adieu, again

Last Sunday morning, last full moon night. Cannot help but note under breath while shifting first lot of books and clothes to new residence.

Room on roof that one always wanted has been dream come true for these last two years. Even with leaky roof and rattling French windows and a hundred other eccentricities, bits of heart will remain here long after we leave.

Daily visitors ranged from parrots - one scruffy veteran; another, a pink-collared young stud - to squirrels that with remarkable regularity dropped from rafters, lay around stunned for a while and later revived enough to make way back up. Being able to step out of bed and straight onto terrace with maybe a cup of tea in hand - Ah, shall miss in earnest.

Outside of one's own world, someone deeply admired is betrothed. Heart cannot help but balloon at hearing of such things. Cold cynic in many matters but whenever see people finding each other and working towards making something bigger, how not to melt into puddle of sentimental goop?

This year, like every fledgling year, is off to whirlwind start and promises many more changes in scene. Will need to pare down needs, wants, habits to minimum if one is to survive this. Must remember to remember that home is where you hang your hat, what will be, will be, &c.

that which must be forgiven

All at once, I miss college terribly. Apart from the early morning visitors - ranging from the hoarding and the weaving to the ultrasonic variety - this room also comes with hyperbolic acoustics. So this song comes on, not one I have ever much wondered about or remarked upon, but it comes on and all at once, I miss it. I thought it would never come.

This oppressive revisiting. Longing for inexplicable things like bus rides at sunset, alone. Like walks in between canteens, stopping for coffee only as an excuse to keep walking, running into old faces from school, from unexpected places. The strange way how everyone seemed to own the campus and be owned by it in turn. Every junkie, every geek, every scowling politico - as if organic growths, rational fallouts of that maze of asphalt and recycled flora. That strange sense of floating through knowing that this was how I would remember it. Aware of the memories hardening, often skewed, perhaps inaccurate, but settling nonetheless for good. Those born under Revati were meant to make an art out of leaving.

The smell of rain, thin coffee, books, ammonia, mulch, cement dust and sometimes skin. Earphones seem to be the refrain in these flashbacks. Sitting on the stairs, not needing conversation but happy in the soft glow of others talking. The easy distance that had replaced the first passionate ardour. Not that I disown the love, the attachment. Never had there been such closeness, such belonging. Not that I don't remember with a shudder the equally disembowelling periods. Times of total discomfiture when people, books, this self skin seemed grossly alien and designed to kill. But keener are these times of neither love nor hate, these times of blessed contentedness spent in solitude, sometimes shared solitude, which only like minds can understand. The absence of guilt, doubt, fear, intolerance. The ballooning joy of everything from a three-and-a-half-legged dog that followed one around the lake to a sudden flower offered. How the littlest of life's touches seemed to brim over.

I had a migraine when I started this. But now the song's over and Ma's just returned with a bucket load of haleem so all maudlin writing must be ended herewith. =)

rattle

songs of akalpoush - i

PoV is pillion seat of cycle leaving village behind. Not levitation, though I wish. 

Text and Image (C) Deboleena Rakshit =D

unavoidable.

Never rebel (no, please) - but must one not shrink, shrivel when everything is Superliked? Never misanthrope (peripheral babble is almost endearing) - but before bed, must one not ask, Where to now? Bile in mouth not so much because you don't see - but because (to think) I once thought you would. When you're your biggest disappointment, how to get erasure? When you're throwing up chillies and what were cashew nuts (mostly through nose), how to stop from hitting floor? The abiding thought - that seesaw of oneness (your breath smells of mine, I smile) versus that ache in bones, weighing every step down, muttering like a dammed sea of voices, O My People - is only biding time.

Someone's counting down somewhere, but meanwhile?, one could (with groan and creak and lumberjack pant) turn to resurrecting the premature dead and burying, and burying those who just won't. Worth a shot, the gun's gone cold after the world got- Yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaye to kya hai? Question is kya rooh pyaasi hi reh jayegi?

O People.

tie up stray strands and go go go

Dangling on the fence, opinionating mise-en-scène, there are mists. The lake, the grass, the pavement ten feet away, brooding; shrouded. Fog, I wonder, now? It was nice talking, he says. Getting that a lot lately. Goodbye, it was nice talking.

Promita Roy in the bus today. Promita Roy, with the always upside down pout that was last spotted in Class 8. I keep seeing you around, she says. Why don't you say hello; Strange, I think. But she smiles, Goodbye.

That strange simultaneity of being, being bubbled and being part of the furniture. Inside and out, at once. Included yet ex-. When just waiting, undifferentiated from backdrop, stray people with stray things to say turn up and disappear: spectral, is that it? Like today's dude on crack, with red eyes peeling off, shivering a little, Harold Bloom, look up Harold Bloom's Invented Man, heard you mention Shakespeare, thought I'd - well (shiver) Goodbye. Disembodied, is that it?

Much like compulsory lists of relatives who must be met before moving - running into old faithfuls and young faithless, after years, months, weeks - with the voice-over saying, speak now or forever-

A litter of five, circular puppies with underbelly rash, quibble like bacteria in the sand before suddenly giving up, snoring, their paw suspended, mid-step. Almost, almost a wave goodbye. Heartbreak, is that it?

Sir's fingers move in impossibly precise jerks. Mind of their own, I think, staring, as he births sounds of a train, rain on a window pane with the same languid intensity. With the cat smug in his lap, purring, what - you think I can't get with it? It's raining outside when he has to leave, time to say-

Three heads in a row on the gleaming tiles, ex-goats, I think. It's a dirge - elegiac, is that it? It's a dirge, this urge to rise above, forgive, be the bigger- It's the knowing that it's time, it's time. Hurry up, please, it's time.

-he says, tchah, you don't say Jachhi, Leaving. You say, ashchi, I'll be coming now. Bad luck to say. Leaving.

No one believes it, but I know this is coming to a close. Only hope the move is not only metaphorical - god knows I'm enough metaphorical - It's the winter, D says. It's the winter, everything begins receding, life in backward, people going eeyaab doog in that death metal voice.

I'll be coming now. (Fullmoon, is that it?)