Music - an epiphany one night

Music once had a human form. Alluring, appealing, charming, elegant, exquisite, glorious, sublime, delicate, lovely, pretty, flawless, perfect. We humans waged war amongst ourselves to gain control over her. She left for our sins. Now we strive to recreate that beauty. The music we create is but a part of the beauty it once was. Ohhh music you once had a human form..!!!

Silence, memories and madness

As the winter night darkens, silence falls upon the surroundings. An eerie dark silence; so overpowering, so maddening, that you beg for sleep, but alas sleep is a virtue you have been deprived of. At this point you wish your thoughts might make some noise, but its all blank. All you hear is your own breath, amplified to such high levels that it sends shivers down your spine, heaving and struggling breath. Gasping sometimes, breaking the rhythm as if struggling to keep the process going. And then, that too stops, 

As the winter night prowls ahead for its next prey, and even the distant hum of the refrigerator stops, you feel the grip of the silence tightening over your nerves. 

Absolute silence is maddening.

At this point before tipping over to madness, memories come flowing down, memories of guilt and pleasure.

Memories of pleasure are momentary,ephemeral; its the guilt that lasts long. 

Memories have a way of getting attached to certain seasons and smells. They say your brain remembers people and events in peculiar ways. On this dark night you could smell all those moments from the past. You could distinctively smell those smiles, those promises, those careless winter afternoons. 

Sounds, you may forget; how it sounded, how they sounded, how those moment sounded, but smells, they are so strong they don't let you forget.

Its like a hazy, grainy video, on mute, being played back in your mind. The pictures getting faded by the passing time, the smells getting stronger.

You start breathing heavily, beads of sweat appear on your brow, a howling train passes by on the distant fields, the Rajdhani is late you think in the back of you mind. 

You start hearing sounds, sounds so distant that you never thought it was possible for them to tear past the wintery darkness to reach your ears. Sounds which comfort you, assure you , and bring you back to the sanity of the present. 

The rustle of your clothes, the water dripping from the tap, the humming of the laptop fan which you always forget to switch off. 

That laptop which had a very good memory, which kept all the pictures of those winter afternoons intact within itself, which had started to make strange humming noises, which has a small light which kept blinking every micro second.

The laptop which you wished would shutdown of its own, stop the cacophony of noises, let you sleep in peace.

That laptop which you kicked in rage and is now a pile of junk.

That laptop whose hard-disk is still intact, and it still preserves those pictures of those winter afternoons, from which you always think of getting the data extracted, but never gathered the strength to do so, because , the smells, they never let you forget.

Trust, Temptation & Trash

Temptation: Mark Twain once said “There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable”. And like my fellow beings I too am tempted to attain the forbidden. You are never tempted to do well; at least I have never felt so.

The desires attached to such forbiddens are so strong that sometimes, after you have touched upon them you feel guilty. You always feel guilty after satisfaction.

There are so many kinds of temptations which lure you away from the so called path of righteousness, the one which you feel you must follow, but are never successful. The strongest of them right now is to get into the social accounts of people who were the entire world for you once, with whom you had roamed an entire dreamland were time was an illusion (*imagine Inception, the movie playing in the background*), but all that was lost and the only thing that had remained constant was that naive persons social account passwords which the other one had shared at a moment of extreme trust.

Trust:  A trust so strong that it was an axiom, no proofs required, but which was time and again proved wrong like the various atomic theories. The trust which was breached time and again; taken advantage upon and taken for granted. A trust which was so blind that it clouded people’s judgement, but for how long. The eyes started to open, the clouds started to clear, the vision got focused, and the friends might have helped a lot. With the passage of time the trust had turned into hatred, disgust, scorn. But even with this newfound hatred and understanding of the workings of the human nature the person still was naive, innocent, unsophisticated, artless, ingenuous, inexperienced, guileless, unworldly, childlike, dewy-eyed, simple, natural, unaffected, unpretentious; gullible, credulous, easily taken in, unsuspecting, unsuspicious, easily deceivable, dupable, immature, callow, raw, as green as grass, ignorant. And the person never changed, like the passwords.

Trash:  I have always found the most shocking of revelations and news in the mailbox trash. Not mine, others mailboxes, the access to which had been given to me when the grass was green, but which remained with me even after the red rose had turned white. People always forgot that the deleted mails and chat histories went to trash for a few days, many never knew the existence of the same till being questioned about it.

The trash had a very high shock value, it created supernovae shock waves which travelled through the interstellar space between the two of us and was deeply felt on both the sides.  It has highly destructive powers similar to those generated by the Earth’s Magnetic field colliding with the Solar wind or shock waves caused by galaxies colliding with each other.

 I am not saying that I am the Earth but she sure was the Sun right now glaring in full glory, and her entire solar energy concentrated at one point. But rather than destruction the Earth was basking in the sunlight which felt sweet after the cold stares, and the well deserved period of silence. The sun it seemed was not capable of destruction.

The galaxies were light years apart from each other but the faint recollection of the once strong gravitational pull was still lingering in some deep crevasse of the mind. On one such faint recollecting moment, a thought occurred, which suggested the use of the once shared passwords to trace the movement of a very bright galaxy; once very close, but now lost into the deep space.

The thought gave rise to desires and temptations, which were acted upon and once again trusts were breached inboxes accessed, and trash was read. As expected shock waves were generated, the earth was on its way to destruction and the sun was shining brightly.

This time acting upon the temptations did not result into satisfaction, but it felt guilty enough. The Sun naive enough continued to shine from a distance, its trust broken, heart mangled beyond repair but still dewy eyed, moonstruck and innocent.

Trust, temptation and trash had again created a mess of the universe

Wallets

Its always wallets, they always think alike i never could understand why. They always gifted wallets - the most intimate ones, the ones closer to heart than the aorta. The ones who we thought will never leave, but looking back now who seem to be so far into the past that their existence seems like a hazy afternoon dream, from which you wake up gasping for breath, thirsty and drenched in sweat.

The wallets they predicted things. Their physical condition correctly represented the tides and tribunals of the harmonies we were creating together. And just before it was set to snap, the thing we thought was never going to end, the wallet would always give way. They predicted things.

Its nothing to do with the contents it  carried, it was as if these wallets were the physical representation of all the poems we wrote, the poems which went on to become life song, the songs which changed pitch too often, the longings, the questions, the drift apart, the looming dark clouds, the shadows and the ultimate darkness. They never could survive till the ultimate darkness arrived, they would always give way, the wallets.

But this last one did outlast the entire song and dance episode, as if it wanted to tell us something. The leather shined brightly, showing the poems were still been written, the condition perfect representing a resonating frequency , a frequency which can create great harmonies. But the truth was something different. The wallet after all was an inanimate object , but it did live and breath.
So was the harmony between these two persons still living and breathing, maybe a muffled breath, never to be heard; buried deep within layers of ego and societal pressures on top to give it a justified healthy look.

We never had a proper closing, the loose ends still dangle around how hard we try to hide them.

Sabse Adhik Tumhi Ro-oge - Ram Avatar Tyagi

Every time I read this poem my heart bleeds, it can't be explained more beautifully than in the words of Shri Rajiv Krishna Saxena

"All of us have gone through those very private moments when we meet some one with whom we have a very special binding and who may care the most for us in this world. While others may be vocal and demonstrative but that special relationship is beyond words and can only be expressed in silence. This is a remarkable poem by Ram Avtar Tyagi Ji. So intensely private that one almost feels embarrassed in sharing it with the poet. What a gem!"

सबसे अधिक तुम्हीं रोओगे / रामावतार त्यागी

आने पर मेरे बिजली-सी कौंधी सिर्फ तुम्हारे दृग में
लगता है जाने पर मेरे सबसे अधिक तुम्हीं रोओगे !

मैं आया तो चारण-जैसा
गाने लगा तुम्हारा आंगन;
हंसता द्वार, चहकती ड्योढ़ी
तुम चुपचाप खड़े किस कारण ?
मुझको द्वारे तक पहुंचाने सब तो आये, तुम्हीं न आए,
लगता है एकाकी पथ पर मेरे साथ तुम्हीं होओगे!

मौन तुम्हारा प्रश्न चिन्ह है,
पूछ रहे शायद कैसा हूं
कुछ कुछ चातक से मिलता हूँ
कुछ कुछ बादल के जैसा हूं;
मेरा गीत सुन सब जागे, तुमको जैसे नींद आ गई,
लगता मौन प्रतीक्षा में तुम सारी रात नहीं सोओगे!

तुमने मुझे अदेखा कर के
संबंधों की बात खोल दी;
सुख के सूरज की आंखों में
काली काली रात घोल दी;
कल को गर मेरे आंसू की मंदिर में पड़ गई ज़रूरत
लगता है आंचल को अपने सबसे अधिक तुम ही धोओगे!

परिचय से पहले ही, बोलो,
उलझे किस ताने बाने में ?
तुम शायद पथ देख रहे थे,
मुझको देर हुई आने में;
जगभर ने आशीष पठाए, तुमने कोई शब्द न भेजा,
लगता है तुम मन की बगिया में गीतों का बिरवा बोओगे!

Also available in the following links.

1. www.geeta-kavita.com/hindi_sahitya.asp?id=146
2. http://kavitakosh.org

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Journey

25^th August 2014 blog entry 23:  As always, all of them on the platform rushed to board the train, even when ‘she’ was shouting at the top of her voice that it will leave at 1.20 pm, an hour and half from now. She keeps shouting day and night, someday I shall speak to her. You humans, why are you always in a hurry, I could never understand. The seats have been decided, the time you know but you still make such a fuss over entering the train. I Guess life is a journey for you
.

Unlike her, the train never speaks, many a times I have tried to spark a conversation, but all in vain. I guess she has larger things in mind, the train. Me, I keep talking to everyone passing by. The humans never pay heed; no one does as a matter. The pigeons always listen; I guess they are from somewhere else, looking for something. They always listen.

Let me introduce myself to you, I am the seat no. 65 of a certain Janshatabdi, part of the great Indian railways, and ya I talk too much, I am a window seat you know.

I have been talking since my inception, but this is the first chance I have had to write my thoughts down. How I got the chance to use this pen of his is a long story, I’ll come to that.

 I had a Nobel bearth. I am no normal bearth, I am a highly advanced seat model of the chair car series. During inception, I had been put on the AC cabin manufacturing line for some time, but was then transferred to the normal chair car section, hence, I am special.

I have been watching you humans travel here and there daily, watching you and your stupidity is my life. On one such fine Sunday afternoon, this guy whose blog space I am using right now entered the train, ya an hour and half early than the scheduled departure and occupied me, seat no. 65, the window seat, I told you I am special.

The pigeons had told me it was August, and it was supposed to rain, but it didn't, the pigeons were worried and were investigating the matter. The train was silently standing below the sun, as for the passengers they were feeling the heat.

After observing you people for so long I can correctly judge you, your thoughts and following actions. This guy who seemed to be in his late twenties, who I think was just a silent observer but a man not capable of action; he had good intentions but did not had the heart to accomplish them as such. Was a voracious reader too, read 2 complete novels in the span of the short journey. Might be a nomad, couldn't guess his place of origin or where he belonged to. So this guy had a bottle of water, finished it off and threw it out of the window. Although I am a cool seat I was not able to provide any relief to him this day. He was quietly shifting in his seat reading the novel when suddenly, the other kind of humans entered, 4 of them exactly, shouting, crying making such hell of a noise the train god knows for what. 

The moment they occupied seats besides the reader, one of them opened a couple of bags of chips, with biscuits and a number of other edibles packed in plastic bags of varying shapes, sizes and color. They kept munching, and chattering animatedly to each other. They were the only reason I got distracted from the reader, I had to help the other seats, my fellow beings.

These chitchatters I speak of had colorful taste in clothing, starting from violet to red and what not. And every other moment one or the other kept clicking a selfie, I tried a lot but never managed to get in any of the shots. I had never had an FB appearance till now and this chance too seemed to have been lost. But they were clicking continuously and munching furiously.

They say humans are the only living beings who generate garbage, and this lot generated garbage by the minute. An hour after their arrival the surroundings was filled with plastic bags proudly displaying company names of multinational stature. These names could have been used against them only if these humans could think. But alas, all they were interested in where those selfies.

With the rise in temperature they started consuming, dubious colored beverages of various kinds, and that too got collected on to the floor. The reader although noticing these things kept reading, without a word of advice, he thought better of himself.  More than an hour had passes since the journey had started, a faint smell of petroleum gases in the air announced the arrival of Mathura, I knew all the cities by their smells, its exact that way. The news of Mathura arriving might have got into their ears too, the excitement of the four colour full persons reached a new level, they started repacking rearranging and jumping up and down with joy.

Suddenly one of them came up with yet another plastic bag, big and empty this time, and what they did next made me reconsider the way I judge people altogether. All of them, yes all four of them started to collect all the garbage that was spilled around the general area they were sitting and started to stuff it in the big empty plastic bag, which within a few seconds got filled. After that they gave a quick glance towards the floor and seeing it empty they satisfactorily nodded at each other. The train by now had stopped at Mathura junction, all four of them rushed outside with their baggage and the garbage bag, I recollect I could faintly hear them discussing about throwing the garbage bag into an incinerator of some kind .They were gone in a jiffy , and me and the reader were the only persons left  in the vicinity.

After 10 long years, I stopped talking and pondered a little, I really needed to change the way I look at people, I thought. And then with the powers vested upon me by the great Indian railways, and with the consultation of the pigeons, I declared the reader guilty of spreading plastic garbage. He had after all thrown out a plastic bottle on to the railway tracks.

The reader pleaded for mercy, but there was none in store to be shown. And as a result he had to surrender his blog space to me, the Window seat no. 65, so that I can tell the truth about him. Ok I have done what I intended to do, now I hand over the pen to him. Ba bye.

25^th August 2014 blog entry 23:  Dear friends, I was travelling today, the heat in the train was too much for me, I guess I spoke to my seat during the entire length of the journey, but I guess I was hallucinating, I feel too much tired to write so today I might skip the job, as for the pigeons I really think they are into something.