A Song of Time

A Song of Time

I, Ishmael, am a child of a city of banyan trees, a city well-known for its cultural, aesthetic and historical richness—a city called Baroda. But today I am miles away from this city which has influenced my life to a great extent. At present, I live in Ahmedabad, a city with lots of hustle and bustle that render my woe inaudible and cause it to fade away.

It is a leisurely Sunday evening and I am heading for a cafeteria called Blues, where youngsters hang out with their friends and couples linger at the coffee tables for hours. I enter the cafeteria, sit on a chair that has been engraved with the king of hearts and then start looking at the menu.  While I was going through the menu, a muffled but familiar tune over the babel of people in the restaurant catches my attention. As I zero in on the tune, I stumble across one of my favourite songs—‘ Look into my eyes and you’ll see what you mean to me. ...search your heart, search your soul...when you find me there, you’ll search no more..’

Ultimately, I have been caught by what I have been escaping from—blues. The song, which I once used to associate with bloom now reminds me of nothing but an unending gloom. I was sitting with Niki under a banyan tree when I first heard this song. I remember I and she used to go to a garden and spend some time together there every evening when I was in Baroda. During one of my initial trysts she crooned this song and bared her heart to me. The happiness I felt at that moment was too big for me to contain and it made me delirious. Suddenly, everything seemed to be more exciting and colourful to me. I was able to hear her name in chirping of birds; I saw her face in various shades of trees. I saw the existence obliterating every possible boundary between me and her. My days started with a call from her, her endearing voice— ‘Good morning. Let’s go jogging.’ And my night ended with her ‘good night’.

However, being totally engrossed in elusive happiness, I did not know that the sweet feelings and the delirium of joy would turn out to be short-lived. One evening I wanted to meet her. So I called her number.  Her caller tune—‘Look into my eyes and you’ll see..’ first  seemed to promise me that she would come and meet me. But to my dismay, nobody answered my call. Then, I got anxious and kept calling her again and again, but instead of her voice, I heard the caller tune. Now this caller tune was enervating me and I was beginning to lose the hope to see her again.

For three months I kept searching for her but my efforts were in vain. Through a common friend of mine and hers I got to know that she has left Baroda for good and all. She left the town. She left the pleasant dreams. She left the garden forever where I used to meet her. She had made some promises but she left them unfulfilled. Leaving behind some memories that will keep echoing in the deep recesses of my mind, she left Baroda with a tacit vow to never return.

Now it is almost two years since I last saw her. In my loneliness I ask myself: what do I have now that she has left forever? And an answer dawns within me—even though she has gone, she is no more with me, her memories, which are my only solace, throng my mind and make my life somewhat tolerable.

My attention shifts back to the song ‘look into my eyes’, which is playing in the restaurant. I gulp down the tea on my table, pay  the bill and leave the Blues with a spontaneous realisation that every spring is followed by autumn and autumn itself heralds spring. Still the song ‘look into my eyes’ is echoing in my mind but it infuses gratitude in me and makes me feel the beauty of those sweet but ephemeral feelings.

Dreaming About You.....!

 It was seven o’ clock in the evening. After wading through a lot of paper work at my workplace, I was heading home. On my way home, I was enthralled to see the crimson sun, which was bidding farewell with its golden rays piercing through foliage of the tall trees that survived the onslaught of urbanisation. The leaves and twigs of the trees, which were shaking owing to gusts of wind and the backdrop of the crimson sky created such an abstract painting that was really difficult to fathom. Moreover, the chirping of birds was the icing on the cake. But I was surprised to realise that people had been so much deafened by the rattle of coins that they could not hear the enchanting music of birds.

Anyway, I plodded home. After getting home, I had a cup of tea while I was flicking through a newspaper. Then, I talked to my children and tried to know how they were getting on in their studies. I could smell the aroma of delicious food and I heard my wife calling me for dinner. Then I sat before the television and took dinner chatting with my wife. After taking my dinner, I spent some time rambling around my house until I started feeling sleepy. I looked up at the sky and was startled by the formidably dark sky flecked with twinkling stars.

I entered my bedroom and lay down on the bed. In no time , I succumbed to the power of sleep, which took me to the realm of dreams, a world that mockingly but mysteriously defies the logic of our conscious world and opens new vistas. Now, what follows is an entangling vista unveiled by the dream I had that night.

There were numerous beautiful fragrant flowers in the jungle and a small brook was flowing nearby crooning its own song. I was a butterfly fluttering from one flower to another and penetrating unchartered areas of the jungle. Bright red berries were dangling from the branches. I flew to a bush dotted with a lot of blue flowers. I perched on its stems and noticed a pool below me. For the first time I saw the reflection of my own body. My irresistibly lovely wings, tinged with a variety of colours were delicate but they were able to challenge the gravitational pull  of the earth and keep me hovering in the sky. Then I thought that I should not indulge in narcissism, so I flew off the stem and enjoyed skimming over the brook. Then, as I got hungry I looked around and found some cherries on a tall tree. I flew to the tree, sat on a stem and started savouring the berries. They were really delicious. I was totally engrossed in savouring the berries and did not know what was happening around me. All of a sudden, a bulky branch of the tree came rushing and fell on me. I was almost smashed. My wings were broken and my vision became blurred. I became unconscious.

With a start I woke up from the dream and looked around in my bedroom. It was half past four  in the early morning. Then I opened the door and quietly went out to the garden. I sat in the garden and started pondering over the dream I had just had. In the darkness, I saw the plants around me in my garden. However, this time the things were not the same. I was able to see the life glowing in the plants and hear the peal of eternity in the timeless moments. The dawn broke and a mysterious question dawned within me—“Am I a human being who has just dreamt of being a butterfly or a butterfly, in fact, dreaming to be a human being?”

When we are dreaming, the reality seems to be false and the dream appears to be real, whereas when we are awake, a dream seems to be false and reality the only truth. it is high time we transcend this duality.

                                                                                                                    

My fingers intertwined in your fingers. My eyes fixed on yours. No movement at all. Neither in you, nor inme. Just eyes speak. Sometimes yours, sometimes mine. And a gust of chilly winter wind tousles your hair throwing some of your tresses on your eyes. And your eyes piercing through your tresses penetrate my heart. Engulfed in a mysterious silence we both reveal ourselves stark naked to each other and merge into each other.

She asked me, "What would you do if I were with you at the moment when the world is about to end?" I said, "If you were with me during the end of the world, I'd penetrate you through your eyes and my lips would utter, 'My world starts when you open your eyes and ends when you close them. Though we live in two different bodies, annihilation will divest us of our bodies and make us naked and in that pious nakedness we two will lie together for eternity.' ".

Those who're ostensibly sobre accuse me of being inebriated and condemn me as being lost in my own dream world.Behind their apparent hatred for me I can see how much fascinated they are with my nonsense chat. They, for self-deception, proclaim that there is no world except this one, but I've also seen them taking a plunge in the "non-existent" dream world through their backdoors. And there they hold me in high regards as their precursor.

Aging Angel

With wonder in my eyes I kept looking at her beauty blossoming in her teenage. I still remember her coy face and a blush sweeping across it. And her eyes full of dreams are still lingering in deep recesses of my mind. However, millions waves have risen and fallen on the ocean of time since then. I cannot help averting my eyes from her when in a vain she tries to obliterate the indelible lines drawn by time on her ephemeral body- the body that has housed plenty of loves and yielded with thanksgiving shining stars of dark nights of love.

English Language Teasing

Gambhirsinh, a very gullible rustic guy, recently caught a whim of learning the English language. Therefore, he visited several English classes and decided to join the one called Jai Ambe English Classes, which seemed to suit him.
On his first day in the class after paying all fees he took a seat in the front row and struggled hard, but in vain, to comprehend what the teacher was speaking in English. When other students noticed trace of discomfiture on Gambhirsinh’s face, they offered to translate the teacher’s talk and he became happy to hear everything in his mother tongue. While this private conversation in students’ mother tongue was going on, the teacher had a disdainful look at the group and consequently the group understood tacitly that the use of any language other than English was not welcome. So they stopped talking and resumed listening to the teacher intently.
After some time the teacher gave them a passage to read and asked them to answer the questions printed below the passage. Everybody was going through the passage easily but Gambhirsinh was wrestling with the text. His writhing movements drew the teacher’s attention to him and the teacher asked him, ‘Gambhirsinh, is there anything that requires my help?’. And Gambhirsinh responded, ‘Sir, please tell me the meaning of ‘baboon’’. ‘Any of a genus (Papio) of large gregarious primates of Africa and south-western Asia having a long square naked muzzle; also : any of several closely related primates,’ was the teacher’s answer, which caused more bewilderment to Gambhirsinh as he was an utter novice in learning the English language. The meaning of ‘baboon’ given by the teacher included a good number of words that Gambhirsinh had never come across. He asked the teacher, ‘But what is ‘genus’?’ And to his dismay, the teacher pontificated, ‘As you know this is an English class so it has no room for use of any other language except English. I’m not expected to explain to you things in your mother tongue, neither is any of the students here. I suggest you look up unfamiliar words in this dictionary.’ He passed him a bulky dog-eared dictionary.
Gambhirsinh felt a little embarrassed. However, he looked up the word ‘genus’ in the dictionary. It said: a class, kind, or group marked by common characteristics or by one common characteristic. Obviously, this was vague and did not make much sense to Gambhirsinh. He had a long list of words whose meaning he did not know and so wanted to ask the teacher but the teacher’s recommendation to consult a dictionary deterred him. As the teacher further went on giving an academic talk in English, Gambhirsinh’s mind was besieged by a very fundamental question: am I going to learn the English language in this way? But he did not have guts to ask anything.
The next day before coming to the class, Gambhirsinh had decided to speak his mind. He approached his teacher in private, summoning all his courage he spoke, ‘Sir, I request you to explain some things in my mother tongue. You know my English is very poor.’ The teacher answered him, ‘You know that we guarantee complete mastery of the English language after the completion of the course. And I hold a PhD in English from an “English” university. So nobody can stop you from learning English.’ These words silenced Gambhirsinh and he went back to his seat.
Two months passed but Gambhirsinh was not making any progress. English remained just as distant a possibility to him as ever. Now he really began to regret his decision and wanted the fees back. Utterly frustrated he met the teacher in private and demanded the fees back. On hearing this demand the teacher grimaced cunningly and said, ‘As you now that according to the policy of Jai Ambe English Classes, fees once paid can never be returned in any condition.’ ‘But your teaching is useless for me. I don’t think I’m going to learn English in this way.’ Then the teacher had a placatory smile and spoke, ‘Trust God, there’s no wave that does not reach the shore. If you have a strong desire, nobody can stop you learning English.’ This utterance injected temporary hope and transient enthusiasm in Gambhirsinh’s mind. Poor Gambhirsinh went back to his seat.
At home also he was making an ardent effort to learn English by reading English books, listening to BBC radio and watching English films. When he was in the classroom, he asked his teacher to tell him meanings of some words that he encountered in his reading and that were not given in his dictionary. There descended a formidable hush in the whole classroom and the teacher scrutinised Gambhirsinh and said, ‘A meaning does not lie in a dictionary; a meaning of a word does not lie in translation nor in explanation. The meaning of a word lies in constant interaction between the reader and the text.’ This made Gambhirsinh gobsmacked. He said, ‘Sir, sorry. I did not understand anything of what you have said.’ There was no answer from the teacher but sheer indifference on the teacher’s face.
The next day, Gambhirsinh was hell-bent on taking his fees back. He met the teacher and demanded the fees back. The teacher told him, ‘There can be many reasons for not being able to learn English. Some of them have been listed in this pamphlet. You might as well go through them.’ Gambhirsinh started reading the pamphlet. ‘First, you cannot learn English because you do not believe in patience. Second, none of your parents is of English origin. Third, you might have committed some sins in your past, which prevents you from learning English. Fourth, you cannot learn English because you have never been to England. Fifth, your dislike for English culture can also be responsible for your not being able to learn English. Sixth your teacher is not English.’ After going through these strange reasons for not being able to learn English, Gambhirsinh became more fuddled. When he vociferously demanded his money back, the teacher motioned at an office-boy and the office-boy started rubbing a stone on a brick. Pointing his finger at this bizarre thing, the teacher said, ‘Look at him.’ Gambhirsinh asked, ‘What’s he doing?’ The teacher answered, ‘He is trying to make a mirror of the brick by rubbing it. How long do you think it will take him?’ Gambhirsinh said, ‘The brick is not going to become a mirror, even though he keeps rubbing and polishing it for all his life.’ Then the teacher grinned and said, ‘Now you got me. You are a brick. And I can’t transform you into a mirror, however hard I rub you. A babul tree never bears mangos. You cursed soul...! You are genetically engineered in such a way that you can never learn the English language.’