जब दीवार से कलेंडर गायब होगा...

जब दीवार से कलेंडर गायब हुआ...
...तो कुछ खिड़कियाँ खुली रह गयीं थी
रस्सी पर सूख रहे कपड़ों में अभी भी नमी थी
अलमारी के ऊपर की धूल झाड्नी बाकी थी
गमले की मिट्टी को सींचना भूल गए थे
कुछ खतों के जवाब अभी देने थे
कमीज़ में अभी भी कुछ बटन लगाने रह गए थे
आधी पढ़ी किताब, मेज़ पर उलटी पड़ी थी
कुछ पुराने दोस्तों से एक बार फिर मिलना था
चंद कहानियां अधूरी थीं, पूरी करनी थीं...

जब दीवार से कलेंडर गायब होगा
तो कुछ खिड़कियाँ खुली रह जायेंगी...

from sublime to absurd...

When we - the trio (now just duo) - were growing up as teenagers in early '70s, we were grappling with finding/ extending the bandwith of life in our existence... an existential freedom to be able to live across the sublime-to-absurd

One of us (not me) had set the agenda for us...

मुझमें है मष्तिष्क, हृदय है,
मझमें काम, क्रोध, और भय है,
जो अपना है उसे दबा कर,
रूप देवता का कर लूं मैं,
क्या जीवन का ध्येय यही है?...

he had also written these verses:

उस शाम, हल्के-हल्के कोहरे में तैरते हुए
तुम और मैं, न मालूम किन ऊंचाइयों को
छू लेने के लिए, पहाड़ के संकरे रास्तों पर
बढ़ते जा रहे थे...

और मैंने एकाएक ठहर कर, जोर से चीख कर
हर एक छोटी को, हर एक घटी को
तुमारा नाम दोहराने पर मजबूर कर दिया...

मेरे बचकाने-पन पर, तुम हंस पड़ी थीं...

और नाक का एक टुकड़ा, तुम्हारे होठों के ऊपर
आ चिपका था....

तुम बेखबर हंसतीं जा रहीं थी
और मेरी आँखों में तुमारा हँसता चेहरा
धुंधला होता जा रहा था...

... और जब नाक की एक लिज्लिली पर्त ने
तुम्हारे सारे चहरे को धक् लिया
तो मैंने रुक कर
नीचे दूर तक गयी उन घाटियों में
(जो शायद अब भी तुम्हरा नाम दोहरा रहीं थीं)
उलटी कर दी!!

hehe!... I did warn you :0)
... we were searching to find "our existential freedom to be able to live across the sublime-to-absurd"!

to.... a past which pays no dividends anymore....

What should I do with a past
which pays no dividends anymore?

That face which haunted the lonliness
of my childhood days?... which grew and vanished,
fading like the evening sunrays...

What should I do with those dry whithered leaves,
of a long forgotten spring,
which flow into my house
with the atumn breeze?

... they knock on my door, rustle on the floor
twist and swirl, unfurl the scars
of a mental crease...

I had once collected the days and years
in verses and proses,
I had once been my antique-collector,
I had painted ghosts, and sketched lost souls...
...had redrawn lines on fading figures.

I had tried to capture my past -
- intact, classified - in multi-coloured jars...

I had althrough tried
lighting old stubs for a smoke,
and got stale taste in the mouth
and almost choked.
I learned the futility and let the past fly,
fade fro the eyes...

But now,
in a new spring of life
the autumn past
sends it reminders...

of decay and dying of certain memories.. within myself...

These were some verses which I had scribbled when I had visited my alma mater - IIT/ Kanpur, some 6-7 years (SEpt '87) after I had moved on.... re-discovered them today in the pages of an old diary... as one keeps discovering such/these memories....
all written during "IIT/K, 29/09/87"

I.
To come back
and to find
that things have changed...
Time cheated you
while your back was turned
and stole away
certain unknown moments
of hazy possibillities
from your life
and left you
insecure, unsure, lost, alien
in you momentary nakedness


II.
Innumerable possibilities
whose warps and weaves
create that magic carpet,
which flies towrds the lofty aims
and goals
.. like the archetypal soap bubbles,
which would burst in the mid air
and dump me
back
into the reality
which I chose to disown...

III.
Disillusionment with a past
which somehow
always assumes a glitter in the memory
to be soiled
when you come in contact with it...
by
a yellowing palm-leaf in the pot
a tube-light which twitches and flickers
a tattered patch in the roof
unkempt grass patches
and cobwebs in the corners
... all signs of decay and dying
of an external reality
which is also a projection of a process
of decay and dying
within myself
of certain memories....

... जी नहीं, बस भीड़ में अकेले हैं!

आप बड़े दुखी हैं,
बेचारे,
सहानुभूति के आकांक्षी!
क्या महंगाई के मारे हैं?

बेकारी से बेज़ार
दुखी दांपत्य के भोक्ता हैं?
क्या स्वाधीनता-संग्राम में,
आपने बहुत कष्ट झेले हैं?

"... जी नहीं
बस
भीड़ में अकेले हैं!"

- दिनकर सोनवलकर

We are the lost one’s, who never fought...

oh well!... I was just 19-yrs then :)

The journey of this lost soul is a never-ending sequence – of enlightenments and ennui, of paroxysms and dullness, of staggering and determination… Nothing achieved, nothing lost. The compulsion of living is the only justification – is any!

Some arbitrary elements of fate, some random components of this purposelessness – and the life is summarized as a poker-faced personification of mockery on us.

The awareness that we live sometimes pricks the ego, and we find that there is no meaning, we live to die… we *are* dead, walking tombs, breathing corpses, engulfed in a cadaverous substance that we call the “vitality” of life…

Let’s lie in the green grass and let the fleeting shadow of clouds trample over us. To forget time, to forgive life for all its torture – and watch!.... and watch the empty men fighting for their different vacuums, and justifying themselves.

Let’s watch them boast redundantly of their burden – and console themselves. They deceive themselves, because they have been deceived, used as a puppet, to satisfy the whims of their own mind…

…Let’s forgive them for their compromises, for their catering to the desire to live, to be happy (Happiness is a consolation – an extrapolation on the hypothetical side of the reality).

Let us walk no more, but lie under the shade of the tree till autumn comes. And then leaves will fall one by one, leaving a naked skeleton of dry wood. The sun will burn our skins, the snow will freeze our bones. But let’s walk no more – there is no escape. Let’s not fight for different vacuums.

Let’s pretend to be sages and act as ascetics. The world will bow to our feet and we will laugh at the back out tongues. We will be god-heads, and become a star…

… and when the sun will go down, when the dark clouds will swallow up the moon, we will show the travelers their path to their grave…

Because one lives to die, one walks to fall – and never get up.

Let them lie on the flower-bed, when they get tired of their disparate fight…. For when the seasons will change, they will be lying on a bed of stinking twigs…

Let’s keep cool and maintain a dignity at the face of this life. Let it not deprive us of our serene and indifferent attitude.

We are the lost one’s, who never fought. Because it is useless to flutter your wing when there only vacuum… You can’t fly!