It was not long after the day I was speaking to Tam about the futility and frivolity of clinging to old worn-out relationships like sugar-ants on a desiccating chocolate donut that it happened. I woke up into a wet yet sunny afternoon with the joyful little sky preparing to shut down for the day. I usually am not a kind of a person who reflects upon fuzzy dreams over the first post-sleep cigarette; but this day was very different.
I couldn't actually remember what dreams I had during my un-mundane day-nap,—but there was something in the air, in the mirthful wet of the grass, in the ruddy glow of the retiring sun, and in my drowsy self—that made my heart a bit heavy. Not that I boast being an expert in dissecting these sleep-induced, or say, weather-induced, heart-heaves into their exact causes, but a lazy Saturday afternoon usually gives you all the time in the world to reach any level of inward enlightenment, if you understand what I mean.
To talk about inward enlightenment, along the lines I wished to direct the phrase, it is a painful confession that almost all mortal beings, knowingly or unknowingly, are extremely prone to misinterpret the idea. It is not all about the net-beans or coffee-beans that your office cubicle might stink of; it is not about meditation and all other practices that claim to help in this direction. It is also not about bestial satisfactions or about loneliness all the time. In fact, I dare say, it’s not an easy job to come down to a concrete conclusion about what it is all about.
Coming back to myself, I felt terribly guilty;—guilty of abstinence from things that only I felt unnecessary—guilty of being so selfish all the time. Selfish, I've really been throughout;— from the day I was born, may be;—may be from the day I fell in love for the first time. It is a weird statement—“fell in love”. It sounds like a sudden event that could be attributed to a specific time-frame (I admit that there is a whole majority of thinkers who believe that the sense and the sound of these words are well in accord). However to me it is a bit difficult to accept it that way. I would rather call falling in love, as the phrase goes, an idea rather than an event. And it is the very realization of this idea that gives you all the symptoms that Bollywood songs often remind you of. And it is the extent of your realization that takes you closer to or away from the other person (or object) involved in it, if at all it is involved.
I took a stroll down the pebbled walk by the lake. The fishing birds packing up for the day made the hustle of the breeze almost inaudible. I kicked on a pebble that was doing no harm to me, just like kicking on the maturing womb of a relationship. I could imagine how it might feel to one who mothers a relationship for so long just to find it dead at birth—an idea dying out before it is even realized—as if it was never meant to occur, but still somehow it had occurred like a parasite; how it feels to touch one’s lips and hope against hope, that you never part, just to part a moment later. When it comes to actions, making love is as easy or as difficult as saying “It’s not working. Let’s break up”. Both are all small realizations, meditated pituitary rushes, that symmetrically hold their rights to come in whenever you let them. At yet we don’t look at them indifferently, as if one is never meant to happen—as if ideas can never change.
I thought of an arrogant optimist who acted a happy man like all the rest of us. A man who lived for his own self; a man, who seldom clung to the ideas that faded—who never regretted having ended a relationship that was as harmonious as friendship—as supportive as the earth—as carnal as nature’s ways—and as pure as love itself;— a man who always smiled— and was always happy with life.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Revolution is not when beggars have strawberry and cream; it's when beggars like strawberry and cream.
It was one of those lazy afternoons, grey and heavy with an air thick with the smell of moist soil. And I’m sure you’d agree that such an atmosphere instills sparks of poesy in the Bengali hearts that reside in the thousands of us. I was just out of bed (for non-hostelers let me point out that my bedtime extends from early morning to late afternoon), still feeling a bit of weight on the eyelids. The last cigarette from my pack, the only remains of the night before, danced in my lips, filling the corridor up with the foul fragrance of burnt tobacco. The hostel was almost empty; it’s usually empty at this time of the year when the watery clouds creep into the heat of the scorching summer, as most of the students go home to enjoy the post-semestral bliss with their folks. And the few who stay, either sleep the entire day out or remain busy in the various departments working hard for what they call summer projects. I strolled out into the field, drudging my way through the wet grass towards the pond. The sky overlooked the lonely lush of the grasses like a Grey Gandalf from some ancient myth. The birds went on with their evening carols, singing tunes of homecoming. And a light breeze brought the sounds of vehicle horns from the B.T.Road. I waved at the Gambian fellow who was exercising at one corner of the otherwise forlorn field. A funny guy. Speaks terrible English, but is taking on Hindi a bit nowadays. The pond was rippled all over by the light drizzle. The stairs, the cemented seats that banked the small pond had many stories to tell. I sat there for a moment, took one last puff, and threw the butt into the water. And that huge tree that bends over the pond, like a faithful servant bowing to his master, muttered something with its rattling leaves. Something reminded it of the boy who used to sit there and smoke, and chat all night with his friends; the boy who had so much to say and so much to explore; the boy who stopped coming here after one winter morning. The drizzles were getting heavier. So I strolled back. The hostel, dark and deserted as it looked, stood proudly overshadowing the wet field. A hapless bird screeched from a distant tree, may be mourning for the loss of its companion. I walked back, all alone, the cool drizzles on my hair. Loneliness tastes good at times. It really does.
I don’t know whether you know the type of feeling that one has at this time of the year when the fluffy clouds brush the blue sky clean and the air, mysteriously endowed with the flowery fragrances, carry the rattle of the newest leaf of the mango tree into the hearts of many.But the hearts at our place—the boys hostel and the ladies hostel—are either too young to interpret the rattle or too old to feel its intensity. But as they say, exceptions make the rule.
Now, to talk about exceptions, every person thinks himself to be so. Be it the lamp-post photographer or the cinematographer, rolling himself flavors of strawberry. And we have the magician, the loving and beloved—a sweet face bordered mercilessly by facial hair—shoulder-long hair that has long been washed; philosophy and logic reside together in him as does his intellect, that, like the dust in his hair, seldom touches the grounds of reality.
Talking about the grounds, we have only one in our campus—and the two hostels form an ‘L’ around one of its corners. Not that our ground is very large but often a guy sits in the midst of the ground, bathed in the light fog of approaching winter, chatting over the phone with somebody waving to him from a balcony on the second floor of the garden of Eden, that faces the ground with its slanting face. He thinks of so many things—of puzzles, and paintings and pollution, and pancakes, pizzas, papers, piranhas, and god knows what else, while he sees a friend, who crushed the grass beneath him, during the match earlier that evening, close the balcony door and switch off the lights; a backdrop tune bellows up while he walks back. The tune continues to play, especially on weekends, when our protagonist finds more than leaves and thorns in a bush to the northeast of the Garden of Eden. Pieces of stretched rubber, as he could make out in the darkness, like Black Eyed Peas on the radio the night before, echoing to him “Pump it… louder!” With agony and hatred for life, for girls who claim to go for committed guys, and for those friends who have broken up with their first girlfriends only because they couldn’t make out or experiment, he walks off. And reflecting on the vigorous experimentations that Saturday nights are all about, our protagonist leaves the current scenario making way for more interesting characters in the campus. And we move on from the dark, damp and stinking stories of the new faces to the warmth of morning light.
And to talk about lights, we must drift away from the campus, from the city and even from the state. A guy in his shorts lying on the sands of Vagator, a netted hat making a futile attempt to protect its face from the scorching sunlight—and a concerned hand of a more concerned girl—a friend—running on his soft and cozy upper abdomen. No doubt they both were wet—one was just out of the sea with her clothes weeping out salt water and the other was drenched in the spiced gravy of 750ml of 14%v/v. Port Wine they call it. A fruity taste—very much similar to mixed-fruit flavored products that are in extensive use in the campus—that had to be tasted by all and sundry—be it the confused lover of an explicit memory maker and a teddy, or the stormy lovers of Johns Hopkin’s hopefuls. Storms often struck our short stay in Goa. The one that threatened the relationship between a Puchu and a Golu was only caused by the flapping wings of a flightless kiwi-bird. But seldom did they know that the bird has already been caged by a Vettori from our campus. And the cuckoo birds who coo in the lives of a Maldah-dweller and a sweet boy from TATA’s kingdom turn naughtier and naughtier as time goes on with Statistics and Computers. Coming back to Goa: a nervous tour convener accompanying his dear junior to see her first school, making us wait for almost an hour; only a few could observe the agony of his bathroom-mate that was hidden under dry smiles. The memories of the slow dance on the cruise, as romantic as it could be, restricted the bursting out of the agony. However there were other things that flowed out, apparently unnecessarily. Mobile phones have served humanity as alarm clocks as and when required; but innovations comprising of hugs and sounds that comes out from my brother’s laptop when he “watches a movie alone”, as he often wishes to, woke us up every morning. But we enjoyed. We had seafood, we had cocktails and we even blew up balloons that were apparently being distributed on the streets during a particular awareness program. And we collected shells and stones and photographs of the beautiful beaches (I apologize to the readers for all spelling mistakes in the text). And few excelled more than others did, while few preferred to disguise their natural orientations to get a close up. Amateur drinkers went for scotches when Port wine flowed in abundance only to miss the crosses that the disco night was all about. The bar-tenders, girls though, were less than what could be made out from these boys’ repeated and desperate urges to waste 150 for 60ml of white rum. And bottles of alcohol were hidden in futility in the bag of a “non-alcoholic” cocktail taster as we returned with another set of emotional outbursts of the explicit memory maker, the teddy and the girl.
The guitars were detrained safely, for we all feared the wrath of their keeper. It is not a very easy job to describe him, who apparently has information about almost all versions and models of stringed instruments played by all known and unknown artists on earth, or, to correct myself, the universe. Now what do I mean by an artist? —an example should do: someone who has a fast strumming right hand and uses the left for all activities other than fretting it perfectly— taking photographs of whatever other people think photogenic and often prefers rock-climbing and teaching “beautiful” girls in a closed room, to practicing the instrument he plays (or collects). And beautiful girls (they are extremely rare in our campus) often come to our hostel to be taught, in closed rooms, about various sorts of Statistics by the poets.
And the poets are very colorful people. They date juniors on August evenings to celebrate 50years of degree courses in the institute: some often return with a blushing bunch of roses, red with the joy of the first breezes of springtime; while others wait in the seemingly never-ending stretches of winter for Shelly’s words to come true. They suddenly realize the differences between the flavours of Martini’s and those of Ele-18.
The yummy grasses dry out slowly. Birds cry out to the screaming dogs. And lights and shadows play around like every other character in the campus. They worked so hard to remove the grass from the field this time. But, the first rains smile at them, like playful Fate does at all the rest of us…
