Cups of coffee caress my throat on its way towards my tummy. Just like caffeine bringing dark shade to the coffee, I need ideas that engulf darkness in my head. Their flow isn’t just as mellifluous as it normally used to be. Ash – tray got its name worth for it has been filled with stubs since morning. Not a single page that has paragraphs in cohesion is written. “One can mince words but not thoughts,” I ponder unable to make a break-through from the eerieness that has been the master of my mind since last night. It is an unusual day when head felt heavier, but drowsiness seems to be far away.
Slowly, I rise from my arm-chair for a stroll around the room. The last cigarette is staring eagerly towards me and so it gets its due. Nicoteine smog fills my room as I reach towards my closet for a new pack. Taking a puff, I slowly reach for my mobile phone to call the love of my life But my mind is lacking in cogency and I eventually dropped the phone on the couch, and started circling around the room like a child playing merry-go-round around his mother. “I promised Nick of recording new material tomorrow and I have nothing in my head or on paper, all those pages of shit isn’t worthy reading atleast once, should I tell him ‘some other day’? should I call Mary?” my mind questions.
“Wait!” I comfort myself for this angst will bow down. I motor towards bathroom and start running water on the wash basin. ‘SPLASH!’ now I feel better for the liquid is sucking all the weariness that has been painted on my face. Mirrors reflect a face which is unusually vapid. The beard that grew on my face is making me look like a hermit from himalayas rather than the ebullient singer whose tunes move like the oceans – unbroken and soothing. Multitasking often works out of my favour as I am shaving and again thinking about something that could be the standout for tomorrow’s recording, the razor slit through my cheek as blood oozes out of it. I bear the pain for a moment and finish shaving and then rub some cologne on it. Carefully, I pamper the scar looking into the mirror,
“ Scars on my face,
There’s Blood and grimace,
Scars on my soul,
Who’s coming to heal and console?
Scars on my soul,
There is emptiness and holes, ” my mind wanders. Surprised by this new wave of thoughts that hit hard in my head, I reach out for the towel to cleanse my face. I get myself a cup of coffee and turn the radio on.
” Is it getting better,
or do you feel the same,
will it make it easier on you now,
you got someone to blame…,” the transistor box plays “Thank God! It’s U2 and not some shitty rapper,” I mutter. Ocean-Blue canopies vacillate to the morning zephyrs. I march towards the window to pull the curtain. Through the windows rushed sun’s rays creating the halos of all seven colors. A moment later, I descend onto my arm-chair with a cigarette and a rush of ideas in my head. ” SCARS ON MY SOUL!” I yell like a first -timer who hit bull’s eye on the dartboard. “Somehow this phrase sounds special, why so?” I wonder.
************************************************************
Ebullience pervades all over the paper with my thoughts- all translating into words, I move on:
The Genesis:
The black clouds snatched the limelight from the sun with clandestinity. The father of our world knew not of being subdued and so he tore away those nebulous encroachers that had encircled the world, with his illumination.
The clouds were flogged again and again,
Their pain seen through those silver linings,
Their shrieks heard through the thunderclaps,
All this turned to be a masquerade,
As the billows hustled like a bickered parade,
Oooo Oooo the rain will never fall.
Murky skies cleansed by the sol,
it was sabbath and it was his day.
Can you hear those heavy clouds with no rain,
Slipping through the veils of darkness,
Sucked into the world of emptiness?
Oooo Oooo the rain will never fall.
Through the waters emerged the baby, consecrated Patrick.
The baby chuckled, as his mother played with him for a moment and carefully placed him on his perambulator.
This night we were blessed with the brightest of crescent, who seemed to have dusted the black color on his flesh day by day for a fortnight to reveal his complete shape and whose radiance seemed to belittle stars in a condescending tone.
The baby seemed unfazed by all this.
His body,
Defined the fringe of tenderness
His touch,
Blunted the sharpness of thorns.
His chuckle,
Shunted the harshness in voices.
His Presence,
Attracted the attention of others
Infant charm had reached its end as the baby grew to be a handsome boy.
The Wave:
The forces inside were made to linger for this moment, world around seemed dazed to me, drowsiness was dissolved into the pool of sleep.
The needles inside had now become awakened. They were weaving rigorously, not of those valleys that I walked past, not of those mountains that I had conquered, not of that day when it rained heavily on one side of the hill and I slid down the hill, technically they call it orographic rainfall, but I don’t give a damn. This time textures seemed different, the colors donned different shades, the threads were made of speckled material, the collages seemed unnamed.
It was a giant wave that splurged onto my walls from the ocean of imagination. I walked slowly towards the coast, there was a sudden echo in my mind, it sounded like that vintage ELP song -
“…You see it really doesn’t matter
when you’re buried in disguise
by the dark glass on your eyes,
though your flesh has crystallized;
Still …. you turn me on…, ” minute by minute these echoes turned louder and eventually the words spat out from my mouth as I stretched my baritone vocal cords. It was just another moment when we are faced with infinite inability to hinder the urge to sing, sing those words that pop in our head, sing the song that’s running in our head. I dragged myself on this ocean of sand, leaving a path behind towards which I gaze intensely, they are the
Footprints on the sand
I walk till they end,
Hourglass filled with sand,
I see it fall to the other end.
Digging into the sand,
I look out for the sea shells.
Conchs uncovered from the sand,
I sound the morning bells.
Laughter on this lake of sand,
For her presence my mind dwells.
Rolling on the beds of sand,
I can taste of her love that my heart revels.
Ethereal,
Were her words to my ears,
Ephemeral,
Was her comforting touch,
Evanescent ,
Was her presence to my eyes,
Effervescent,
Were her memories in my mind.
She made those footprints in my heart,
Like a painter who spread the colors of his art.
She joined those footprints in my heart,
Like the pieces of jigsaw falling into their parts.
Returning from this brief sojourn of contemplation, I picked up a sea shell. It revealed of sounds misconstrued to be from the ocean but it is the systole and the diastole of your heart and they are the two parts of our heart beat.
‘TWO!’ I wondered.
‘There is black and there is white, one which absorbs everything on its way unfazed by the size and intensity of the source, gulps the malign and benign with equality. Then we have the other case which reflects everything with same zest as shown by its counterpart towards its work, and it spits out at any cost. We have dawn and dusk, both analogous to white and black respectively.
There is victory and there is defeat, every defeat weakened the will to win, the fire in their eyes died like the light with sunset. For some defeat is meant to be a pebble that lays foundation for those one little victories that sum up to glory. These pairs are never-ending, equally strong never to overpower their opposites,’ my mind splashed with philosophical colors that were vivid in my head.
At this point of time I laid on the bed of sand and gazed at the variegated patterns that the sky made of clouds. Laziness seemed to be bound by infinity on both ends, there was neither a beginning not will there be an end for it. Salty breeze swept across my body, I lilted to the tenderness they showed. Time passed by, the gears in my watch shifted the hand to another hour, the hour when sun sent illusions of slipping into the sea. Then suddenly everything went blank for a moment.
Another world, another frame, the needles were weaving a different texture now, it seemed like a parallel universe.
The skies were pervaded with black. I am glancing at those sparkles woven on the black cloth, with my guitar named the ‘black knight’ caressing the ground beneath him. The reflection of those sparkles was visible from the polished body of ‘Black knight.’ The shades of silence I try to explore and this started off with an old adage ‘silence is golden,’
silence is bliss,
silence is torturing,
silence, converses with our soul.
Silence permeates the emotion called love.
But the glass walls built around this silence were all shattered with a strum. It sounded like D major chord, sweet yet thunderous from my knight. The chord progression wasn’t alien to my ears, it was D G C and Am with ¾ timing. I plunged into this river of music, swimming past those crests and troughs in my notes, those Cadenzas in the middle were highlighted through crescendos that created a maelstrom, but the journey proceeded in continuum with me finally approaching the coda and eventually surfacing near a levee.
Obscurity reigned in my head for this hour.
” What is the name of this river?” I asked a passer-by with angst written on my face.
” Tsang-Po!” came the reply from the man with his eyes transfixed on mine for a moment as if I were a phantom.
The territory seemed like a déjà vu for me, with the music airing waves of familiarity, my presence had been felt by this land somewhere in time.
There was light in this pitch dark night and I followed its signals to a tribal settlement. The sounds of bell and dorje accompained by a collection of cymbals connected by a string called ‘tingsha’ as told to me by a local, formed the backdrop of the scene. The fires lit with the help of juniper and the people winding and unwinding in spirals seemed enticing for these eyes. The oriental trance had invaded my head and this was not for the first time for I knew their sounds and their machismo.
There is an air of eerieness in my head, the winds carried words I wanted to utter, those words that would coalesce with the music that’s played here. Suddenly, a whisper passed through my ears, it sounded from a person known to me, the brittleness in its voice was unique and I knew it belonged only to her.
‘Come away with me,’ she whispered
“the voices from the pagodas that were high-rise,
of the lady who laughed in disguise,
her presence I could picturise,
her whispers always mesmerise,
and my thoughts seem to crystalise,
now its time to break the ice,
O’ dear lady shred your disguise,“ I rendered words to her whispers.
“Come away with me,” she whispered again
“with joy filled in the cups of porcelain
from the buoyant clouds sprinkling rain,
cleansing the wounds that screamed of your pain,
in the stillness of my touch lay your gain,
feel the vacuum cleared by the zephyrs from the vane,
look through the windows of the world from another pane,
O’ my voyager this is life in another lane,” she rendered her words as I felt enslaved.
“Come away with me,
to the corners of the hemisphere,
to the clouds on the stratosphere,
to the valleys that cut the mountains,
for a ride on the roof of the world,
for a taste of the nature’s gold,
for a slice of celestial pie,
O’ my vagabond let your journey begin,” she continued in her cherubic tone, I felt like a droid to her demeanor.
I walked to her words, she was taking me somewhere, to a world never seen before. I felt the sourness of butter tea in my mouth “who gave me this shit.” I bemoaned at the obscurity that had arisen. But her voice started to fade and eventually her waves were squelched with null-ness pervading the locales and a frantic side taking dawn in my head. I rummaged for her, walked with least co-ordination, fell into a ditch that turned out to be the fringe of a hillock. Everything turned black all of a sudden.
I rolled and rolled down the hill and eventually I fell down from my bed.
Awakened by this sudden thump, I rubbed my eyes, walked into the kitchen for a glass of water, but it ended with four.
It was still pitch dark outside as my somniferous self was awakened again.
The threads lost the vividness, their textures and their aura of comeliness started to fade. Everything stayed black, but slowly I could feel the light coming to the fore with every passed second, just like a beam from the torch that spread with distance. But now the threads seemed to make a move, more swiftly, just like the director who is ready to call his shot, came alive the new world.
Under the neon-lit night I walked through the city that never sleeps. A famous singer called it the angel of harlem and it surely had the angel of my heart.
The city always bathed in colors that our eyes craved for. The hudson river seemed serene as usual, but the atlantic at its turbulent self.
I sauntered past the battery park glancing at the gift from the French, the statue that turned green with age.
Towards the subway I walked, boarded the uptown train, I get down the train at 42nd street, slowly I climb the stairs and head towards times square. I moved ahead with no clothes to cover my flesh. Everything seemed spooky, the city has finally slipped into a slumber. This is the moment I wanted to freeze. I crawled through the ever-bustling broadway, only to find myself in loneliness. Through the halos of those lights I got a glimpse of her, hollow yet impenetrable shape. It felt like those lights molded their rays to give her shape, illusion still was my master.
Through the ambers of the night I paced around in this epicurean paradise. Finally, I reached home, thre the door open and headed straight towards the mirror.
There was a sudden twitch in my spine, a harbinger that went unregistered in my head. A sudden prick on my face, oozing blood that went unnoticed. A taste of bitterness swept across my tangs, never did I face such an acerbic feeling. I motioned towards the mirror. On its way I bumped on to the black Knight he was staring at me for attention, the polska I created last night was still sonorous in my head, the solo played on A major scale was still turbulent on his strings.
I stood naked in front of the mirror, black knight was shining beautifully in those shimmering reflections. At this point of time the sanity and sanctity in my head had taken to dusk. The tuning felt out of place. A figure looking like a caryatid that fell from the finest sculptor crossed my eye “Yes! It is her!” There’s her mirage in the corner. I heard her whisper
“Don’t look for yourself in that mirror,
For the last time have all my love you can garner.
Roses of our love burn,
Leaving ashes in the urn.
You have confiscated all my bloom,
Imprisoned me into this doom.
Don’t search for me in that mirror,
My presence creates too much of terror.
The womb of mistrust conceived a curse,
Wounds are all you have to nurse.
Into those oceans of stars I swim,
Cursing my fate for its whim.
The stairway towards a bright oblivion awaits,
Now it is too late for any regrets,
Let those roses burn,
Let those ashes remain.”
She vanished slowly out of the scene with those words. There was sudden sense of loss, sense of pain, like a stroke from a sword. I dig my nails deep into my face, blood all over the ground and screaming violently.
I wake up with a scream. The director inside had called for ‘pack-up’ as I rushed towards the sink, splashed water all over my face, with a sense of fright spread all over my head. Windows were all covered with frost, there is a certain crimson tinge to the skies as sun arrived for his daily duty. I opened the door, I can see the dew drops on the paper, on the leaves, one the door, everywhere. It seemed like the world was mourning a loss. The dream was still in my head and its symbolisms seem to show a distant evil.
To be continued…..
