Of escapes and pearls.

These are dull days, no sun to look up at, no rain to ponder on, no chill so that you might allow yourself to be hugged by yourslef tightly, let that strange feeling of warmth calm you down. There's a lot to what i'm studying, there's a lot if you think of it that way. But then again, there really is nothing in it. I can loose myself in the dynamics of the natural phenomena that i'm studying, they call it a science, but it really is just another escape. It's a fantasy, the whole of it, a beautiful make believe world which people have carefully built up over the years. We all live in that fantasy.

It all really is an escape for me. I like escaping, that's the cold truth. And i like escaping from that cold truth.

About thirty six-hours ago, i watched 'Double Indemnity'. I took pleasure in watching it, an immensely crooked guilty pleasure. People have done the same over the years. I was chilled by Barbara Stanwyck's first appearance, she was loosely covered in a bath-robe, looking down at the man downstairs the same way a teacher looks at a student when they pose an unexpected question. Something would shine in her eyes throughout the movie, and yet we shall forever be perplexed by what those eyes really held in them.

That was another glorious escape for me.

I've been hearing stories lately. There was one about a guy who walked into a resturant by the Maine and treated himself to a sumptous feast. It turns out that he didn't have a penny on him at all. The resturant manager was swelling in fury, threatning court, when the man blurted out those silly words which won the day. He had been having oysters for lunch. Now, the thing is, by the side of the Maine, they simply grab the oysters alive in their fishing nets. Back home, we've all seen the dynamics of animal slaughter. By the side of the Maine, they're techniques for such murder are infinitely cooler. They just spike the oysters with fresh lemon, and all life is sucked out in an instant, a second and a few drops of lemon juice and you're gone.

But i'm digressing. This man, he had these oysters for lunch. And when the manager asks him for an explanation, he retorts with a smile and says, 'I had so many oysters, i'd simply hoped that i'd find a pearl in one of them. I'd hoped to have payed my bills with that one pearl.'

We shall all search for that pearl. I'm sure we will.

1

It was early morning, the sky was a dull grey, the air was thick in smog and the birds weary in their early morning chores. Trendhill's Gate, where all the dead come in to be stoned, was witness to a small gathering in those early hours. It's decade-old undertaker, Mr Gatr, was in his early morning stupor, his hands feebly clinging on to a bottle of old California Wine, an E & J Gallo. He was seated next to his young accomplish, the sprightly teenager Miral who was often blasted by the undertaker for being a touch too curious about life when his work dealt mostly with death... And just as these two were out on the yard, feeling about the earth with their feet(soft and warm from last night's sleep), they were stalled in their tracks by the earliest group of mourners. Mr Gatr groaned. He hadn't been out to feed his dog yet, he hadn't yet lifted his eyes up at the sun, and there they were, those bloody beings who've got nothing better to do but mourn for what's gone and never coming back. Over the years, Gatr had compelled himself, internally, to not flinch at the sight of the dead bodies. While the mourners allways irritated him, their noise was annulled by the silence of the dead in front of him. Early on in his career, what had haunted him most was that some people would die with their eyes open. Which meant that even in death, they seemed to be eerily staring back at him, that cold lifeless stare a dreadful sight that filled him up with inexplicable guilt.



And yet, he had moulded himself, almost carved himself into that role that he had chosen, and after all these years, Nixem Gatr was Trendhill's sole burier of souls, he was the one who had the last glimpse of the rotten corpses before they were burried beneath.



Thankfully for him though, the crowd assembled this morning was a small one. A dozen people, about a couple sobbing shamelessly into their handkerchiefs, and there were six people who held the body, now covered in white apron, they had it hoisted up above the rest. In a sickening thud, it all came down, and Gatr was suddenly consigned to it again, for there he was, a pale young youth in a bed, a serene white deathbed. Up above him, a giant eagle circled the sky, but Gatr went on unflinched, his eyes fixed on the unmoving earth as he sealed the death in front of him with a reading from John's Bible, that which had been for a thousand years.



In the midst of life, we are in death. Of whom may we seek succor but of thee, o lord, who for our sins are justly displeased.



The deceased was Paul Gregory, Gatr knew him by sight, he was a handsome young youth after all. He had however, been fairly ill-reputed around Trendhill, for he would often wind up in brawls, or take to the road with a town belle. His eyes would shine in a queer tempestuos lust, (Gatr read it as his natural lust for life), and now in front of him, the eyes were gone.



And suddenly, it wasn't a dull morning anymore. As old Gatr turned around him, the morning was dreadfully sad. The eagle up above him was gone, the people were gone, Miral was gone, Paul was gone.

I stared on, a second running into an eternity. All that there is to love, in that one frame, one vision, my mind a paradise, blisfully blank until it was gone, gone, gone in one painful stroke of time. I can stretch my hand all I want, all i'll grasp is the dreary sadness of the air around me.

Time, time.

He is two, a tot jumping in front of his mirror, giggling in delight at the sight of his own face that is in phase with itself. A dry toothbrush sticks out from his mouth. It is memory, of the earliest years, of an old shade of greenish golden. The borders around the room in which the mirror was have blurred, and now all that rests in it is a fondness, and time, time, time. Like royal silence, where none can sense or trace it, time, time.
A blinding light pervades the room and at once, he is seven, and walking through the Moorish streets of Lake Gardens holding his mother’s arm. She leaves him there at a park, tells him she is a working woman, she has work, she has to go. He stands there, in drab silence in the midst of the green earth, looking around at other toddlers with glee on their faces. That glee, which is rare and unperturbed, which marks no creases on your face, but simply carries you forward. The earth slowly turns greener as the day brightens and it reaches a peak until it all fades away again.
Thirteen, and there is a sudden flurry of activity, of noise. In the midst of it all, suddenly he is burdened with death. He does not know how to deal with it, he has heard frightful things about it, yet he doesn’t know how to deal with it. As the November rains drains the earth, as if in defeat, he simply stands by his grandfather’s cot, studying minutely the creases on his face. There is an absurd naivety in the old man’s face, a naivety of the kind where you have completely given in, completely scorned feeling and doubt and gone beyond. He sees all around him crying, he doesn’t know what he is supposed to do. He walks away. He remembers the rain. It fades away.
Fourteen, Fifteen, teen. He says those words over and over again, rounds them around his lips, feels the exciting prospects that are invested in that word. Once when he was young, he had dreamed of growing up. And now, Neverland was here, in all its promised treasures. And yet, he is more often than not entwined in human tussles. Something has begun, something genuinely and strikingly different.
The earth seems to have opened up. Beauty and treachery lie on the same bed. He doesn’t know which is more exciting, which disturbs him more. Slowly he realizes that time is ripe for him to move away from all that claims to be his authority. Instead now, he is possessed of this desire to explore himself, to explore what he wants and more importantly, why he wants it.
The days have meandered off since then, the earth has taken its turn in being green. When he was young, he used to share a silly little dream of waking up one winter morning to a snowing Calcutta. Calcutta hasn’t remained, the snow hasn’t come.
The world is now a hodge-podge, where fantasy and desire and sorrow and pain aren’t mere articulate words, they are part of each other.
There are a million voices, a thousand crazy whispers. Winter is here for now, biting into human skin like conscience, telling them not to take anything as a joke, not even themselves.

The winter is now at its peak, the skies absorbed in royal silence, and humanity tussles on beneath, its own course unknown and bleak, but for now breathing in relief, for a year has ended and with it, its sorrows and the next turn marks a new beginning. There is a chance after all. India, abysmally dry, is gearing up for an end of year bash, and nothing will rob a nation of that chance at glory, the glory of forgetting, the glory of washing yourself away, of renewing, of having another chance.
And he has spent himself here for a while, he is looking aside, looking beyond. Time, time.

Narcissism.

Each moment an insane excess. Each vision a fleeting attachment. Each gust of wind like love.

I was standing on the side of the Rabindrasadan Platform, kneeling into the dark alleyway from which the train beckoned. Its funny how at the back of each and every person waiting for the train at a particular instant in time, in one particular place, there is that one common concrete anticipation for the rushing sound of the train. For the sudden blinding lights to break through the darkness that we look into. And when the train arrives, wooing its beckoners with a gust of wind, and the familiar smell of damp metal on a rainy night(light rain, not heavy rain), everyone there takes a moment. They take a moment to see the many faces within the train rush past them like an illusion of life, like a fleeting moving dream, until in one sickening thud, the magic thins away and grants you the relief of your everyday life. You bathe in the wind, and while you do so, your mind is blank and bliss, noise is gone. And then you step in. To life as you know it, and as you grasp the firm metal contours of the metro, it really is a reaffirmation of the truth, of the only option we have, of the slow motion of a train, of your own identity, of you.

As I look up at the sky, I seem to be lead into a belief that my memory bears the colour of the sky. It is crimson, but strangely mordant and harmless, stretching aimlessly. As I look straight up at the sky, suddenly I see a ray of silver. It is only an unassuming drop of water. And before I can think, the drop of water must take advantage of my slow reflexes and seep into my eyes.

And suddenly, I prise myself out from this strange Tarkovskian melancholy. I choose to look at the Volvo bus that struts majestically through the road. It is the new prince of the road, and everybody gapes at it, admiring its gentle grandour, its wild silence, its control of life. He is a prince of high demand, and must thus bear the irk of those not so well off. His lowly colleage, an auto driver, shrugs him off as an irksome fly and moves on. Such are the travesties of life, I presume. One must learn to accept defeat.

But Volvo doesn't care. The winner takes it all, after all. He has too many detractors to be bothered by them and so he flatters his admirers. He promises them the many wonders of a roadtrip. People gaze and dream. A silent dream.

What is beauty? Does it depend on how you perceive it? Does it last long? I found beauty in a drab grey lampost tonight when I was meandering outside in my campus. I touched it, and it had wrought in itself a coldness. A frightening coldness. But it was remarkably beautiful as well. It amazed the hell out of me.

And finally, just on the brink of night, my hands on the dirty creased railings of karunamoyee bridge, I stared as far as I could into the narrow, slim expanse of Tolly Nullah. For those not in the know, throughout the years, Tollynullah is the river where human waste of a thousand years have been dumped. Strangely enough though, on this night, while the rest of the sky was a still red, devoid of purpose, the sky above this wasteland was a shock. Was it red at all? I can't tell. And beyond it, the horizon was breathing softly into the day's end, quietly amidst the insane flapping of wings and screeching of birds, all in a rush to go home. It faded away slowly. Deep in my mind, from where the silly questions arise, I asked myself what this place might have been a good two hundred years ago, when the late British engineer(er, Mr Tolly was an engineer and tollyguange and tollynullah are named after him), had stood here and had taken a long last look at the waters that would soon submerge beneath all of history's dung. If indeed he had any idea about the gravity of his own decisions, of the manner in which time would account for it all in its own inexorable way. And the other silly thought that presented itself was if he really wanted to do it. After all, he must have had a whole world of choices. Why this one?

As night fell, I turned around and moved away.

It was only later that I realized I had lost my mind for a while.

Words elude me like it has for the past few months. This elusion has haunted me, albeit in my subconscious, it has tricked me and bafooned me.

When I wake up early in the morning, I am infected by that wondrous fresness that is there everywhere around me. In the covers of my bed, in palm of my hand and even(surprise surprise!) in my mind. I could jump then if I wanted to. I could shout hoarse at the sky and the world wouldn't mind because I wouldn't mind.

Recently, music has occupied a large part of my life. If you asked me, an explicit explanation would fail me, I would even have to admit that it isn't that I've been suddenly invigorated with divine realisations about music. It's just been there. I haven't sought for an explanation.

And so has Ratul. It is my good luck that the boy won't ever be reading this(yes, even if one of you go and tip him off, for he really hasn't the patience, as he'll be quick to remind you). I will refrain from commenting on my opinions on him, but he has blended into the bleak canvass of my existence and I didn't even see him coming.

And i will also refrain from the rest, for then I will inevitably start to blabber. A nothing post. Good day.

It is after so many days that I feel the need to blog.

But hell, its all stuck in there.

Lukachupi. Nice song. Nice word.