Freedom

You want to sway with the leafy boughs

Remember they too have anchorage.

Eagles may soar above the midday sun

But the nests beckon them at dusk.

Crashing waves recede

While the sand is left naked,

And the rebel who walks out

Finds home in distant shores,

Like the seed that falls farthest from the parent,

And greener is the other side.

O heart, when are you free!

Are you when you break shackles?

When legs carry you as far as possible,

Faster than your beats.

Ah naivety, the earth is round

And all is dust.

Build on it, paint with music,

And the stars will be your bed,

And no dams can arrest your flow.

You shall burst forth with light,

With the shadows as your guide

And though the cord won’t be severed,
You will be born free.

Perspectives

Of the gentle war

And the cruel love

Of the blind betrayal

And the mild belief

Of the dark cloud

And the faded moonlight

Of the mad sanity

And the regular eccentric

Of the painful sob

And the faint smile

Of the strong dislike

And the weak passion

Of the cozy frost

And the shivering warmth

Of the ideal gibe

And the awkward hug

Of the long gospel

And the short sight

Of the wet sun

And the dry rain

Of the harsh censure

And the soft acceptance

Of the brazen knowledge

And the shy wisdom

Let us not be extinct in the former

But live in the footprints of the latter

For the ocean knows that the drops are not lost

But grow onto making itself.

To Us

Give me your hand, the sapling needs water

Give me your hand, the walls will be painted

Give me your hand, the puppy is restless for a walk

Give me your hand, the kitchen will be cleaned

Give me your hand, the baby wants lullabies

Give me your hand, the car will be repaired

Give me your hand, the novel is nearing the climax

Give me your hand, the long drive will be covered

Give me your hand, the starry night is waiting for the campers

And our hearts danced with the blooming daffodils

And postcards grew younger against the green walls

And the dog always ran to the door at the sound of our footsteps

And the bread was earned and relished too

And our child haven’t missed a good night wish from foreign land

And the sedan carried us without a grumble

And revisiting old books made the heart fonder

The road to stars is now shorter

While the light ever more radiant

All because we held our hands together.

Trying to shadow an epiphany

This is inspired from a writing of Brian Doyle (https://theamericanscholar.org/why-do-we-not-sing-these-things-as-miracles/#.VvQ6O-IrLIU). Please pardon if I did bit more than I can chew. 

I say wrinkles and you think of the bedspread after you have had slept like a baby in the arms of your love. I say blanket and you are beside the lake with the stars over you. I say rope and you think of how your big dog pulled you when you were small. I know you when I say you haven’t forgotten the castle you built in sand, and how you leapt into the puddle of water in rain, and the cold wind against your face, ruffling your hairs, as you rolled down the coaster. And you were glad that the ride ended soon, as your eyes were closed, yet you were also sad that it got over quickly because you could still see everything. Your palms were sweating while your throat was dry, like the way you felt while holding his or her hands for the first time, and then many more times, and you thought it was the best thing that ever happened to you until better things happened to you, when someone held just your finger with both of their hands, because he or she is tiny and helpless and sleeps almost all the time and yet knows you and trusts you.

I say pungent and you are holding the test-tube in the high school chemistry lab, or smoke, and there you are in the backyard having a barbecue, or bruise, and your father is helping you get on the bicycle again after your third fall and you could tell from his eyebrows that he is not worried. And you could wake up with the sun without an alarm, or stay up with the moon without a yawn, and you could tell that your mother isn’t pleased because you are scared and she’s not, even though it is your eyes that are red. You know that you can run on the grass, barefoot, and in the snow, for when you are a child, you don’t always paint the skies blue, or the leaves green, but you know camels can fly and you are invincible.

You know the silence while others had clamoured to remove the charred branches of your favourite tree struck by lightning. You see the old photographs, and in an instant you are doing the same things all over again. And you are not worried anymore about the way you were standing or the nose coming between the lips while you kiss. You remember the time you went to see-off your dear cousin, after your first vacation together, and he or she was right there and will soon be far away, and you would give right now to have what was long ago.

I say now and you think of then, but which was always and will be, whenever you have looked inside. You were humming these things, ever amused and bewildered, and while I say miracles, you were always singing softly, that they are the reasons anything ever happened, and someday imagination will become memories and never fade.

His Prayers

The chants of the Surya-Namaskar, deep in reverence but fervent in appeal, was His wake-up call. How soothingly it resonated with the Ajaan at dawn! A perfect daybreak, if you would ask Him. Still, He didn’t want to be left out and played His part through the chorus of birds.

The mundane daily schedule then takes over- even He cannot escape the drudgery. There are so many things that need His attention. The Yeti’s gene-mapping is yet to be completed- he tried studying a few mutations but before any conclusions were drawn, some mountaineers created such a ruckus that He had to slow down. The magnetic field near Bermuda triangle needs proper calibration, it goes off every now and then. He has to fine-tune the Earth’s temperature again; it has been increasing dangerously in recent times.

When He was exhausted, He could always turn His ears to any corner and listen to the melody from the other world. Last Christmas, He heard a Sufi saint singing carols in Istanbul. He listened to Honkyoku at a musical class in Nairobi. That particular synagogue in Berlin playing the Pizmonim was one of His favourites. And after shining all day, He quenched his thirst from the Baul songs of the Portuguese missionary in Darjeeling.

Though, of late, He was feeling that the orchestra was losing its symphony. The notes were off in India, there were piercing sounds from the middle-east and the western lyrics were hurting the soul. However, He was hopeful that experience will impart wisdom to the novice musicians. Also, He was pre-occupied with a glitch in the lunar trajectory. It took Him a few days but in the end, He averted a major tidal flood.

Happy with Himself, He opened His ears again to celebrate with music. But He was met with disappointment. What on Earth were they doing? The United Nations, before getting disbanded, was in the process of certifying the newly drawn boundaries of belief. He was always skeptical of the word ‘Nations’ after ‘United’.  And now, hymns are banned in middle-east, Qawwali is not heard in Lucknow anymore and the Lotus-Sutra cannot be uttered in the west. The concert was over.

He had so many dreams- He had actually started working on the one with providing water to the nearby ‘red planet’. All those trials now need to be put on hold.

He took out an old book from the shelf- the dusty cover read something like ‘Handbook of Rob…’ He started revising the basics-

0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

1.  A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the Zeroth or First Laws.

3.  A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the Zeroth, First or Second Laws.

This time too, He is hopeful that the robot will help re-create the music. He does not care about naming them anymore; humanity was better than Him in this game. Krishna, Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha- what interesting names they came up with!

As He sends the robot away on the mission, His heart grew heavy. He had always thought that free will was the best ingredient in His creations. Alas! Humanity, with its free will, still forced Him to fall back on His lesser self. Himself.

(Humbly acknowledging Isaac Asimov, from whose works I have borrowed a significant theme and my deepest regards to Suvro Sir for introducing me to his books and so many other wonderful things.) 

The Amateur

Yuri was introduced to pornography at the age of thirteen by his friends. Mostly steel photographs and cheap magazines; sometimes the silent adult movies that used to run in the dilapidated video parlours in the outskirts of Moscow.

It was mere curiosity at first, succeeded by a brief stretch of repulsion when the very thought of those dirty pictures made him nauseate. Succumbing to peer-pressure, he went for a second time and not so surprisingly, got hooked onto it. And addiction followed.

1920s Russia was experimenting with a new socio-political order. A voyeuristic teenager had limited outlets in such a laboratory. Yuri improvised. He started by copying some photographs from the magazines. Very soon, he was able to harness some of his own wild fantasies on pencil and paper. Yuri was thrilled to discover that his imaginations far exceeded what was out there. His popularity grew among friends and he started earning pocket money by drawing erotica.

However, the addiction got the better of him. He was losing his youth in these voyeuristic pursuits, incapable of a normal relationship, awkward in even conversing with a girl! For Yuri, the fairer sex existed in these photos. Or to be fair, sex only existed in these passive reproductions.

Not that it would have mattered anyway! Like most Russian youths, he was conscripted for the Red army.

Eventually, it was the end of summer in 1945. While the world settled for a lesser evil, Yuri was sent to Siberia for not serving the greater good. His crime was deserting the frontline against the Germans a few months ago in the face of hunger, cold and lack of ammunition.

The Gulags were designed to keep humanity at bay. Neither the clock nor the daylight determined the working hours. Whilst the prisoners tore away at stone and ice, the guards did the same to their spirits’. Where life was cheap and labour was never wanting, the authorities couldn’t be blamed for inadequate rations or winter clothing and warm shelters.

The capability of humans to lose something when you need it most is amazing. In the face of tyranny, one would expect the prisoners to be compassionate to each other. But fellow inmates turned to snitches in the hope of getting an extra bowl of watery soup or another torn blanket. Or they humoured the pervert seeking’s of the guards. They lynched the meek, enforced homosexuality upon each other. Probably ‘survival of the fittest’ came true here like never before.

Thanks to his drawing skills, Yuri enjoyed a special position among the inmates. He brought them, albeit on a paper, something that the starved hadn’t experienced in years. Requests poured in from guards and inmates alike. In return, he got a piece of meat for supper every other day and a bottle of vodka on the weekends. Times like these reminded Yuri of the cold night when his father discovered his notebook and turned the boy of fifteen out in the snow on an empty stomach.

Five winters hence…the world tries to move on from the war. In the Gulag however, constant is the only change. The season, the prison, the labour- all seem to have brought destiny to a standstill. Except for Yuri; his stature among the prisoners had diminished over the years. He was not productive as before. Weak health, trembling fingers from the labour served as an excuse for a while. Soon, the vodka on the weekends stopped. The guards started threatening him. Being the only source for pornography, he was not violated yet.

Yuri was unable to fathom himself. There was a time when he could draw unnatural coital positions in a single stroke. His vocabulary set was different: normal to him was what perverse is to the society. Now, he had to struggle for hours to outline a busty nude! Strange that he was drawing a sun rising from the mountains the other day. Phew…no one there had seen a rising sun in years. What was he thinking? What was happening to him?

One evening, someone saw Yuri drawing a flower. It was so funny that that inmate wanted to share the joke with others. Sensing danger, Yuri stopped him with the bribe of meat from his own supper.

Few months later, Yuri couldn’t bring himself to sketch any more of obscenity. Instead, by now he had almost perfected the outline of a baby girl, just learning to crawl. That night, he was working on the smile on the baby’s face. How does someone smile? In the last few years, he had seen howling, shrieking, hysterical laughter. He knows grinning, he had been sniggered at. But a smile is so elusive…

Someone snatched the piece of paper from his hands. Yuri looked up to see a bunch of jail-mates crowding around him. Seeking help was in vain, he knew the guards would turn a blind eye. Everyone was always jealous of the perks that came with his ability. The time was theirs to get back now…he had not catered to their base passions for more than a fortnight.

What kept Yuri alive was not a life. Forsaking it didn’t keep him alive but gave him a life…his only regret was not being able to catch the smile on time. Now, he will remain an amateur artist. Forever.

A smile is always so elusive…

কাঁথা (Kaantha)

সবুজ সুতোয় বোনা কাঁথা

ওতেই শুত মা-মেয়ে

একদিন সকালে দেখল কাঁথায় রক্তের দাগ

যদিও মায়ের কাছে সে এখনো খুকি

আর পাঁচজনের কাছে তো তার বুক আছে

ঠিক বুক নয়, বয়স সবে এগারো

বুক হবার জায়গা তো আছে

সেটাই যাচাই করতে এলো পাঁচজন

সবুজ সুতো ছিড়ল

এবারে দাগ নয়, লাল স্রোত

একটাই কাঁথা, ফেলা তো যায় না

ওই কাঁথাতেই তার ছেলে হল 

ছেলে এখন আঁকিয়ে

কাঁথার ইতিহাস কেউ তাকে বলেনি

তা ছিড়ে ন্যেকরা বানিয়েছে সে

ছবি, রং মোছে

ছেড়া কাঁথায় তখনও লাল মেশে

প্রথমে ছিল প্রকৃতির, পরে দানবের

এখন অবশ্য শিল্পীর