Purple Haze

You called me impatient when I was a child, for I ran instead of walking, leapt instead of crossing, I sang instead of speaking. I threw windows open, I spoke loudly, wept louder and laughed the loudest. I have been torrential, rapid and exhausting. I have lived every moment in my life, revelled in it. Enjoyed it, felt gleeful, took a handful of sunshine in summer, got drenched in the rain, and took in the cold in winter.

You ask me to take it slow, to savour the taste of my passing life like it is wine; but my time is running out; despite the vast barren years that lie before me, in which I have to bring to life the garden of my paradise; it is getting late, and I have to live. And I never did like wine, anyway.

In all this passing haze, I have a snap shot of time, where I live, survive, stable and safe. In all this contradiction, stability and instability at one go, I feel almost bemused to think that this is where I am, where I have chosen to be.

So, I have chosen to be away from my stability. To be in this whirlwind of uncertainity. I have dreamt to the extent that they have become my reality. I have lived in my dreams, done the unpardonable in your eyes. Chosen to be away from you. I am deviant. I break norms and create my own. I have sinned and revelled in my sins.

I have loved whole heartedly time and again, given all that was to give, ceded territory, taken as much as was willing to be and given and more. I have loved more than one, loved in different ways inconceivable to you. I have died and lived in love; I am not a survivor; I am the victorious in defeat.

You speak of pain numbing you; you speak of my words of poison; you speak of my love that strangulates your existence; that confuses you in its complication; that instabilizes your home, hearth and honesty. I live a thousand lives…most importantly I live. I do not know what pain is. Pain is what you make it to be. Pain is when you stop enjoying the sight of blood; of your broken image in the mirror; of the wasteland in your eyes…like you are far far away; like you have already left.

I walk around, trying not to stumble, often succeeding. I look into the eyes of the passersby who find it curious that I smile despite our times of dispassion and a looming great discursive fragmentation of our spirits.

*

You feel you are safe in your world. You feel happy, blissful and calm. There is silence around you. The leaves are rustling…or maybe you think they are? You look into poetry to find meanings. Words for you have a rhythm. It flows through your veins and warms you. From the depth of your being you search for what you consider is the elixir of your life.

The morning light is touching your, caressing you. Your eyelids flutter. You lay still; watching the fan whirl above you. You stretch, slowly…not ready to break the morning spell. The window by your head is letting in the light cascading it over your body. You remove the sheet from over you and get off the bed. You walk out of your room, finally.

Making love is not just your body and mine. It would be our souls infused into one. It would have the rhythm, you find in the words around you. You pour yourself a glass of water. You take the first sip and lean your head back a bit. You are not in a hurry. Not yet at least. Your life is yours to live for now.

It is very difficult to be a voyeur. I cannot reach out to you. I cannot touch you. I cannot help you reach the zenith of pleasure. I can only watch you try.

Orion

orion walked over valleys
where my words echo
and my poetry flow
while I sat contemplating
he read aloud from verse
and prose.
and then he whispered
"write about our mother"
i looked up, astonished.
"mother"?
what could I write of her?
that she is beautiful and cruel?
or that she is ugly and kind?
what could I write of her
who gave me dreams
to paint in words?
what could I write of her
who took away those I held dear
and yet gave me love?
i could praise her as poets have
i could disgrace her
and be called demented
could I rave and rant?
complain?
hurt so much and yet be?
i would crave for her
but would she come?
cannot I say
that I loved her
in all her disgrace
in all her splendor

But Nature is me.

"Mora Saiyaan moh sey bolay Na"

Don't tell them, I waited for you
Don't let them know, I knew

Walk away now,
So I don't have to see you go

Let this silence flow
Let my dreams wait

Walk away now,
I have nothing more to give you

Walk into their arms
Where they still sing

But, don't tell them
I knew....

Reality

“…mirror is an illusion. Consider the individual looking back at you, condemned to perpetual left-handedness…”

~Umberto Eco in Foucault’s Pendulum.

I often walk down Southern Avenue…imagining a different time and space. It is very real to me. Suppose this was something else, suppose that was something else too. ‘Suppose’ is not a mere word. It is the beckoning of dreams, the faith of the faithless. It is the permission to imagine where your entire existence is under surveillance. It is survival. You can suppose that you did not live here and now. That, you are not reading this. That, you are a part of this.

Reality is according to perspective. The tree I face when I get off the bus is existent for me, because I see it; I understand it to be existent. I call it a tree; I know it is a tree. This is not an idea wholly out of my head. The idea is related to the philosophical idea, Solipsism.

Do I then suffer from the Solipsism Syndrome? As Wikipedia puts it “Solipsism syndrome is a state of mind in which a person begins to feel that everything is a dream and is not real.” I cannot fairly judge whether I suffer from this Syndrome, as I do not know what it is real anymore.

Everything is a symbol. A true symbol reflecting who I am, what I believe. Unknown to myself, I let people know things I am not sure are a part of me. I help people constitute an image of me. But very consciously, when in a situation I do not get much verbal cues, I try hard to understand what the other person means or believes. When I am idly sitting by the window of a slow moving bus, I try to understand the story behind every movement of a particular person. Yes I am a voyeur. I take a somewhat illogical interest in what the stranger is trying to hide, or to show. About where he belongs, about who he is. I try to construct a story out of what I know are signs, culturally embedded or otherwise. But I am not alone in this. There is Semiotics, the study of sign processes (semiosis), or of signification and communication, signs and symbols, individually and grouped in sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood.

But then how much of his signs, or even mine can reflect the real me. How real am I? what is ‘real’, anyway? "Baudrillard argued that in late Twentieth Century "global" society the excess of signs and of meaning had caused an (quite paradoxical) effacement of reality" Real, for me has become a mesh of information, most of it what I have no personal proof of. I have not seen the Earth go round the Sun. I have not seen a man eat a man. I have not touched an Electric Ray. But, I know that it is real, that the Earth goes round the Sun, that man has eaten man throughout history, that the Electric Ray stings. Similarly, I also know that a Women’s Horlicks is a better health drink than Complan for a tired and stressed out woman. For, that is what is implied by what I see.

My reality, my existence is not created by me. My reality is created by a number of other people who are members of the culture industry. What I start believing through advertisements, through well meaning movies, through news papers, and books and all media entertainment networks, becomes real to me. It becomes an inseparable part of my reality. So I show the victory sign of two fingers, as Churchill did. I give a high five to my friends. These are part of my characteristics. These are part of who I am. These are part of my reality. But this reality has been constructed by the childhood images of sportspersons in their success.

Your entire life is an illusion, build by a number of other people...people believe you are a certain individual by what they read into your body language, whatever exists in your life, exists because you believe it to be real, like your relationship with your lover, your ideas etc and what is real to you, you do not know for sure if it is real in the first place. For that matter, your idea of how you look is an illusion too. Would what you see in the mirror and thus, conceive yourself to be actually stand as the real you? “…mirror is an illusion. Consider the individual looking back at you, condemned to perpetual left-handedness…” ~Umberto Eco in Foucault’s Pendulum.

~Shrirupa Sengupta

~~~

It is not when you win that you lose, it is when you lose that you win. When the first season of spring brings out an awe in the child, the mother can only feel joy in her loss-the loss of turning the child to the ultimate mater-nature-she who shows genesis and the last judgment at one stroke.

But the win is always the mothers', for she is gifted ,and the gift need not be from her womb for just like there are women unable to create, there are children unable to live in the arms of their creator. Fate always smiles the last smile of creating the mother and child, if not by the cry of birth, then by linking two souls for a moment which lasts forever.

In life, you do not lose, You gain-from a stolen moment here or there, from a secret smile, a light sigh-maybe from the shaft of light from the ventilator or the music of rippling water as the breeze blows over. You win nevertheless

He believed in that now. He believed in it, even as she turned away, watching the rays falling on the metallic sheen of the sundial. He had to believe he had won, in this loss somehow and it would all be alright. That the human mind can be superior in power and strength than the human body is a possibility entertained by both philosophy and psychology. This is tested each day-and reinstating the faith in the human mind, more often than not, this idea endorsed holds true.

He moved his gaze from her to the sundial which had taken a halo of its own bathed in the afternoon glow. Life is beautiful…not worth losing, he thought. All around him, life whispered its magic. But the most precious to him, what he had believed was his life so long, stood beside him, so distant, so strained that he was afraid to reach out

Fear is a strange feeling. It engulfs you with the ultimate mist at the same time messing about with your vision and granting you immense strength, strength to fight back; to make or break. He waited for her to say something but silence reigned. In the silence, his fear rose like a soaring white bird. In vain he tried to quell down the waves of despair that rocked his very being.

In one life we live many lives. But why is it that of all these lives, it is only one that we hold very close to our heart? And we look for that life in someone else and make that individual the embodiment of that life. But a human is free- free to come and go, to live or to die-to protect or to kill. And one may stand by and watch that life go tumbling out of reach or implore. For all human hearts are kind. Is love this giving up of all to the hands of another? He did not know. He could only wait, hearing the beat of his heart, as he waited for her to speak. Patience after all is a virtue. And he was a virtuous man.

the child ran around the sundial .the silver sheen of the night kissed the surface.. he reached out to touch the sundial tentatively. smooth and cool, the metallic surface seemed to beckon him. he would have to be in bed soon, but like a dear old friend this sundial called out to him. Soon, his mother would walk up to him and he would turn towards her, for then they would behold the sky-the home of all light

~ whenever you find darkness in you, look for the stars like they shine tonight

As he waited, he looked for these stars now. He tried to connect the points, but now in the silence, the constellations would not form. Inside him, darkness reigned.

His love was not prone to testing. His love was to accept, not to question. For here too, fear danced on the edges - the fear of not having a suitable answer

I

A distorted vision of clandestine ecstasy often beckons an individual like the residual images at the end of the dream, as one awakens and with the opening of the eye, the dreams flee; nervous lest they be caught and tied. Many try to beckon the image time and again, inducing it to return or to stay. Their answer may lay in Psychedelic drugs or slow labourous love making…whose later memories bring glimpses of undulating bodies to the rhythm of the heart-beat, shady afternoons and dusts in the filtered light through the ventilators; the dazzle of the stained glass painting. The hope and belief in the dream is reinstated by the broken vision. In silence, the drifting light may sketch shady patterns as the glass flips in its fall. I stretch to feel the threads of my fleeting dreams, but I know many do not desire so. They are content to wait till they fall asleep again. In my reach towards it, if I try just hard enough, I can also touch Silence.

Silence is claustrophobic when there is a storm within. Locked behind the door of screams and shudders and unknown droning voices, silence can only be the rusted latch which just will not budge. But, I have made peace with myself. I have loved and lost. In that loss, I have embraced silence and been in an adulterous love affair with this silence of mine. But the man I love has not left; not yet… he has drifted into the horizon, a pale vision now…his voice fading as the night swoops down to gather in her arms the victims of sleep. This is not a testimony of a broken heart. My heart is as whole as ever. What is to love if there is no pain?

Perhaps then, we may live in a world of make believe; of stories about Princes, the middle-class or paupers. We may weave dreams or fantasies. But many do not wish to reach out to those dreams but to only wrap the cloak of silence hiding in the fear of light. The abhorrence for failure forms a silken sheath which keeps the lust for the new at bay, and somewhere to try is forgotten. Had Midas not loved gold, would he have loved making all of gold? But in my tower, I weave alone…as I am encouraged to weave my dreams…it is not his favourite. But I am, so he lets me weave. And as I weave, I thread a needle with strands of silken silence. And gently, deeper into my dream, I fall.

Silence is not absolute. I seek to hear voices, to talk, to feel the voices weave around me poignant drops of dew. It is not my desire. It is my need, in the deathly silence of my tower. I blindly seek to talk, about anything…my feelings, my sexuality, my sensuousness...I hear immobile as it is clinically commented upon, my problems examined…I am glad. I have at least been spoken to. There are rules of speech, I discern. You may not hurt at a comment; a joke…fabled bonhomie. Or better still, you may remain comfortably numb.

Love commands devotion, it is believed. Where does this devotion lay? In following like the shariah all that it uttered in the best belief of wellbeing? …

The Queen of Spades

The Queen of Spades had four suitors. No one is born a Prince, all are Kings. So there were the Kings of Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades. Of the Hearts and Clubs, both were glad to remain friends. But between the Kings of Diamonds and Spades, there rose from dusty avenues, smoky veils of mistrust and misgiving, for the Queen had loved both. And in loving, there rose fingers and mocking voices, making the veils thicker till they swamped all strength from the rays of light which had playfully played on the dusty avenues. When Love is questioned, she does not rage back, such is her faith in Truth.

The Queen of Spades had accepted the suit of the King of Spades, much before she led her entrée in the Court of Cards. And then their eyes met. The King of Diamonds raised his glass in salute, while the Queen bowed slightly. “He is a poet”, the Queen of Clubs whispered in her ear.

“The King, a poet?” whispered the Queen of Spades in surprise from behind her fan.

“Yes, he is not man enough. What man is a poet?” sniggered the King of Spades. “O, look at him speak, he is such a woman”

The Queen of Spades looked at the King of Diamonds through the designs on her fan. He was unsure of himself. He looked so different from all the other Kings in Court. He did not laugh derisively like the others, nor did he choose to establish his manliness by commenting on the weakness of the next man. And then he looked, tenderly at her fan, as if searching for a listener. And then, she loved again.

That night, as she lay in the arms of her beloved, the King of Spades, she wondered if there could truly be a man.

Someone to weave a story with, someone to share life without the questions and threads of silence; someone to share every dream with, someone who would understand, someone who would talk listless, endless and paint the pictures of beyond; a poet of love, a joy of togetherness, a spark of forever; someone to be with in the heart of hearts, in mind and words, in expression and silence….someone….a man.

And outside, a lone star twinkled in the inky blue-black night, the star on which she beheld till she closed her eyes in weary sleep, the star on which the King of Diamonds took one last look at before dipping the quill in blue-black ink. And he wrote “The Queen of Spades”…

Dearest,

How long has it been,

since we have held

our relationship

in the proverbial

setting sun?

Do you still dream?

Do you still want to paint

a portrait of you and me;

in white against the

clouds in a run?

You are not a lost love.

Nor a fairy tale of yore

of "once upon a time".

You are my present,

My future undone.

But, how long has it been

since you held this

in the light of day?

And watched the prism

reflect the moonbeam?

Do you still believe?

Do you still want to try

to weave a dream for me?

Do you still get drenched

in the April rain?

“Is this a poem, beloved?”

~ You will ask.

No, This is the cry

Of a cursed soul

Salted pain on paper.

I am looking for a blotting paper

Do you use it?

Or, perhaps you don’t need

To correct whorls of words

On writing paper.

***

I watched you that day

Pacing in the rain

My cheeks were wet

But I held an umbrella

To the camouflaged sun.

Insurgent

In my fortitude

I have rallied

Than be prey

To blinding light

I walk now

Stripped of glory

An yesterday’s story

In the darkness

Knowing my way

You stand afar

Amidst the voices

I walk steadily

Towards deafening silence

For a moment

Don’t offer light

LET ME BE!

Come...

Let me give you a dream,

Let me make love to your senses.

Let me soothe your soul

And grant your spirit

A resurrection,

Amidst the ashes

Where you and I stand

I do not love you.

I cannot do so.

I have left all my

Unease behind

Because…

…For once,

I want to be with you

Without the chaos

Of my thoughts

Guarding my presence

Warning me of you

Without the rustle

Of silk and cotton

It is not that I desire

I want to weave

A new starless sky

For you and me

With the warm golden flame

Of the candles of our dream

I will not turn back

Because I know you have left.

I know…

…You were never there.

You do not exist.

Saturday, June 30, 2007

19:56

He

I sit before my reflection. Perhaps, I could brush my hair. I glance at the telephone; the same that adorns my desk. My mind speaks. It repeats a telephone number. I could call him. But would he understand? There is nothing to understand though. Yet for no reason at all, I am sad. He looks for reason, for logic. When he finds none; he scorns at it all

He thinks this to be... (This writing, this feeling, this thought, this idea, this me)… a product of a complication of simplicity; a product of a relentless romantic mind; lacking in rationale, a Metaphysicist of youth.

He is a parody of my trepidation.