My Year, in Words…
It’s almost gone, 2011, and try as I might, I really don’t know what to label it as.
Eventful it has been, my masters is over, and I find myself working. I have changed jobs already, been lucky enough to find something I love doing. I have been distressed, I have been lost. I have been confused. I have walked for hours in the Hyderabad rain. I’ve earned real money for the first time in my life. I’ve made new friends. I’ve run away from love, hunted by the demons of my past.
I’ve tried to hide from myself, and at the same time found a way through it all.
I have lived in three different cities, each one special to me in it’s own way, each having a story of it’s own.
I don’t know what to call 2011, it has been a slideshow of emotions – mostly sad, sometimes happy, but always special. But this also means I’ve lived life, and I suppose that’s something.
I have discovered, or rather rediscovered things that used to mean a lot to me.
Music. I sang a lot this year. At parties, at friend’s places, at get-togethers, on my own. Among friends in Hyderabad, at joints in Chennai. Some times this year, music was all I had.
Cricket. I donned the red and white of the Amrita School of Business for my last university game. I bowled reasonably well, batted very badly & lost that game. It hit me hard. My final university game deserved better. I wasn’t sad about the loss – that’s part of the game, and of life. But I was certainly disappointed. At that point of time, my game could have given me some kind of solace. It didn’t. Even my beloved game deserted me.
But these won’t be the things that will say ‘2011’ when I think about them, many years from now. I will remember 2011 for something else entirely.
For abstractness, for meaning, for imprints left in the mind.
For words.
My love for the written word came back with a vengeance this year, and having nothing else to hold on to, I clung on to it with everything I had. Probably more.
It was “one of those days”, as we call them – evenings when existence seems to question itself and your heart lurches in the misty memories of times gone by. I was chatting with a friend. Nothing big, just your basic depressing gtalk chat about the futility of it all, when she said something that made my heart stop.
Sai. Love is terrible, in that one taste of it is never, ever enough.
I don’t know in what context she said this. I don’t remember. Maybe I was just being my usual cynical self, but that string of words is an observation so deep and so true, the meaning of it is enough to knock you over.
Words have a way of doing that.
I found refuge in my books this year. I read so many, sometimes a book a night. There have been nights when I’ve finished a book at 1am & started another. It has been my year of books.
I’m so thankful that I read, though. I of course don’t remember the exact moment I became a bibliophile, but it must have been something like Alberto Manguel describes here –
At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book – that string of confused, alien ciphers – shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.
I don’t think there’s a better way that can be put.
I was woken up one morning last month by a phone call which asked me simply this – “Do you remember what you tweeted late yesterday night?” I didn’t. I just knew that I was sad, & I was sleepy. “I have sent you a mail, check.” I woke up and did what he told me to do. I checked.
Twitter has become something of a diary for me, and of millions like me around the world. It records my moods, my thoughts, my opinions, my every move.
Those 140 characters sometimes can become mirrors, reflecting things from the crevices of your soul, things you try hard to keep hidden.
My friend had sent me a curation of my tweets from the last night. It must have been a godless, moonless nightfall. For the darkness in my own words scares me.
Her haunting presence in your every waking minute. The knowledge that you never were for her what she was to you. That.
The trauma of beautiful loss. Knowing that as she walks in your head, she tramples on your dreams.
The World went on. She has moved on. But your heart screaming out what you already know – You will never be the same again. Never ever.
The letters she never wrote. The kisses that never transpired. A love that never was love. What happened doesn’t matter. What didn’t, does.
When words are all you have left. And flashes. Of memories, that is. Distant, cold. And the laughter that once ruled your life.
When all I want is for my thoughts to fade away. The flicker of a lamp, the damp of the night, her hold on my heart, the time that flew by..
The songs she demanded you sing. The rains she demanded you bring. When all she loved was what you gave her. Not you. It was never you.
Where that came from, or where it went, I do not know. But there it is.
From the contemporary science and fiction of Richard Dawkins, Ian Rankin to classics from Wodehouse, to some heartbreaking Rumi and Neruda poetry, I have uncovered gems, but some of the most beautiful pieces I read this year were not on paper at all.
This one, from someone I know only as mentalexotica, is something I just cannot have enough of.
Why I will write you four letters in one night
Because I cannot keep away from you. Because my nights are yours in thought and memory of the morning before, of the unexpected detonation of desire beneath the sheets at 6:49 am. Because my days are filled with disinterest and wild distractions both. Because your lips keep the memory of my tongue pressed upon them like unwithering flowers. Because my skin is stained by the fingerprints of your craving. Because breathing reconciles itself only with short, sharp pulls and forgets how to exhale. Because writing to you is not writing but an accident of words; colliding, spilling, revealing. Because my body is sore but my longing goes un-neutered. Because the amber-gold highlights of your hair spilling across your face tease a wicked game. Because the white in your smile is a reminder of the bruise on my neck. Because love is a four-lettered word when we make it. Because I cannot keep away from you.
I cannot keep away from you.
If that doesn’t take your breath away, I don’t know what will. I will not try to describe the words above. I don’t possess the intellect to, and I will fail miserably. I’m only a guy who reads. I’ll just get lost in the turmoil it throws my soul into.
It’s time to end 2011 on my blog. What better way than a poem? But first, a small story.
There was a boy, in London. He loved a girl madly, hopelessly. She loved him too.
And then she died in a plane crash in Canada, far away from him.
It was Christmas, 1943, World War 2. He wrote a poem in her memory.
The boy, Leo Marks, was a cryptographer. In March 1944, he used that poem, to encrypt secret messages for the Allies. He used the words he wrote for the girl he loved, to fight Hitler’s evil empire. He was fighting for nothing less than the freedom of the known world. It’s only a few lines, but they do not betray easily the secret they carry or the emotions they were born from. Read it once, and then read it again. Then read it once more. These words demand it.
The life that I have is all that I have
And the life that I have is yours
The love that I have of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have, a rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause
For the peace of my years in the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.
Walkin in the Rain… Again..
The movie ended with Aamir prancing around on screen. The credits came up & I walked out, drawn along with the crowd of happy, laughing people, who, like me, had enjoyed the movie immensely. A gust of cold wind hit me from the window on the side on the stairs. I looked out & what I saw confirmed my suspicion.
It was raining.
The monsoon’s arrived here in Hyderabad. Started about a week ago & hasn’t really stopped since. The cold is a weird, seeping kind of cold, something that cuts into your very senses. I like it. I always have.
I wait for this new cold coffee Krushers they’ve introduced, from the KFC below. It’s a special KFC, managed by people who can’t talk nor hear; you have to point out your orders. It’s quite close to our flat, and Anand & I end up here quite often. There’s something about these people, some of who now know us quite well now. In spite of being different from the rest of us, the smile never leaves their faces. I try to think about living like that, in a world where there’s no such thing as sound, no such thing as music, and it fails me. I can’t. It could have been so easy for them to say that they were not good enough, that they were embarrassed, & stay home. They chose otherwise. In our daily lives, we see courage & character in so many forms. This is one of them.
I sip the cold, frothy coffee & walk out into the foyer, where a lot of people are waiting for the rain to stop, or at least slow down. I stand there for some time too, and look around. One small kid loses her balloon in the wind. I grab it & give it to her. She says a shy, cute ‘Thank you’ & runs off to her mother. My eyes fall upon a girl fiddling with her boyfriend’s shirt buttons. I smile involuntarily. He catches my eye & smiles, suddenly self conscious. I take that to be my cue.
I walk out into the rain.
I’m wearing a red, or rather maroon, sleeveless sweatshirt. Hadn’t realised that I’d been wearing this one. Memories have a bad way of coming back to you when you least want, or expect them to. My flat is just down the road, about a five minute walk. I pull the hood up over my head, bury one cold hand into my jeans and sip some more coffee.
I walk past one of my company’s stores. The green neon shouts out at me ‘Heritage Fresh’. The store manager is locking up. It’s about 11. He must just have finished the accounts for the day. He can’t recognize me, not under the hood. I don’t want him to.
I walk on.
Cars & buses go past me in a blur of light & sound, some of which go to Hi-Tech city, the huge IT special economic zone to the west. Client calls from the US & the UK, some of my friends tell me, have to be taken after this time. Bus no. 147 comes towards me, the digital board on its top flickering in the rain, and at last dying.
I sip the last of my coffee & see a trash bin a few metres away. I look around. There’s no one. I position myself, lock my feet & throw the plastic can into the bin. It falls in with a dull thud. I do a Kobe Bryant spin right there. It’s almost midnight on Banjara Hills Road no.2, right opposite the Harley Davidson showroom, Hyderabad City, and if you’d been driving on this stretch of the urban jungle, you would have seen a boy doing a jig in the middle of the road and wondered “What’s wrong with him?”
There’s office tomorrow & I’ll have to go & work. Even if it is a chance to learn & perform, it still registers as another dreary day at the workplace. I just hope that it doesn’t kill this part of me, the part which still loves doing stupid things, which still wants nothing more than a coffee and a walk in the rain to keep smiling. I don’t wanna get caught up in this life, this corporate race. That’s just not me.
The rain’s slowing down a bit
I walk on, pulling my ipod out for the final song of the day. Quite fitting, really, as it’s Adele I stumble on, as she sets fire to the rain..
I let it fall, my heart,
And as it fell, you rose to claim it
It was dark and I was over
Until you kissed my lips and you saved me
My hands, they’re strong
But my knees were far too weak
To stand in your arms
Without falling to your feet
But there’s a side to you
That I never knew, never knew.
All the things you’d say
They were never true, never true,
And the games you play
You would always win, always win.
But I set fire to the rain,
Watched it pour as I touched your face,
Well, it burned while I cried
‘Cause I heard it screaming out your name, your name!
The Search..
Update – I won the YouthExpress ScribeHunt prize for this poem in mid-2012.
This poem was inspired by the Crusaders’ search for Jerusalem during the middle ages. As they tried to cross the desert towards the holy land, they had only one companion – their faith.
This is my imagination of it…
The Darkness engulfs me as I ride through the night,
I hold my sword near, as if I’m in a fight,
But these are my own demons I run madly from,
Will this never end, will I ever see the light?
My fears gallop faster than my steed,
Floodwaters in my mind that never recede,
The night’s silent, but I hear its voice,
What are you searching, what do you need?
I ride faster; I cut through the mist,
My throat runs dry, I clench my fist,
An icy wind blows across the land,
I implore my heart – Please Resist.
I do not know what I’m searching for,
Is it fame; is it glory, or something more?
Is it immortality, or the curse of it?
Or is it Eden, like the tales of yore?
I turn back to peer into the void behind,
Winds swirling the sand of time,
Terror grips me as I turn around,
Is something chasing me, or is it in my mind?
I turn around, on the dunes I stand,
A speck of life on a barren land,
But nothing appears from the brown haze,
The infinite desert remains bland.
There was something there, I could have sworn,
Whatever it was, it seems gone.
I move on in the punishing terrain,
I trudge forward, and wait for the dawn.
Pain ebbs and flows, like storms on the sand,
As I keep looking for hope, a golden strand,
But it’s still dark and cold as ice,
In my lonely search for the Holy Land.
Music… And what it can do to us… !!
Ever heard a tune that makes you think of times bygone? Ever heard a song that you once loved and had forgotten about in the melee that we live in, and it takes you to that day and age that you first heard it? I’ll presume you have, and I’ll get on with it.
This is one of the joys of music, of the peculiar and specific set of instrumental and vocal arrangements that we hold so dear to us. A song is never just a voice and a tune, it is so much more. It is a piece of our own lives, something that remains in our hearts for long after the guitar has stopped playing. It is an experience in itself, as the harmony takes us back in time & space, transcending our very soul.
My Dad introduced me to music, and of course, late 80s to early 90s Tamil Music can be summed up in one word – Ilaiyaraja. I listened to masterpieces on our old Philips tape recorder (It’s still there at home) without even knowing how privileged I was. For every ardent music lover out there, I can firmly say this, if you haven’t heard Ilaiyaraja, you haven’t heard anything!
A song can make you cry, it can make you wish you had never been born and it can make you wish like you are on the top of the world. It is true; I have experienced all of these. A song is the best way to tell someone how you feel, there is no better way. Music transcends so many barriers, there was this Tamil – Sinhalese music album when tensions were running high in my state during the last stages of the war in Lanka and I was stunned. Their country was staggering through a civil war that threatened to destroy their beautiful little island nation and a young band produced a bilingual album that extolled friendship & peace. What better way to tell the world that hope and love are still alive and well?
Music is human expression at its finest. Each one of us has a song and a tune that almost defines who we are, a melody we so love we can’t have enough of it. Sometimes it’s an emotional bond, like the song we first sung for a loved one or the song that gave us inspiration to do something when the chips were down, something big that changed our lives. I have one or two of them as well. It isn’t difficult to find out. Grab your ipods and see the 25 most played tracks – the top ones are yours!
There was a storm off the East Coast when I was in first year at University. The rains lashed out and flooded every road and highway along the coastline. Me and my friends were in our hostel, we had no means of going out (everything was underwater), all transportation had ceased and our college closed down. We were stuck in our dingy little hostel for five days flat with absolutely nothing to do but look out the windows at the unceasing rain. I listened to the only new CD we had at that time for five days nonstop & even today, when I listen to ARR’s “Munbe Vaa”, I journey back five years to my square room with four beds, my drafter & my chart box, my posters of Rahul Dravid, the smell of clothes that refused to dry and the general wetness in that air. A simple song, with no connection to the events mentioned above, is able to play such tricks with my mind. That is the power of a Musical Note.
Each one of us is special, is different. And hence different songs impact us in different ways. But what moves us is still the same – the wonder that we call Music. Discover more of it, search for some if you have to, because there is nothing in this world better than a beautiful song.
Radioactive Ruminations 