Darknight

I have walked down these alleys before. Each corner has known me at the midnight hour, alone and brooding, hands in pockets, head bowed, deep in thought, trudging from home or towards. A solitary streetlamp illuminates some and some are dark but that does not mean much. Light is essential when people are around or the threat of them. In silence, one finds darkness the better companion. The mind is free to ignore objects that arrest its flight, bringing it down to earth, making it the slave of ponderous, transitory phrases. What in the brightness of the noon-sun gleams, glitters, causes the eye to waver, in darkness ceases to exist, swallowed up in the oblivion to which all things unseen by human eye are condemned. This state of affairs I prefer in my midnight rambles, far from the madding press of people and things in the daily world. Aimless, the senses silenced, the mind wanders at will as do the feet, looking for nothing and finding it near the edge of existence. Yet not all who wander are lost; but come back in time to where they left from, refreshed from encounters with remoteness. I return too to the cycle that bred me, that feeds me, that will throw me away, in time, for something better; and I want to return too. For the absence of meaning tires as much as too much of it does. A night is only so long and, at daybreak, I have to take my place in the ranks. I will not be missed but I cannot have my hands in my pockets nor head bowed when the sun finds me. It ill affords me to let go the dire moment that separates me from non-existence and I do not. Dark alleys are better visited when it is dark.

Hillel - If not now, when?

Sprawled on the rock, he puffed breath after breath of dense nicotine smoke into the stale air. A gloom as of centuries of neglect enveloped the two grizzled men as what was left of life fled into the darkness obscuring the work of an army of ambitious hands. Not much to be done now, he said, shaking his head. Very little, corrected his friend. Very little, yes, not much; only a few more months and then back to where it had all begun. Hopefully. Decaying in dignified desperation, he called it. Vegetating in the stillness of meaninglessness. A play in seven acts winding down and not much to cheer for. Not that there had not been cheerful moments but still. One always tends to ask for more. The work, his friend said, is not done yet. Yes, the work. Always the work. One can never get too far away from it. So they got up, dusting their bottoms, freeing themselves from the oppression of the rock that overlooked the sea waiting for the mountain to crumble as wave after wave crashed, hoping its way through what was to become sea, what had been sea, what was now land, and a few more hoots into the desert air that had learnt to remove itself from the haunts of men, ungrateful wretches, puffing away what was good, what was bad, desecrating, despoiling what was theirs, what was never theirs, and then, a blank nothingness settling in as sweetness corrupted itself cloying, a few more puffs now and then off to work. The midnight siren is muffled but is heard more readily. Old men dotting the flat no-land of the beach, dotty, into their dotage, doing deeds unnecessary, in the desert light, dry, dead, disappearing. But is it midnight yet? When stars twinkle out the life of men, slurring their pure light in the beams of man-eyes, stressing last syllables strong, sparking out life, sparkling with life. The wife will know, when he returns at day, of the time she waited, waiting at turn of the clock to where it had been already. And the child will know too who slept with monsters under the bed, no magic for him, no none, he was at the beach then. Tired. Sweating. Cold and shivering. Back limping to a bed that is warm in the light of a noisy sun. Only a few more months of this. Hopefully.

The Road

The night was long, dark and dreary. Not much light about and the way was not one he was accustomed to. Every now and then he would stumble, catch himself and curse; every now and then he would see something that lightened the heavy mood that hung about him. Will-o'the-wisps sometimes or sometimes a flower lingering on, at the edge of the trodden path, after the last human eye had passed over it, unmolesting, into the darkness that beckoned. Not an easy task on the brightest of days, this was turning out to be really difficult in the unrelenting, heavy gloom. And all this all alone! Of course there were others on the road but they were all either much slower or much faster than he was. All contact was a mere brush. A few words and a little time. Then pass on as polite as can. Nobody to travel the whole long road with. Difficult under the circumstances! Really very difficult!

But he had to keep to the path. Hadn't he been warned? Hadn't they told him of all that lay lurking in the murk ready to snap up the unwary or the adventurous? Not that anybody knew what exactly lurked but there were some who had heard of people who weren't heard of after crossing into the unlighted realm. Not much light on the road for that matter, just enough to know if one was on it or not. And the insects. Ah! the insects that buzzed fables of a Land beyond the darkness, beyond the confines of the road. So much trouble keeping them off one in the darkness.

Some kept to the road because it was easier; some because it was the more difficult proposition. One could always despair and wander off while it took all the reserves of the human intelligence to keep to it. Or it is always easy to make one's own the nightmares of the old, or was it the young, and the unimaginative, or was it the imaginative, learnt in the cradle. One never will know what exactly made him keep to the path. There were more stones on the path now, assuredly, than there were before. And if only there were some light one could catch sight of every now and then. Something to stick fast to. A thought, even a hallucination. But then how was one ever to know one had not wandered from the road? Where will the mind stop that has let itself roam free? Where will the questions end and where the answers begin? It wasn't easy. No; even if there were people who seemed to do it easily. People always did go on this road every night. And only by night as if nobody knew what it was to take the road by day. Or maybe people did that too and only were not heard of after.

And the heavy burden. It bit into one's shoulder long before the end seemed near. For sometimes one felt the end nearing. With trepidation sometimes and sometimes with joy too. But it wasn't an inerrant faculty driving the thought. Often it was just a thin blue reed of light, the kind that wavers for an instant showing everything in its macabre glow, and vanishing into the black of the night when it is done mocking the burden-carriers. Yes, that was what they were: burden-carriers. Doomed to an existence not of their asking, not of their choosing. Born into a free servitude where all was allowed as long as one stuck to the road.

And those who returned from the beyond had temples sometimes too. But the apotheosis was a strange affair. There was a general stoning and only a few survived that to be condemned forever to a worship in stagnating stasis by the mass. And they never spoke of what lay in the beyond, or weren't listened to maybe. Anyway the prodigals were not of the people any more. They were below them or above depending on where they stood. And sometimes it did not matter. They did not matter.

It was all tiring and he wilted. A few more steps and he knew he would be done. But then the insects flew away, and when there was no more temptation, he was at last free to be tempted. And he stepped off the road. To be never heard of! What a notion! What bliss to rub one's back when one felt like it! But to run away when the end was near! Or was it? A few steps only and then maybe he could turn back to the road. Or could he? Did it matter any more after a journey so long and painful? But should it not, for that very reason? Anyway, he went his way and so another was lost to the road. But another night dawns and another traveller, wearied and confounded, lost in sense and intellect, numbed with his heavy burden walks this way. The night again is long, dark and dreary.

Journalism and the Free Society

In a free society, everybody is allowed everything. But, of course, we are not all good nor charitable. Hence the need for a watchdog that restricts social freedoms by taking some to itself. The three branches of government have been the traditional watchdogs, but increasingly, especially in this information age, the media is taking up the role too. So there is bound to be a problem, as there is with the police, as to what the ideal freedom-restriction ratio is: always a moot point how much freedom is allowed the watchdog. Only, in the case of journalists, the freedom they take away from people is the freedom to prosecute wrongdoers-by-law, offering them anonymity for information. Judgement comes into play and sometimes you use small fry to catch big fish. In this context, this judgement on the journalists who refused to divulge their sources in the matter of the leak of a CIA agent's identity is bound to raise some hackles. While the law has to be upheld, as indicated in the NYT Chairman's statement, there ought to be some kind of federal shield legislation to let the Fourth Estate function independently. It is all in the grey and Gopalan's interviews with Veerappan were exasperating agreed, but I feel we ought to sacrifice some rights to those who keep us informed(I am not talking of the papparazzi of course). And just when Deep Throat came into the open to remind people of the golden days of journalism(although that was by the way), Judith Miller's stand in court assures us its not just all papparazzi values in journalism now.

Dreams..Promises: Spring

I dreamt today of tomorrow's flower
Waiting to spring on my wearied eyes
A fresh memory of a promise stale.
The air and the earth stir with notions of her:
All awash with light, life, relenting to kiss
With grudging grace a nature's fool.

The roses drip their thorny red
And my heart gathers up her lies all true.
She is not here but I wait in hope
For tomorrow's treacherous flower to bloom.

(She lied to me, with dimpled smile
And, lying, loved me, as I her.
But now I lie here alone, and she elsewhere.)

--Shyam.

Cold, Dead: Winter

Death comes swirling in fairy forms
And dark white bright masses swamp the sun.
No light, no life, all hard and cold, stone and snow:
No heart hers that sold mine to the howling winds.
The passing cars splash slush; nothing moves
Except to wound, to smart, to shiver its rusted bones.

Rugged barks, naked, drooping in the withering storm,
Stand monuments to despair; and I learn to freeze
What she wove into my dreams with her cruel charms.
Dead, dying, ready to die, I bear my coffin in my heart.

(I warmed her eye and fed her heart
And she let me bask in her summer love.
But now all is cold and dead, where is she?)

--Shyam.

Too much out o'the sun

Summer has been around quite a while now but nothing much done to savour the sun before the Notre Dame winter creeps in. Bound to my work, I haven't had much time to move around except for the odd couple of days off. Tennis has been a welcome respite each day and I have come to consider the two hours of sweat and slow dehydration the highlights of my daily schedule.

I seriously am missing home, Indian movies, cricket and loafing around in the Madras summer with friends. Missing the NatWest Series final hurt and am crying over not being able to watch what promises to be the most competitive Ashes in a long time. Federer though made my day today. Woke up late due to my chronic inability to understand timezones and TV schedules, so had to rub my eyes hard before I could register the statistics of the first 2 sets: 33 winners and 3 unforced errors for Federer. Of course the women's final provided enough entertainment so the men's final could be about class and the distance between the best and the rest in grass-court tennis.

Also watched a couple of movies the last couple of weeks: The War of the Worlds and Anniyan. The War of the Worlds was disappointing to say the least. The movie aside, what is with our portrayals of aliens? I hope alien science fiction writers don't imagine me as being slimy and green and oozing slush in their novels. The other movie was better but somehow Vikram seemed to have overdone all his parts. And of course there was not much in the story line to speak of. Anyways that was perhaps the one break from the monotony of my sad life as a grad student the last couple of weeks. Hope things change soon and I get to do something real and actual before the summer leaves start falling off leading into the next semester.