Distractions

Everything in the room looked dislocated and chaotic due to my days of negligence. Dust to be wiped off, things to be replaced and trashes to be thrown out. When was the last time I had stuck something on my walls? There are no more hangings, faces and childish sketches to décor my fantasies and distract the solidities. Stop searching for the colours, certain combinations won’t work out! Roots and Shadows was sitting precariously on a pile of other junks with its frayed edges brownish and shabby. “Mini” stepped into my memory somedays back, at the day before her marriage, my cousin sister’s. The bride was taking in that air of acceptance just like any other girl, persistently smiling smiling smiling until her cheeks getting that dirty tweak. She seemed to have plunged herself into that image of Mini in these pages. “Behind the façade of romanticism, sentiment, and tradition, what was marriage after all, but two people brought together after cold blooded bargaining to meet, mate and reproduce so that generation might continue”. I don’t know how the jewels, garish bangles and flashy dhuppattas becomes the center of focus, excitement and sole sensation for a girl to make over the dry dry agreements and conditions behind it.  “It was the marriage that mattered not the man.” It was the marriage that mattered! For her? “We like our women not to think”. We would probably wish for a fresh delicate blossom, delicately looking, ever sustaining that delicacy, seldom swayed with all its delicateness, indelicate to wither its beauty so soon. And it’s not so difficult to prune and domesticate even the wildest ones which have the tradition and legacy of submissiveness in their gene. I wish all blossoms had some thorns in their very petals;)

 I have my leaking nose and aching throat with their seasonal conspiracy with each other motivated by the windy rain being battered right over my face. I should divert my attention to some willing distractions to avoid the pain. I chose The Boy in Striped Pyjamas to content me enough. The midnight quietness across the hall was shuffled and waggled by the boys’ slow pitch exchanges between the thorny fence. “They smell worse when they burn, don’t they? They smell worse when they burn don’t they? They smell…” One line glued to one end of my conscience, swallowing the subsequent scenes. I have this occasional premonition of being in that moment just before when you are going to get burnt alive! Alive with so many others packed together, getting nauseated by their sweat, being claustrophobic, hungry for a bit of air. A fear added to man's primal fear of snake, height and darkness. I promised myself to stop the watch right before Bruno finally getting burnt with the boy in striped pyjamas. The mother’s wailing would call for other distractions to appease myself. I didn't keep my promise. Hence this distraction of wrestling with the keyboard to stack out some thoughts, helter- skelter, like clothes spread out in “drying-combination” to get some sunlight! I really don't know why am I posting this. I got used to posting so much that not to post something is a distraction. Now Pardon me for this deliberate distraction here:)

"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant!"

The private lady had “selected her own society”, closed her “valves”, and peeped through the lattice at the strange faces, unmoved like a stone. It’s Emily Dickinson. The most peculiar woman. An eccentric being of “finest secrets”. Was she arrogantly sure of the durability of her art even while having a word with her sister to annihilate them all? I wonder how so much of that reclusion hasn’t hampered her insight. I am so comfortable with her except the fact that the rope of "death" recurrently squeezes her lines. Our reservations nullify each other with a laxity which gives enough spaces for the words alone to hang in the air. And I would have get caught for stealing away all her purposefully shuffled manuscripts crammed in her drawers if I was allowed into her privacy. I fell in love with you the moment I heard you saying "Tell all the Truth but tell it slant!"

 My soul gets wet, my soul gets burnt when I am with him. It's Neruda. Teach me your language in that green ink. I heave sighs and sighs and pine and pine for that piquancy of unrequited love, loss, passion and cravings. Have you been a woman at somewhere at sometime? You urge me to transform myself into a man who wants to entwine with several women and uncover all their furtiveness. Such a gentle torture, so rudely polite.You seem like an alien descended here, first to objectify and then to subjectify and then again to objectify this “love”. You inflict so much of pain in me that I would remain freakish and insatiable all my life. I wish I would have never met you. Tell all the Truth but tell it slant!

My Hamlet is waiting out there with his pale forehead and “leaden eye despair”. I have left him with his contempt for “incestuous sheets” and “pernicious women”.  How would I pacify his melancholy? You are too young and too old. Come out of your shell and don’t argue that “I could be bound in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space”. You and I think too much. I have your future with me. I feel like a God, helpless to inform you of it. I suffer with you. I am delaying myself so that you won't take my face in your arms and condemn “God has given you one face and you make yourself another”. It's not meant to be uttered like that.Tell all the Truth but tell it slant! 

I know you have that secret wish never to see my face again since it will demolish all the unpleasantness we had the last time we met. It may bring back all the dusted love. But “what I wouldn’t do to see your face again”? You made me apprehend that love is not that easy to find, that deception will wag its tail every time I search for something more tender, more pristine. Purity should not be demanded beyond a limit. It no longer exist in its nudest form. Have a look at me now so that I would get one more chance to make you laugh when I stumble and fall and bleed. I would doubt the pleasure behind that pricking joy. Aren’t you sad? Tell all the truth but tell it slant. Lest I may not survive!

There is so much beauty in you...

The mundane indolent air is wafting across the open window. Why the night  reminds me of day as some distant past? So distant that only streaks of some moments were lived in a day. All the other bits like a blurred picture, mute and shapeless, faint splashes visible in some nooks of the canvas. Does a procrastinated smothered event waiting at the other end of the bridge, to be unfurled? 

I lay in my bed with an imagined tiredness. There is no sorrow, no love, no desire- like my body reluctantly dragged in here from the day -only some thoughts, thoughts, thoughts- mixed and dimmed -so much of clatter coming out of my memory satchel. How the memories scream like an abandoned child at the end of a day- wooden benches-resounding classroom walls- deviating talks. It passes like it never happened- the perceptions. Thousands of it! Perceptions! Few registered ,lot indifferent. 

She said she wants to go long walks with me, to hold my hands, to lock her fingers with mine, to soak herself up in our talks, to count the waves, to fly kites, to get wet in the rain, hot coffee, films and window shopping.  She said she wants to take me in her palm, like a bluish butterfly grappled in between, to enclose me in a translucent glass so that I won’t slip out of her clutch! “Sounds so filmy as usual. You fictionalize too much”. She looked away with her beaming smile.  There is so much love and beauty in her.  Love which injures me, beauty which scares me. It contrasts with my distortions and contradictions. Leave me. Let me wallow in this filth, let me wallow in my relentless guesses and infatuations. This plainness dwindles my narcissism.

I wonder what he thinks in his long lonely drives back and forth. There will be city lights, horns and buzzing crowd. Do you hear the songs dad? Or do you retrospect?  Do you retreat into that fidgeting child of yours…my little toes darting towards you, pestering you to yield to my puerile longings?  We would have played with that silence in between our seats if I were beside you. Have you had a glimpse of me in my mom’s eyes even when I was unborn? Because there is so much beauty in your vision which stretches so long and so incisive.  The spangles of its glare injure me. Leave me. Let me wallow in this filth so that I would be a feeble ray in this darkness rather than be something grotesque in that spot light.

I thought I stopped playing with my shadows sometime back. But I am not. Not yet. There is so much beauty in you which makes me toss my mirror away and merge with you...but you are always one step ahead...;)

That's How He Redefined It!

It's the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge - Albert Einstein 

Chilled evening rain with its patter sneaking in my ears, scattering the audio bits of Wuthering Heights. My ears spiced up by the voice of Juliet Stevenson with the intonations and stress patterns flaring up the weight of the words, the weight of the semantics, the weight of the literariness! The language lab window across my chair was ajar allowing the short whispers of breeze to horn in. But I could hear, conjure up, feel, the white husky whispers of the scorching dew fall to which the benumbed "fixed" Heathcliff must have remained unmoved, leaning against the old ash tree, growing ferocious by Catherine's death news - savagely howling - chapter sixteen- I repeat it till my tongue stiffens - Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living;...I CANNOT live without my life! I CANNOT live without my soul!


He was on his chair, up the small platform at the far end of the lab completely enwrapped in some book, most probably some science-fiction, his favourite genre. "Do not rely only on film adaptations. Images and visual impact disperse the essence of linguistic aspects, it will only help you to know the story". Where as the audio is a different experience, you can savour the enticing charm of the syntax, evincing the raw beauty of the dialogues, the fairness of the narration... Yes he is right. How can he be ever wrong in here! Many evenings I have spent here, in this lab, the "Beyond the syllabus Program" as he named it. An initiative in which he was the sole sustainer from its very commencement to the close. A good student always goes "beyond the syllabus", new pastures waiting to be grazed! Language lovers from all departments came. Some appreciated it and highly benefited from it. Some doubted its use (madly in love with ignorance!). Some became "regular users", some "occasional visitors". He never compelled anyone. Compulsion was a displeasing word in his "word collection". It was completely voluntary. It was for the pupils who seek improvement, who have the zest for knowledge, for refinement, who have the genuine likeness for this subject, not for the ones- the girls who see it as a pretty option before entering into the marriage market. Numerous world class audio lectures, audio books, a plethora of knowledge, of information, an audio treat, a literary feast! He was incredible for me. Charismatic! The passion he has for teaching! The clarity and depth of his knowledge! The focused lectures ("talks" to be precise than "lectures"), focused yet vast- one hour- a journey from age to age- from Romantic to Victorian -right back to Elizabethan- sliding down to Medieval. Spontaneous sly puns embedded in satire, sarcasm, yet tender! "Knavish speeches which sleep in foolish ears"! And the Audio Clubs! How can I ever forget those Friday afternoons in my life! How he could elicit the rapture of language learning by songs! Took an idea, a theme- subtle ideas which usually fail to poke our attention...related it to a bunch of songs- then it to the realities around us. Vocabulary building! Another venture. Taught us that words have stories to tell, the "etymology" which otherwise would have bored us. 


I would go on pages and pages on his activities. He showed me how much a teacher can do! For me it became a path for "discovering" myself. He was never an influence. The aura of inspiration he has formed cannot be encompassed or be confined to an "influence". He showed us the lands to toil in it, made us understand how fertile it is, made us greedy for its fruition, how the saltiness of sweat in our brows would taste! And when he "retired" the very word would have shriveled and felt the shame, it would have wanted to drown itself somewhere for ever from the dictionary. Retirement? For him? Busier than ever before with his "extra readings" (as he calls it) and social activities. Inventing and contributing efficient methods of language learning for the dumb and deaf. What's more noble than that? A true teacher, who disliked to be photographed, who abhorred the showy and the braggarts...!


It is said that the best teacher is the one who can inspire. And when I copy pasted that Einstein quote at the beginning I have done it with such a gratification and blessed feeling. I am sure there would be a teacher who must have swept your feet off in every one of your lives. A teacher who illuminated some corner of our soul, leaving a part of them, ever enkindling our growing sensibilities. Who have "awakened joy in learning". And what we have towards them is not mere admiration and respect. The word "gratitude" can bear no corruption to a limit. Let's remember them and be grateful to them with all its purity and faithfulness in this corrupt world!  

അനാഥമായൊരു മുറിഞ്ഞ വാക്ക്...

സോഫമേല്‍ ചാരിക്കിടന്നു 

നൂറ്റാണ്ടുകള്‍ പഴക്കമില്ലാത്ത 

ഒരുപുത്തന്‍ വാക്ക് സ്വപ്നം കണ്ടു 

അപ്പോഴുണ്ടു വിദൂരതയില്‍ നിന്നെന്നപോലെ 

ഒരു വാക്കിന്റെ നേര്‍ത്ത ഗന്ധം 

നാസികയില്‍ കൊണ്ടു

ഉറക്കച്ചടവോടെ ഞാന്‍ എണീറ്റു പുറത്തുവന്നു 

മുറ്റത്തൊരു വാക്ക് ജനിച്ചുകിടക്കുന്നു 

അലസമായി ഞാനതുകൈവെള്ളയില്‍ പൊതിഞ്ഞെടുത്തു 

രഹസ്യമായി 

അകത്തു മേശമേല്‍ കൊണ്ടുപോയി കുത്തിനിര്‍ത്തി 

അര്‍ഥം തിരഞ്ഞുപിടിച്ചു തിരിച്ചുവന്നപ്പോള്‍ 

രണ്ടക്ഷരങ്ങള്‍ കളവുപോയി 

മുറിഞ്ഞ വാക്ക് ....മുറിഞ്ഞ അര്‍ഥം!

ബാക്കിവച്ച വാക്കിനെ തിരുകിക്കയറ്റാനായി

ഞാനൊരു വരി മെനഞ്ഞെടുത്തു

വരിക്കുള്ളില്‍ വാക്ക് ഞെരുങ്ങിയിരുന്നു ഞരങ്ങി 

വരിക്കു വാക്കിനോട് പ്രണയം തോന്നിയില്ല 

വാക്കിനു വരിയോടും... 

മുറിഞ്ഞ വാക്കിനെ വെര്‍പെടുത്തിയാലും

വരി പൂര്‍ണമായിരുന്നു, അര്‍ദ്ധപൂരിതമായിരുന്നു   

നിഷ്ഫലതയോര്‍ത്തു കരഞ്ഞുമടുത്ത വാക്ക് 

മുറിഞ്ഞ ശരീരത്തോടെ വേച്ച് വേച്ച് 

വരിയില്‍നിന്നുമിറങ്ങി നടന്നു 

അനാഥമായി....മൂകമായി.... 

അര്‍ഥം പകര്‍ന്നുനല്‍കാനായി...

അര്‍ദ്ധമില്ലാത്തൊരു വരിതേടി

ആരോ എഴുതിയുപേക്ഷിച്ചുപോയ ഒരുവരിതേടി...!!

Unfathomably Simple

I initially didn't want this one to be projected onto this screen...I did't want to spray the grey melancholic spots to the other hearts- a destruction like by virus- a "string of nucleic acid with attitude"- bouncing my head like a ball-springing up and down...from sympathy to sorrow...from sympathy to empathy...but I couldn't deceive my heart so long...couldn't hold that grief from being articulated. 

 She always put on a smiling foolish face infront of me...silently embarrassingly grinning at my snobbish remarks on her lack of sophistry in taste and intelligence. For me she was just "silly and simple"...the "silly" in this pair of adjective was larger and bolder in font to my view than the "simple"...It would be more proper to say that I actually remained callous to her "simplicity"...in fact to anything "simple". Her "missing you" and "need you beside me" text messages were just another set of cliches for me added to other soulless pretentious friendship messages with which I daily let my inbox to be filled with. And so my outbox and her inbox were equally empty. And then there were silences in between. Silences to which I brutally remained impervious and added to her wounds over wounds. 

Things became tragic lately. A physically and mentally decaying beloved is something terrible. "I never imagined that he would become like this...almost like a caged animal...", as she hardly finished her words I gruffly intruded with my scoldings over the phone for her "uncivilized metaphor"...but she stuttered and stammered at the other end in between my short pause..."but it is like that...exactly like that...worse than animal...my dad...my hero...now in a lonely room...just existing...with no memory...no taste ...no desires...just a diseased body...simply existing...unaware of his own existence". As she bursted out in tears I groped for words with a pain in my throat tightening my nerves ...I was in no way eloquent in consolations! With what philosophy would I console her for philosophies are now like open eyed corpses just like fate, apathetic to an excruciating human life. All that she demanded was some kindness from me...costless kindness of words and understanding...atleast a calm listening. As I flied from sympathy to empathy holding the phone tightly gripped in between my sweating fist I couldn't see those grey spots in the white walls of my room for hot tears swelled my sight. As I closed my eyes there were only the bigger red red spots taunting at my coldness and reservations, screaming for a reparation. If it was something from a sentimental  melodramatic movie I would have dissected this "empathy" and related its cause to "mirror neurons" and "soft-wired brain" proved by empathetic psychoanalysis. But here there was only "pain" at those moments...pain and nothing else..."simply" pain...so simple...just like her! I was aware that the simple was the unfathomable...the simple was the complex...but never felt it so simply...so unfathomably!

The Versatile Blogger Award - My Picks!

Here I am to finish my duty of passing the Versatile Blogger Award which I have received  from Anand to the blogs of my choice as per my last post. So these are my picks!

• To Pygmalion : She is this one strong intelligent woman who writes so candidly on the personal and the social. She does not write for the sake of writing and when she writes it is with much depth and sincerity. I truly admire her boldness and candor!
• To Mohammad Israr for Misterio Vida : He writes on various issues -social, scientific and the cultural. Some of his posts are hilarious too having high social relevance. A blend of creativity and knowledge!
• To Zeba  for Zebra Talk : It was only recently that I happened to join her blog. Her brilliant way of sharing her reading experiences make me read her posts over and over. Amazing writer with much profundity!
• To Siddhartha Joshi for Lost and Found : I absolutely love his fiction works with subtlest details which almost take us completely into the ambiance of the story and the feelings of the characters. Brilliant writer!                                               

My beloved  KP, Saru and Lady Fiona whom I completely adore have shared this award with me from Anand. (They would have been my first picks without a second thought if it was otherwise). So I extend my hearty congratulations to them!


Congratulations to the winners and I would be extremely glad if they accept my humble compliment and now it's their turn to pass it to the blogs of their choice! Make it a good experience! Thank you so much!

My First Blog Award - Most Delighted!

I am extremely delighted and honoured to receive this wonderful blog award "The versatile Blogger". I am expressing my sincere gratitude to you Anand for this sweet appreciation and it is highly encouraging for a beginner like me. I am a person who value appreciations to the core and this was an appreciation worth of immense appreciation from his part! Thank you so much for all those who have visited my blog and left in their valuable feed-backs. Special thanks to my regular readers whose comments and suggestions are really a cause for my improvement and inspiration:-) I would like to give a special thanks to Pygmalion and Krishna Priya who have been there from the very beginning to amaze me by their critical, intellectual and honest support:-)

As per the rules of this Blog Award I am obliged to list seven things about me. So here they are;

1) I am a hard core romanticist who follow the "heart" rather than the "head".

2) A freedom lover who is not so particular about "conditions" and "prescribed rules" in life.

3) Uncertainty and confusion rule my mind and hence a deep thinker filled with doubts and questions marks.

4) A receptive person who is open to new ideas and perspectives.

5) I appreciate anything and everything which appeals to me as having substance and beauty in life.

6) I am a very secular human being untainted by religious or any kind of ugly prejudices.

7) Writing for me is a pleasure and a need and a catharsis.

Special note: I perfectly remember creating this blog by getting a small spark of idea from Halim Sha's blog whom I met on facebook. I never thought of blogging before and is thankful to him who had unknowingly became a cause for this and I eventually became interested in blogs (I never forget people and the places from where I start my journey- point wanted to be add to the list!).


Once again thanks a lot! I will be soon passing this award to the most deserving ones!

   

The Latter in the 'Either-Or'

"You want to say something?" No nothing at all! The beauty of her silence has a blushing comfort on him. She conspired with her head before each exchange with him. Planned words pleased him more since he often couldn't digest or rather understand her spontaneity. How artfully she learnt to abandon her heart with her fist sweating and clenching in the darkness. Words growled inside her...throbbing and scolding her hibernating longings. She feared whether the fluttering of her veiled wings would  reach his ears and betray her smiles and silence. Her mask was a slowly built up one out of numerous silences like this, suspending her wings in vain exertions for a sudden flight. She couldn't entreat him to fly with her. No that was not possible. What would he do in such flights for her flights were always unplanned and instinctual, filled with "commas" and "question marks"?? He hated commas and question marks...he loved only "exclamations and full-stops"! "Brackets" vexed him like hell. How earnestly she grasped all his likes and dislikes and gave him the warm shock of mystery at times when her repression overflowed! How dexterously she kept him in ignorance of the fact that what he found and believed as a big beautiful straight exclamation-"she!"- herself was a clump of commas and question marks! There were only two choices...either she should fly single or she should walk double. She couldn't dare to do the former for she was damn sure that she'll find only the white white blankness when she folds back her wings after the return. She couldn't afford for a "neither nor" too...it would be dreadful for her...so she picked the latter in the "either-or". The "either-or" mocked her too often that she had to defend her choice. Picked choices should not show off its distortions. Its distortions should be concealed anyway by any self argumentation. So she found out a meek solution for the growling moaning words inside her...throbbing and scolding her hibernating longings..."words in print"! Words in print are mute! Fictionalize it! It will become more mute to him! The commas, question marks and brackets hardly visible to him. And fly in "the viewless wings of poesy!"


I know you think you understand what you thought I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant!
                                                              -Alan Greenspan

Hamartia

How is it like to die after an encounter with each moment to be reborn in the next? The dark circles of the incomplete thoughts, memories and experiences loom over the sunken eyes as if to leap over the coming moment to extinguish its luster. The deep cuts on the old trunk are easily noted than the freshly emerging mushy leaves. The newborn leaves are lost among the dusty large stark ones...these old ones whine and whine, loudly rustling in the wind to be noticed and the new tenuous soft rhythm of the fresh leaves with the silken sways never reaches the blunt ears. And if I could listen with a much more heedfulness, I may hear that delicate noise or may be even capture the sound of the roots which was ever unheard and unattended. 


From wake to sleep (never know the exact boundary) the mind strolls through illusions...sometimes engrossed in the thrilling overturns in a narration, the goosebumps by the vomited imagination hung before me from an eloquent mind, sometimes the arresting all pervasive fluctuations in a song...perverse priorities and nonsensical persuasions. Nonsense excites my senses and the brazen irrationality can never be beaten down for there is a natural prone to it. Is it my hamartia? Existentialism and its niceties have a strong hand on my scudding bunch of "ideas scraps". "The greatness of man is that none can save him". I long to discern the true distinct face of my hamartia before the attack of a disillusionment. I don't know whether a disillusionment should be taken positively or negatively. May be there will not be a disillusionment and may be my hamartia is not that grave and drastic to be the cause of an unaware disaster. I wish to be a pebble in a sprightful stream so that I get constantly washed off by the running water...washed and washed...dying each moment  never knowing what it is to be like burning in the hot fumes of the past. I like to tag the "fuming past" as "hamartia" of the collective suffering human conscience. (I think I am more vulnerable to absurdities now a days...sometimes it soothes me much more than logicality).