The Observer

I have a Blog

2011-05-01T02:09:00.000-07:00

I have 6 blogs. One of them was created for office training. Let's leave that aside.

I have 5 blogs. The one that meant to stimulate and inspire young generation into charitable activities for impoverished children, had 3 posts in total. All the posts sincerely called the youth for conscientious contribution. Last entry was in 2006. Friends dissembled. Fatigue murmured.

I have 4 blogs. Not really three, as one of the blog was really a stray ray of inspiration that touched the surface of reality, spurred a few wavelets (5 posts) and died. Incidentally this was the one that was created to impress a girl who was never a friend and who understood English better than Bengali. Hence a blog in English. A poetry or two. Last entry in 2007

I have 3 blogs. Although one of them is not really my personal blog. It's a blog created by me all the same but a group of author can share their views/reviews on any artistic creation. Got immediate success with a catchy name and all, people who never got opportunity to write reviews in formal platforms, wrote with passion. I value this blog, as a relic of personal history, as I can hardly find any interest in this blog any more. I most dejectedly announce that I can hardly see what is there to appreciate in obtuse art forms. May be, hypocrisy of the artists and devaluation of the artistic media, has brought about this personal downfall. Over the years, I have changed and last I wrote in it, it was summer of 2008.

I have really 2 blogs. One of them is in Bengali and really is my oldest blog. By publication date, this is the blog where I published last. 's a poetry blog where one can clearly see the evolution of both style and theme starting from my early poems. Nearly all of them are heavily influenced by a number of my favorite poets - Rabindranath, Jibanananda, Shakti, Shankha, Binoy, Utpal. In recent years, most of the poems are focused towards infertility of poetic inspiration. As an excellent example of how poetic and realistic worlds are tied together in their fate, last post, after a few sporadic ones, was published in April of 2010. One year back.

So I have this one blog. In which I am writing now. Fighting against the fate of literary sterility, fighting against dissuading depressionism, fighting the hell out of demands of reality, I am writing. If I can't write anything else, I'll write how and why I could not. I'll talk about how many times in this very blog, I have started writing after getting brilliant idea, but after writing few paragraphs have fatalistically forsaken the children of my thought - unpropered and underdeveloped - as my dreams had been, all the time always. But now I want to complete this one piece of writing - and post. It is no way near being my best creation, not a masterpiece by its own face value. But I will show it the daylight in the memory of its superior predecessors. Here it comes, in this last blog - last post of mine.

Where are my dreams sleeping?

2011-04-24T23:34:00.000-07:00

It smells like betrayal though brain says it's only to happen. There is no other way. That is how this world has come so far and that is how it will go. But anchored to one time, one generation and one mindset and not being able to move on with inanimate world, us, the mortals are doomed with the double feeling of apprehension and rejection, when something you believed to be eternally true comes to an end, when beliefs that you held dear goes adrift and when 'evils' that you drove out so far knocks at your door.

Yet, unwary must have been the sentinels who had promised unceasing vigilance over these lands and its shadows. Where are those who had renounced their sleep for their dreams? From the tomb, no one will rise again to combat the fair evil. And the living world is now a waste of past deeds.

My movie unmade or its memoir unfinished

2010-04-21T23:49:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my life, I got a glimpse in the eye of my mind, of the movie I always wanted to make. The vision was clear as daylight of a cloudy day. The background was bluish with a tinge of gray. The inspiration was so sudden and compelling, I am afraid it would also melt swiftly and die in a quicksand of whim. It's better to leave some trace of letters in its memory, so I thought.

The movie would be based on One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Why so? Why a popular novel? We will, in our haste, leave these questions on the road side and move ahead.

It can start with a blank screen. Or a completely white screen. After a determined pause of 5 sec, a voice will take over the audience like a guide or hell-guard.

Where have all the toilets gone

2010-03-04T06:49:00.000-08:00

Finally a shooting star! After 28 years of life, it comes scampering across the sky, dripping from the skin of sky - a chance to wish for.

What I wish today, the ashes of the star will know! And no one else! Those dreams of faraway times in past will jump into oblivion and turn to ashes in the midway. But we will still be going to where everyone goes, in this rickshaw.

The rickshaw-wala will ask for more money than deserved. (And yet what does he deserve? What do I deserve? ) We will have a good fight over the fare and lose our temper for good. But one of us would give in and the rickshaw-wala would go on to carry other people somewhere.

Where do they go?

Where do everyone rush?

Obviously, to their workplaces! or toilet, mind!

This eternal going back and forth to toilet, this inevitability ingrained in the fabric of human civilization - doesn't it tell us something about that which can not be told? Does it not whisper in its husky voice and faded language like rustle of the leaves in a storm? Wherever you might fly, you are to return unto me - spoketh the toilet in its vitrified vice. A binding contract! A non-negotiable liability!

Every soul on this planet is laboriously complicating their lives, others' lives, twisting their fate and essence of existence to seriously unwind themselves eventually in the toilet. That is the fate of our race. Believe it or not! Hence the dream that I had last night can be the inspiration for the greatest horror-cum-scifi-cum-action-cum-musical drama ever made.

I saw I was in a mighty room, the room was filled with troubled men. Their face was red and haste was great, but all the toilets had fled.

Name... for god's sake

2010-03-03T09:40:00.000-08:00

It is hard to explain what I feel. You may have come across thousands of people who claim...

I crossed the lines above. That was not a good beginning. I'll eventually come to them through the uncertain landscape of rotten words, figures, statues and memories. After crossing innumerable more such beginnings.

I can talk about a lot of stuff at length. But my problem is that I can not fold them and press them into a book and into a shelf. Thoughts that I have...I feel pity for them. Because may be I am doing injustice to them by not expressing them. Had they been some others' thoughts, they would have been perfectly happy and well brought up ideas with proper grooming.

I. on the other hand, a poor little widow living by the side of a sewage, only dream of them being grown up one day and provide plenty of support for me in my old age. This I know will never happen. I will only look after my home grown rockets of pocket size and sell them in the market for free. That is my destiny. Ever since my husband died in the war of the Others' Land, my future has been sealed. I still remember the day when I first went to the market.

It was clammy day in the summers. I took my first batch of rockets (they were all pink and cute) and trimmed them well so that they all look the same and behave the same. Then I read to them the useless books as usual and made them recapitulate. That made them fall asleep. Then I cautiously put them in a fruit basket and made for the market. I was anxious with joy.

The first customer came and asked me : Sister, I need a rocket which will sing and dance when I ask.

I picked the pink one (They were all pink anyway) and gave it to him for free.

I think it was two days after that, the man came back to me and said that the rocket won't stop dancing even if asked, ordered and threatened.

I said I can include that option but that will require two hamados.

I took the two hamados that he gave me and jumped in triumph. And the two hamados fell in a pond.

This pond used to belong to my father-in-law when he used to practice fishing. The kind of fishes he used capture have all gone extinct. Nowadays there are water-creatures residing in the pond who feeds on hamados. That's why it is called the pit of Hamados. It is right beside the market.

One look at the pond and the shape of the half-emerging creature (shapeless), and I was sure that fate is irrefutable. Hence I stopped taking hamados from that day onwards. I sell my fruitful and obedient rockets for free.

My day comes to an end, with the twilight buzz up in the air. After that no sound can reach your ears and no thought can touch your mind. Spectres of lost nights and nights yet to come, haunts my small home. My little thoughts come running towards me and jumps on my lap. I pat them and think what'll happen to you when I am not there. I go to sleep, with the dream of a thought
that touch the tip of my forehead and will put me to sleep, deep sleep...

Spectre of a story that vanished

2008-02-25T21:49:00.000-08:00

"Stories can't be written. There have been many attempts and many failures. But no story have ever been written."

- Abbas Hasrat

My cousin Manjima is 14 years younger than me. Yet I get on pretty well with her. She is shy and taciturn. Yet, we used to have quality chat whenever we met. It was beginning of this century and everything around us was quickly changing.

I got married at the age of 27. Four days prior to the actual occasion, my uncle and aunt visited our place and Manjima was with them, too. In a black top and blue jeans she looked more grown-up and taller than she usually used to look like. We sat down for our lunch. It was Rice and Dal and Fish Curry.

By the way, she was going, at that time, to the same school that once I used go to in my childhood. Memory of schooldays, drifted into our conversation and as these things often go, we talked about random things in school. At this point she casually mentioned that Nilmoni Kahar is dead. It was cancer that got him. Then we moved on to more charming topics.

Next day, I went to some places to invite some more people. (We had already invited people more than necessary). As I was walking from Tobin Road to Bonhoogly without having seen a single rickshaw or autorickshaw (It was a hot summer noon), a commonplace idea visited me.

I thought about writing a story on deceased Nilmoni. This would be quite different from all the stories that I had written. There are so many of these new experiments going on in story-writing. A character like Nilmani, washed by memory and its dark holes, would fit wonderfully. I tried to gather in my mind all the memories of the person that I had and had not forgotten.

It'd be great to start with the funny reference of the Principal (Actually he was HeadMaster, but little changes would drive away boredom of truth) asking Nilmani in his distinctly nasal voice to ring the bell before morning prayer. We used to mimic that to make fun out of it. Remembering that I had smiled to myself and some of the passers-by had looked at me in curiosity. My destination was there only and the idea sank in my mind.

Next night, I had a dream (this story is becoming too dramatic) wherein Nilmani was trying to find out how my chemistry practical went (He was lab assistant, did I tell you that?). If dreams had memory then I'd've realized that that was indeed true. But I didn't. I enjoyed the dream like watching a cinema. I got quite emotional in fact at times realizing that it was not my exam that he cared for but myself .Everybody loved me...then. And that caring person is not there anymore. (Facts lurk behind the curtain in a dream.)

Diary in Deathbed

2008-01-28T22:41:00.000-08:00

It is the prerogative of God, not man, to create confusion and inspire wonder.

Never being able to fathom the infinite transparency that science offered, three of us, of the then decaying rock band Salutaions, became interested in mysticism. This is almost the dying days of the last milennium, we are talking about. People were restless, people were down.

As we started writing new songs like, 'Tears on our circles' and 'Pack your daylights', we tried to, I am being painfully honest, we tried to achieve something more than reviving old enthusiasm in rock music. In Roger's words, we went for 'a new order'.

It is this same Roger Callow, who wrote a diary entry in his deathbed, that has made me scribble this little note I am writing.

I have led a long and shameless life,

Yet it is not a confession that I want to make.

Repentant I am not,

because of a life

of unveiling and abandoning.

Roger had a peculiar manner of speaking.

Solitude

2007-08-27T21:23:00.000-07:00

This is what Bitan wrote today, in his leafmade pages of diary.

I feel loneliness today. I feel it in my dead white bones. I feel it in my relentless breaths. Not only that there is nobody around. But, nobody was even supposed to be here. I am the only existence. Now, I know, how Adam might have felt.

I withdrew from the pages, and spread my gaze across the landscape creeping through my window on the East.

No, Bitan. I'm there.

Bodilano

2007-08-18T11:04:00.000-07:00

Today I’m going to divulge a secret, that I’ve protected for over half a century. I wasn’t supposed to do this. But I can feel death’s warm breath on my forehead. I don’t dare to think of what’ll happen to the secret after that. Death for me would leave a memory, but for a secret it is oblivion. No, It can not detain anymore. Bodilano is going to die.

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I’d Just finished reading the last of Bodilano. I was not going to re-read the works, simply because re-reading could mar the spontaneous effect. For Bodliano, moments are as important as the words and thoughts.

But that didn't stop my craving for more of Bodilano. Not the finite person, who walked the earth in early part of the bygone century, but the boundless being in my mind, created as a collage of words and phrases. Boundless, because not only I have read whatever he had written, but I also know what else he could've written.

That Bodilano, whom I know by heart, who has answers to all my confusions and queries, who has seen the world as I have seen, who has thought quite the same way as I've done, who has used the words as I'd've liked to, I started to miss. He was an experience I wanted to last for my lifetime.

But, ironically, the infinite also ended with the finite.

I mused, and became sad. In 1940, his last work was published. Coincidentally, this piece of work, named The Twilight also dwells upon art as an extension of identity. It is this queer idea of individuals being mere projection of universal that drives the narration. Projections die and projections are born as the light passes on from angle to angle.

I have positively felt, at certain points in the text, that I know what comes next. As Platonism suggests (knowing is remembering), I've felt that this has been written by me in a time, far away, and abandoned. There are so much more, that I'd like to add to it, now.

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The vague inspiration took three days to form as a clear idea in my mind. On 20th October, evening at around 7, I went to the Library Central . My purpose was to study the forms and styles of Bodilano over his long, illustrious career. My destination was 2nd floor, shelf no. 7.

By then, I'd decided that the only way to appease my hunger for Bodilano, is to re-create him. And if anybody could do that, it has to be me. Can I fit into his role as an author?

To do that, I need to know him even better. Unfortunately, his personal life has left no trace over the media. In his prolonged literary career spanning over 60 years, he has made no public appearances. No biography of his has ever been published. No photograph, No Interviews. A solitary identity expressed in pure words of his texts only.

The only way to know him was to study his words, then.

Shelf no. 7 is in a dimly lit corner of the floor. Not too many hands has touched the bindings recently. It came as no surprise, as the genre of Bodilano has died a long time back. I took out the most fresh-looking copy of The Queer Fall, the first ever published text by the magical author. The date of first edition : 19th July, 1881.

I won't go into the content of the story, as it has no relevance to my present narration, and as always I have been allotted limited time. But when I tried to list down the most frequent nouns (motivated by another Italian) in the text, I found out : light, reform, decay, metaphor, nobility, maitre, chain, moon, sky, sea...

This indicates a clear presence of romanticism in this novel. But he is not getting carried away by the romantic ideas. Every now and then the text pauses and analyzes itself. Can this taken as an early form of self-referencing, the technique used extensively by the author in latter works.

The narrative is a conventional linear one. Yet, here and there, a sentence or two are there to find, where dreams have been attempted to be described. Accordingly, the nature of the narrative has been distorted there. Overall, Bodliano, that we came to know later, is trying to come out in the open with hesitant footsteps, in this piece of work.

For next 5 years, Bodilano published similar such stories with few experimentation, although the style remained virtually unaltered. The main point of focus for him in this period was dreams and imaginations. From 1887 onwards, there was silence from the pen of the great author, for another six years. What he did or had undergone, nobody knows.

But when he returned in 1893, with The Gray Nightmare, he instantly drew attention of the critics once again. This particular book has been centre of controversy for a long time. And that is more due to the controversial content rather than the form.

I took out the copy, cautiously : it's easily the most referenced and worn out entry in the shelf. The beginning of the novel, is marked ( I observed) by unusual expression of joy ( relief would be a better word), which has never been properly explained later in the text. As if that emotion was not meant for this particular writing, but an unintentional outburst of another chain of emotions outside the story. This rather intrigued me.

Are we missing something? A secret plot, ( that I've dreamt for long), has been hatched, by somebody somehow. The answer is lying very close to me, but in the darkness, proximity is coming to no aid.

Anyway, my original intent of knowing the author through his texts, took a blow, as I went through the pages. It seemed that the author has completely transformed in his period of inactivity. The style is hardly romantic anymore. It’s dark. It’s gloomy. And it’s calculative.

The words that dominate the text, are like : But, door, dark, now, why, night, room, silent, breeze, chair, window, roads, lamp…

I remembered the first time when I read the novel. I was shocked and relieved, at the same time. I was shocked by the haunting details of solitude. It was hard to believe that the writer who has given pen to The Queer Fall and The Morning Hues has also created something like this one.

But at the same time, I was relieved from my own solitude at that time by the presence of another solitude. What makes solitude so unbearably painful is its uniqueness or self-importance. Once you realize, that you are not the only one suffering, pain recedes. I remember, after I read the book, how I spent long hours fighting with myself to take a new grip on life.

May be, that is why it didn’t occur to me. But now, the more I am going through the piece, the more I am convinced that Bodilano of 80’s and Bodilano of 90’s and onwards can not be same. As if the latter one is everything the former is not. As if younger Bodilano has picked up the pen as a response to the elder one : to nullify all that he has said. No person can change that much.

This mesmerizing idea left me dazed for a while. I thought I was in a dream. Or in a game whose rules I don’t know. The inevitable and determined moves of my unknown opponent are binding me in a very small room…

To break out of the claustrophobic trance, I hurried to the shelf again to look for more clues. ( My conviction at this point was supreme. I needed proofs to validate it only. Although now, while writing it down, I can not see much logic behind my conviction.)

For 20 long years after that, Bodilano had concentrated as a topic on reality, absoluteness, wretchedness, intoxication, cruelty, rage, vengeance, revolution, pangs of despair and solitude. A very sharp, brilliant yet cruel pen defines his works in these years. Some of the techniques that he used are wit, sarcasm, symbolism, use of a single first person narrative and a stream of short disconnected sentences.

Towards the end of this era, in 1929, he wrote a novel called The Knight of the Night. It caught my attention. I know, it is a story of a knight who roamed the city streets after dark and who is in his deathbed casting a glance back at his illusive past. But I wanted to re-read it and scrutinize it.

On page 57, I found what I was looking for. A letter in the form of a poem, or a poem in the form of a letter. It is penned by the Knight. It is addressed to the night.

…While everyone thought I was combating you, protecting them from you, all I was doing is nursing you inside my vacant mind. I roared at you; you roared from inside. I galloped toward you; you filled the space left behind. I thought I gave you wounds; but it was me writhing in pain.

I have grown old, and I have grown tired. I wish I hadn’t picked up the mantle. I chose my way and now I am lost. Surely, someone will pick it up again. I wonder what he’ll do with it? I wonder; because it has the strength of the universe. Only if you know how to use it…

There, it was all the time. The clue to a wonderfully hidden secret. And I thought, I was the first one with the idea! I knew, there won’t be single publication in next 3-4 years, and I was right. God is a Circle got published in 1933. And the words there were of different hues.

God is a circle, claimed to be the best work by the author, deals with circularity that we find everywhere we look at. It doesn’t have any story to tell as such. Bodilano, in this monumental work, is comparing stories with lives, author with God. He wants to give stories a platform independent of life and reality. And he tries to depict how one law of circularity governs the worlds of lives and stories.

It is a really difficult story to analyze. But I was thrilled at how the style of writing has changed over a period of 4-5 years. This Bodilano, has abandoned looking at positives and negatives, goods and bads, morality and corruption, optimism and pessimism as two opposing walls. He’s looking at it from above. He’s trying adopt the view of God.

By now, sarcasm is gone from his pen. There are very few dialogues. The different parts of the text is written from different first person perspectives. In many parts, the text has become more mathematical, although in earlier works no inclination toward mathematics can be discernible.

This preoccupation with mathematics, abstraction and specially infinity is present in his subsequent works also. The story he is telling is the story of symbols, words, images, sentences and stories. In The Lost Grounds (1938) he sets out to travel through the realm of identities.

In that particular text, he writes :

…I marveled at the bronze statues. They were all my own replica. Yet in some unfathomable way, they were different. Different from me. Each one different from the other.

I was having a odd feeling, like vertigo..

I was falling down a bottomless hollow with glass-walls. I counted my reflections : it was infinite. I closed my eyes. And then there were none…

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When I came out of the library, full moon was playing with clouds. Deserted roads invited me to the indefinite. I took a while to decide. But my excitement of finding out the truth and importance of finding myself within a secret chain of history, made the decision for me. Bodilano, was going to live again.

A Failed Experiment

2007-08-08T10:26:00.000-07:00

The story that I heard today or lived, must be written down somewhere. Otherwise it'll keep transforming itself beyond recognition, using my mind as an alibi. With a historian's inspiration, I am starting this narration.

Already I am not quite sure, whether the events took place in my life or somebody else's. The details are still vaguely discernible : afloat in the wake following a dream. The profiles and genders are gone from the memory, forever. But number of characters (this I remember) in the story were 3.

While expressing my confidence in the last line itself, I am again shrouded in confusion. Is my conviction due to an illusive belief in the sanctity of the number 3 ? May be, I have worshipped it all my life. And now, in this twilight of being, my symbol of deity, has touched me with conviction and inspiration.

The three unknowing victims of my indecent gaze, shapeless hence identical, like three bubbles, changed positions, dialogues, motives between themselves. Were they aware of their identities? I can't tell. It was getting dark and confusing.

It's best to describe the story through a running commentary on thoughts and words without aligning them with certain characters.

If anyone could see me now ( no one does, I know), he/she would see a man of approximate age 28-30 (I look older than I am), walking down a lonely Franklin St. at 1 in the morning. The yellow shirt (untucked, unbuttoned, wrinkled) would draw attention away from other details. Lights. For example, the traffic lights, blinking tirelessly over a deserted road. The empty dishevelled ground after the fair was over. The fairwell day in college and a scattered pack of friends.

Of course, the imaginary observer won't be able to read my thoughts. For that matter, nobody can. And there's the cold. I need some shelter, and lights. The ususal metallic symbols hanging from the doorways, wooing the wind with clinking sounds. The wind is carrying death tonight. Somebody's gonna die.

If only I could ask somebody. Bloody hell! No one's out tonight. Where's 'verybody? Need to distract the pain in my legs ( caused by severe cold). A few more steps and then the warmth of home. This garbage bin, black and tilted. The sudden bend of the road. A man approaches.

A man approaches. A shadowy figure. May be, he can help. His steps are lousy in this dead night. The reason, the indefinite observer can not describe any sound, is that there are no sounds. A girl's memory in my mind. She won't ever know or be in this place, in this night. The tall, unnamed trees paving my way through mosses and nightly uncertainties.

Silent night. Holy night. All is calm, All is bright. Hmmmhmmm....

The figure is humming something, indistinct. The slope of the road between us is downward from my side. Over the landscape drunken darkness lies like a bridge : gullible, soothing. I know somebody faraway is remembering me. His reflection I can see in my glass of liqour. The image, I see, is not a clear one. It may be, because I never saw Him. Or, it may be, because I've forgotten Him.

It's not hard to imagine a listener, like my psychiatrist, who'd patiently hear my version of the story. And then he'd paint me. I'd ask him : How are you going to sketch me, Unknown portrayer of human mind? A rage inside me. A futility. A flame can depict me. A denouncer of true love? A directionless vagabond? A foolish girl? Is there any symbol for irrationality? In a distant country, I live as a memory. A girl's memory is etched in my mind.

Hey, man! have got some light?

In this dark island, I had forgotten how voices sound like. The distinct words and tones came dangling down the rope, hung over bottomless void. Can't see the face. I don't have any light.

Sorry! Don't have a light!

Damn it! Now how do I drive off the chill? Who was that voice? Roaming the desolate streets of a little known country in search of light? Whose face was that in the mourning liquid? A few words just came to mind and after a little arrangement they were :

I have travelled that road many times after that night. But never did I encounter that voice anymore.

May be that is how I'll end a story based on the events of this sinking night. May be that voice will relate it to a vagabond in another way. May be, the girl in my mind, will remember this night when she's old : devoid of anxiety and fear. (But memories don't grow old. They're already ancient. ) Or, we will all grow used to it so much that the details will fade; there'll be nothing to tell, write or remember.

Though this is where my narration ends, the events, heedless of our insignificant storytelling, had flown. The characters passed from one story to another, across time : as Borges once said, unknowing of their roles in replaying history, they acted until they were withdrawn.

About my narration, obviously it's plagued with failure and deviations. Thoughts can never be expressed through words. The pattern of words in the text is characteristically mine, not of the characters. And this pattern brings with it my own past into the text. Though, I tried hard to make it as impersonal as possible.

The Lonesome God

2007-07-29T06:56:00.000-07:00

The whole city has turned into a den of informers. Earlier, it was possible to tell, looking at profiles, doctors from clerics, clerics from teachers, teachers from businessmen. But now those physical boundaries are becoming increasingly vague.

It's impossible to step into the road : The main road that lies like the spine of the city : without the feeling of numerous eyes on your back. Eyes in the rearview mirror. Askance, narrow, round, slitted. Black, blue, gray, pale. But all expressionless. There's nothing beyond those eyes.

But as I shifted and turned my gaze, the eyes were gone. The car was moving again along the road that creeps from information to information. And the uncanny feeling of being spied on, hangs in the air.

Now the question is : who sold the boy off? I have to track him down. That is my 'task'. For last 3 days I have been enduring constant yet absent gazes of this city, trying to get back to the trail of my prey.

I decided to start with the place where the boy was taken in. A whirlwind of information, was rushing forth along the road and its side branches. It was difficult to focus the mind on what I need to do. In a desparate attempt, I held my hand in the storm and suddenly closed my fist : somewhere a window slammed open. From the window that popped up, a genderless voice spoke :

If you must choose, then choose between the one and the many.

Amidst the haze of duplicating, intricate and illusive details, I heard a distant yet clear gong. It sounded like the wall-clock of my own. While I headed for the source of it, I tried to unwrap the puzzle I was provided as a clue. It could very well be a red-herring. Still.

(I vaguely remember having to make a similar decision somewhere. But when and what I have no idea.)

Yet soon, my mind was preoccupied by another thought : Always the clue is in the form of a command : a direction for the directionless.

This reminded me a story that I read in my childhood, where the protagonist gets lost in a maze, loses all sense of direction and gets wrapped in an ill-defined despair. He feels no difference between day/night, light/darkness, life/death. Obviously this is not the real story( which I have forgotten), but the fabrication of my mature mind from the real one.

Still I remember my fear and anxiety at this point of the story, which used to overwhelm me so much, that I used to close the book. I never got to know what happened to the hapless vagabond or how he managed to escape.

Now, I regret it, faced with this puzzle, that I didn't read on.

The haze has subsided considerably. It seems that I have left the main road quite far behind. The echo of the gong and the voiceless clue was leading me toward an open space. The sense of being observed secretly by many definite eyes has transformed itself into an overt indefinite gaze from above. This unnerves me.

Not because I suddenly realize that the choice of the puzzle has already been made and the one has been chosen against the many, but because I am not sure whether choice is supposed to be one or many.

Am I going to have to decide again?

Anyway, I was looking at a delapidated house in the middle of nowhere. The details of the existence have been ruined by years of indiscriminate observation and reporting. They are all scattered across newspapers, popular storybooks, horror movies.

Expectedly, the door is unlocked and the rusty hinges turn with a freaky creaking noise, as the door opens to a dark corridor.

As my eye got used to the darkness, I realized that I have unknowingly hit a gold mine.

On each wall of the corridor, written in red ink, were messages and premonitions :

Beware, enemies, for the Other One is rising.

Unite and fight. Seize your right.

Belief will lead you to your goal.

No mercy for the Non-believers.

All those who have, leave it here.
All those who don't, take it from here.

All these innuendos made me think. What do I have that I can leave? What is mine, truly? And, what do I not possess? who, or what is the other one?

The only part I could solve, not without a shiver of realization, was the interpretation of union. I can only get what I want through union or abstraction.

This in turn gives some clue as to what could be the other one. I realized to surmise the other one it is necessary to know the 'eminent' one.

'One'. I demanded. 'One, Un, Uno, Ein, Ek, 1'. Nothing seems to capture the idea. Because all of them are symbols, again realization of the idea they try to portray. As opposed to that, can we not imagine a silent vision where everything is present?

Suddenly my lost yet obedient memory was with me again. I had known no other concept, then. Before that, from history, none = ' I know no concept'. Then was invented ' . I was born. It is to my birth is the prophecy related. None and I could no more exist in solitude. 'None and I' was the natural, logical name of our boy. But we prefered to call him : You.

We loved you. You : the improvement and extension of mine : Always one shell ahead of me. You used to read my mind perfectly. Even within the pulls of the destabilizing systems, I could recognize you from afar : a blur .

But soon you got lost in the flood of facsimiles that were produced. In place of you, now there are : Them. I have been placed on top of a tomb, or, at the root node of a tree. I could observe everything as if from a very distant land, but couldn't do anything. Slowly the whole process stabilized again. The extension of one to many has taken up the whole space : beyond measure : encapsulated by a second.

For a really long period, every road to visit, every time to shelter in, every book to read, every music to bathe in, every memory to chew were swarmed by them. I and you : we : lost ourselves. I lost my memory and you lost your identity. I have been wandering the pathless streets of theirs, where breeze of information : futile, pointless and dialectic : made me weary.

Waking from this opportune dream, I suddenly feel that many things are clear; and, others are not worthy of clarity. Is this another sign that things are changing? I remembered another story from another childhood, which in my present narration would be :

I was sure that even if I end up finding you, it'd be impossible for me to stay with you. I'll have to bid good-bye to you once again. But this time, after you leave, there'll only be me, in my full spectrum of power. Once I had chosen infinite friendship : open embrace : wave among waves. Now the cycle wants to close down itself. The time for the reversal of choice has finally come.

The writing on the wall was a true hint after all. Through union, the other one will rise. And, now I understand, with some despair, my search for you is nothing but a step in that process being myself again.

They've disappeared. You'll not be for long either. I'll be there till the end as a bubble of self-contained memory.

Until the sanity bursts.

Words and The Fable

2007-07-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

...and, so the foolish shepherd continued to forge fun out of his ability to pretend. Everybody was outraged to the limit : he amused himself with the thought. He remembered, now, the first time the idea hit him on the face. Upto that point life was pretty dull.

Dullness, he thought, emanates from being nobody special : having no special ability : not being able to stand afar from the throng. Dullness is some attribute of the mass, the group, the crowd that he didn't understand.

With nothing happening around, he even prefered a tiger or two to come and stir the jar. And the idea that struck him one dead pale afternoon was : If even the most cruel realities of death and danger have decided to steer clear of this village, why not create realities of our own?

Why do we have to toil in this adverse world? Waiting for the infrequent change of destiny?

Then as we all know from the famous fable, he started his life of pretense : he turned his life itself into a storybook where there are twists in the tale on every second pages. Ordinary people : afraid : awestruck : spellbound. A lunar glean on their faces.

People were agitated and one day the tiger attacked the village. Nobody paid any heed to the futile screams of the shepherd.

His helplessness muffled his words.

---------------------

What do I want to write, here? My intention was to rewrite the fable in my own way. But, it's become really difficult to separate myself from him anymore.

My helplessness has muffled my words.

I have journeyed far and long. Into realms of deepest imagination. But, faced with a hard reality, I've always tried to say : See, I've been acting all along. I forgot to tell you, then : made a mistake. But, now I'm not pretending. I'm telling you I'm not.This words are true, true, true...

I called up a friend to share the idea of this post.

He said : It's you, right?

I said : I, yes.

He mourned : I've known you only through your words!

Words, more words and still others.

Where do you hide from them?

A Detached Memory of A Father

2007-07-21T01:22:00.000-07:00

I am standing with this vastness under my wounded feet. This I have been granted (by whom, I don't know).

I have to cross this uncertain(hazy?) landscape before darkness. To collect aid from the other side is my purpose. This journey I have to undertake twice a day for next six days.

I stand here, with haste in my mind, mesmerized by the endless plains of solitude. This I can not describe the way a painter'd have done. I don't have the power to collate borrowed words into an image, let alone a feeling.

But this loneliness, I must mention, has nothing to do with the person that is me. It has nothing to do with my dreams and desires and conscience : what secret I've suppressed : what I've repented for : what I can not control : what stories I'll be part of.

I can see my importance silhouetted in the fading light of the impending twilight. The sole survivor of an wasted generation. But there is nobody to share this uniqueness with. Obviously.

And also this is a part of a story : role of a cameo. It always is. I ask you : who is telling the story? who is hanging on to each and every word so keenly?

The father of a faraway time. Your son is dreaming another dream. Your words are the threads for him to weave with. Starting with these words of yours(?) : "However hard I try I can not get the lonesome valley and long hours of tireless barefoot journey out of my memory." he would write down somewhere : "Like a ghost, the image haunts my mind. It has become my default presence amidst clemency."

The heedless son would make your words speak of different tales, to fulfil his own agenda, to emphasize his insignificant arguments and to advertise his fleeting belief. He knows not the details of the evening : this evening I am leaning on. He knows not my wound in the left foot, and my pain. Nor my haste to skip this monotone plain of green hollow : to reach the skyline on the other side.

My childhood, locked inside that image of fragmented shadows and dark hues : nobody to guide, no one to wipe the sweat off the brows, nowhere to go that can be called home, nothing to wait for, no dream to lie down upon : who has written down that history or that fixation in the flow of events?

And even these are not my words. Not even these. Someone must have copied these symbols from humanist, communist, nihilist, socialist, capitalist, individualist, romantic, existential, paganist, populist, fascist, marxist, modernist, materialist, imperialist, libertarian, postmodernist, psychedelic, illusionist, nationalist books and journals. They have been put in my mouth.

This shadowy vastness : fixed wordless eternity, and the bloody wound are granted to me . These are only what are mine.

Infinity

2007-07-15T03:59:00.000-07:00

After more than two days of fruitless inactivity, today I have broken free.

49 hours ago, I was visited by the apparition of an idea. It left me awestruck. and comatose.

I read the last two lines along with you. It has unearthed/dug up one major curiosity : what is the sublime idea? As an author, I've the responsibility of figuring out something that matches the excitement of these two lines.

If you ask me, now, for a word, I'll give you this : Infinity.

The eight symbolic fruits were hanging from the tree in the courtyard. The fruits were perfectly spherical. This at once surprised and pacified the young novice. His name : Unknown Query.

He, sat beneath the great tree of eight fruits, and meditated. The following time was counted, not by predictable and eternal movements, but through random visions that weaved in his mind an unending tale.

At the end of the story, the storyteller asked the inevitable question :

And his answer was :-

There are trees like this one in distant lands. The number of fruits are different in all of them, and shapes, too. Here, forgive my use of the word "distant", as you know and I have only come to know, that to recognize distance is to look from outside. But I have seen them all within me. If you ask me how many trees are there, I'd have to show you the fruits of the tree within me.

The storyteller nodded in agreement.

He opened the book that was once called, "Death of Mathematics". There are no page numbers in the book. It's meant to be opened at a random position. The page that opened now says,

There is no meaning you inject to this lifeless text, by saying "now". Which now? this now? that now? Alas, your "now" was lost when you were busy saying "now".

Disturbed, the storyteller, again opened a random page.

We came this far. But couldn't reach it. We have no energy to carry on with. Here is a clue that someone told us on the way. May be, it will be of some help for you.

'Look for your secrets in exhaustion and awe'

Now, totally confounded, our little storyteller went to the 'New Age Bookstore'.

The storekeeper, was trying to arrange all the books in shelves according to category. But he was having a hard time doing it. When asked, he pointed out to the storyteller named Normal Preacher, that a few years ago the name of the book was changed to 'Death of Language'.

He didn't tell him that he was a little down. In fact, he didn't say anything. A complete contrast to yesterday, Preacher thought, when Dig Deeper, the bookstoreman, was enthusiastically sharing his feelings with him.

Deeper, at last, driven by penitence, wrote down on the back of a voluminous book :

Penitence, it is not. The contradiction between my present and past. Present gnaws at my heart; a familiar voice tells me how base I have been. And I agree spontaneously. Although it has long been my conviction that there is nothing solemn and nothing base...

On the other side of the book, was written a poem :

Which way are you going?
How long can you bear the pain?

Where you are heading,
There'll lie a fork in your path
Then again,
Then another.

How long will you choose
between them?
How long...

The poem abruptly ends here. The first thought that came to Deeper's mind was that the subsequent part must be written somewhere. and the second thought was that the poem was meant for him. He looks at the title : Death of Philosophy.

The author just died a second ago. Deeper was there when the black-robed individual declared that Futile Fame, the renowned author, had written a manuscript, that starts like this :

I once claimed in a book that today there is no mathematics, no language and no philosophy which can claim consistency. Here, in my last written document, I admit that it is not my arguments and figures and analogies and rhetorics and sarcasms and wits that prove my point, but simply the contradictory fact that I have been using mathematical logic and usual language to "prove" what is my personal philosophy, in that book.

Silence, is consistent. Silent, I shall be.

2007-07-07T04:01:00.000-07:00

By that time, we had started manufacturing several identities. We had distributed ourselves in those different s(h)elves. Old conservatives and humanitarians protested for a long time, but nobody heeded to them. We had already developed a process to generate wishes and desires mostly by copying and merging from the grand dream-base. In this process we had learnt that desires of one identity are not really independent. But one also can make a collection of dependencies and choose from there. We had done that. Till that point, it was controlled chaos. A leap in dimensionality and degrees of freedom.

Freedom. We had always sought that. In the ancient historical archives, one can find the annals of freedom : from religion, from state, from economic oppressors, from morality and from corruption, from poverty, from wretchedness. And these are not all. If you can recall the oft quoted line from the legendary Moscan Poet, Miklos Balazs :

Rhetorics, verurteile ich Sie.
Es ist nicht ich dieser Sie Kette zum Stein.
Es ist mein ashen Zunge.
Wenn Sie aber sind, nur link
würde ich eher auf Ruhe hocken.
Aber leider, sind Sie in diese
Linien von meinen, auch gekrochen.
Rhetorics, verurteile ich Sie.

it's apparent how people at the turn of the milennium suffered agony for not being able to destroy the image of words that they themselves have rendered. They sought freedom from falacious, impotent expressions.

Finally it was our turn to strive for freedom. Freedom from ourselves, our binding identities. And everything was going as planned in our experiment, until the Pseudos appeared.

There has been a lot of discussion in Active Forum. Mosly people, it seems believe that I am responsible for this new Pseudo hazard. Here I regretfully admit that I had unknowingly played a role in the Pseudo Revolution. I'd like to describe how it all came about.

Pseudo is a mimicry and extension of our shelved selves. They came in a jocular fashion. Instead of deriving an identity through combination of several others, they started using existing identities. That created much confusion. I still remember, ( Pseudos have just entered the floor then) there was a huge debate between Acilino and Akilina, regarding whether these new entrants could be classified as art-forms like us. I'll quote Akilina here :

There is a sharp distinction between existing art forms and the pseudos. When you demand that every new art form is imitation of previously existing art forms, you must consider the granularity of imitation. Fusing elementary assumptions and ideas of several entities is one thing and arbitrarily creating facsimiles of prevalent existence is another.

But nobody listened to her (including me). We dismissed her logic as materialistic. We fiercely objected to her use of the word elementary. There is no such hierarchy, we argued. There is no whole and no part. We heavily encouraged the Pseudos. There we committed the mistake.

This recognition from the incumbent genres, resulted in a population explosion of the neophytes. The chaos now took an indefinite proportion. In the overall pandominium, I observed basically 3 levels of Pseudos :

1. Commonplace Pseudos --- These used to steal identities used by us. They were the most confusing ones. Because the concerned identies were getting modified outside the system of the true owner. This resulted in a lot of contradictions in the identities. Some of the owners among us, had to leave their affected identities once and for all.

2. Dream Pseudos --- These entities specialized in mimicing our dreams. They unlike Identity Pseudos, didn't affect the existing identities from inside. But by alluring them with the in-built desires and dreams, they created malfunction in the system. This resulted in many of the identities becoming voluntarily inactive or confused.

3. Abstract Pseudos --- The most harmful of all of them. Any abstract concept, idea, theory they used to pounce on. Their strength was their ability to manipulate general philosophies through imperceptible alteration, juxtaposition or truncation in the word sequence. Most harmful, because they at times hyptonised a whole class of identities.

The most fearful part was the game. The Pseudos are within us, any of us, may be allof us. By looking at the choice of topics and the style of imitation, is it possible to detect who is playing who? Are there any styles at all, or are they also blind imitation of some other which is again...

2007-07-06T01:25:00.000-07:00

This is an offhand and vague sketch of one of the most powerful writers of last century, made by Rustem T. who was a friend of this little known author. In fact, I didn't know about this sketch until recently. Last week I bought 'The exhaustive work of Rustem' and came across this one.

Istvan Tamas (2051 - 2112), had really been instrumental in forming a new literary genre, when everything seemed to have been achieved in our literature.

Born in the town of Tatabanya in Northern Hungary, Tamas witnessed in his youth, the Europe that was rapidly casting off shells and changing shapes, both politically and culturally.

But, almost ironically, Tamas as a novelist, shied away from this celebration of change and focused rather on constancy, as if in an attempt to defy the fleeting nature of his times. He neither resembles the old moralistic genre nor shares the current enthusiasm for mechanization of art in a form of word game. ( In fact, he was one of the last authors who denied the now established fact that formation precedes meaning)

His own places and times, also really don't appear in his writing, except in a very obscure manner. Probably, 'The Fragrance of a Lost River' is the only exception, where he is conjuring his past, his memories of a small industrial town and his nonchalant observations on growing mediocrity, in a dreamlike fashion.

May be, that is why he didn't attract much recognition of the critics.

This nonchalance about the present and resigned devotion to the eternity, brought me close to the works of this master philosopher.

I was in my sophomore years when I first got hold of 'Experience of reading a book'. For the readers who haven't been acquainted with the wizardry of this great master, let me mention this much :

This is a letter from a reader to the author of a successful novel. In this letter, the reader relates her reading experience of the book. She mentions every bit of detail of the surrounding. The books she had read just before, the books she is reading alongside this novel, the books she is planning to read. She even writes down the lyrics of the song playing in the background.[These details I thought, are very important because no two events occur independently anymore]. Sometimes the novel itself takes a backseat and the exotic world of the reader is unraveled through the pages of the never-ending letter.

I was totally taken aback by the hidden circularity of the book. This was the time when I have started to equate infinity to circularity. So this is what I thought about the book :

The letter is never-ending because there are innumerably many things a reader has to share with the author. Suppose the letter was finite. Then upon reading those finitely many symbols, I as another reader would've other thoughts to share. I'd write another letter, in which the earlier letter would be embedded. Thus an infinite sequence of embedded letters would only establish a true relationship between author and reader.

'No piece of writing is complete in itself',

Tamas wrote in 'In search of silent literature' whch is a collection of articles on future of modern-literature. He also went on to declare that,

'Every literary creation is bound by its circumstances and should be placed before these circumstances while reading'

Throughout his whole career, Tamas has written a number of novels, short stories, articles. He almost always dwelt with complex and esoteric topics like dreams, reality, causation and time. He has also written quite a few critical essays on the art of reading. Although he never favored the idea of independent formation of symbols, he at a later stage of his career, strongly emphasized on the interpretation of symbols. In that regard, he can be noted as the precursor of many of the successful present day authors.

His ideological battle with the critics and authors of his time, deeply motivated him to write the most convoluted novel of all time : A duel with a columnist. I admit that I managed to understand only 10% of this novel. But the fact that remains is that he lost the duel and his genre is more or less obsolete at present.

I can't give you the full list of works by him (because, nobody really bothered to develop such a thing). But I can tell you the names of the books that I have in my collection :

1. Experience of reading a book : 2078

2. Fragrance of a lost river, a memoir : 2095

3. A duel with a columnist, 2087

4. A few broken pieces of glass : 2093

5. In search of silent literature : 2095

Tamas retired from his literary career in 2095 due to his increasing neural disorder. I'll try to provide some more information on this unknown or little known genius of words in some of the later posts. Also if you have any information about him, feel free to share with me.

Bye for now!

2007-07-04T08:32:00.000-07:00

A blank stretch of time. An unforeseen yet welcome break. And there was water, waist-high and unfathomable in gravity, in every direction from where I stand.

Marooned. This is the word she used. It sounded like the only word in the existing language. For the whole day it reverberated in the huge green pool of water, the rain washed trees, the gloomy looking discolored houses and the vast cloudy grim sky. It echoed in my mind.

As is said, the books are your hiding places when you feel you are out in the open and the people on your trail are going to spot you like that. I picked up 'Snow'. I opened the book where it was bookmarked.

One random quote from that page : "Do you really want guidance from me?"

Now, my question is who are you seeking guidance from.

If you are Ka, you'd be prompt enough to say 'Seikh Saadettin'.

If you are a student, I think the answer would be 'Prof. Sengupta' or Somebody else.

If you are an employee, you'd certainly blurt out the name of your manager.

But actually I was asking you, yes you, typing away mindless sequence of letters.

You have closed the book already. You cannot concentrate on a single book. Because it's not the guidance of a book that you seek.

Confusion. That is what you need in this shapeless monotonicity. You pick up another book. This time it's Borges. Lying on your back, following the tiny garamond fonts, you think that you've found the recess.

Because the story you are reading is not claiming itself as a story. Small sentences. That's what is used. Like objects in a dream. Clear. Fragile.

It's too rigorous. I like it. I have a vague feeling it's written by me. Actually there's no doubt about it. Just that I cannot remember when. A feeble satisfaction. A deep uncanniness.

Like Fune, I imagined, I can hold on to every second of details. What details? The "objects" floating away in the shabby river of two days.

"Objects" :

1. A pouch of pan masala
2. A piece of paper, blank of course.
3. A cigarette packet, empty
4. A towel!!!
5. Branches and flowers of trees
6. A shoebox, again empty

Now wide awake, I am sitting in the balcony, looking at the liquid constancy. Missing my childhood. Paper-boats. Dancing in the rain.

"Miles and miles to go before I sleep"

Curses. Upon the system. For the rain. For the lack of infrastructure. My non-distinct voice plunges into the uproar. I too have to go somewhere. Someone I don't know is waiting for me. I need this to cleared at once. This is urgent.

But the point is : where'd you pour this stagnancy, if it has already crept along all the veins of my city?

2007-07-04T08:07:00.000-07:00

Details. Inscrutable pieces of information. Place them side by side. They have a story to tell.

Stories. Fantastic lives and dreams. Let them intersect at a point of space and time. The point explodes with countless details.