Today.

Magpies dancing,
Busy body ants,
Flying cockroaches,
Sober afternoon,
Absent sunlight.
I am having a monsoon.

Spoilt precedents dancing,
Busy body kingmakers,
Flying nominations,
Sober citizens,
Absent common sense,
My country is choosing a president.

I bang a row of teeth against a slanted light post,
a drop of my country's blood falls on the dirty sandy host.

-15/06/12

Lumding.

In Hiding.

I now marvel,
Perhaps foolishly,
But with a sarcastic understanding,
Not at your modest speech,
Or your never-ending silence,
But at those undercurrents of chance,
That let;
Me be me
And you be you.

In that fated soil,
13 across 13 across 8,
Which never beheld you,
As I used to do;
The rains have subsided,
The storms have lulled,
And the stillness in the air,
Spreads silence like wildfire.

Everyone inside fears,
even an extra trickle of unnecessary fate,
that would disturb this lazy comforting calm.

Meanwhile,
I lie cocooned in a crazy atmosphere of noise,
and pandemonium,
Lest those sounds of silence come looking for me again,
hiding in the attic of egos,
Trying forever,
Not to be me.
Even if you are still you.




-Palash
June 2012, Lumding.

The Walls.

Many years back, Roger Waters had written a searing melodrama about a bloke called Pink. Rock star/Entertainer Pink had had too much of everything in his life, too much adulation, too much applause, too much publicity. The painful events in his life, which were not so obvious to the fast changing world, had built up a wall around him, brick by brick. Pink fell into self oblivion, no longer being the person he was meant to be.

The tale of walls assuming significance in our perspective of life is nothing new. They are not mere structures of brick, stone and mortar. I perceive a building has walls because it wants to have a stand on its own, its own separate demarcated existence on geography. 

From the nuggets of history, examples can be picked up from the Great Wall of China, a 2000 year old 8000 km long magnificent fortification of a kingdom. A barrier to nomadic intruders. A stamp of an authoritative civilization. More poignant and symbolic is the Berlin Wall. Antifaschistischer Schutzwall (German) was built by the GDR, against their claim of protecting East Berlin from the purportedly still not denazified West Berlin. More than a wall, it was a bloody cut across the face of Berlin. The myriad murals on the west german side stood silent testimony to the thousands of east germans who tried and died failing an escape from their own motherland. 

There are walls around and within us. Like an inseparable part of our compatmentalized identities. What someone is to me, may not be the same someone to you. Its just not only a matter of vivid perception, but what people are and what they really let others know. Little peeled off slices of memories, of childhood, of teenage, of being adults; and the experiences from them, sustain and build the bricks of those walls. Sometimes, these walls break, and sometimes, they just keep getting built and built.

Late into the night, I watched the Berlin Wall being clobbered down, amidst hysterical euphoria. People hugging, celebrating and waving comfetti into the still german air. I glanced into my own walls, and whispered a soothing lullaby to myself, lest they collapse in the apparent apprehension. “I need you now” I told.

It will just be the bricks that will have to go.

“Walk up and down outside the wall.
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands.
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand.
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.

"Isn't this where....”

(Outside the Wall- Waters)

-Palash

May 2012, Lumding.

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