Ruchira's Ramblings

My dreams weave in and out of train stations, crossing perilous oceans on un-navigated ships- always an anxious waiting for arrival, never reaching- promises of fabulous cities drifting away in meandering mazes or wrecked vessels, like that omnipresent thirst as cups of tea become as elusive of the alchemist’s secret formula cooked in holy chalices and old faces masking mine warble incoherent delirium that I cannot translate though they always speak languages I know in my dreams. And I wake from dreams where I am a drifting castaway in an island being dug all over by an army of automaton Man Fridays for treasure far more potent than Defoe could have imagined, the treasure forever slipping my grasp, with only a lingering sense of terror that I carry over to my Duolingo lessons. Je suis une femme. La pomme es rouge. There is such comfort in the familiar stability of these words. It is easy to learn a language as a child, for the child’s world is still whole and solid and unta...

The mountains recede into the folds of memory, the snow disappears beyond nameless roads forking and the world flattens out into ceaseless ordinariness- acres and acres of plains sans mystery or beauty or movement, and we are moving away, encased in this marvel of modern technology, this miracle of glass and metal and comfort rushing on towards an inevitable end. We drift away from ourselves. Yet somewhere still in the world the ghost of a forgotten ocean raises its soul upward as buried past overreaches towards heaven. And one day, that churning unseen ghost life will topple the earth.   Happy moments fall flickering lightly like wondrous soap bubbles, sparkling, weightless, innocent. But then the heavy air of life touches them- with all its needs for data and details and precision, the lightest touch from the expanses of the flat lands, and the brief refracting looking glass is gone, leaving you with chores, lists and deadlines. But then you pick up the straw-pipes...

The Quest of Saint George’ by Frank O. Salisbury The Quest of Saint George’ by Frank O. Salisbury) #1 There’s a kind of relaxation that comes with the experience of travelling, of being transported somewhere without any direct effort on your part- this sense of a flow, of a movement towards somewhere. As the destination draws closer, an anxiety creeps in, because you know that soon, too soon, the bus or the train or the car or the plane or the boat will stop, and you will have to step out of the safe cocoon of passive inaction and be responsible for your own direction again. It’s like the breaking of a spell, or a reverie. But step back and think of the before- the past actions that led you to this journey, and may be finding a new route will become that much easier. Or may be not. Who knows! The ice melts, the oceans part, the forests shift and the maps change all the time. You are on the ride of life anyway, and there is only one destination, eventually. But maybe you can ...

Original Song Lyric ©Ruchira Mandal Tomorrow night if the dreams come along I shall catch them all and spin up a song. And there’ll be no more pain and no more brine. No scars, nor taste of sour wine. Sweet Lady Death, give me tomorrow night, I swear to you I’ll make things all right. The sands are slipping, give me a little while The stars are dipping and I don’t wanna die. Give me a month, a week, a day, I’m yet to build my castle of clay. Let the clock stop ticking, let the flame be bright, A few more tries and I'll make things right. Tomorrow night I’ll catch the train, Retrace my steps or begin again. I’ll pay my debts give me another chance- I had never flown or learnt to dance. A year, a month or just one more night Give me tomorrow night to make things all right. Tomorrow night I’ll call them back- The unsaid words that have gone off-track And broken hearts shall waste no more When love returns from Lethe’s shore. ...

Imagine endless night, and a sleeping world, in which you are the only one awake. You decide to take a walk. It is an imaginary situation, so there are no killers or rapists or drunken drivers waiting out there for you, no kangaroo court to make an example thoroguh you of their twisted, perverted ideologies. Everyone  is asleep, save you. you walk past quiet shadowy houses and tall, silent  trees that line the path like sentires. Each house is a microcosm of illusions, a multitude of stories we tell each other in order to breathe. Each tree is a whisper from the Yggdrasil. Slumbering dogs raise their heads as you pass, sniff the air with eyes unseeing, and then return to their canine dreams. And then you note the slippery edges of the strange light of night that settles like a blanket upon the soul of the world and the only things that matter are you and the contours of the road that stretches endlessly, emptily before you. And so you keep walking through the years and eons ...