Ruchira's Ramblings

 On the last day of the year, we came down from the mountains at the end of our little winter vacation. As the car pulled into the 'Drop & Drive' lane, I felt the stirrings of a vague sense of anxiety. We were about four hours early for our train. The journey from Takdah to NJP station was motion with purpose, the train ride to Sealdah would also be movement towards certain destination. It was the waiting period in-between, with nowhere definite to go that was unsettling.  I'm not much of a standing still person, I tend to pace around instead. Which is ironic considering how I've lived my life through little units of waiting. Waiting for this or that exam to get over so I could have fun afterwards, waiting for some movie to release so I could go and watch it with friends, waiting for vacations,  waiting for birthdays (now increasingly accompanied by a foreboding sense of dread for the inevitable and inexplicable letdown), waiting (now as a teacher) for end-semester ...

Imagine an empty room. Imagine a house. Or a world. Imagine an entire star-spangled universe with its make-believe show of beginnings and ends. A show that engulfs us, consumes us and drives us towards each other. Or away from. Even from ourselves. Now imagine us. Forget the noise. It's just you and I. All that I say won't matter in time. All that I say will echo across the stars forever, forming new words somewhere else, for someone else. But right now, in this moment, all that I say is for you. You know that. So listen. I love you. I've been looking for you. I hope we find each other, because what else is left when the sun is cold and we are all long gone? All we have is this moment, to be true and to live and to not burn ourselves out in this great cosmic pantomime that consumes us and drives us away from ourselves.  📸 John Fowler via unsplash.com I found a Tumblr screenshot on Instagram the other day. I don't recall the exact language but it said something to this ...

NaPoWriMo Day 28. Prompt from napowrimo.net: Write a metapoem or a poem about poetry.

This was a tough one. From napowrimo.net: " today we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that incorporates at least one of the following: (1) the villanelle form, (2) lines taken from an outside text, and/or (3) phrases that oppose each other in some way. If you can use two elements, great – and if you can do all three, wow! " They don't ask for much, do they? My external texts: the ballad 'Scarborough Fair' and the poem 'Alone with Everyone' by Charles Bukowski.

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...

#1 "Write a poem that a young you needed to read." I found this poetry prompt for National Poetry Writing Month. Really nice prompt, except I was 3 days late. But it got me thinking. What poem would young me need to read? I mean, I have come across these pieces before – Letter to Young Me- but I’ve never given the idea much thought before. Perhaps because it was not my time yet for that contemplation. But tonight, disturbed, anxious, slightly depressed with my thoughts going where they shouldn’t, where I don’t want them to go, I am trying to think of what advice I could conjure up for a younger version of myself. At five, perhaps, don’t be so bitter For being always mocked at, For being made fun of, bullied, For being the youngest. We all grow up someday And frankly, it's overhyped. At ten, don’t try so hard To be nice, to be liked It won’t matter, in the long run In a few years you will wonder That you ever liked these people, An...

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 ...

Have I drunk of the hemlock? How else do I explain this numbness of the soul?   As part of his death sentence, Socrates was offered a cup full of hemlock, and ordered to keep walking after. I read this story in fourth standard history book and somehow remembered that last part- “You must keep walking.” Years later, a professor in college explained that the effect of hemlock begins from the legs and makes its way upward, till it reaches the heart and stops it. And the brain knows the gradual numbing of the toes, the feet, the legs, the thighs… it feels the slow but certain disconnect from everything that orients it in the world, and it knows the assured arrival of death. Sometimes on the infinite cosmic stage, the trappings fall away, briefly, to reveal the utter nothingness of it all. Ennui, we term it. Must I smother my soul daily thus wasting this one, singular chance that comes with an expiry date without an alarm bell? But what feeds a soul if the body dies? The soulless...

Dusk is a kindred spirit. Have you ever noticed the colour of the twilight sky- light, but not light, dark, but not dark, and the street lights lining the streets- bright and sharp, but not really needed yet- everything seems to be in a vacuum, waiting for something. The rush of the day is over, the rush of the night yet to begin, and the world moves around you in fast forward while you seem to be suspended in slow motion. They pick up tired  smiles, and cheerful anecdotes, and they all have a destination, a goal, and you ask- What is home? Where is home? Why am I going there? And I'll leave again, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and return in the evenings once again.  "...and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday  Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm"  Is that all that is there? Through the days and weeks and months and years? And for how many years must Icarus fall before he can rest in the sea? Reincarnationists say that this world is only a tem...

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...

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 ...