Friday, February 8, 2008

NOSTALGIA

The dust swept over the harvested field putting it to a dull sleep
And withdrew with the wind into a scraggly bush.

I was very happy as a child –
Far away from this baking Sun.
In the evenings, I used to swing on the hanging bunyan roots
Till dusk perched coolly on my shoulders.

Anesthetic coolness
of the plateau-evening.

I remember how in the evenings
we wore the rain all the way home from school,
Mouth and eyes gaping open, running against the striking rainthreads,
My vision always smarted till late night in monsoons.

The dead-snake road winds ahead,
Beyond the sparsely leaved trees.

It felt good to fall in love back at my place.
I remember how she fluttered and then shut her eyes
as our faces started to blur in an intense proximity.

It’s dusk in the head.
I listen to the dizzy procession of waves
In a sea that I haven’t seen now for years.

I wasn’t looking till the rain smuggled back in its entirety
All the ghosts to my hostel walls, in spreading water-blotches.

I sleep with naked nightmares
Breeding in miraculous fuss
Maggot-like memories
That crawl up to my windows,
Tap, sigh and wait for a reply.

I am tired.

Oh, to think
The silliest illusion
Is the hardest to lose.


3 comments:

crumbs said...

so I finally dug this up :)

may be the silliest emotions are not so silly after all

I ve often wondered what if the past was all just an illusion? What if it never happened, if our mind just cooked up this one big illusion to keep us sane? and perhaps, alive?

ARUN said...

@ crumbs
your questions are interesting. they fall short of assertiveness insofar as their answerer must stake some assertions. and the moment i,or any answerer of your questions, assert something, your questions puzzle that statement by shedding the question-drape and becoming counter-assertions. (dont know if im making sense, still this is the closest i can get to it)
notwithstanding this, let me answer: past is both a fancy that a person consciously creates, and an intangible magma of expriences-till-now over which s/he cannot have any conscious command. selected and hierarchised memories occupy the created fancied past. the other memories are not absent; they are on the frills, always ready to edge in - say, in dreams. the space that is made or wishfully owned is a past - "that keeps us sane and alive." the other one, the looming intangible mire of experience, with no sense of priority or hierarchy whatsoever, is what defines madness - and death.

crumbs said...

most my questions are a result of a lot confused contemplation, and mostly, because I can't find some satisfactory answers to them.
your answer is very clearly put...and don't you think that it is these undefined, unstructured memories are what make our life what it is...we go through life with this pretense of being well adjusted and unperturbed, when suddenly these memories that were hiding in some dark shady corner of the sub-conscious surface, and we are forced to look at life in the eye...and that, changes us, and our concept of life again...

thanks arun, for pointing to me, towards a different tangent through your reply