Aerodrome

The sky was painted azure, like a sea light plume of smoke screen. It was not possible to discern the sun, or the perhaps the moon; two painted discs on the sky oblivious to my earth. I headed home on the highway, watching airplanes fly above my window. I noticed the runway was short, and that it needed incredibly skilled pilots to land the 737s on a stretch of concrete less than a kilometre. Perhaps I could have called my friends from school instead, and drawn dinosaurs on the runway with our stolen chalk pencils. Just like old times. The airplanes could have waited. Our beasts on asphalt were always friendly, and seemed shy; almost apologetic of themselves being big brutes that were supposed to growl and snort and howl and scare little boys to death. For all we knew, inside our first grade fantasies, they probably sipped on candy floss the moment we turned our backs on them.

I made a corner, and narrowly missed hitting a herd of goats. “I have no business being here, sorry I disturbed your nap!” The goats waved back, and went back to sleep. A kid pulled itself away from the herd and stared on to the highway. I remember being saddened by its big black eyes, like empty space waiting for nothing. A group of children playing nearby swooped down upon the kid, and fed him plantain leaves and asked him to chase their ball. The kid did, and happiness rained like daffodils that afternoon.

I had dreamt mountains that dawn, mounds of snow underneath which nine patriots slept peacefully, heroed to death. The wind inside me howled itself shrill. Today, I didn’t know where to go, the plantation seemed too close by and I could still use the afternoon. In the distance, I could only make out the hills faintly, just about so; even though it was March and the monsoon was still a month away. I remember thinking perhaps hills were like memories too, they get blurred over time. Even though you have a clear sky and a clear mind and clear dreams. One could never tell with memories. They are weird.

I had two smokes and waited awhile to watch the sun go down over the paddy, slowly like a lost estuary that doesn’t know which way to flow

.

Long back when we were kids, our father made us go watch the fields and the cattle after school. We had to count them, rope them and tug them back home. Those days, one didn’t have time to watch suns go down. Our feet trudged on mud, cake dried by the time we returned. I and my brother took turns at the pond. The bank was slippery, and we had to be careful not to miss a step. The still waters used to reflect the moon and two stars we had named our names. Full minutes used to pass by us staring into the water before someone called us back. We hurried with the pond and went back to our civilization, silent as the night.

Those days one didn’t have time to watch suns go down. Those days, we had a moon and two stars all to ourselves.

The evening set in. I drove on.

-Palash
Feb'16, Tinsukia

Neverland

Olivia purple,
violets aplenty,
backyards running amok!

Clockwork time themselves,
to a pretty foolishness,
of belching luncheons,
and disguised shoemakers.

Stony milestones,
Inked history on yellow chalk,
prim & proper,
are better off as frog nests today.

They ride on river waves,
You and me a 100 years ago,
We are happy.

Nothing moves here,
this otiose afternoon.

Birds from neerlandia fly by,
obtused & misdirected,
and land in the world of Olivia purples,
never to cry,
and never to leave.



-Palash Sharma
April'2015, Tinsukia

An Aged Shadow

One day,

I see a shadow,

Pass by a distant door,

Padlocked, wrinkled and moth eaten,

Both of them.

The glum old man,

My shadow of that monsoon afternoon,

Watches by a corner,

As a sunshine plays with the rain.

A silent shroud of silence,

Lies over the afternoon,

Like the flies,

Dead and gone,

On his chest of many buried secrets.

A hat,

A broken harmonica,

And a few stolen memories,

Soak in a solemn stupor,

Of a melted conscience.

A greying riverbank,

He just lets time pass by,

To watch that rainbow smile over the sunshine,

Again and again,

Again and forever.

We storytellers lived,

Till time passed us by,

Like moths circling a candle of dust,

Into a whirlpool of the world,

And they say,

He did die smiling.

-Palash

Jan’14, Lumding.

Presence

 An auburn sky of yesterday,

and those 24 drops of rain that fell,
spawned an eager lemon tree,
prickles and peanuts on my shelves.

A lazy monsoon today,
of those 24 drops of rain that fell,
trickles down my teaks,
as a hurrying catabatic makes way through.

Suspended in 12 minutes of fame, and 12 of despair,

A still silent world of mine lost in itself,

The impatient sand dunes cajole themselves out,

Through my reluctant hourglass,

Air tight dreams dribbling inside.

Long away, A mild breeze somewhere  finds itself.

-Palash

October'2013, Lumding

Slashed!

Take a Someone.

Take an Eric Clapton. 9 times of 10, You’ll cry like never before.
Take a Jimi Hendrix. 9 times of 10, You’ll feel high like never before.

Take a Jimmy Page. 9 times of 10, you’ll feel your head banging like never before.

Now take him.

10 times of 10 (yeah, even for those half dead morons who didn’t understand Page, Clapton or Jimi), one wouldn’t know what hit them in the first place! He’ll sear and slice through you, like knife through butter, like a bullet through a heart.

What was a whole of you before,  will only be a part of you after. Everything else will be slashed away. Nothing will matter apart from the thing, whatever that is.

You’ll keep wishing there actually were no words left to speak, because all that would suddenly seem to be so grossly unnecessary. He would go on wailing and wailing, on top of pianos, makeshift stages, and barren church fronts. With each piece, a part of you would feel more and more alive, and more and more desperate all the same. It will reach a crescendo, peaking at the highest of notes that can be beckoned, and it will not fall down that easy too.

The wails will fight. With each other, and then with their end. They will die, but they will not give up.

Ever!

That will be the day, you’ll wake up to that one emotion.

That will be the day, you’ll wake up to Slash!

-Palash

September’2013, Lumding.

Visions of a father

An odd irritation crawls up from somewhere behind, and decides to settle in the back of my neck. 

 

I am in a void. Not bored, not exited, not up to anything at all, but oscillating somewhere in space and in time. Blaring horns of the Locos nearby are somehow lacking in confidence. Unsure of themselves and their audience, they pass by without being heeded. 

No Lizard ticks, No owls hoot. No music in the phones or the mind. 

The clock inside though, ticks on unabated. Where it will end, is a question that question itself can’t offer any answers to. I have infinity in front of me, and a sheer wall on my back. 

Tired of thinking, I let loose. The silence gets additive. I dwell in such regions of my mind I never knew existed.

I see the Man. Chocolate Brown Leathers. Havana Cigars. Piercing eyes. Wild, mad temperament lurking behind a silent exterior, waiting to be provoked, and justice to be delivered. Reclining in an ease of moral evil. And an offer that can’t be refused.

I see the Godfather.

 I see Al Pacino.