Expressions

At three in today morning ,when I could no longer sleep I concentrated on the persistent cries of the cricket which pierced the nightly silence as though it was the only sound that made up the world.The invisible creature made such a ruckus far disproportionate to its physical proportions that I began to think that the cricket was blowing itself up in the cosmic scheme of things so as to really matter and and wrest a place on par with my own place in the scheme. The creature somehow seemed to matter and stood eyeball to eyeball to me.We looked at each other recognizing each other’s presence.

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 When there was a volcanic disturbance in the tummy there were sure to follow the dreams that soured in the pit of the stomach. Baby corpses in yesterday’s unreal sleep were a sequel to the previous day’s fitful dalliances with the macabre full-grown corpses that had refused to be cremated. It was the foretaste of the horrors that were to follow.
 “To sleep,perchance to dream”-no ,sir. The unreality of the horrors made them no less horrors. At the time the horrors occurred ,they were real. In the train ,here, the music of the clackety goes on -”to stop train,pull chain”.Luckily this will go on in the remainder of the journey. “To stop train ,pull chain”.How nice.

Quite reassuring that I can always pull chain ,to stop train. But the other day ,in a fantastic situation in this very train ,I thought my son had got out of the train in a station and could not get back into the train before the train started back.I tried to pull chain but could not stop train. The horror was unreal because later I found out that he had not actually got out of the train at all. I now like to think that I can pull chain to stop train.

When my son was a five year old he enjoyed the song that went on like this "The elephant brother is fat/He has a lot of water in his trunk". He now misses the elephant brother dearly. The elephant brother continues to be fat but malnourished and he is now a doddering old idiot waiting to depart from the scene. There is no water in his trunk. Why cannot we have the elephant brother around all the time ,he asks trying to bring back the days when the elephant brother was always at hand.

 My own elephant brother is on his death-bed waiting for the Ganga water drops to be put in his mouth before he finally calls it a day.

Here, in the Staff College guest house I sit alone in the room ,watching a mute T.V., which I have come to like ,because I could see the mime of human actions without the meaning attributed to them by the accompanying sound. The meaning is still there but a garbled meaning which stills the running commentary within our selves. The mute T.V. freezes time temporarily putting the human actions out of perspective and suspending the operation of the clock. For a while I hear the pigeon’s moans which seem to somehow unmark time .This happens to me when I hear the pigeon’s moans in the stillness of the room away from the road’s traffic sounds. The moans sound as though they unmark time ,as though it does not really matter it is now 10.30A.M. or 7 P.M. Or rather, as though it is always 10.30 A.M. When the pigeon moans, my body remains still and stops growing because it unmarks my body’s time. The screeching sound of the furniture on the first floor comes luxuriously floating through the walls ,hitting the muteness of my T.V. which responds by a brilliant blink of the screen.The pigeon has stopped moaning as though it has now decided to mark time again for the time being. My body has started aging once again.

The palace was luminously wet and reached out to sky

In its shadow lay the kings and their faceless women

 Whose fine drapery interrupted their noses and seeing eyes

Under big-vaulting domes and resounding halls.

Their noises went up to the ceiling and returned empty

Like their noses and eyes lost from their faces.

They were not lost actually but had never been there.

When the silks arrived they forgot the women’s faces.

The women sat there gossiping about other women,

Other women in the harem and their fine draperies.

Their men’s bloated egos did not show on men’s faces;

Their men’s egos showed on the women’s stomachs,,

On the little heirs to the throne who came from there.

A fine bangle,a glittering necklace and some pearls

Hush talk about the latest addition to the harem

And other scraps of conversation went on as it rained.

 They had no faces for the evening conversation,

Only bodies fully draped in the finest gilded silks.

In the beginning they sat on the ground huddled.

Later the West grew on them in the white man’s land

And they sat on sofas and high backed chairs presiding

Tea ceremonies just like the sophisticated women.

They still did not have their noses on their faces .

 

Now you are not the same as day things.

As though you are one among all those

Who form the viscous mass of night.

When you walk alone under the stars

The night bush exists separate from you,

 Just a speck of black ,for a while,

But soon you become the bush

Darkness drowns us all,bush,hills and sky

Except the hum of the sea-waves.

Apart from the comic refrain that goes on in the mind all the while, there is the sound of a pantomime, the flapping of hands ,thumping of large feet and fluttering of drooping wings and a terrible satire negating all that is good and positively held in beliefs. A running commentary goes on dully as an undercurrent. We are trying to destroy finiteness, the borders of consciousness , the physical world which ends where our eyes end and the sky begins. Then why this slapstick within, the vulgar shadowy figures which seem to be acting out a meaningless play with no apparent theme in particular? I want to be just like others, playing out the general theme , the theme of waving about my physical limbs loosely to some purpose and trying to stretch the mental limits to understand where all this activity leads me to. If they too are playing out a similar theme in their world, their pantomime may be different or may be, in some ways ,of the same kind and a part of my theme .The laughter is resounding as though it is an after-thought.

Right now, in the room next, she seems to say something

At times as I lift my eyelids she appears in vision's periphery

As an incandescent presence in the diaphanous daylight.

At midnight I see a tiny lip movement as the train hoots

And in the wee hours when the cricket cries incessantly.

She does not speak to me in several dreams on my pillow

I know she is now in the other room, the far corner one.

In the stillness of the train's night ,I turned to the left, on the top berth ,having suddenly woken up to a frightful sound in my dream. The hope was to avoid further frightful dreams which had a realtime repercussion on the goings-on under the belly.I then contemplated on the lazy black fan just above me ,in peace,only to listen to its own whining sounds which were equally frightening amid the snores of my fellow-passengers. Then something happened . The train was loud in its clackety clackety ,in between with occasional sounds of the gravelly stones hitting its under parts.I saw the red Kerala banana of the chain handle on the opposite wall - "To stop train ,pull chain". The song of my train went on synchronising the train sounds rhythmically with "to stop train ,pull chain',To stop train ,pull chain","To stop train,pull chain"..

The only sound I see in the silence of the night is the cricket.I have always been wanting to see the insect in its physical existence just to make sure it is not a ghost.I have never been able to do so.Tireless and not pausing even for a second,the ghostly voice (sounds spooky on lonely nights) goes on and on and I do not even realize it when it stops for a while in between.

 

Just now ,as I am typing this I hear not one but two sounds -the bigger and more strident one from the nearby  back garden and the second one probably from a distance in the front lawn which appears slightly in baritone. As the dawn breaks where does it disappear ? Apparently it does not .It continues to make the racket through the morning .Only you do not get to hear it as the sound level in the city goes up with people getting up from bed and going about their daily activities.