Ruchira's Ramblings

Will you be my forever, Will you be my light? Shall we walk along the river Hand in hand all night? When I was 12, my best-friend tried to keep pace, waving as lovers do in slow-motion movie scenes, as our car slowly backed away from my childhood, forever. And I left behind the alphabets in three languages, and numbers, the basketball court that I had never liked anyway, and half my heart. I brought with me memorized phone numbers, and pin codes and promises to keep on a dark snowy road in a bright, hot country.  No wonder they melted. Later, I would learn of the road not taken and ponder on the what-ifs, but that was many many years after love had taken my hand again, when I had forgotten to be surprised even by the absence of pain. Sometimes I try recalling that 12 year old, to touch some part of that bereaved solitude crying in silence in a class of strangers. Where has she gone? Among my decades old accumulated paperwork, there is an old handwritten essay ...

There’s this word, or idea that I like. Journey. Odyssey. We are travelers in time and space, all seeking, knowingly, or unknowingly our purpose in life. Pilgrimage. That’s another word. Draupadi and her five husbands knew this when they embarked on the final journey of their lives (perhaps a lifelong path of wandering homelessness taught them that) – the one we call the ‘Mahaprasthan’- the Great Exit. And that’s true too. We journey to a purpose while also moving onwards towards the final leave-taking. Estragon and Vladimir were travelers too, even if all they did was wait beneath a dead tree. But what if our paths are ellipses, an Ouroboros circling Godot? What if we were all just lonely planets lost in our own orbits of individual, inexplicable sorrows? And the hope of meaning and purpose, like the sun, gives us light and life-sustaining warmth, but we can never really touch it, and getting too close would burn and blind us, and so it’s much, much safer to remain content with...

What's in a name, you say? In Kalimpong I overheard a little girl complaining about the name of the mountain to her father. "What kind of name is Kanchenjungha? I don't like it." "And what do you think the mountain should be named?" "Megha Mountain. Because it touches the clouds." A while later, as her parents called after her, I realized she had given the mountain her own name. We were leaving, so I didn't get around to asking them, but I have questions. Did she mean to claim the world as her own, or did she want to become the world? Or did she, as a child, recognize that she was , in fact the world- she was the mountain in the horizon and the clouds kissing its snowy peaks? Kanchenjungha is a Tibetan name, by the way, meaning 'the five treasures of the snow', named after its five high peaks. The mountain is worshipped by the people of Darjeeling and Sikkim. And mankind has long worshipped the immens...

Original Song Lyrics ©Ruchira Mandal Withdrawal Signs Last Friday night when I was high, You caught my hand and helped me fly And now I’ve gotten used to the sky, Dancing on the clouds with you beside, The heady rush of wind so blue! And now I’ve gotten used to you. But now my mouth is full of ashes, I dream of empty spaces, It’s hard to breathe while falling Though I try. And there are voices in my head That talk to me of the dead, And I sit and count my failings, And all your lies. Last Friday night I won the game Took my shot and hit my aim, And now I’ve gotten used to the fame For nothing else quite feels the same And I’ve tried so hard to forget you- But you were such a dream come true. And now I’m going through the paces And all those vacant gazes, I don’t know where I’m going Or why. All I want is sweet bliss, What’s the point of all this, Why all this endless striving’ To die? Last Friday night was a ...