Still afternoon

There was this ripeness about that time ,might be just 15 years ago in calendar time in small town of Bengal where cable tv still did not rule conversations and internet et all were beyond the horizon of the place but that was a different era . There was a majestic mellowness in everything in how the sun moved from morning gold to the midday warmth all the way down to the champagne sobriety of the evening, the passage of the days of winter vacation, badminton with aunts in the evenings and the promise of new story books, for the boy there was a touch of magic in everything.
Mornings dawned slowly through the mysterious knit of the green and the mist of the giant old wood apple tree beyond the north window of the common bedroom and by the time golden rays of sun came playing through the east windows , the room was sweeped and cleaned its sanctity restored. The boy would be lazy to get up but there would voices chiding and harrying him . There will still be freshness in the air and dews glistening on blades of the grass when this king beheld his Xanadu once again with the delight. The old building winced under its cracks and age lines and promised the boy of another story of mystery at the deserted west room that afternoon. Grandma was calling for breakfast the boy ran , there was so much to do the hole he was digging beside the tall papaya tree in the garden off their ground floor room then there was the borrowed arabian nights book that has to be finished . He had to play priest and peep down the rabbit hole of religion. He had to create empires with bamboo stick bows and arrows .
The old house had many rooms abandoned and padlocked or just left to crumble and wither and each of them had a story to tell. When the denizens drooped to the siesta after the busy morning of the lively buzz, the silence only broken momentarily by the stirring pigeons,the boy loved to chase these mysteries in the stillness of the afternoon tiptoeing through unfrequented corridors over mounds of pigeon droppings .... the spell of the intoxicating silence could only be broken by the call of "raabdi malaai ..." , the smiling messiah , the lean old man with a big earthenware haandi on a rickety cycle would be there returning every year at the vacations . Or there would the ice candy man hawking his wares whatever the agent of delight it would always be peppered by the disagreement of a consenting benevolent grandma bestowing a bounty of five rupees for the ice creams and the warring aunt vehemently opposing the idea of ice cream.
The bike was drumming through the deserted highway on the still afternoon , the same stillness in a different era and age but a pair of eyes under the helmet has stopped digging holes in ground for magic . It could be so that living through life is like stringing on a necklace of pearls , pearls of experience and when that pearl falls into its place its time to move on to the next pearl never to return to the one already strung.

True happiness

What is that thing called absolute happiness , the state of Ananda , i have been dipped in it yet my being falls short in absorping it in its entirety .It is a kind of numbness of the heart that shuts off at the most profoundest of the moments , a sort of " fear of winning" or too much self conciousness. At the most intense of these moments which are profoundly personal , these questions do prick me and they have this objectivity to them almost bordering on to philosophy( or what i know it to be ). It is such a shame to have lost the capacity to giggle like a child without a care of the thing to be in with that , in that giggle totally, i cherish those moments from my childhood and i stand in awe for them who still retain that. If there is one thing i can get over it would be this daily quarrel with myself about myself , the failing and falling self , the self infected by the world. In this moment of truth , at this confession box i must say that it is very selfish.
I seek my Nirvana in the flow of the sacred river, the living rivers of faith , i believe they can touch you and cleanse your soul, i believe in the living diyas of faith to light up the darkness. Here's one question to which i seek answer to..... for all people who have watched the Hindi movie "Guide" or read the actual novel and remember that part about the protagonist released from jail is mistaken for a holy man and he keeps up the show and takes up a fast for the cause of innocent villagers who believe in all this and him but he has lost his faith. How much of that penance was dishonesty ?? because to start with he didnt believe in it , perhaps the nature of all penance is to metamorphose the one who takes it up, so may be a non believer may change to a believer in course of that penance but if he took it up knowing that it will change him is not there a deception in that or something mechanical in that.
Such is i think the very essence of all rituals any religion expects one to obey , some mechanical step to turn every practioner into a believer , change them so much that they invest their faith in what they are doing. Please enlighten me if you know what my dilemma is . A detailed post on religion is on order.

Loneliness must be heard

Back to blogging after a long time. The weekend before watched this movie "Lost in translation" , the movie was very eloquent on the theme of loneliness as accentuated by an alien language and culture barrier that you can not cross. So there you are long shot frames with a single character , a tiny speck in the face of vast emptiness in the background , very subtlely done . I especially liked a scene where the character of scarlett is in the huge swimming pool complex alone , the place was huge and the emptiness in the long shot seems to devour her.
Is Loneliness so bad ? I mean if i put myself into this film into any one of those characters how would i exactly feel ? I am in a new country a new culture , so much to see explore and being alone gives you that perfect perch to view this ebb and flow of this whole new world , to explore , the serenity to observe and absorp . This takes me back to 2007 August at Toronto, the walk from Casa Loma , spadina , Kensington market to Eaton's on a Sunday afternoon . The joy of discovering a haat at the heart of Toronto , the confluence of so many cultures , starting converstations with absolute strangers, eating off blueberries from somebody's backyard . I looked Loneliness in its eyes that day , it was a gaping hole of blackness in Earth, a deserted subway station, eerie and inviting like a sleeping monster.
At the end of the day i had a full heart but less than a perfect experience , i had sponged the loneliness of the empty streets. Loneliness eerie, mysterious , inviting was now steel cold heartless , can drown my wails and cries. As i warily walked towards my hotel room i cant say that i was unhappy with the experience but it was not perfect .... "How i wish you were here ..." ..... it is wonderful to be a child on mountain top during sunrise , but hapiness is to have somebody to scream with you and hear the echo. Signing off with recommendation for "Je t aime Paris"(I love you Paris) , there are two short stories on loneliness in that movie that expresses this idea the best way..... Au revoir !!