Thursday, August 25, 2011

....

Stories continue even if the words stop. One such story starts where they have lost words. Actually words are not lost, they are there.... unsaid, buried deep.... The sky is overcast with clouds; but the rain maker still stuck in the boring office desk.... this is not a life the dreamer had asked for. Often on rainy days like these, the dreamer wonders what the lunatic does. Does it still sit near the big window every evening with a glass of whisky? Though it’s incredulously absurd, sometimes it also tries to guess if the lunatic still bunks office to dream; loiter around in the house and sing loudly on the side veranda when the light goes away after hours of rain.... Sometimes the dreamer wonders what can be more beautiful than making sense out of complete nonsense.... Wise friends (specially the Mortician) get irritated with this habit of the dreamer; they are successful people of the world; they are pragmatic and sane. They keep on warning the dreamer.

Sometimes the dreamer thinks to retaliate; but honestly how does it matter to them if the dreamer loves nonsense? Or rather the question is what matters? The dreamer has a world of its own, where no one has place except the lunatic.... and that’s what matters may be.... Let them think whatever they think, lets revert to our dreamer. The dreamer runs around in the room, closes the windows before the droplets hit the den, lights candles; and recalls how much the lunatic loves scented candles.... the room gets filled with the sick sweet smell of those strawberry candles which the lunatic had got from the city mall last year.... the dreamer is numb and submerged in oblivion and continues dreaming.... the silence is unperturbed with occasional barks of street dogs form the narrow lanes of south Calcutta. The sound of the pendulum echoes and swings and with it swings the past and the present.... the dreamer is torn apart; the helpless merciless pain plagues him.... the barrage is broken, the flood gates open, tears have found way amidst the perplexed helplessness of the dreamer. Salty tears drench the night, but the rain doesn’t pour....

Three years ago when the dreamer had shifted back, it had a very big dream; it had dreamt of finding love in this city. This is the city the dreamer always wanted to come back to. This is the city the dreamer was born in. Childhood, school days, gawky years of adolescence, carefree years of college; in the breaths of this city are the witness to those days. It felt the search had ended when it met the lunatic. Little did the dreamer know that it was just the beginning.

The dreamer rediscovered the city with the lunatic’s eye. Bus rides, Tram rides, auto rickshaws, underground metros all became more fun with the lunatic. The dreamer often caught itself dreaming of walking down the streets of the city barefoot with the lunatic.... Caffeine stained evenings, colourful nights, encounters with Tagore and Mohiner ghoraguli, and clandestine games with the little lunatic of the dreamer.... Colours changed and life seemed beautiful; reality was better than dreams; happiness was crowned with melody and marshmallow clouds. The dreamer thought it had met a friend for life. It was that sense of being attached that transformed the life of the dreamer. It was a walk in a trance. Million little things started making meaning. Time flew quickly....

Two little streams flew together, grew into big rivers flowing towards the same NOWHERE....
Suddenly the blanket of love is wiped aside for the skeleton to come out of the wardrobe....
separate ways, separate worlds, so close yet so far, so right yet so wrong....
blank eyes, open doors, roofless rooms, blood stains, acid rains,
a sky shaped hole in the universe....

Now, every evening the dreamer meets the Mortician over coffee. They talk of love, life, lunacy, legacy, leisure, loss, laments, lullabies and every other possible thing. Sometimes the dreamer quietly listens and does not speak. The Mortician knows the dreamer deeply; so it does not get upset. The dreamer often thinks of explaining it to the mortician; for her its one single ball of grief. But for the dreamer it’s even more complex. The dreamer does not even know what plagues him more ....the loss of friendship? ....the loss of love? ...the fact that the lunatic does not love the dreamer? or the fact that the lunatic has only the balls , but no backbone to support the balls. The cat is out of the box gloriously. The lunatic has miserably failed but still lies to the dreamer, even though it knows that everyone knows the truth. Who needs pity more than a man in self denial !

The Mortician blames the dreamer, she tries to convey how disastrous songs are and how perilous are the assets of sentiments and faith. She calls the dreamer her “little masochistic angel”. She feels the dreamer overreacts and is lousily cheesy in bargaining when it comes to EMOTIONS. The dreamer wonders what EMOTIONS are....

2 comments:

  1. ur characters r so beautifully crafted... sometimes u feel them merge...and yet like an internal conflict... they r distinct.... somewhat like a multiple personality..... one body yet so many ppl... simply... outstanding....

    ReplyDelete
  2. you have an image of a person in your head, each time you see its not the same a bit of that image gets shattered; each time trust is betrayed!
    shocking it is. the seed that was planted has grown into a mammoth tree, not to give you shade but to entangle you more in the disastrous roots....
    reasons lost in time, the internal conflict continues, change and acceptance are after all not same!

    ReplyDelete