I knew the river Ganga

This had once struck me, in my childhood.

That I had been there in my previous life.

Not that I remember it anymore.

I just know it.

Now, I am small.

Playing with toys.
They don’t have life.

Have friends.
They will be namesake later.

I’m living a good life.
It will be marooned in a couple of years.

In a couple of years from now,
I will be only matter. A lost soul.

But, I still don’t know that.

Now, I am playing.

It’s marbles.

I had once used my fingers to dig a hole.

Today, because of rain the place is wet.

The hole is filled with water.

And, I have to touch it.

And there, it struck me.

“Water!”

My previous life, I recall now.
‘I am water.
Ganga was there.

Its water flowed.

Its tributaries many.

I was one of them.

A water body.

Used to flow.

Carrying everything.

From life, to death.’

I couldn’t take it. This flash of thought.

It was too huge. I was too small.

What is water? One of the five elements.

In school, I learnt it.

But, I am not one. I am just a boy.

Leave me. Please. Please leave me…

Now, I am in my early twenties.

Water has been my childhood friend.

I love rains. I love water.

But, I am carrying a burden.

A truth. I can’t recollect it.

It’s some memory of my childhood.

Now, I am small.
Powerless. Full of life.

I am playing. It’s marbles.

The game I love the most.

It’s raining. I am winning.

I want to play more.

But they are leaving.

One by one. Leaving me alone.

Suddenly, it again struck me.

“The rain.” It’s because of it!

Now, I am water.

‘I am carrying a dead body.

It was bathing in me. Every day.

Now, it has drowned in me. Forever.

Its death- I can taste it.
Taking the corpse to where it belongs.

To Ganga- the land of the dead.

Where even I am destined to die.’

I am screaming. I can’t take this.

I love water. I really love water.
It can take my life with it. Just can’t.
Leave me alone. Let me be. Just be.

My Crux

Everything is same. Everything. Man. Book. Galaxy. Want. Snake. Your gaze at this piece of writing. The pen in my hand. Your wrinkled brow. My Kafkaesque writing. All. All, I say. It only changes form. The hump of a camel is my Adam’s apple. My protest poetry is nature’s anxiety. The colour of my used chappals is words coming out of an egoist. The air between cold rice particles is trapped history.

Everything, everything is placed at two opposite ends of a spectrum. And yet is conjoined. In such a way that they are stuck forever. Stuck like soil on roots. Darkness with the colour black. Me with writing. Words with tenor. And with every passing day the grip is only getting firmer. Defined. Heavy. Like the continuation in life that floats without gravitational force. Yet everything is under control. Like, more than four meanings hanging on to a 4-letter word. Each having an existence of its own. Every meaning, in the context that it is used, becomes alive while the others wait for their turn.

Prose. Paragraphs. Sentences. Words. Letters. Phonetic sounds. I am addicted to them all. Fascinated how they play in front of me. Quite in contrast to what they make me think- that I am playing with them. They jump, roll, rotate, sleep, dream and awaken within me. As if I am indebted to rear them till my last breath. Disciplining and evolving them every passing day. Trying to craft them into a piercing lead of a sharpened pencil. Afraid at the same time, that its sharpness will taste blood, which I hope, is only mine.

I

Lights, camera, action!

“Statue!!!” she yelled. It was like an NYPD officer saying “FREEZE” in his hoarsest of voices. As if, I was cattle about to be butchered. And then and there, I just wanted to slap that girl. No second thoughts. Just whack. Like a blind man playing cricket- he just hears the sound of a ball rolled towards him, and there, he whacks. Without a thought. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t a blind man. I was scared. I was feeble. I was just a small child then. Unaware of how to behave in the world which was very new to me; still is; will always remain. I felt scared of making a mistake. Never wanted to put a wrong foot forward. Never. Ever. Not in this life at least. Not knowing then, that this was just a myth. Like a balloon. Such that will never remain the way it was in the beginning. Like a face. Such that will soon be full of freckles and wrinkles. My entire effort of being good was like those fiction books- full of magical realism- intriguing yet impractical, into which I dug my head like an ostrich. There was no end to my pursuit of being good. But then, I was just a child; or am I still?

Today, when I go back, I feel sorry for the child that I was then. He did what everyone did. Always followed the herd. For, any defiance on his part made him less human- that’s what he was told then. He started living a commoner’s life. Played cricket, badminton, marbles, cards, hide-and-seek, hopscotch, kho-kho, langdi, statue-statue, jolly, wall-current, sakli, climbed on trees, hated studies, rang house bells and ran away, cycled indefinitely, punctured tyres, heard & told non-veg jokes, fought, cried, abused & got abused… he was just like anyone. A suitable boy; or was he?

The day he thought he was no longer a boy, he became a man. That’s where I enter. I made him dream. I made him grow rather strangely. I made him live a marooned life. Like a frog with a 5^th leg. He completely repelled normality. Spoke less, observed more. Absorbed attitude, sarcasm, wit and slowly did his own bit. He knew he had come of age. He started reading- anything and everything. He started writing- which mostly started with ‘I don’t know what to write, but I feel like writing.’ Odd and ordinary things, he experienced and expressed. The more he found me, the less he remained himself. Soon, he disappeared. And I took over.

Cut!