It's a wonder some people don't take to walking on their hands, just to show how unique they are, regardless of how inconvenient it may be.

Autumn Song

The autumn road is paved with leaves of gold

And red, that lay beneath the languid blue.

A song recalls the tender days of old,

And brings a hope of spring to come anew.

The autumn road is paved with golden leaves

And winds its weary way among the hills.

The shepherd only minds the song he weaves,

That speaks of days bygone and coming still.

The autumn road is strewn with gathered gold

Which winds have shorn and scattered from the trees.

From bud to branch uncounted and untold

Retreat until the spring unfolds the seed.

So sings the shepherd lad, who now commands

His flock depart the slope for winter lands. 

...Meanwhile across town

I am visiting my blog after two months. It's a little dusty, but it seems safe and familiar. Poor blog, ignored for so long. Really, how can things be so hectic and yet so boring, that I have no time to write; when I do have the time, I'm too bored to think of anything witty to say?

Thankfully, I have a test coming up this Saturday. Like magic, it's spurred me to do anything and everything but study. Nothing new to write about. Just a different city, an different subject; a different time, a different life. I pray my friends stay safe and healthy, and that my parents miss me a litle bit.

Welcome back, welcome home.

Ode to Kamini

[One of my very early poems. I'm a bit embarrassed to reproduce it, but hopefully you'll like it nonetheless. Please excuse the bombast...]



Ode to Kamini


What a bright day it is! An afternoon so sunny!
The amber earth seems all drowned: it’s been drowned in honey;
The world as a picture, no motion, not a sound,
Not a caw from the crows: silence all ‘round.
A shadow near the window moves silently:
It glitters and glimmers mysteriously;
A network of shade and light skipping to and fro, to and fro,
On the glassy tiled floor of the room;
Like little black and white marbles
Chasing each other in endless circles.
Kamini’s leaves are swaying in the breeze;
Holy light—graceful bright—through the dancing leaves.

I can see the tree now, though it's hidden from view,
As I have seen a thousand, ten thousand times before.
Its old coiling roots in the loam,
Moist and snug and living.
Its gnarling, snarling trunk
Like a stoic bears the cracking heat of summer
And the passion of the monsoons in equal measure.
Its branches and twigs and twiglets bear its leaves,
Whose shadows dance cheerily now;
Even now as the Sun makes its downward bow.
Oh! those leaves, glabrous glamorous leaves,
Oiled by tropical silt,
As fine as the softest silk.
And there were once flowers,
Clinging together like luminous fire-fashioned gems;
Such pure delicate satinwood blooms,
More bright white than milk.

Ah! Those delicious blooms, that delicate bouquet
Seeps into the sitting room at dusk;
Awash in that sensuous sea of scent were we
During the rain-time rhapsody.
Such stormy weather! Where’s a poor bird to go?
The sobbing sparrow looks hither and thither and lo!
Finds safe refuge in the Kamini tree.
Chirpy-chirrup cry the sparrow-folk in glee
As they make a feast of satinwood fruits;
Round like a pea and as red as a dying star,
The dainty dish for sparrows, near and far.

Dripping raindrops drippling off the leaves
That glisten and shine in the ethereal glow of a solstice moon.
How tender are then those fruits, that flower,
Pearly bright after a sharp monsoon shower.
But alas! Summer’s reign is past, and now begins
Autumn: a decorous decline in things.
Now the fine friend bears neither fruit nor flower:
Unornamented, patiently awaiting Spring’s amorous embrace anew.
A sudden gust shoots through the whispering boughs
And a single withered leaf of that darling tree
Flutters in through the window—
Brushing my hand it falls
Rejected to the floor.

How fragile its sturdy boughs and trunk seem then!
A mere nothingness, a speck of insignificance,
That may as soon die than live,
Enthralled by its very roots to a brutal earth,
Subject to forces superior to its own.
O! Then where would I find you again?
Your shining leaves and glittering blossom?
Your gleaming fruit and birded bosom?
The shadows would no more be a-dancing on the floor,
And when I would open the garden door,
Your familiar form which I have seen a thousand,
Ten thousand times would be no more.

No, my love! You shall for a spell be mine—
Always a pleasure to see beauty so fine—
For we cannot cheat Death, but perhaps beguile Time.

Haiku for friends

Calm before the storm
Take a kite and feel the wind
Lift me up and far.

---------

Good friends one needs to
Live sunny days with, but most
to share my brolly.

---------

Green leaves of summer,
The worm's metamorphosis
To love and to die.

---------

The clouds are crying;
I don't need silver linings
For I love rainbows.

---------

Before the crows' cries
In secret light ere dawn glow
The magic is gone.

Beginnings and Ends

So, my three years at Jadavpur University are almost over. Some people will no doubt assure me that "it passed by in a flash", but for me it was quite the opposite. It seems like a faded distant memory, my first class at JUDE. I grew old at Jadavpur. Felt really natural, going to class, seeing the familiar faces. Yet some remain unfamiliar. I have no regrets, of course. Jadavpur may have been the best thing that ever happened to me. Before, I merely existed. Then, I learned to live. Yet, I wish I knew each and every one of my classmates more fully, to understand their desires, their dreams, their quirks and their neuroses. Now it is too late.

I made some good friends at Jadavpur. I learned how to make friends at Jadavpur, too. I started off hating a classmate, and then learned to like him. I fell in love with a classmate, and hate that she doesn't know.

But that's in the past, because the fact remains that after the semester exams I may never see some of them again in this life. Perhaps most of them. Perhaps if I met them ten years later I wouldn't recognize them because they have changed so much, or because I have. I don't know, maybe I have already changed since first semester. The one thing I'm sure of is that Jadavpur changed with me.

And now I'm leaving. The last lecture has been delivered, the last class test held. Only the tenuous link of the end-of-semester exams still anchors me. But the tide of change is strong and claws out the anchor from the oozing sediment of routine and sameness.

I just finished reading all of Bakuman on onemanga.com:

http://www.onemanga.com/Bakuman/


It's interesting in that it's a manga about writing manga! Honestly written, and a wonderfully self-reflexive look inside the hidden world of manga-making. It follows the adventures of Moritaka "Saiko" Mashiro and Akito "Shujin" Takagi who start upon their road to manga excellence in high school, and face the ups and downs of the publishing world. Recommended read

Why do I even try?

The Face of Seeming

Painted faces sped by in velvet carriages,
Looking back, the rack of neverbeen,
Saints and swallows racking my willow
Limbs; could not see you at the feast.

Enamelled eyes, prize open the thoughts,
And surmise what's never said.
Colder than ice, so nicely
They did speak and fade.

Chained alive, pain has wrenched your face,
I can't find you behind the stagnant mask;
Clothed in sand swept from many shores,
You are something I dread to ask.

Another year...

I should be studying for the Modernist Prose exam. I should be tucked inside my mosquito net, little dog-eared book in hand, warming blanket upto my chin.

Instead, I'm posting/swatting mosquitoes. To think, another year has slipped away again. Where did all those minutes go? Sublimated into a confusing swirl of half-recognized faces and thoughts of tenderness. Gone absolutely!

Everyday, I get older. I sometimes make a great sweep over my face with my hands, as if to physically wipe away the years. Let me revert to childhood simplicity, a Lucy without the boobs, when I was invincible in my fortress.

Now, everything is in ruins, my mind picked at and broken into bits for the tourists, loud and obnoxious, who scrawl trite graffiti all over my body. Very soon I shall be an incoherent mass of debris, just a bit of ash left over from the extinguished incense-stick of history, symbolic of I don't know what...

But now I shall go to my bed, and cover myself up tip-to-toe with my lovely, delicious quilt, which uses grandmama's old faded widow's sari as a cover. Then I shall have no more doubts or questions, but one: over the chin or under the chin?