The Forgotten Traveller

An earthly triangle,

of homebound avians,

Streaking across the evening sky.

Bathed in the advancing dim light,

Soaring towards the quondam horizon, as

A rainbow from the nascent monsoon,

throws a million colours

Into that emblazoned journey.

Staring across the unearthly sky,

Echoes of a distant ecstatic flutter of wings

Reach my wistful ears.

I secure those jealous senses,

Lest they shower undeserved wrath,

Over the joyous birds bathed in home-bound colour.

For, a home I have not,

A Heart I have not.

A voice within resonates differently though,

An aura of worlds foreign,

Whisper into my magnified ears.

Visions,

Of dust and grime, of rain and flood

of untold stories and forgotten shrines,

pass on a secret hitherto unknown,

Yes, you’re a traveler, just trapped in time and space!

-Palash