Solemn Solitude

                                                            SOLEMN SOLITUDE

 

                                                                        By: -

 

                                                                 Vikas Haldar

           

 

Me and the world, I like traveling and from where I write now; am situated on top a hill with an eagles eye view. The town sprawls out. Arms extended on both sides stretch out in an expanse. The clock strikes past lunch in the city square. It definitely may sound very English on the ears it falls on but it all is

here, at home.

                I am here, with a pad and pen in hand thinking of what to write of next. I pick up a diary kept beside me on the grass. This place is apt for thinking, for reflecting. It’s peaceful here, away from the prattles and sights of city life.

                  I cast my glance to the right, see the river run by. On its side a track runs up, a flock of sheep herded along it. Its summer and the sun is bright, the place I choose to sit is on top of the hill and the sun beats down my back with all its might. It’s warm, pleasantly so as the summer been and gone and the solstice is slipping into autumn, soon it will be yuletide, another month or so to go for the festivities to set into the city.  

                I close my eyes; the light around drapes a curtain of red on the closed eyelids. I open my eyes, my head resting on a boulder, my one leg crossed over the other and I muse, its so peaceful here. I wish this time would stretch on. I don’t want to back to a mundane life with all its tensions, bundled up to form one big knot in life, and so it trudges along like a bid burden on my back.

                The river gurgles down from this mountain. In the valley I hear the sheep’s bleat and the shepherd herding away the sheep in flocks its time for shearing wool and the creatures return with their bodies devoid of fur. The weaklings are missing from the time they were taken on a trip lower down from where they all began. The weaklings always loose out, not the physically weak alone but the ones weak from within, weak in resolve. Only if I had a strong resolve! The time when I had to decide, wracking my brains out, I quit; I broke away to spend time with myself, for myself. The essence of nature just helped me that much more.

                It wasn’t easy, taking all those decisions. One had to keep so many things in mind while making a final decision and a sound one at that. It troubled, the ‘it’ were many things, things on my mind.

               First, always me first, I couldn’t make my mind about love. I worked it according to me, to me 

what was ideal I did just that. The other thing going on my mind was – where did I stand in my family? I was just a spectator in a corner stand watching the family farce and the wheel of life with them just move

on, the relations all disagreeable to the next, but we stuck like sore gum.

 

                Sometimes I thought we were a batch of eccentrics. All mad in their own respects. Old age brings on senility, I say, ‘Be born to a family like mine, and you will be a born an eccentric.’ Not in a depriving way, all geniuses under one roof, but somewhere something clicked wrong, one member would be disagreeable to the other and each would sit down with sullen faces.  

 

                Others were deserters and one really thinks, ‘Why desert your own?’

                Now, I know. To desert is better than to be bred amongst a breed of mad men and be the scion of such abnormal beings.

                Madness runs in our blood, from father to son and so on till the whole family branches out. This  

 

mad rush I find echoed in the rivers waters flowing down from these mountains to wash away all human

 

things and preserve nature’s sanctity, to wash away the polluted human touch as much as in the physical

 

touch as in the mind, to purify, to replenish, is the way of the nature.

 

                In the birds chirp I hear sweet voices singing, talking. The voice spewed forth in a fragrant breath

 

and the air is sprinkled with the perfume. The essence I was familiar with once, but now with time has

 

faded out. The wind has carried the cotton from the cotton silk tree onwards to place quite unknown.

 

                   I can see apple trees from up here and the fruit suspended from the tree, not ripe as yet, it needs

 

time, so do I, for as I sit here I don’t chase after things to meet ends meet, as I will have to once I return to

 

where I rightly belong. This respite is a welcome one and now as time slips by my resolve mature on

 

matters, as that fruit on the tree matures with time and in a habitat of its own. For only can something

 

survive or someone survive for its just ends in its own environs.

 

                I take in a breath of air and hold it; the chill is felt down to the foundations of the soul. The air is

 

not polluted as it is down where my home is. I return every time to a similar place where I now sit because

 

the true home is on pastures as these, which run on and on to, meet the sky yonder and the sun shines on

 

this path to guide the greens along. The wind blows gently to create a musical note or two in the receptacles

 

of the mind as accompaniments on this journey of mine.

 

            I understand why everybody comes back to where it all started from, looking yonder, running my

 

gaze in front of me, where mountains on mountains run parallel to each other, some a little short of their

 

goals and some, which reach higher than others, do. This is nature’s way of proclaiming ‘Accept ones

 

destiny in its entirety and if you try to change it and reach for something higher justly you shall be

 

rewarded.’ This I know for even the small ranges reach out and they grow taller by and by, a little at a time,

 

so, too they are rewarded for their efforts.

 

                I don’t want this to continue forever, it will loose its novelty. This refreshing of ones soul is

 

important and if I were to stay on forever I would be destroying its sanctity with myself and my impure

 

thoughts, sights and sounds. I wouldn’t want myself to infest this golden sight with something black.

 

                I got up now as the evening descends. I take my time coming down from he high-rise make my

 

way among the sleepy people of this town and somehow I like the tranquility of this element of sleepiness.

 

For nothing worries them, they live for the moment and we, who are all muddled up keep thinking of future

 

happenings when we are not even done with the present. Or all the time spent is spent on past ventures and

 

assessing its success and failure ratios. Where is the NOW?

 

                I heave a sigh and continue down, reach my destination, at my lodgings, sit down. From my room

 

I command a view of people in the market and sip on tea placed next to me on a table. I look up and notice

 

the sun setting in the horizon, painting it orange, the size bigger from what I would have seen in the city if I

 

got to time to notice it ever. I bathe in its glory and everything around tinged an orange-yellow and soon the

 

sunsets leaving behind twinkling stars in the night sky; thousands of them each one sparkles brighter than

 

the one before it. This is how I would want it in life, one step studded with more success than the previous

 

step, not materially alone but something more besides.

 

                After dinner I go off to bed only to realize tomorrow I’ll be back among the grit and grind of city

 

life and home, is where I belong. These last hours I cherish, as the cold blanket descends soft, not heavy on

 

the heart; to put everything within at rest, to sing a lullaby to put thoughts to sleep for after this unrest

 

among them is sure.

 

                With this final thought I put my solemn solitude, which I enjoyed till it lasted, to an end.

 

       

The Actor

 The Actor

 By:-

 Vikas Haldar
 

He was sitting on the couch.

 Previously he had been sitting at the dining table. Before that he remembered sitting on the charpoy. Thats all he remembered doing all his life, sitting. THe positions kept varying, places kept changing.

 Even at work he was made to sit. It depended on the person sitting across him, how he sat – cross-legged, shin placed on shin, straight backed, so on and so forth. But it boiled down to, sitting.

 The variations used to come with the questions, the facial expressions. Sometimes he would lean back and have a laugh at a joke he himself had cracked to lighten the atmosphere. A joke which was stupid, like the following one -
 'Knock! Knock!'

 'Who's there?'

 'Amos'

 'Amos who?'

 'Amos- A mosquito.'

 He was a star, people said so. It was amazing that he had a fan following, considering he didn't even have a fan, literally above his head, five years back.

 Now he drove his own car.

 They, the producers had told him, he would have a chauffeaur soon, on the companies expense.

 He had a house. Although, the initial months in this city he had seen the sun-rise and sun-set from a barsati on hire, which he shared with three other people.

 'Was all this a miracle?' He often asked himself.

 No, he was told he was good at what he did. That is why he was where, he stood today on the social strata.

 It felt good ascending the staircase to success. He had struggled from being a spotboy on those televised serials  to having a sitcom of his own in today's date.

 Lord alone knows, what the producer of the sitcom, saw in him. But, he was told, he was oozing with talent. And like always, what he was told, he believed. And then started his journey on the path of fame and fortune.

 It wasn't as if he wasn't educated or something of those sorts. In fact he had cleared his BA and was working on his Masters degree, when he threw it all up, following a hunch of his own. And like all other mongrels followed the light to this forsaken place, where he came in search of stardom.

 He had regrets in life, but he handled it well. He had been staying in this city of blinding lights some odd ten years. Or was it more?

 He remembered he had come across the lens of the camera very naturally, as naturally as could be. He was told that. He was given conviction by his producers -
 "You're star material boss!"

 And he had slowly come to believe it, with all the perks he was getting besides his salary. He was asigned a secretary, somebody who would handle the professional front. The complete trust game was so important to play right here, shouldn't be allowed a single slip with a tag like a secretary behind him 24 hours round the clock. Or else everything would be public. After all he was a public figure, people admired him. One slip in morality and the straight slip from stardom to being a nothing, where it all had started.

 The truth is he was righteous in everything he said and everything he did. But like all mortals he too had had low points in his life. Like that incident, it wasn't many years past, the initial years of trying to make it big in this field… he had lost his son in an accident.

 He found tears welling up in his eyes. He wiped them away with his finger. He was an actor, he could up a facade, but how long could it last?
      
 He worked like a dog. Allowing himself just 4 hours a day alone. That was hectic, considering at this stage, his counterparts were lazing after working off their asses in the initial years. This was the only consolation in life, his work.

 He had just driven home from his shoot. It was past three o'clock in the night. He was scheduled to be back in the studio at eight o'clock. He was directing a serial. One of those about ambitious people in high society. He had come across a script of a young gun, who reminded him of his initial struggle trying to break through the scene somewhere in this industry. He had put the money where the mouth was immediately after reading the script. He liked it because… it was him, the story spoke of.

 So he had burdened himself with work. After years handling his famedom, he knew he was reaching a burnout. He had never given up, he would never give up.

 One of the mistakes he committed in this "Tinselville" had cost him and he was declared bankrupt, but had jumped back to normalcy with his hard working nature. After that he never looked back. He was one of those breed, who die trying, trying till their last breath.

 It was the next morning when he opened his eyes again to wakefulness. He made it to the studio at the scheduled time. His team arrived. He started discussing the nitty-gritty's of the job on hand. He roughly divided the script into 200 odd episodes of half hour each.

 Serialization of scripts was so much like play acting. It just stretched across and left a lot of room for conjecture on the audiences part.

 Soon enough, the cameras had started rolling after finalizing the cast. This itself was a difficult job, as many thought they knew acting but were plain slapstick comedians, not serious actors. And for this serial he had need for serious actors, one's who knew what to do without being told a lot. The serial was on the floors. It would be aired within the month on television.

 The serials initial episodes were broadcast on National television. It soon turned out to be a success.

 The hectic rate of work left no room for anything else to hit him at a subconcious level, as he bled all his energies into the making of one episode after another. Working felt good!

 Then one day, everything was over. The last episode aired on televisions. The channels TRP ratings had gone up the past year with the serial being broadcast.

 It led on to a satisfactory finish.

 And then besides work there was the personal side of himself, which he never showed. His sons death was a drawback, therefore he had liked it when he worked. He had been on the brink, about to trip off. The accident was unfortunate, especially for his three year old son, at that time. Hot tears rushed to his eyes at the memory, stinging him deep within. He had not thought about it for days now, then why today?

 Was it the satisfactory end of his serials , like the death of his child. An end to everything, abrupt. Thats the way it was with him everytime; everything just ended so abruptly in his life, first going at a head tilting pace and then all of the sudden the halt!

 Now that he thought of it. He had warded off that dreaded word at home – "divorce". After his son's death, his had crubled into a heap of nerves. He had pulled himself… and her through that phase too. He had attended to all her needs with the utmost care and intimacy.

 With his humourous nature he had managed to win over everybody. It had needed working. His close friends, had wondered at the stupendous effort he took to gladden everyone and everything around him with his quips. He was the star then, and had maintained the status quo through till date with grace. Everything had bounced back to normalcy once again.

 The talk show he hosted was a success in such a way that there had been a slew of clones of the programme. But none was as successful as his own talkshow. And the road ahead was beautiful now, his past life he had passed through just drowning it in deep waters by working hard at what he did best talk, so as it didn't have a chance of resurfacing and spoiling his fun for awhile. He had worked these past five years relentlessly.

 He changed into his nightsuit. Came and stood near the bed. His wife was asleep. Then she stirred,turned, opened her eyes glanced at him questioningly.

 He sat on this side of the bed, crawled to her and wrapped his arms round he. She choked a giggle deep in her throat. He pecked her on the cheek and then thay slipped into oblivious world of sleep although the dawn was breaking through the window.

 There was a sense of security lying there in each others arms. From where the sun had set with all its gloom yesterday. Today was a new dawn. And he knew he would be back today, where he was yesterday, working, working, working, till the end of time, because that was the truth of his life, this life which helped him drown all his sorrows. True, true as much as the truth of that companion, through all good and the bad times times, lying beside him. Hearing her breathe each and every breath of hers was a new lease of life for him.

 The Actor, was what he was meant to be. The Actor, he is and will be throughout. The Actor, in him is his mirror image and can't get rid off. It is with him, within him, absorbed so much, that now, the Actor and he are one and the same.                 
     
     

The Window

  
 The Window

 By:-

 Vikas Haldar
        

                She was sitting with her back hunched over her knees. It was one of those
 
 summer mornings which usually would be called bright. But today the sun didn't shine

 down, the sky was overcast.

         I looked down from my window. The road was empty. This road was never
 
 crowded,after all it was a mere lane running on to the main road. The sun filtered
 
 through the window and merged with the yellow of my kameez.

  I had been thinking, if He would have been here He would have snapped his

 fingers in front of my face and broken my reverie. But He wasn't there, how I wish…      
  
  Its no use, I know He won't return, after all I did shoo Him away, just as

 if I had dismissed a pup from my side, who had lingered too long. But at the loneliest

 of times even a pup seems handy, just to be a companion. Maybe I shouldn't have let

 Him go.  
  
  Maybe I should have kept Him by my side, just so …

  I remembered all that He had once said about me, my eyes,

  'You got these big eyes', stressing on the big just to make it sound a little

 out of proportion, 'they reflect off everything.'

  I asked, 'Reflect… what?'

  'You always were disjointed.' He says and turns away looking the other way.

  Why did He have to turn away, abandon me like that?

  Was I really "disjointed"?

  Yes, I think I was, I am. Disjointed was so apt. That was what irritated me

 about Him, He was always right. He was perfect. But hadn't He said the same once

 about me?

  I remember I wasn't anything much before He came along. I was mere putty for  

 everybody who I came across. This one person seem to have given me such a lot, seems

 to have given me a definite shape. If only…

  I jerked my head from side to side, I had developed a crick in my neck. He

 had had the habit of every once in awhile to, hunch his shoulders and twist his head

 from side to side just like that and then you'd hear a distinct, Cr…cra…ck, as

 if a piece of stick had split.

  He gave me a back massage this one time and then I got addicted to His hands

 just resting on the small of my back, massaging. His hands were firm yet gentle. They
 
 didn't sting like Ashok's did!

  Ashok was mad! He was older than me, maturer than most or so I thought. I was
 
 proven wrong here, who had never been wrong about anything in life. I guess woman
 
 intuition is not to be relied on every time.

  Putting Ashok aside, I had shared my all with Him. He had resisted, stopped

 me,

  "Don't! You don't know me."

  But I had anyway poured out my bitterness, not noticing His disapproval.The

 words flowed in rythm with my tears. He had sat there listening with the utmost
 
 attention,calmly. I had never thought anybody capable of so much patience. All the men

 I had come across had been short tempered and antipathic towards me.

  As if it were my fault I was born a girl!

  Tears dulled my sight, His arms embraced me, hands wiped those tears away;  
 
 unburdening me in some way. He was too good to be true!

  I had faith in him, whatever little it was, it was a relief just to know He

 was by my side. He touched my face with the back of his hands and exclaimed,

  "You're hot!"

  And then,

  "Calm down." in a lower tone.
  
  I released all the pent up steam within me in an endless eddy of tears, which

 He wiped off my face as they flowed in a small rivulet. These He wiped with his hands

 and then held my face cupped in his hands, reassuringly.

  It was not just this once but so many times that I relied on Him, but, did I

 pay Him back justly? That's one thought that disturbs me. If I had not turned cold on
 
 Him, maybe He would have stayed on.

  He had once described me once as … what I felt now? Something about a void!   

  "You know, this life's a void and people like you and me manage to fill it up

 here and there, in bits and pieces, and that which is left? That which is left, is a

 big blank."

  The only reaction I could manage after coming out of my reverie was,
  
  "Uh! What?"

  He would smile at me, look down, shake his head, look at me and say,

  "Nothing." and He would just dismiss it at that.

  I felt guilty in a way, that I couldn't reciprocate. It was later I realized

 that He was just filling in one of His voids by filling mine. He had a habit of living
 
 His life, through other's lives. He was… just so… transparent.

  No! That's not the right word.

  Amorphous?

  Yes, amorphous.

  He took on to be anybody and everybody, as if this life were a drama to be

 played to perfection, on a stage, before the audience. And once he played one

 character to perfection he dropped it from himself, ridding himself of it. Just as
 
 someone tries leaving behind his shadow, but is unsuccessful at the task. He… he had
 
 mastered it. He had mastered the technique of leaving his shadow behind him and in the
 
 process had left a part of him in me. Which kept nagging me somewhere at the back

 of my mind, that he was there, with me,always. He continued to stay in some corner

 of me and grow, grow in my mind to such an extent, that now I am almost, like him.

  He fondled my arm, kissed it, carressed me, took me by my shoulders, pulling

 me closer to him. I sank my head on his breast. He ran his fingers through my hair,
 
 tingling my very being. I crept closer, hugged him tighter. I shut my eyes tight, I
 
 wanted to close out everything, forget everything; the past, the present, the future

 and just remain as I was, clung to him in a tight hug.

  No! No, I didn't want to forget the present. The present was beautiful and I  
 
 wanted it to last forever. And then… he distanced himself away from me.

  Why? That was the question which went unasked. My eyes looked on and saw him

 caressing me, loving me in those dark eyes of his and then, he let go. We didn't need

 an explanation for letting go of each other. We slowly drifted apart, each taking to

 its own stream. If we hadn't let go, we would have been stuck, stuck in a void which
 
 everybody wants to fill in their lives. It can get messy, holding on, we understood

 that and so let the other free from the others grasp.

  But, now I regret the fact. And the void in me keeps getting deeper and the

 ache at times becomes unbearable, so much so, that I just feel like letting go of
 
 everything which I hold on to so dearly. I let go of all because I don't want to fall
 
 into that void which fills me. The void which is my darkest being somewhere inside of

 me which I would never like to come to the fore.

  Sometimes I feel just the opposite of this and want to hold onto and live on.
 
 I want to live on to seek once more such person who really can fill the void in me,

 like once it had been. Just as an eclipse is partial so was this phase of my life. And
 
 this is the same principle we fuction on, everything dark cannot eclipse our lives and
 
 we have to move on removing the hindrance from our lives because life goes on it
 
 doesn't stop anyone.

  This and many more things were once told me by the person who I so miss in

 life, is nowhere within my sight. For whom my heart pines for, is nowhere near me.

 And so I let go.
 
  And now I as sit knees bunched against my chest in a tight hug, sitting at my

 window of my room from where I see the road. The road where I saw him depart for the

 last time. He looked back once over his shoulders.

  I guess he was hopeful of a last glance at me.

  This is the window from where I saw him go. And it is this same window I look

 from now hoping to see him trace his steps back to me. I look on just wishing him to

 walk up the road from where he had departed.                   

        
        
  
  
    
                  
       

Whose the Ghost?

Whose The Ghost?  

By:-  Vikas Haldar  

 I am restless. So many things seem to haunt me.

 The ghosts never seem to leave me alone. I am surrounded by them. And perceptions    are there to perceive. The others who see me, think of me as a loner. But the truth is I    am surrounded by ghosts.

 Ghosts are said to live in the past. The past haunting the present, the future is eerie. People just get plain scared of this haunting that they blame it all on innocent  phantoms of theirs, a figment of their imaginations.

 These ghosts haunt us mortal men in one form or the other. More often in the form  of questions unanswered, or a fear of the future and speculation in our human minds of  what lies in store for us. What we do not expect or anticipate, scares us the most. We  use another word for this type of haunting – 'surprise'. What we least expect to come our way, when it does, surprises us out of our wits.

   Demented, is one foretaken as one mentions 'Ghost'.   But it holds true, whatever people may say,  

 'There are ghosts in this world.'

  One form or another, but they exist. Phantom creatures with bloodless faces,     vampire teeths, figures floating in air may not be true, but ghosts despite all this exist, its a truth.   

Can one explain the eerie sensation when one knows something's in the air, but can't place it? Your hair may just prickle up or stand on an edge, because you felt something. But later on you couldn't place the sensation, what was it that you felt? You blame it on a ghost.    

Its all around and whats around is within. So it boils down to to, its all within us.

Something in your sleep disturbs you, from the past, something in the present and   sometimes it so happens that it hasn't happened as yet and that very incident which you   incensed occurs the very next moment.   

Visitations. Spirits visited you, and so it passes, without realizing what it really was.

There are exorcisms of the mind, the body and the soul. The evil is supposed to  end here and now and GOD will help fight all evil since ages unknown, now and forever. A person who is mentally sick, would well be branded as "desperately neeeding exorcism".Just another tool to make a belief firmer that "GOD exists". If evil does, so must GOD exist, it just falls into place. For there is a belief since the beggining of the polar differences; polarity; two extreme points of any view. And since it is a blind belief, we may say the "Dark Age" isn't over as yet.

I am a ghost hunter and I search around for people and places for ghosts. I had a  sense of nothingness, a sense which can only be described aptly with one word, as being  left 'numb'.

I don't think before I say something.

But why?

I know, the answer lies deeper within because it is not I who speaks, but someone  who speaks for me. Whether it is a manifestation from another world which takes hold of  me, I am not sure as to that.   In the past I have written reports for newspapers – investigative pieces mainly, I have had to dig for facts of course, on such occasions as they demand it. But how I get the premonition of what lies where, and how it all fits in even before anybody else comes to know? The answer best be left unanswered and those of the other world with their secrets. It's so easy, just blaming it on a ghost.  

 I been thanked later for bringing the 'dead mans plight' out in the light in various ways. Not as if I have seen anything or have had visitations, but on a more materialistic way been gifted with tokens on such occasions, with a raise in salary or a leave granted unasked for,etc., etc.. People may fend by saying,      

'After all you did work… the Editor liked it, so you got a few perks.'   

There are other relics to which only my memory can bear witness, because all     material evidence on such occasions has been destroyed, one way or another; by force,     willingly, accidentally. Choose from any one of the options. But inevitably, the evidence   gets destroyed. Till date my articles have been attached with the tag of "entertainment   value". News is no news for them in this case, who hold me as blasphemous a figure as the "people" I write about. And such news is disposed of as a "figment of the imagination".  

I go by various pseudonyms in different journals. Its odd as how I always come back to one notion of ghosts, I am a 'Ghost Writer' writing about ghosts. There is so much significance attached to just this one word – 'Ghost'.

Don't laugh! Ghosts may take offence. After all they too are a respectable lot,  who now rest finally in their graves after death in peace. It is us humans who keep    talking of bringing the dead back to life, the more hearty and adventurous of the lot.The rest are plain scared of the notion of the dead rising from their graves.   

Mummy's were mummified for the same reason, 'life after death' or reincarnation or the idea of a re-birth, in another world, to live in the under world to protect this mortal world from all evil of the nether world.   

Why do we associate night with spooks? 

The truth is we are surrounded by ghosts all the time. They are around, in the air. Wave your hands about in the air, you aren't going to encounter any ghosts, nor can one see them. They are just there, just as GOD was meant to be. This is the only world, this is the truth.                                        

The world beyond life is a mystery. The life before birth, conception is a mystery. So blame it all on high powers of the unknown, sitting somewhere up above our  heads, GOD's? Or blame it on the evil spirits from the underworld and Satan?

Satan, another interesting subject. Be it Hinduism, Islam or Christianity there will always exist the two, the heaven and the underworld, hell; the house of the Satan or Shaitan. 

But the moral of the story remains the same,   

'The victory of good over evil.'   

So will any harm, can any harm come to mankind as long as that one thought of the   supreme being as our saviour remains alive in our hearts?   

One can't be sure. There were men who took on mass destruction of humans before,in recent times and will continue to do so in the future and one day there'll be Armegeddon, mass ravishing, annihiliation of all living beings on this world, this universe. The question remains, will it be GOD or Satan who will unleash such a power to destroy everything that was once created?   

The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind. And thats that! 

We Are One!

      We Are One!

 It's a beautiful piece. It's an amalgamation of all that we are; all that we are meant to be. The basic, the man the woman. And here they are just that, the man and the woman, amalgamated. They are one and the same.

 Here, the man and the woman are cojoined. It just reiterates that one phrase – '…woman the better half of man'. The shades of greys and whites in the painting show just that.

 Where on hand we can see the dawn of a new day, on the other we see the receding of night. One side depicts life and the other life extinct. The river runs dry this side, on the other we see the river wash this death away and bringing with the rush of water, on its dry stony bed, a wave of life. Its just another way of showing the two halves of everything – the binary life form, the good and the bad, love and hate, night and day… so on and so forth, the two extreme degrees on any scale.

 The ambiguity is commmendable. A bush in the corner – bursting into life or shriveling into death? The background – azure golden sky of morn or the dusk into nightfall? The sky above – clouding or clearing after a storm? Its all grey. The land parched with heat meets the sea , which washes the earth's face clean and refreshed.

 The man and woman, central figures of the painting, the arms, the neck, their body one and the same. Their faces , if seen closely, resemble each other,one the reflection of the other. The only distinguishing mark – the moustache on the man's face.

 Every detail brought on canvas so vividly alive. The dress of the woman, dewy with toil; sweat and soiled.The body detailed sensuously, yet strong; strong as a man's, not a mere fragile piece. The distinguishing marks on her body – the rounded breasts and the bangles on her wrist. The earthen pot hangs loose from the end of her fingers, dripping water on the parched earth; the last few precious drops dripping on to the parched, cracked earth from the earthen pot, the magical pot of life. This depiction just drives in the point more firmly than ever, The beginning and the end are inevitable.The earth meets the sea in one corner of the canvas. The drop of water falling from the pot onto the earth and the sea meeting the earth is so euphemistic. The drop of water from the earthen pot depicting a drop of life and the latter image of the sea meeting the earth bringing on a new wave of life, washing away all that is past. The drop of life – the blood of life – the life blood which flows free as the sea.

 Deep crimson like the lifeblood are the bangles on the womans wrist, a symbol of marriage, the 'sati-savitri' at home breaking boundaries to be with the man in the fields, proving herself equal to the man. This strenghthens the point of the man and the woman being one.

 Despite this oneness, why do we fight for separate identities? And doesn't this one painting epitomise that men and women are at par with each other, none the superior to the other. Then why the rending cry which goes on forever, of freedom, equality, separate identities? It is not a male dominated society, it is an androgynous society, a male-female society.

 The atrocities against women in such a society are work of perverted minds, trying to break this equilibrium. The stress again and again on the point – 'women are feeble' by various mediums to make this point stolid in society over the years has made women a soft target, has made her weak, in mind, in soul. The woman has to realize this and be upto a man's mark in every way. She has to prove herself. then only can one appreciate the equality in work of the likes of Sobha Singh and others. And the love story forever sticks in the crags of the mind – 'Sohni-Mahiwal'.     

     

A Melancholic Melody

 A Melancholic Melody
By: -

Vikas Haldar
           This account I start from a period somewhere back in time, long back in time. I don’t know what stopped me before, its innocent as innocent can get.
          

            It was a strain. The song still jingles in my ear. The sight, the sound intact, just as intact as the smell of wood after all these years, fresh, as if it were just yesterday. 
I used to drive up here quite often in my early days of youth, trying to search for a new subject to write about. The lush green surroundings always managed to stir my imagination. As a young man, I climbed those hills, yonder and beyond, on and on and on.
 
           But here, I always returned. Returned to the same table for four, with me sitting by myself at it.The same huge rafters overhead, they went as time slipped by. From candlelight’s to electrical arrangements, from crude wooden chair and tables to plastic molded ones. Everything changed except that one thing, the center of the restaurant.
 
            In the center was a wooden dance floor, with one change alone, the voice and the face were missing from it. And of course with it the vigor of the place had run out. Where there used to be singing,dancing and merry making was now an empty vacuum, which sucked you back in time. 
 
               Remembering days past and gone, making love to a pint of beer or a little tonic and gin, some daysjust watching those eyes shining down on me, those light brown eyes it reflected you back just as one were,masking everything behind those eyes. The sensation light with the heavy after effects of making love.
 
               The chandelier, which hung over the dance floor, with accompaniments on the sides, but her voice left everything else unheard, unseen. What mattered was her, just her.
 
               I took time. Finally managed to go up to her one evening. The snow packed in. The crowd thin and my head light, I garbled something about her beautiful voice to someone, at this point I passed out. The next waking moment I found myself in the dark cold night with the snowing falling lightly from the night sky above. The effects of alcohol receding slowly, and thus I made my way home, trudging through the snow.
 
               The young spirit does not sag easily. Evening after evening I was to be found with a glass of ale looking on with keen eyes the beautiful sight before me. The hair dark, her lips full, the nose tapered, the chin rounded, she was a soothing sight for healing hearts. A goddess, a simple girl elevated in my eyes.
 
               The next set of events was quite out of my imagination. Considering my demeanor, I hardly had the courage to go and ask the girl for an evening out. To this girl, I bolstered my spirits high and walked up to.
 
               I was waiting outside after hours. The door opened and there she came out in her astrakhan all wrapped up. It was the first look I had at her in dim sight without her makeup. She walked on the other side and I proceeded towards her.
 
               ‘Hi!’ I cried in a cheery note, all the cheer I could put into it despite the hour.
 
               ‘Hi?’ she walked on without glancing at me.
 
               I guess she must have been used to monger looking chaps like me following her.
 
               ‘Nice night.’ I try making conversation walking by her side, keeping in step.
 
               ‘I can hardly call it that.’ She says in a resigned tone.
 
               ‘Hmmm….mm’ is all I can say.
 
              She stops in her tracks, ‘Yes?’
 
              I look at her, ‘Mind if I walk you home?’ I huddle in my coat, the cold on the rise.
 
            The girl shrugs. Walks on now, with me by her side. The few minutes we walk down hill are silent moments ticking by, just ticking by! The clock tower, which now rings across town, announces the second hour past midnight. The mist thick and wet shrouds us with the visibility at its minimum.
                
               ‘You seem to spend a lot of time in the tavern.’ The girl asks nodding her head the way we were coming from.
 
               I smile in a way of answer,
               ‘I have all the time in the world in my hands to while away?’
 
               ‘Jobless?’ she enquires.
 
               ‘No.’
 
               ‘What do you do for a living?’
 
               ‘I write.’ I pause and add, ‘For a pittance.’
 
               ‘I sing for the same.’ The girl, I guess trying to make conversation. While to other ears it may have seemed a monologue rather than a dialogue.
 
               I look at her. She looks at me looking at her. I her eyes, I notice, are stone dead.
 
               I continue to make conversation, ‘You do this every night?’
              
              The girl replies, ‘Every night.’
 
               The after awhile I ask, ‘Sorry, but I don’t know your name.’
 
               ‘Neither do I know yours.’
 
               ‘Sorry. I am Nalin.’
 
               ‘I am Prakriti.’ She says in the same stone dead tone.
 
               ‘Wow! Apt. You born in the wild?’ I try passing a stupid joke to lighten up our dark and dreary mood.
 
               Silence pervades all and then,
               ‘Yes.’
              
               After that all is silence again.
 
               I was intrigued. First her eyes reflected wilderness, then her mannerisms and now her name. What was this?  A product of wilderness? A nature’s child maybe?
 
             ‘I need to explain, I guess.’ Prakriti says
 
             ‘We have been walking for quite some time. ‘ I remark.
 
             ‘Up ahead is my home.’ She points out a log hut, cold to the sight.
 
             We enter in darkness. She moves to one end of the room and lights up the fire in the grate. In a few moments the room becomes cozy and makes one feel at home. With a small table, a couple of chairs and a crude bed to one side.
 
            Prakriti moves off to another small room. The wooden hut was very organized,compartmentalized. She comes in with two cups of tea. Sets them on a boarded box, a substitute for a table.I crunch on some homemade crackers with the tea.
                               
           ‘You were about to tell me something?’ I ask in between sips of tea.
 
           ‘Yes. It’s about me.’
 
           ‘Yes.’ I prompt her
 
           ‘I can’t.’ She turns her face away.
 
           Hearing a faint sob, I get up. Walk up to her. Taking her by the shoulders, raise her. Through misted eyes she looks at me. Wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and turns away gazing at the fire.
 
          'I was left, abandoned. It was in an insurgent state that I was born to, left to. The factions had arisen. Everywhere you turned your gaze; the smell of tepid blood followed you, innocent blood. I made
myself, nobody’s responsible for me!’ 
 
         ‘You are a child of freedom.’ I state
 
          ‘Yes. Maybe.’ The girls eyes were misty the voice sounding far away.
 
           ‘I was taken in by a kind hearted man in the midst of inhumanity. He brought me up till here. In later years of our acquaintance he fell prey to illness of first one kind then another, he fell prey eventually to his ills. And then it was just me, this shack and… and loneliness.’
 
           ‘Did he name you? Your name that is, was it he who named you?’
 
            Prakriti continues as if I hadn’t interrupted her at all, ‘The man was old. He was kind. If it were my own breed I guess I wouldn’t have been any better off. Maybe he too was abandoned by his own, just like me. He gave me a name, my identity. He just didn’t live long enough for this child of his to repay him.’
 
               ‘He would have been happy to see today, like this, self dependent.’ I remark
 
               ‘Maybe.’ Her every breath seemed a whisper.
 
               I moved closer. She huddled into a blanket, now seated on the bed. The cold outside raged with all its force. But within we were snug and safe from ravages of nature. The night was long, not lonely. The fire kindled into the night, whence it went out I am not aware.
 
               I woke up early dawn in the cold. Wrapped Prakriti in the blanket, leaving behind a note, a blank nothing. I walked out. It was the last time I saw her, heard her breathe in her sleep, the last time I touched her.
 
               And now I had returned to this place with all its changes. It was the next day after my arrival in the tavern. There was a lady at the reception signing in new guests and checking out old ones. I walked up. She engrossed in her work, startled and looked at me –
 
               ‘Yes?’
 
               ‘Nothing.’
 
               She smiled at me. Then her eyes glinted at the edges.
 
               ‘Sir, you still are non-chalant.’
 
               ‘If that’s a compliment, I thank you, ma’am.’ Saying thus I move off to my room. I hear the young at the reception ask of the old,
 
               ‘Do you know him?’
 
               The reply comes, ‘Yes. An old acquaintance, darling.’
 
               In the evening as I sit in the modest reception. My girl walks up to me and sits besides.
 
               ‘It’s been a long time.’ She says as she sits down.
 
               ‘Yes. A very long time.’ I reply.
 
               She looks on straight without any hint of any feelings at all, ‘ I didn’t think you would return.’
 
               I reply, ‘I didn’t think I would be seeing you here after all these years, again. But cannot negate my hearts desire, my hearts plea, that maybe if I took a chance I would be rewarded.’
 
               Prakriti asks, longing eyes misted over just like they had misted, all those years back,
               ‘Were you rewarded?’
 
               Nalin looks in her eyes and whispers,
               ‘Yes.’
 
               A tear glistens at the edge of Prakriti’s eyes and overflowing falls inevitably on her lap.
 
               ‘You’ve been crying?’ The girl who I had seen earlier with Prakriti walks up takes and a seat beside her.
 
               ‘Yes. We have been talking of old times. Nalin meet my grand-niece, Payal.’
 
               ‘Hello. Nalin…. That name sounds familiar.’ Payal thoughtful. Trying to place me.
 
               Prakriti butts in, ‘I have told you so much about him.’
 
               ‘Oh! Yes, now I remember.’ Recognition dawns on Payal as if we were old acquaintances out of touch.
 
               ‘You have been telling tales about me?’
 
               ‘Not really, after all we have read so much of Nalin Bandopadhya’s works.’ Prakriti offers an explanation.
 
               ‘I will leave you two to chat.’ Payal gets up and walks into the office, behind the reception.
 
               ‘Do you know who she is?’ Prakriti asks with a conniving look.
 
               ‘Payal? No. Who is she?’
 
               ‘Our grand-daughter.’ The eyes with the far off distant look in them and Prakriti’s voice cold and hard as steel.
 
               ‘Wha…? I can hardly…’
 
               ‘You don’t have to think hard. I’ll explain everything –
 
               It was a fateful night when you came in that one winters night, when we walked home, unknown. I was never to fall in love again. After all it was a teenage whim. Those few precious moments I never wanted forgotten. Never wanted them to fade away. I was a nature’s child. Payal is of the same breed, a nature’s child.
 
               I did conceive but aborted the child, our child, it was painful, but what else could be done, what else could I do? At the same time my sister gave birth to boy, but as fate would have it, she succumbed to illness following the child’s delivery. In later years I lived my life with this family of mine, till the interceding war disrupted our lives. And he had to leave, leaving behind his wife and child, Payal. The son was missing in action. And then we three girls took care of each other. Payal’s mother due to ill health… it was a weak heart this time, she passed away just these few years back. Now, my memory fails me, I can’t remember the years. Leaving the two of us together, to take care of one another.
 
               With one wish left in my heart, that, someday I would find my love again, I did have you back.’
 
               ‘You did. You did get your love back.’ Nalin holds her hand in his.
 
               And then from the back,
               ‘Uh… hhh… hm.’
 
               ‘You don’t have to make weird sounds to enter. We aren’t shy of acts of love at our age. We hardly are bothered what the other thinks. Come in and sit down my child.’ Prakriti says without turning
her back to Payal.
 
               ‘So you are my grandfather? Nalin dadu?’ then a little more confidently Payal goes on, ‘Good to have you back.’ And she gives me a hug.
 
               ‘Child. I am happy I got you back. I got a family to return to.’ I acknowledge her holding her hand.
 
               ‘So tell me, dadu. Didn’t you marry once you left here?’
 
               ‘No. I didn’t get the time. And moreover I had my heart here. All these years I just longed to return here. Return to a memory, a fond memory.’
 
               ‘You won’t go back and leave us alone, Nalin?’ Prakriti asks crying on my shoulders.
 
               ‘Of course not, dadu will stay with us.’ Payal interposes.
 
               ‘Yes, sweetheart, we will live together, now and forever. After all I have to make up for the lost time with you two.’ Nalin says.
 
               ‘But tell me Nalin, why didn’t you marry?’ This comes from Prakriti.
 
               ‘I couldn’t. I loved somebody else. I loved you. I just couldn’t gather the courage to come back after I deserted you that night. I felt a complete loser at my end, a coward. All this while I kept myself busy with work as not to think of it, wanted to escape it. Deep down I knew I was just a coward, throughout my life.’
 
               ‘No you aren’t!’ Prakriti hushes me.
 
               ‘Yes. I have, otherwise I would have returned to you earlier, much earlier.’
 
               ‘Never mind. You have come back, now. And this time we shan’t let you go.’ The cherry Payal slips into the conversation again.
 
               Nalin laughs out, ‘ Don’t worry this time I won’t abandon you. Never, ever will I abandon my own ever again.’
 
               And the scene recedes into a happy family of three. This was the story of my grandfather and my grandmother from a long, long time ago. And now I have nothing left of them except memories,
one endless string of memories and a sense of melancholia.
   
 
                         
 
     
  
 
 
 
 
 
              
 
   
 
              

A Sunday Picture

 A Sunday Picture
By: -
Vikas Haldar
 

Click! Clack!
 
Focus. Aperture width. Snap!

Damn! Lighting!
 
Sorry. As you can well make out, I am busy snapping photographs. I am a student with a lot of free time on my hand. I like to jingle around with photography and cameras and with all its other accessories, such as the filters, lenses, shots.
 
An orange filter here, a UV filter there, makes all the difference in a photograph.
 
I was once told –
‘A picture can speak a thousand word!’
 
‘And thus the picture speaketh.’
 
It started as a hobby. And now with it growing slowly on me, it’s become a compulsion. But wait!
 
Where am I running off? I wanted to report a story to you folks! It’s about the slime of the society.
 
I often visit this part of the city. Its rocky, its picturesque and on a spring-summers evening its heaven. It is also home to that, strata of society, which isn’t a stratum at all – the Prostitute. In other words, this is the story of a ‘Red Light Area’ as we refer to it.
 
               Like the Municipal Corporation trying to clean up the city, a host of Moral Police descends on this bunch of poor nothings. They possess the body alone, their soul support, their only means of livelihood present at hand in dire straits.
 
               These pimps, prostitutes have their ‘Hey Days!’ too, every once in awhile. When there aren’t enough stories “popping up” the newspapermen in league with the law enforcers will be ready to give these poor souls coverage on a ‘Human Interest’ story in the papers besides stripping them of their earnings.
 
               Moolah! For men on both sides, the reporters and the reported, except for the ones in custody.With no one of their own except they and their kind. Each girl for the other! No others in their knowledge living or dead; near or far; kith or kin.
 
               It was not so much the fascination or the dire need of the basest of sexual desires that drove me to their quarters, but something else. I’ll try my best to put it down on paper here.
 
                               As I may have mentioned before, it’s in this part of the city, where there are stored the filthy rich and their filthy riches. Just once or twice on an odd chance will you get to see a customer picking up his girl, who could well be romping about on the streets quite oblivious, till she would be successful in hooking somebody with that expert discerning eye for just that someone special.
 
               By the looks of it, you wouldn’t even have noticed her, but to that trained eye, she’s eye-candy for a night. Next day with a few bills of money stuck in her skirt she’s off, preparing for the next nights hunt.
 
               The camera goes click. “That’s some photo buddy!” My editor pats my back, drooling all over the photograph. I just gave in my story with the pictures. It’s on a sympathetic angle, a ‘human interest story’.
 
               “The marginalized in society. After all they, ‘the whore’ is just as much human as the rest of us.”
 
               The argument continues and the moral police descend with all their might on the likes of us, who try defending these poor wretches, ‘the whore’.
 
               Since I am on the subject of clicking photographs, I may have forgotten to mention about my new camera ‘Nikon F3’ with a 75 mm lens.
 
               Somebody shouts from the back –
               ‘By Jove! That must a cost a fortune.’
 
               ‘Yes. When I do my job, I do it thoroughly. And my boss, editor sees to it I am comfortable. That’s all I am concerned with. Somebody’s ready to pay, I am ready to deliver. Freelancing is heaven!’ 
 
               ‘What about the scrapes you get into?’ my friend asks me as he now joins in on the narrative, sitting over a cup of tea, with other people on tables around us. I am now in one of the news agencies cafeteria.
 
               The friend of enquires of me,
               “So what’s next?”
 
               I answer-
               ‘As usual, search for a new subject, this time on the roads.’
 
               I am driving and this scraggy looking child comes knocks on my car windshield. I slide down my car window. The urchin comes along side and says in Hindi,
 
               ‘Sahebji, take this magazine’, holds up an issue of some classified magazine, ‘only five rupees, take it. You’ll do me a good deed.’ Saying these standard lines he pushes the magazine in my face.
 
               Snatching the magazine I toss him a coin and drive on as the traffic lights change.

              I stop at another crossing and see on the opposite pavement, a man on crutches with bandaged hand and legs asking for alms from one vehicle to the next. He manages to cross over safely to the pavement as he notices the traffic meter count its last second before the traffic lights change.  
 
               It was something in me. I wasn’t satisfied so I picked up my camera and set out on the streets, late night. Wound my way through in roads and landed on one settlement of beggars.
 
               I tried to fit in with a pair of worn jeans and a kurta with a pair of Hawaii chappals. But how could I possibly fit in with this lot of misfits? The ‘beggars’ were smoking bidis and I had just lighted a cigarette. I found the King Pin.
 
               I went in his shack, was made to sit down, comfortably. He sat on a charpoy, folded up his lungi and addressed me in Hindi,
                ‘What can I do for you?’
 
               “I am a journalist. I want to write about you, your people.” I try explaining.
 
               The kingpin laughs boisterously,
               “Another one! They sent one more. Sympathy from the people, try making us all one! Ha! A pack of lies, no politician could do it, can do it. No social worker could! And now, neither can journalists like you!” His voice thunders in my ears as he dismisses me.
 
               I walkout. Snap a few photographs. While walking home I rewind the conversation with the 'Beggar King’ in my head. And truth of his words finally hit me. Those words seem to echo forever.
 
               The next morning I set foot in my editors’ office with the photographs and story. He hands me my paycheck, rests his arse on the chair and goads over the photographs. He lets out a chuckle from his fat throat,
               “Good! Good work boy! Get in more. I’ll see to your promotion on one of the regular beats.”
 
               “No.” I say under my breath.
 
               “What was that?” The editor says with a puzzled look on his face.
 
               I repeat, “No. Thanks, thanks for the short stint that I had.”
 
               The editor’s cherubic face lights up,
               “You tired of this already.” Flails his hand across the myriad of photographs spread on his table.
 
               “If this is what journalism is, an instrument of pity, to mock the poor and prod the rich to higher platforms, then, I am sorry, I can’t do it.”
 
               “I feel sorry to hear it, son. You weren’t bound to a contract, you can leave if you want to”, says the editor with no expression in voice or feature.
 
               I mumble a thanks and leave his office with the pay package in my hand. I drive home.
 
               A knock on the windshield, a small hand with a dirty cloth starts scrubbing the surface of the car. He taps the window on my side. I roll down the window further and drop a coin in the boys puny hand. For a moment I try looking in his eyes just to discern the pain in them, but can’t locate it. I guess. These urchins are used to this life, just as we are of shooing them off or dropping coins in their hands for their services.
 
               These are just some of the marginalized of the society. After all we make them ‘marginalized’. It is us who provoke them and later encourage them to such acts. It is an eternity, now and forever. The same as the eternity spent between the hand and the coin dropped to reach the awaiting palms.
 
               It is finally a life of the oppressor and the oppressed.