confab

Love
“Dear Disha,
I hope this letter reaches you and finds you in great comfort. I am knocking the blind doors in the furnace of my inconsequential repentance. I tried hard not to bother you. I can imagine the condition you may be in. But all proved futile. I can not convince myself of itself. That stormy night drained myself out of me. My predicament is that I can not blame anyone but myself for all that. I find myself unable to love me without you being my soul. But I am not a stone hearted murderer who kills his soul first and then other lives. Think me as a fool. I broke the pearl to test its purity. And now the broken pieces have scattered and lost. They are still shining. I did not see the beauty; I was examining its worth. I admit that I was an undeserving fool. But think of the punishment. The pieces are still shining. I am craving for them. But they have stuck with my shadow. My shadow that always follows me in the light but deserts me in the moments of darkness. I search for the pearl pieces. I crave for some light. But it has gone with the shadow. The shadow that is believed to be inseparable. Whom to blame! The pearl pieces or the shadow! Neither is wrong. It was just a moment. The moment possessed me and see what it has done. I lost you, I have lost myself. And now I want to hold it and turn it back. But its slippery form doesn’t allow me any grasp. Hope has kept me alive. Hope makes me desperate. Hope gives me the fear of hopelessness. See what life has become. Treading a dreary path, carrying the immense burden of betrayal. But I was just too ignorant to know the consequences. What else one can expect from someone who learns ‘love’ as a word! Since the childhood days I have seen love in its material manifestation. Mother loved with food. Father loved with other things. Some one else with something else. But every time this love appeared as something. How could I have known it if love never appeared before me as itself? I knew the icons of love. I understood the icons but missed the love. For me a hearty bye was love. For me a meticulously prepared dinner was love. For me a kiss and return kiss was love. See I knew all the conventions. Only I missed the love. I was ignorant of love. Disha, I have spent my life in the poverty of opulence. Every corner filled with something. Every side decorated with something. Every emptiness filled with a new gift. I never grew up but remained a child. And suddenly one day the child started feeling a lack that made him to grow. He was told that this emptiness is just too personal. His search began. His search for love. Only love can get love. But how love is exchanged! Through gifts. Through cards. These were the only methods I knew. Archie’s was my angel of love. Nirulas and McDonalds were the temples of romance. A night long stay was the acme of love. And then if I felt any emptiness, I lit a cigarette. I still don’t know whether it was just a myth or some truth. Post-sex cigarette took me to the height where I felt floating. For me that was the best experience of love. There were different episodes but meaning remained the same. But that night has changed my world. an Emptiness has engulfed my whole existence. You have made me to realize love. And once knowing this true love has nullified all the love I got so far. My whole existence seems vacuous. What had filled all the emptiness in my life was nothing but illusion, lie, deception. Now I want to substantiate myself with true love. Love that you have taught me. Please come back and be my guru, my path and my companion. See the bee is still around that lotus. Flying around. Dancing and singing the dirge of his lost beloved. He has understood the true meaning of love. It goes beyond the material existence. Love has an existence of its own. Love is the space of immortality. love is an eternal celebration of itself. I entreat you to put me through any expiation and cleanse the stains. Lead me to that celebration of love and together we will compose new harmonies and fresh celebrations. We will row together the dinghy into the depth of the never ending ocean. Let eternity be our destiny. Through the rising tides, sailing beyond it. Liberate me from the slavery of the shore. From the chains that I always believed to be my anchor. Saturated with the nectar of your love I want to sail free. Give me at least one drop and let me fuse myself with that, with you, with love. Sailing from this momentary and incomplete shore to the eternal and complete horizon, we will realize our oneness. I want to experience that oneness with love. See destiny awaits us.
Waiting for you,
The culprit of your love
The child of your love
The seeker of your love

confab

LOVE 1

She looked at his face for some moments. Several emotions came there, on her face and in her eyes. He stood fixed but perplexed. Sometimes there is no way out. She took a deep breathe and turned to her left. After going a few paces she stopped. As if something stopped her. There was some restlessness in her. Some conflict. Feelings are the strangest creatures inhabiting the world that we in our scientific age call individual mind. The duality of heart and mind was the golden age of incomprehensibly intense and consuming romances. Now is the time of mind’s monopoly. And what limbs will follow if mind itself is confused. She had to say something. She did not want to say. She did not have the words. She was not able to frame her ideas. Or she was just apprehensive if she could express her feelings without slipping into incomprehensibility. Poverty of language, tyranny of mind. There was a time when lovers could submerge into each other, revelling in the same universe of nothingness where feelings were shared not exchanged. Now mind holds the reign of an individual world that has immense possibilities before it. It does not want to lose it. We don’t share. Now we exchange our feelings. Mediated through a colourful maze of language we exchange our feelings. Feelings that are primitive, feelings that are pre mordial, feelings that come creating turbulences or feelings that go without causing even a small ripple. And we try to understand this polymorphous essence of human life through syntactical frames of non essential words. I felt happy. I was sorry. I felt just like anything. Hey you know it was a strange feeling and I have no word to express that. What was her problem? She stood there, looking away from everything. Only six or seven yards away but two individuals in complete isolation. And then she turned. “Do you know the story of that bee couple, Ramesh?” he looked at her face. Might be trying to recollect. She continued. They were great lovers. Always engrossed in each other. And one day the male asked his beloved, “Do you love as much as I love you?” she replied in yes. They remained silent for some time. Then she said, “ I love you more that anything.” Suddenly the facial expression changed and ramesh looked confused. But it was the story. This time she turned to ramesh and loked into his eyes. “ the male bee asked her to give its test. They agreed on a test. Who brings the lotus nectar the earliest! It was settled. Next morn...” suddenly ramesh caught the narrative. “ yeah, i remember ti now. It’s the same story in which the female bee dies.” Ramesh brought the end in a single shot. She gave a detatched smile. Probably she understood that ramesh was impatient with her slow movement. Or , may be, he was not interested in the story.lack of suspense might also be a reason behind this kind of response. Or wa s it like some bitter syrup that he immediately finished? She remained silent for sometime. Then she resumed her narration. “even before the sun bathed the eastern horizon with its first vermilion hue or the moon departed like a dejected lover, he went to the pond and sat near the lotus which was yet to open after a night long slumber. He was the best lover. The beloved was nowhere around. He was just musing upon the immensity of his love. The pride of returning more than he received. A strange reciprocation. Finally the sun peeped over the horizon and its rays fell on the sleeping beauties. The whole nature appeared like a beloved who has adorned herself the whole night and now is rushing into her beloved’s fold. The bee sat beside the lotus. Wating it to open. With the soft touch of the sunlight the lotus opened its eyes. Like some amorous beloved. The petals moving with eternity in their eyes. The bee was getting impatient. What if his beloved also comes before it fully opens. Just one more circle and it was over. He was already up in air. His heart was hard to contain when he got a glimpse of that magical nectar. Dancing he descended. Every nectar bore witness to his love. Every nectar was his love token. But there was something more lying. In the thick of those magical nectars. He had to rush. But the curiosity was overwhelming. Who can be there even earlier than him? Some rival? Lost? And he had reached where the answer was waiting. It was his love. It was his beloved. Lying dead in the middle of those tokens of love.” She looked at him. Now he had to respond again. “yes, actually she had come before the night fell and started collecting her token of love. And suddenly the lotus petals closed. Suffocation killed her.” She took a deep breathe as he finished his formally compulsory response. “yes, suffocatoin kiled her. Love can survive only within itself. Beyond it lies its death. There is some cosmic conspiracy. Everytime love has to venture out to prove itself. You see, dont you. Love dies for its life.” She laughed. Its hollowness drilled into him and spiralled down into some yet untouched depth. It had someting that brought further gloom on his face. “ what a paradox! Love dies for its life.” She took a long sigh. Ramesh dropped his eyes.

Silence reigned there for next few minutes. Ramesh had sat on a chair. His face bore a dilemma. He expected a reasonable explanation or excuse. But here was none. Her offering no explanation or excuse made his position quite vulnerable. His straight posture had arched at the back as he sat in the chair. She had come nearer. “don’t think that i am hostile to you. love is not some chemical bonding that some catalyst could change its very nature. It’s not some material philosophy that understands yes or no. Love is permanent. Its realization could be in various forms. my feelings are still the same for you. it’s just that i am going for a greater love. My love for” ...suddenly ramesh looked into her eyes. Shocked into stone he was. She continued and the calm on her face looked sublime. “ the pristine form of love. I can not disgrace my love by defending it. I can not be so selfish. I can not be ...” a sudden break in her speech betrayed the inner turmoil raging her heart. A pain appeared on ramesh’s face. He stretched his hand to touch her shoulder. To comfort her. But he felt her sailing away into the deep ocean, in her small boat with an entire universe of love, and he standing at the shore extending his arm, unable to muster enough courage to follow the now gradually drowning trail. He felt a tide rising in the depth of the ocean. She will be drowned. The tide riding higher and higher. fishes flying in air spreading their fins like wings. He felt his limbs shaking. A fear chilled his spine. His mind had started growing dark. He felt the high tide pressing on him, dragging his feet, his body, his soul. Tide, the monstrous tide. His arms were still stretched. Some hope that could come in his clutch and save him from this devouring tide. she was nowhere. Gone in her small boat. Beyond that tide perhaps. . A sudden movement in her shoulder broke the spell. She suddenly remembered something. Putting his hand away, she moved towards the kitchen. Ramesh wondered what she was doing. And she returned with tea. “would you like to have something with it?” he just sat, watching her making tea. She knew he did not take much sugar. Just strong liquor and a little milk. He was looking at the spoon that moved, pressed between her fingers, in his cup. The ring that connected them was nowhere. The ring that he gave her as his token of love. It was there. Wrapped in a small piece of paper. Paper that bore his mark. Paper that bore testimony to their love, and now, how ironical, of its demise. His first love letter. “ the rose you gave me has dried, pressed between the pages of the diary that had our names written over it. Its fragrance has spread through the pages, the days and the dates. Hope you wont mind me keeping them.” Slowly she stood. Holding the cup in his hand Ramesh was looking at the tranquillity of her face. Storm was raging inside. “Please shut the door when leaving.” Ramesh had put down the cup. He stood with his eyes fixed upon her back as she had turned towards the wall in the opposite. He took a deep breathe. Suddenly his lips parted. But words deserted him. Probably he had found no expression within the realm of language. Slowly he crossed her. Eyes cast down. Paused near the door for few moments. Looked back at her. She stood stone, looking into some unknown depth. Only if she had returned back. Only if she had understood his repentance. He begged fate for at least once. Yes, only if he had understood her. he stepped out. The road opened like the wide mouth of a monstrous adder and he entered it. It was all dark and he was groping his way. Only once. He was begging.

unheard weeping

Unheard weeping

“i could not burn”
At the moment of last farewell
You said
Returning my loveletters
“ i will burn...”
Hearing my thses words
You sobbed
“ yes, you must do likewise
But never tell me
on which deathbank did this cremation
of my first unborn expectation...”
since then i am praiyng
whenever youe womb bears fruit
same your first unborn hope
everytime bloom in that
because telling truth
could not ash even i
your that unmarried hope
in those self written loveletters
often serch my own face
and my whole poem
is that your unborn hope’s
unheard weeping.

(translated from malchand tiwari’s rajasthani poem “ ansuni rulaee” in its hindi translation.)

confbulation

Trishanku in Alps



Holding the half-ashed cigarette between his lips, he appeared at the door of the classroom. Probably mocking the wooden face of that “no smoking” board that hung there for no apparent effect. Suddenly a deadness of discipline engulfed the whole class that was enlivened by the gay chirping of youthful flock. Corridor was our most usual loitering space during the class intervals that we had enough as very few teachers troubled us with punctuality. There was another board that told, “Loitering in the corridor is prohibited”. We laughed on the deadness of those words but sometimes it made me to reflect. I remembered a school day story of a demon who had a big garden and it had perpetual springtime. Children from the neighborhood used to sneak into and play in his garden. One day he saw them. He drove them away, made a big boundary wall round the garden and put a big notice “transgressing the boundary is a big offence and offenders will be prosecuted”. Every time I thought who might be the demon here. My paranoia was just momentary and then I used to think what if those demons crept out from the closed world of fairytales. Anyway, the cigarette was burnt till its butt and he released it from the crab clutch of his fingers. Smoke was rushing out through his nostrils and he gave cool eye to the class. The last flame was extinguished with the shining tip of his right shoe and he entered the class with a solitude around his face. We found it quite befitting for a person who was to teach us Wordsworth. “Who are you?” the whole class was perplexed with this sudden throw. No one knew who was to catch. After floating for a while around the heads it started descending down the benches. Suddenly our smart teacher gave it a fresh blow into air. “ you don’t need giving your name or some other thing like the same. Just tell what gives you the sense of ‘ I’.” equally confusing. Or even worse for many for us. Now I understood why wordsworth was so much fond of mountains. Such deep questions could be solved only under some kind of transportation. Transported into a state of intoxication, affected by the beauty of nature or some opium. But here was none. Logical consequence: question remained unanswered. Attempts were made. “I am what I think I am.” This was the best answer I thought a student of literature could make. This is what art should offer. Unlike science that gives either right or wrong, art revels in the world of deferred judgments. And the answer was exactly that. but it was considered inadequate on the philosophical scale and he waited for some surprise package. When no answer surprised him, finally he surprised himself on the absence of some good answer. We gave a gratifying grin and he gave it a somber acknowledgement by offering us some enlightening views on self. Passing through some gentle obscurities of philosophy, we reached a sublimated level of wisdom that could be plainly termed as defamiliarization of the familiar. We had a sudden realization of the profundity that our body encompasses. If “self” could be an hour-long thing then body must be something of many times bigger importance. However, philosophy did not let it be. Personally, I felt the body of commonsense being mutilated by the cold knives of philosophy. Suddenly Descartes appeared before me, flying upon his wings and performing magical antics like in some popular belief geese do with a mixture of milk and water. separating the two apparently inseparable things. After straying for a while in the wild wisdom of some nature myths suddenly my imagination descended down into the world of reality and I found it absurdly incomprehensible. What strange creatures we humans have become that we can’t buy a single simple thing without creating a hard laboured web of wisdom around it! It took me some moments to realize the import of those words for the examination purpose and I also realized the importance of master’s degree as a career building block. Very next moment I was a most attentive student like any body else, my eyes glued on his face and my ears tuned to his lips. I was so absorbed that I forgot to open my notebook and taking any note. The incessant flow of words seemed making an unobstructed passage into my mind and occupying my soul. A sudden loud tone broke my attention and started. Dear teacher was moving in his evenly smooth tone. Probably I had fallen asleep. My friend later confirmed my guess. I was totally blank on whatever was discussed in the class and whatever I got was merely an illusion of my self. Now I had begun to understand what self clould mean. The only thing that troubled me was that even though I knew what self could be, I could not assert it without risking another fall into a mere illusion. It was after several afterthoughts that I came to conclusion that self is something for self realization, strictly not for explanation. The harder you try to crack into its core the worse it gets for your intellect to track its circumference. And then you are also vulnerable to the traps of false enlightenment. It just reminded me the case of a recently married friend. He has an average built and an average appearance. After their first night of consummation( among maithil brahmins it happens on the fourth night after the mariage) I went to meet him with some other friends. He was at his in-laws’ place as customarily the groom has to stay there till the chaturthi( the four days period of familiarization and abstinance). We went with fishes as the sagun. We found him in a room, surrounded with his sisters-in-law. They were just pulling his legs. Poor chap felt great relief when he saw us. He immediately greeted us and a stormy rush of our friendly jokes drove away the in-laws. He even called them to stay but they did not. He laughed loudly to mark his ultimate finish of the episode. We had some hearty chat and our friend was often blushing. Well, cutting a long story short, he sent our rest two frinds out on some pretext. I expected some spicy thing to come, personally for me. I must tell you, my ears were burning like anything. But a sudden wet voice cooled it like the thing you might guess. “I don’t know for sure. In fact it is slightly embarassing but I think it ok to share it with you. Well this is something I felt…” I was looking at his face unblinkingly. “ I think she was faking at night.” He spoke in a hurry as if the words were burning his tongue and he spitted it out. I dared not to ask him to repeat them. Just silent for next few moments. Quite unlike me who loves being called a chattering box. I tried my level best to fake the troubled look on his face. Honestly it was oppressive. Just to break the silnce I said, “ oye don’t bother yaar! Arre you enjoyed na?” “ well…yaa…I enjoyed. I enjoyed but you know I just felt that she was faking.” I felt his voice drowning somewhere. Pitiable, lamentable, laughable, and above all it was unresolvable. “ see bro. you enjoyed and she also did. Forget if she was faking or not. The game had a happy course. Now forget all this crap.” Supposedly my best logical consolation failed misrably. He gave me a hurt kind of look. “ how can you even talk like this man? It’s no game but a relation. Leave it, you wont understand.” I took a long breathe and repeated with a pretentious mischeviousness, “yaa. How could I understand? I am telling you man just take some gulps down and she wont be faking anymore.” I put special emphasis on the last five words and got a tired kinda smile on his face. Fish was reaaly delicious and it was a most welcome break for all of us. The taste watered my palate as we sat there waiting for our tea which abdul bhai was yet to bring. Wisdom of the day:
doubt and seriousness make a really deadly combination and it must be used with care.
Anti dotes if badly inflicted: yet to be invented.
Immunity: eat, drink, be happy.
What If it turns chronic: turn to philosophy and make the maximum of it.
Diagnosis: when you fail to answer your own questions upto your satisfaction and then try to convince others with your arguments.
What if uncared: well, that is a case study still under way. You can also contribute some data.

before the camera

Before the camera
Any date
Like 20 june 1989
I took your picture
Of laughter
Laughter such was that
As fallen from hands
A bronze plate
Do you remember
The thing
I had said
To make you laugh?
You must be laughing still
Because i have been saying the same
Sitting forgotten
The flowing teary garlands
Listen
Do see once more
On that very day’s pattern
Before this camera.
(translated from the hindi translation of Malchand Tiwari’s Rajasthani poem “ camera ke saamne”.)