10th May ( But does it really matter? )
It was only the other day; a reader asked me why I named my column as Stray Thoughts ( and now the blog too). I wanted to tell him that perhaps my intellectual capabilities and my age are growing in an inverse ratio. A few years ago things used to come in a flash and I would have lured the readers with perhaps more romantic title for the column like Magical Musings of a Maiden or cheekily copied something from the bestseller’s type How to make fools (of people) and still influence them or one that had a double meaning which at least made the men raise their eyes to the article in anticipation of more rising elsewhere, hence increasing readership, something like Woman Bares All but then, I said, what the heck, a rose by any other name would be as beautiful, and therefore, logically enough, a bad article by any other title would be as unreadable. So, there.
6th May
From my very childhood, living in a small town which had very few distractions I started living in my own world….imaginary world of my own making. And this world I realized was always hungry and I ended up feeding it with books. Its appetite was voracious and many times a book a day was also not enough to satiate its devourer nature. But somehow it had no taste for the MBs or even the Danielle Steeles. It never believed in the Prince Charming coming on a white stallion or even a red Ferrari and those lines “they lived happily ever after.”
My world had a few movies too, initially only the Hindi or vernacular languages ones and now English and other foreign language films. But here my mother played a crucial role. Even when I had not reached my teens she had baptized me with Gurudutt, Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Bimal Roy, Govind Nihalini etc. So I am neither surprised nor hurt when JB says I jumped from Bachpan to Burapa.
He is not too far from the mark. But I have my funny bone too but one that David Dhawan and his likes cannot tickle. Why are you so serious? Why do you have to think so much? They ask me. I don’t know and I have never delved too deep inside me. I like to discover myself but often I come across things which seem more worthwhile to discover. And I abandon the discovery of myself for that. A book. A movie. A hobby. A game. A place. A person. An art. A cuisine. An ideology. The list can be endless. And being a person who cent percent believes in only this one life…I know I have to do the good, the bad and even the ugly in this very life however clichéd it may sound. Yes, I must be accountable of that and have the maturity and strength to accept the consequences.
Isn’t this a simple thought? So why do you think me and my thoughts complex? I write about simple thoughts, stray thoughts of stray moments. I don’t always deconstruct or annihilate, scream a cause or voice a polemic. I have done that and got recognition and awards I didn’t dream of, didn’t try for. But the inconsequential, the trivia, the silly, the ridiculous, the personal, the vagaries of mind, the tides of seasons, the joys and pains of living, each has a place under the sun, on some piece of paper.
And once in a while during my travels I do meet people who let me see that when we take it all too seriously always and demand too much from the people around us and ourselves, we lose our way. So what sayst thou? Chill and take the time to be not so perfect and laugh at the madness of life???
7th May
But today I feel lonely and I take out those bits of paper, I keep in my drawer where sometimes on a forlorn, melancholy mood I scribble. I read them. I see many things have changed over the time but some are glued to me, the thoughts or events surround me, never to go away. And how idiotically I thought stray thoughts are like winds….they touch you, caress you or pierce you and move on to do the same to someone else somewhere! But then I was wrong. Often they stay with you. Forever.
I read these lines which I wrote years ago and they feel like the twin sister who I never had but who might have echoed the same things because at least in the womb we would have been one for some time. But sisters need not be blood sisters. Sisterhood can be found anywhere. It’s universal.
They say -
At twilight,
at that moment when the blue night falls on the world,
the world becomes silent,
silent for a moment,
like the audience in rapture after the curtain drapes down the stage.
Perhaps it is this moment- the moment of complete silence
when I hear a muffled voice say your name.
Where are you?
Who else is with you?
Saying what?
Are you busy?
Making big endeavours in a still bigger world?
Or are you thinking of me?
Remembering the smaller moments of my small world?
Why does love come on me
and the whole of me wants you in the evenings,
when the hills recede into blur lines
and the gloomy trees into erasing shadows?
Often I have sat in the rocking chair
Thinking,
Watching the sun sway behind the purple clouds.
Watching it display the wonders of melting into a darkness.
Of dying.
The tea has turned cold.
You will be late-as always.
When you will come you will be preoccupied-as ever.
I know you will move into the room called “self”.
Where is the key to this room?
Do I have it?
Do you?
Or is it lost?
Lost and gone like the sun.
And we?
We will recede like wonderless, dark silhouettes
Into our “selves”
Into an oblivion
Into death.
( Poem Published in Assam Tribune as a series of poems titled Meloncholy Moods.
The write up is a part of article published in The Eclectic June issue. )
It was only the other day; a reader asked me why I named my column as Stray Thoughts ( and now the blog too). I wanted to tell him that perhaps my intellectual capabilities and my age are growing in an inverse ratio. A few years ago things used to come in a flash and I would have lured the readers with perhaps more romantic title for the column like Magical Musings of a Maiden or cheekily copied something from the bestseller’s type How to make fools (of people) and still influence them or one that had a double meaning which at least made the men raise their eyes to the article in anticipation of more rising elsewhere, hence increasing readership, something like Woman Bares All but then, I said, what the heck, a rose by any other name would be as beautiful, and therefore, logically enough, a bad article by any other title would be as unreadable. So, there.
6th May
From my very childhood, living in a small town which had very few distractions I started living in my own world….imaginary world of my own making. And this world I realized was always hungry and I ended up feeding it with books. Its appetite was voracious and many times a book a day was also not enough to satiate its devourer nature. But somehow it had no taste for the MBs or even the Danielle Steeles. It never believed in the Prince Charming coming on a white stallion or even a red Ferrari and those lines “they lived happily ever after.”
My world had a few movies too, initially only the Hindi or vernacular languages ones and now English and other foreign language films. But here my mother played a crucial role. Even when I had not reached my teens she had baptized me with Gurudutt, Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal, Bimal Roy, Govind Nihalini etc. So I am neither surprised nor hurt when JB says I jumped from Bachpan to Burapa.
He is not too far from the mark. But I have my funny bone too but one that David Dhawan and his likes cannot tickle. Why are you so serious? Why do you have to think so much? They ask me. I don’t know and I have never delved too deep inside me. I like to discover myself but often I come across things which seem more worthwhile to discover. And I abandon the discovery of myself for that. A book. A movie. A hobby. A game. A place. A person. An art. A cuisine. An ideology. The list can be endless. And being a person who cent percent believes in only this one life…I know I have to do the good, the bad and even the ugly in this very life however clichéd it may sound. Yes, I must be accountable of that and have the maturity and strength to accept the consequences.
Isn’t this a simple thought? So why do you think me and my thoughts complex? I write about simple thoughts, stray thoughts of stray moments. I don’t always deconstruct or annihilate, scream a cause or voice a polemic. I have done that and got recognition and awards I didn’t dream of, didn’t try for. But the inconsequential, the trivia, the silly, the ridiculous, the personal, the vagaries of mind, the tides of seasons, the joys and pains of living, each has a place under the sun, on some piece of paper.
And once in a while during my travels I do meet people who let me see that when we take it all too seriously always and demand too much from the people around us and ourselves, we lose our way. So what sayst thou? Chill and take the time to be not so perfect and laugh at the madness of life???
7th May
But today I feel lonely and I take out those bits of paper, I keep in my drawer where sometimes on a forlorn, melancholy mood I scribble. I read them. I see many things have changed over the time but some are glued to me, the thoughts or events surround me, never to go away. And how idiotically I thought stray thoughts are like winds….they touch you, caress you or pierce you and move on to do the same to someone else somewhere! But then I was wrong. Often they stay with you. Forever.
I read these lines which I wrote years ago and they feel like the twin sister who I never had but who might have echoed the same things because at least in the womb we would have been one for some time. But sisters need not be blood sisters. Sisterhood can be found anywhere. It’s universal.
They say -
At twilight,
at that moment when the blue night falls on the world,
the world becomes silent,
silent for a moment,
like the audience in rapture after the curtain drapes down the stage.
Perhaps it is this moment- the moment of complete silence
when I hear a muffled voice say your name.
Where are you?
Who else is with you?
Saying what?
Are you busy?
Making big endeavours in a still bigger world?
Or are you thinking of me?
Remembering the smaller moments of my small world?
Why does love come on me
and the whole of me wants you in the evenings,
when the hills recede into blur lines
and the gloomy trees into erasing shadows?
Often I have sat in the rocking chair
Thinking,
Watching the sun sway behind the purple clouds.
Watching it display the wonders of melting into a darkness.
Of dying.
The tea has turned cold.
You will be late-as always.
When you will come you will be preoccupied-as ever.
I know you will move into the room called “self”.
Where is the key to this room?
Do I have it?
Do you?
Or is it lost?
Lost and gone like the sun.
And we?
We will recede like wonderless, dark silhouettes
Into our “selves”
Into an oblivion
Into death.
( Poem Published in Assam Tribune as a series of poems titled Meloncholy Moods.
The write up is a part of article published in The Eclectic June issue. )
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