HOPE & some Ramblings.

Leafing over some unfinished manuscripts, I noticed over a few months last year, a lot of material on "hope" as a theme had accumulated on my notebook . Most of it unfinished though (perhaps due to ongoing undercurrents), but still browsing over them, made me rethink and for a moment, rewire my thought processes.

Everything happens for a reason. Not necessarily the way one wants them too. Everyone is priceless. Lets respect that.

·       

1. (Prose)              "A  slight shift in perspective can help adjust the focal distance of your life's lens to the right degree. Things of the future are now thankfully blurred. And I am suddenly short sighted."

I see the air I need to breathe.
I see the seconds I need to time.
Much thankfully not the hollow years,
I still have to painfully live.

I see me. Thats it.

·         2. (Poem) The Lens.

By the cobble stoned pavement,
there sprang an "odds and ends" store,
I stopped by from work,
and my errands with time.

The keeper got me a lens,
from somewhere behind the shiny cobwebs,
A one I couldnt even peep through straight.

"But how do I make it work?"
"You don't. It's an artefact of life."

The day over,
The errands done,
The lens soon found its place among my own cobwebs.

Not later than yesterday now,
when your memories,
stole that brick in my shaky embankment,
The lens resurfaced in the waters.

And now I see,
how it does make me soar,
upwards and backwards all around.

Faded and Focussed,
I am not me anymore.

-20/06/2012

·         3. Hope. (Prose)

Sometimes, there will be a persistant knocking of that past on the door. Pretending you are away will only add to the apprehension simmering inside. Do let her in, have a cup of talk and two words of coffee. Loose your thinking capacities and turn into a bumbling idiot who knows nothing about the past or the future. Turn into the you of today. And then show her the door.

Now there's a knock on the door,
of the past on my tail,
I so forgot to cover my tracks,
heck, I'll just go and then sail again.

(C) Ramblings.

·         4. Hope.(Lyrics, Poem)

"And through the window in the wall
Comes streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning"

(C) Waters, Gilmour,Wright, Mason, 1970.

No,
Don't drown this drink of today,
In the hopelesness of tomorrow,
I made it for you, soul,
calculated the percentages and all,
And hope I got it just right.

This drink,
perhaps is not the one,
you were looking for,
The prized alchemic potion,
to a destination of nowhere.

This drink,
This time,
This place,
Has its own beautiful coordinates.

I just hope you see it.

(C) High me. 2012.

·         5. Hope. (Poem)

This back,
my back,
starts acting up today.

Just when,
that rain,
this rain,
starts, and
keeps falling.

Just when,
those dreams,
my dreams,
dared trespass into,
the falling rain of today.

Ah!. Thank thee,
shooting stars in the spine,
for I have no time for dreams,
nor for rains.

-25.06.2012

·         6. Hope 2. (Poem)

In hope you will find your nemesis,

For it will be easy to drown in despair,

in the djinns of hopeless behaviour;

But it will be a rebel chromosome,

that will do you in,

take your wings,

and make you fly,

from the comfort of the velvety marsh,

And fall you may,

Burn and singe you may,

But,

It wil be a shooting star in the sky, say!

-17/07/2012

Reading Room 2 : Midnight's Children

Yes. The clock has stricken. The countdown has ended. And finally I am not me anymore. I am two. The one before and the one after.

“Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two three, four hundred million five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as , all in good time , they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until a thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it’s the privilege and the curse of midnight’s children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace.”

Many ‘times’ stolen out from hundreds of over packed schedules over the past one year had been used in trying to read and comprehend the whole idea called the “Midnight’s Children”. It is only then I realised that the above last lines come closer than anything to describing for real the many multitudes of the book.

I started it as a fantasy novel (at least that was the impression of the first few chapters), of a story being narrated back in the timeline, of a story that begins one morning by the side of a lake in Kashmir. There was no getting away from the time and date, the date of Saleem’s birth: The stroke of Midnight, 15^th of August 1947. Even then, Rushdie’s magic forces you to concentrate on things and events that that so seamlessly swing back and forth in reference, in importance to everything going on.

Towards the middle, slowly the realistic, historical side to the story begins to unfold. I recall here the movie “Butterfly Effect”, where everything, even the flutter of a wing, is said to have profound consequences. Every little move, or thought in Saleem’s soul is tied to the story of India. India is Saleem and Saleem is India. How the author manages, in spite of weaving fiction, reality, history-all into India’s path breaking events in the Timeline, adding to that his own take and views on every situation is beyond comprehension. It’s like walking on a tightrope with a fire beneath. Pure mastery!

It was only when I was into my last few chapters did I realise (from some other 3^rd source though) that MC is not only the book with all that hype; it is also a loose albeit fantastical biography of some events in Rushdie’s life. A total full circle.

I had to admit. Midnight’s children is THE book to read. A surreal magic realism. A total tangent to everything that is India and everything that it is not. All through the eyes of a young man’s life.

“Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past,

the more concrete and plausible it seems-but as you approach the present,

It inevitably seems more and more incredible..”

-Palash

November’2012, Lumding.

The Scream

The element of surprise. Thats the catch phrase to any good scream. Not for others, for yourself. One must surprise one's own instincts by the scream. The sound should start from somewhere behind the head, just below the cerebellum, which almost always is the garbage bin of your life. Like a fast moving avalanche, the scream should build up in pitch and volume, reaching a maxima in below 1.5 second. That moment, that instant, everything else must be a blur in the background. There should be nothing but the scream, the scream and the scream.

You can always later experiment with the type of pitch and length of the scream. My personal favourite is a sharp shrill tone a scale above the octave lasting for 5 secs. Somehow, It feels like tearing pages and pages of paper. Writing endlessly, and the scream, and then the tearing. Nothing feels more purifying than the scream at that time.


For that one moment, that instant, I actually revel in absolute chaos.

-Palash
October'12, Lumding

The Puppet Master

Stuck?
Sewn?
or Safe?
in between the pleats of an Italian Saree,
Absurd white with plum blue streaks,

He lurks and plots,
Hides and plots,
Even parties and plots.

When the god mother goes off to mass,
praying for the prosperity of her immortal dynasty,
Queens and King makers in a sorry democracy,
He finds his solace in the pleats once again,
this time a smiling damsel,
wearing the angel moon of her tyrant grandmother.

No one dares question the crooked V of Victory,
The drugged dove of peace,
The resounding slap of the Hand,
And How the Nehrus' became Gandhis'
And with it, came how,
the country's favourite rubber stamp of recognition.
"Gandhi!"


He is now away,
hidden from stern, hopeless public eyes,
Frightened no, a trifle anxious maybe,
But, So what if the shadow of the pleats,
left a half moon on the conning scalp?
In a country of a million of millionaires,
and a billion of ragpickers,
He buys (and sells at 600%) the strings to pull,
The Wise Puppet-Master.



-Palash
October'2012, Lumding.

A Soiree

In an evening quiet,
Four people meet around a smoke,
teacups glistening against the light,
the fireplace throws at their jewelry,
and plan,
a social plunder.

Dark shadows throw themselves on the wall,
Desperately dancing in delight,
For few good days remain it seems,
And time doesn’t ever last long enough.

The walls loom menacingly,
Smug and uptight,
Their decree sealed:
A fortress meant to bury a secret,
The world would demand to know,
One disaster day.

The conversations don’t last,
But the teas in the cups do,
Perhaps there were more pressing matters at hand…

The shadows finally arise,
Float to the door,
And bid dark solemn farewells.

On the table behind,
Two cigar stubs,
Last remaining embers of the soiree,
Let the horror of the planning sink in,
And finally,
Rightfully,
decide it’s better to die…



-Palash
September’2012, Lumding

An Afternoon in Fall

The Sun riding on the wake of its crescendo,
Not a soul in sight, on the metalled roads breathing fire.

No more the lazy chill of the morning,
No more the insomniac warmth of the night.

The birds are finally seated for lunch,
The cattle are busy staring at shadows retreating.

No time for crazy dreams or lofty hopes,
No time for solemn rumination or  silent desolation.

Its the only time, everything is finally real, for once!
Its an afternoon in fall.



 - Palash
September'2012, Lumding

A Night of Fate

The night had set in early that day. It almost always did. 

Tucked away in an obscure countryside in Bengal, Keshavpur was a small semi-rural set-up. A beaten down railway station, two old rails cutting across the seemingly endless paddy fields en-marked in inadequately small plots by short embankments of wet mud, 20 odd families in their thatched huts, and the forest department area-an inspection bungalow, 2 quarters and a check post on the rugged road which marked the end of habitation and led to that narrow trail snaking into the forests and up the jutting hills.

“And it is not even 8!” Aditya marvelled at how time cunningly tuned in to the demands of nature. He had arrived at Keshavpur in the morning, on a department jeep along with a local boy, Prosanto, a driver cum helper in the Inspection Bungalow. He had been putting off this inspection for months. Ultimately running out of excuses, he finally had to take the 10 hour trip to the place.

***

On the verandah, by the light of a flickering hurricane lamp, Aditya savoured the silence of the night. The rains had just subsided and the smell of wet earth was pouring into the air. The constant chirping of the crickets was broken only by an occasional raucous horn from one of the bull frogs in the compound. He took a light and smoked away. 

A dimmed brightness came from one of the quarters. The bedroom in all probability. Faint, broken sounds of a sweet lullaby floated on into Aditya’s ears. 

“A Lovely voice...” In the stillness of the night, Aditya had forgotten how thoughts uncontrollably turn into words.

“That is Sanyal Didi, Aditya Babu..” Aditya’s nightly reverie was broken by Prosanto’s contribution to the happenings. “Mrs. Neha Sanyal”.

“They live all alone here?”

“Yes. Mahesh Babu is the in-charge of the four check posts around this area. It’s been a year since he came here. They married around four months back. The child is from her previous marriage.”

“She was married before?” His interest stirred, Aditya felt the lullaby-voice coming in more clearly now.

“Yes. She was expecting at the time when her former husband was convicted of a murder. He got into bad company, they said. Since he had no family, she went to live with her parents in Belampur. Two years later, her father too died. She had no option but to remarry, for the sake of her newborn and her ailing mother”

Prosanto’s matter-of-fact narration of Mrs. Neha’s story, added more poignancy to the night. For a change, Aditya began to sense, how, in the midst of such commonplace circumstances, there was always something that was distanced from normal. Something that could take hold of someone’s life by its wings, and put it on an entirely different course. Tired of his musings, he decided to sleep.

Around midnight, Aditya’s subconscious was on a roll. Tonight, it was a car with him on the wheel. He was fleeing from someone he didn’t know. Downhill, swerving dangerously around the tight corners and finally the cliff emerged out of nowhere. He missed like every time. Falling into the unfathomable depths of the gorge, he felt his insides rising.

The silence of the midnight was disturbed by a scream.

**

Aditya woke up with a start, even before he made it to the bottom of the fall. He heard the shrill cries of a woman, interspersed with the crying of a baby.

“Someone has broken into the other house, Aditya Babu!” Prosanto came running out to the porch. 

“We must call the nearby chowki! Get me that telephone!” After 3 failed attempts, Aditya was explaining to a reluctant sleepy havildar the events of the night in Keshavpur.

His attention now on the house, he realized the sounds were coming in more muffled tones now. Something inside of him, perhaps an irrational pity for Mrs. Neha, willed him to go and save her. He wasted no more time. Groping in the darkness, and cursing the erratic power supply, he took the poker from the kitchen and slowly stole up to the house.

The sounds were now coming from the front room. Nobody heard the click as the door slowly opened and Aditya’s shadow entered. 

“Please go! Please leave us alone! I beg of you!”

“But Neha...”

Nobody got to hear anything more than those last two words. Aditya flung his full might on to the burly form on his right. It fell with a thud. More shadows entered the room now, perhaps of the policemen from the chowki. Two of them carelessly picked up the man lying on the floor and dragged him to their jeep. Aditya almost began to revel in self-pride.

For some reason though, Mrs. Neha’s screams never stopped.

**

On the doorstep of that little house, Aditya stumbled over a broken chappal. Bending down to throw away the last dirty remnant of the intruder, he noticed a little toy in the corner, behind the door hinges. And a hand written note, stuck on it by some cheap glue.

“Neha...Hope you are well... Perhaps I may never get to meet you again, so I took a chance at an escape...2 years now and they still do not believe that I did not commit the murder. Not that it matters anymore. They now say I am dying of some disease. I am tired of these games now.... How is the baby?... Will you please give this to her? ...Who knows when we’ll meet again....

Time stretched out in long guilty painful moments as Aditya dragged himself to the Inspection Bungalow, the note caressed in his fist. Mrs. Neha’s sobs continued to pound the night. Even the crickets and the frogs gave their music a miss.

Except a content Prosanto, still proud at his master’s bravery, nobody slept that night in that small corner of Keshavpur.

-Palash

August 2012, Lumding