Reconciliation : a response to random scribblings

     To write what is in my mind is difficult but to write what is in my heart is nearly impossible! When it’s my mind I am expressing, my mind itself tells me what to say and what not to…what will make sense and what will “sound bad”. But hearts usually don’t believe in censorship.

     Ever since I realized that words are radioactive and so must be handled with care, I decided to shelve it all together. Why bother to toy with radioactive substances when I can safely stay in the no danger zone?

     Well, just like if you start running from everything you find that you have no place to run, the same happened to me. It was as if I was running away from a mirror thinking I am actually running away from me. Obviously each time I stumbled onto a reflecting surface, I found that I was there, just as I had left me, only looking a little cross because I had abandoned me.

    I tried to stop many times, but it was more of just slowing down the than really stopping. You can never really be too harsh on yourself unless of course you are on some masochistic spree! But then something happened.

    I was on my usual routine run, when I felt a sudden jerk. Thankfully in my world of figurative running, inertia of motion doesn’t exist or else I would have surely stumbled onto the ground. I turned to my side to see what had caused the sudden stop. I saw a hand firmly held mine.

       While I was running away from me, someone very quietly had decided to run along with me. Only difference was, he wasn’t really running away from anything. He was running so that he could catch up with me. At this juncture he had realized that we were running in the same speed and in complete sync with each other. So he stopped, held my hand firmly and made me to stop.

       He looked intently into my eyes though two layers of spectacles and said, ‘write.’

     It was a thousand words packed in one. Words are truly radioactive!

       So here I am, finally not running away but sitting down and penning down…sorry …typing my thoughts. I am not going to think whether the whole piece is meaningless or not, whether or not it makes any contribution to the world of literature, whether this is just a showcase displaying my stupidity and idiocracy decoratively.  I am just going write, with or without reason, with or without plot and even when I know my style is the most cliché one in the world. Maybe I have nothing new to say, but I will say it nevertheless because it will be ME saying it…and that itself is something new…at least for me and people who care deeply about me.        

       I have often heard myself think, some pieces are best never written because they are so ‘bad.’ But I don’t feel that way anymore. If I write badly I need to keep writing badly so that writings get tired of being written badly and decide to have a mind of its own! Believe me they do have a mind of its own. When I abandon it, it pouts and sulk like nobody’s business. It throws wild tantrums if I go near it. I almost hear it say, ‘either you stay with me through thick and thin or else I don’t want to have anything to do with you!’

     So I have decided to reconcile. I am going to hold its hand just the way he held mine. And the rest will just fall in place just the way it always does!            

                     Onek din baadey aaj tokey anubhob korlam. Belar dikey ami jokhon chande gechhilam lep rodey ditey, tokhon hothat bujhte perechi je tui eshechish. Tai jonnei bodhaye goto dui din dhore amar monta onorokom lagchhilo. Abar gaan shunte bhalo lagchhilo....gaan gaite ichhe korchilo, ghorer kaaj korte korte majhe majhei neche uthchilam. Monta boro osthir chhilo...kintu ei osthirotatei boro shanti pachhilam. Mone hochhilo jeno onek diner bondho kora ekta gumot ghorer janala keu hat korey khule diyeche. Amar ar dom bondho hoye jachhe na.

                    Sondhe belaye ami kichutei amar kaaje mon ditey pari na . Sither shesher sondhe guloye ek odhbhut snighdho gandho thake. Shei gandho amake mataal korey toley. Ami aj abar shei gondhe mete uthi.  Tokhon i bujhi tui phire eshechish. 

                    Ami jani ami tokey diner por din abohela korechi....tor tai amar opor khoob abhiman. Ami tokey jor korey amar kachh theke durey thele phelechi. Tui kotobar cheshta korechili amake bojhate kintu ami shunini...shunte chai ni. 

                  Kintu ekhon ami tokei khunjchi. Ami tor kachhe thakte chai. Karon tui amake shobcheye beshi bhalobashish. Ami tokey chhere dileo tui amake aankre dhorey thakish. Ami jani tui amar jonno onek koshto peyechhish.

                   Tai aajke jokhon bojhlam tui amar shonge dekha korte eshechish....amar mon bhore gelo. Aye na, amar bhanga mone amra dujon bash kori. Dujon miley ekshonge abar gorbo, srishti korbo ar bhalobashbo.

Vox Pop 2011 (teaser 1.0)

Unreachable

         I stand there above all. The sea of heads below. This time it's only me and the mike. No podium to hide the rest of me. I lean back slightly over emphasizing my confidence. I clasp the neck of the microphone and see my fingers curl around it like frightened children clinging on to their mother. I breathe slowly. I know even my breath will be magnified in the ears of the many just the way everyone can hear my thumping heartbeat. I stand there to speak.
       I was supposed to speak on a motion. For or against , it doesn't matter. Either way it would be lying. It would either be restating of facts that most people know or words which everyone wants to hear. I have five minutes to myself. Five legitimate minutes to be the loudest among them all. Five whole minutes to stand in the line of vision of a thousand eyes and five whole minutes to leave a mark in the minds of millions....
       If only I could speak what I felt, what I thought, without any kind of restrain. But the only way I can reach everyone of those indistinguishable minds in the blurred mass of flesh is by packaging my thoughts in an  
 " acceptable"  way. 
       Thundering applause break the silence that was formed after I had uttered the last word. I had said another well articulated speech. Every word was crafted in a way it would hit the right chord in the hearts of every kind of individuals. 
        Yet again, what I feel, got lost in the ornate packaging of my thoughts. 

         The low ceiling hits my head each time I want to stand straight. So I keep my head bent. It does ache after sometime but then again sometime after that the back of my head stops feeling anything at all. The ceilings on the side are blank wooden planks. I shamelessly write there with my uneven scrawly handwriting, glad that whatever I am writing no one's going to ever read. I doodle too sometimes. It never happens consciously. It's only when I am absent minded it happens. 
        On the ceiling below me I have kept a 5' 5" gap. The rest is strewn with food that I am going to devour each  day. Every moment. In some places in my room, " the food" piles up and touches the low ceiling.
        I have an in built camera in me and an in built notebook. The moment I have gathered enough strength from the food I shall take off. For a while the room is my world. But I know that the world outside my room is a massive place. When I take off, I'll try to cover the world. Am sure by then I will be strong enough to fly that distance. Strong enough to fight the opposing current and fly against the air flow.
       For now, excuse me . I need to eat.

          

I was walking down the street the other day. As absentminded as I have become, I had forgotten to wear my specs. Well with just -0.50 power in my left eye and -0.75 in my right, I have a nearly perfect vision. But the only problem is that the faces of the people a little away from me appear as if though a translucent glass window. This street by the way , at the time I was walking , becomes extremely colourful. Literally and not literally. In the morning, that is the time when I was walking , the morning bazaar operates in full strength. The make-do shops eat their way into the street in a way which makes it impossible to walk straight. It's like concentric circles, it starts with the vegetable jhuris , that get surrounded by the wayward onions and potatoes that roll off and in a way increase the property area of the sabji ola. Then that gets surrounded by the morning risers that come to buy their daily ration and finally this concentric formation gets fortified by the cycles that these morning risers bring and carelessly park. With the fortification and all, the make do shop reaches the middle of the street. Walking down absentmindedly, the hub of the haggling buyers and sellers and enthusiastic advertisers and morning greetings all gets stirred into a hum.

I was walking down the street the other day. As absentminded as I have become, I had forgotten to wear my specs. As I walked ahead, like a movie camera focusing on random faces to create a prologue to an approaching danger, random faces caught my eye. Only the faces were not random and all I could see of the faces were their eyes. When they met mine they said the same thing, " I have seen it too."

As my eyes shot from one pair to another pair of eyes they echoed the same thing ... "I have seen it too."

I squinted. How did they know that it was chasing me ? No wait, how did I know it was chasing me? I think I read it in their eyes. In their eyes, "it" said to me, "he saw me in his cousin who ran away with a boy of a lower caste", or "she saw me in her son who could not come home because the train left the tracks" or "she saw me when her best friend felt that anti depressant pills were not working." and the stories went on and on. And then in the time space when I was ricocheting from one pair of eyes to another, out of nowhere it said " and I am coming for you..."

A loud honk. I jerked back in reflex and the Auto which came from nowhere missed me by a millimeter.

"Dekhe cholben toh didi "

It was not a near death incident before which I had a premonition of it. It was a coincident. If the auto had hit me, it would be an accident and nothing more. But no matter how much I utilize my rationality, I still feel that day, I met Death. In person and not in action.