In the room the seasons
come and go
Speaking of
Michelangelo
Now, when women put their
smile on windows and approach, inside dank tiny rooms like the one where I
stay, it should rain in heart of hearts. And it should rain till far away, in
the morning, when the sun should’ve risen but because it rains, we don’t see it
rising, though it really has. Perhaps. And when those drops smashed against the
pane, I saw how the world, whirling, twisting and untwisting itself along the
edges & contours of time and trembling with its chaos & harmony, would
splatter itself across all significances of our barebacked Universe. It rains
only when everything falls silent. And whatever sound, other than that of rain
gnashing against the hard surfaces of the world, approaches the eardrums when
it rains – such as ships bugling out from the jetty, caterpillar-trains
rambling past, horizonbound, cloudbursts, people splashing past puddles, people
talking in miffmuffled whispers, toads challenging the sky, it all echoes. And
there’s this other echo, when it rains at night on hills and the other hills,
where it doesn’t rain, reflect it, like sincere Gods holding the mirror we
haven’t been looking for. That’s how prophesies sound, or so we believe.
Venus of Urbino, her form
stretches before the eye till as far as vision reaches. There are drops of
water, forming little pearls of beauty, the sort that wipes the muck of mind
and often waters eyes, like only pretty women, pretty poetry and other little
big pretty things can do. And the drops are all over her body, forming little,
rounded globes, trickling down her brave nipples to her tender forefingertip,
and gathering up, to fall, like autumn-leaves, on fertile soil. And they gather
like the seven jewels of wisdom, around her mighty blooming navel, curving down
her smooth underbelly to the folds of her moist pubus. Man, have you ever
pressed your face against woman’s hair and wept? You should see her, our Lady
of fond giving, in the soft light that peeps out when it stops raining. That’s
the light we see on her eyes, and we can see inside our hearts, like an X-Ray
plate. Earliest memory involved green mornings after the rain had stopped and
the leaves were greener. I would look outside our living-room window, across
the pond, to the coconut and other trees. Granma had cut out an unused
water-bottle, put some soil inside, and had planted a bit of green that popped
up, proudly, in the tint. She used to say that green is good for the eyes.
I remember early autumn evenings.
There was a Gulmohar tree behind our Government-colony apartment, and its head
would be just outside our bedroom window. It was red with flowers and a lot of
birds would sit and move around. My favourite one was this little colourblast,
BashontoBouri or Barbet. And all the chirping to wipe dying sunlight off their
feathers. Mother was a nest and father was a big tree of wisdom and solutions.
And red petals would soak in the last drips of daylight, and the skies would
turn from red to magenta to mauve. There was a lot of green in those off
Calcutta suburbs and beyond the tree our tiny compound wall would be covered
with shrubs and there was a little canal beyond it, and a row of coconut trees
lined up like war criminals before the firing squad. Colonel Aureliano would
have thought up snow by then. Beyond the criminals lay a stretch of green, on
one side of which there was a dense bush of bamboo and more shrubs. By the time
the skies and the world would be the dark blue pearls of Blue Danube, a million
fireflies would surround the bush and little dots of fire would surround it in
strange worship of living, and crickets would start singing when the first
conch-shell sounds pierced out of the lower-middle class apartments to mingle
with the Azan from our neighbourhood mosque. The hawk, which had nested itself
on the palm tree beyond the bushes, would flutter its big brown wings for one
last time, and that would be it. Dad would return from the world across the
yellow streets – my first knowing of the city below yellow streets of night –
in a few hours. First erection was sometime around then. Our hero and heroine
were singing and dancing by some waterfall on television and I had a toy
helicopter and our relatives from Assam had arrived.
That was late autumn,
sometime in November, as winter was sharpening its claws and little Oskar
hadn’t yet gone inside his granma’s rainbow-faded skirt as she sat on the
oven-heated bricks. Don’t know how there stars had placed themselves and how
the Milky Way floated in our deep dark form-interrupted space. The moon
could’ve been a big bowl of silver or it could’ve been in ox-horned, knit-brow
frown. The sun hadn’t entered the eastern piece of land we inherit and windows
opened and shut in forced cacophony. And untimely rain arrived, between these
two seasons, and little drops flew around in trembling breeze, that sort that
stabs the bones of the Universe and kisses them, in the wintry, baleful game of
woe and death. Perhaps, the moon was down. I remember, bending over the volcanoes,
in darkness, with sharp droplets flying across the sword, in the breeze,
calling out for the shadowy blends, for lightning and oblivion, as she arrived.
That was lady midnight. Her gown was purple, and the fond folds her applemoon
shoulderbaldes held the waves of living, with mint and silver of life, love,
death and everything in between. I kissed them once. And I kissed them again.
And again.
There wasn’t affliction
all around. Yolk-mornings of winter, for example, staring at sparrows jumping along
the sunlight on balcony and portico, from the other side of my blue nylon
mosquito-net, were kind. The Giver gave. Faint sounds of cooking would come out
of the kitchen. Sunflower-headed lions, softly smiling through their lips and
eyes, would glide in. That was warmth, and warmth was yellow, like it always
is. And things melted, blending senses in fresh dewey light, sweeping all nice
things up from conscious corners and piling them up in a heap. That was the
earliest connection with good. Good was kind, and was smiling all the time.
Even the lizards would be happy on the walls, and elephants would trumpet
happiness from faraway green forests, by unknown rivers from books of hunting.
Books had started filtering in and so had cricket till lunch. Some things would
reach late, but there were always other things to fill the void up. Thus, the
distances behind eyes. I had discovered solitude pretty early, and the sun
would set on all trees and houses of clouds. Ophelia, our great white lily,
floated by the river-bends, and willows stooped over her closed eye-lids,
reaching out for her, seeking to caress her cold face which could be seen, but
couldn’t see anymore.
Spring was all about
Guernica and white horses. The piano-reeds would inevitably be soft, like petals
from twilight flowers, and the candle-stand had a stone-fairy holding the
candle on her head, and, when the flame made candles weep, wax would fall, like
dazed tears, on her proud, perky breasts. That was in one such spring. Each
time I tried to light the candle, it would go off. Fairy, and her perky bosoms,
were mocking. Suddenly, through the swelling curtains and through cold music
from the battery-operated radio, and through the light and darkness of the
room, now enlightened by the flicked matchstick and now shunted to the sharp
calendula-tinctured darkness of children in Roman masks of pain and wilderness,
frozen while screaming, it arrived. There were shapes of monstrosity on the
walls as the vineyard of dark tales of crime coiled and tolled up, roofbound,
in muted rebellion and conquest, like those softly burning petals of beauty. I
attacked Bastille. I stood tall and proud, the emperor of my doom.
Summers weren’t much,
except for sweat sticking to meat and meat sticking to meat, yearning for more.
And there were dogs in dogged afternoon streets, rolling on black asphalt,
leaving little traces on the semi-molten macadam. Mornings would be waiting by
the deodar trees for the school-bus of scare, and afternoons would be waiting
in a file to board the bus back home, staring at the mirror of a photography
studio and observing a line a sweat trickling down from the corner of one of
the eyebrows and streaming down, chinwards. Books and copies would be in a
rectangular suitcase with my name written on it. Back-home, it was all about
Mama-Television and siesta as evenings passed through needle-eyed tear and
snot, trying to draw lines and squares and circles. Summer had more misery in
it than the entire history of our melancholic world of dementia and margins.
There was this Chinese
king who had a map of his kingdom drawn out, and the map was so big and
detailed that it was as big as the kingdom itself. And the map stayed on even
when the kingdom didn’t. Now we all have our little big maps, and we are all in
it. Dead moments pile up below the ocean. And soon enough, they will rise, like
DiscoveryChanneled coral reefs, tearing the face of water, booming tall
prophesies over our dark hedonist lays. Where will we let them keep their
raised feet? Head becomes pointed, like a question mark, and I enter the room
where the huge flame of the huge candle flickers. My fingers show their white,
thin bones as I hug the candlebody with my fleshbody, and weep, dark water
shivers on the walled, framed mirrors. They are burying our prophet twenty feet
below our dark soil that knows of it all. Full fathom five thy father lies.
We see the face of our unknown idol, her screams and echoes shooting from room
to room, making shapes of fury on the tiled walls, plastered roofs, and on our
weary frames. The flame flops down like red tongue of thirsty desert-hound and
like its demon of starless eyes.
I don’t remember when I
was born. There’s a calendar with a picture of god on the wall, and there are
numbers and letters written on it. That might have an answer, but the numbers
are blind without the letters and vice versa. I didn’t know that I was being
born when I was being born. I don’t know whether I knew that I was born when I
was born. I could never trust my sincerity in knowing, and whenever I feel like
I know something, a little voice from somewhere asks me whether I really know
it or whether I have learned it from books. To step down into this labyrinth
without any clue, without knowing where the doors are, to be doomed to move around
in circles till forever lasts, is the first idea of fear. And could we ever
penetrate that? Theseus had his ball of threads. We have the seasons.
Or maybe, we don’t.
Is this why we have come
this far?
Is this not why we have come thus far?
