Googol.

‘There’s a subtle joy in huddling together like animals, tasting the sweat of each other hands, saliva dripping here and there, smelling the mass fart suffused in high velocity- as long there’s a destination that’s more like a home or a dream.’

This is how he describes the scene. Time to move on to the character’s more didactic voice.

‘The dream of a better humanity often shadows the humane and like scuttle marks left in prison walls they are etched in history books only as facts and statistics.’

At this point, he talks about the importance of stories.

‘Reminders in real life do not come with alarms, that’s why you need stories. The stuff of stories give a number its meaning. Good stories are the alarm clocks of humanity. A Googol is one followed by a hundred zeroes, but what if we say a Googol is a boy who works in the day and masturbates in the night, we will share him with the human experience of many Googols out there. What if, let’s say, he be remembered as a leader- ‘one’ man followed by a hundred ‘zero’ men. Such a nice image it is.'

There’s physically no joy in travelling in a crowded bus (realities of a heavily populated country), often hanging like an animal in those slaughterhouse trucks but perhaps it calls for an intellectual stimulation. Sometimes when he is hanging out there holding those steel rods by the gate, he imagines letting his hand go- his frail body falling over, bending and rolling for a while before another speeding bus goes running over him and making him all gory and dead. He often thinks of doing it, but his destination always remains the same. Someday he will reach for the moon. We can say that such imagination perhaps issues out from watching too much of those fancy little b/w art films. To me and you, depression is overrated anyway. Nevertheless, he never minds such a thought. Neither should we.

The denouement of the story comes in his voice.

'I do not want to be a part of that accumulating Googol of humanity that only ends in the tragic misunderstandings and power-play of others. I want to make a difference. I want to live and fight. I want to love. I… am...’

Bam, we lose the signal. We think he’s cured of his ailment. But we feel helpless anyway, who doesn’t like hearing an inspiring speech every weekday morning? I will instead try cheering you up a bit, so here’s my insight and please take me seriously.  It’s true that although a Googol is just another meager name assigned to a number: numerals repeated in space, but you know what, it’s kind of vast and if you are the geeky kind of a person you can tell your beloved that you have a Googol of love stored in your heart for him/her. I can’t be held for any sort of bitter consequences though. You can thank me later. Send me a letter and all your love?

The signal comes back again and all I hear are those final words. I know you already turned off the channel so I will tell you how it was…it was like the ending of some good book - a stab in the heart but in a very good way. I don’t want to ruin you with those words for I want you to imagine something sweet you will say to someone at the end of a pestilence, imagine a rhyme, a little poetry that’s nothing but the projection of your honest heart and trust me when I say it was something like that for those words were not his they were yours too. It was always words like that, you know,

it was something that

you must always

hum for

her.

Letters to the Self: Two

Dear People of the Earth,

It’s my birthday tomorrow. 
With that ‘theme’ in my mind, I write this. I must warn you though, this post shall be filled with narcissism and if you aren’t particularly fond of me, you will hate me more after you read this. I wouldn’t want that. You know the good thing about growing older is you grow wiser- never mind the thinning hairline. Whenever I begin to write anything, I don’t exactly have in my mind what I would write down. I think all of us who suffer from the creative process would agree with me. It’s just that, with every key pressed- there’s a thought in the head. For instance right now I was thinking what would she think when she reads this. I am even thinking whether mentioning her is at all relevant here. The muse is always there somewhere. Omnipresence of the muse-I even plan to write something about that.

So I write. 

Let me tell you something about myself, right now I am in a certain juncture of life that I chose for myself because I didn’t want to be around people who don’t dream. I don’t know if I am being unkind to them or this is my childhood fancy coming back to haunt my head but it’s true in a way I chose something for me. I definitely had favorable economics to back me up with. I fear social judgment because there’s an innate superiority complex I suffer from, and I don’t want it to be under scrutiny. But then, I have seen many around me talking about dreams and never taking that leap of faith. From where I come from, I know how hard it is to afford ones dream. Am I being a little pretentions? Perhaps, but here I am –‘’taking a break’’ in the words of mortals and dreaming a little more; what’s the hurry to get somewhere in life when love is all around?
I don’t know when people talk about success if it’s a lot of money or having a lot of friends to pour beer. It still bothers some people when they see my aimless life- ricocheting between the murals of lifeless figures. I don’t blame them either- what would they know? But I think we all evaluate the world in our own way- the difference between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’, our personal morality and its ever shuffling dialectic. I mustn’t get into those philosophical debaucheries, but let’s say we all owe something to our early generations and thank god parents exist. Oh, I hate shopping malls - it’s one of those random thoughts that just came to my mind.

Adulthood in a way has been a little painful to me- but if you are fond of American movies I will tell you that it was like a roller coaster that preferred shutting down when it was in that upside-down position. I think unlike the teenage kings and queens, I have always felt alienated. I remember a friend mentioning back in those halcyon college days,

‘everybody knows you, yet you always roam alone.’ 
I didn’t have an answer then, but perhaps I do now. Age does that. It gets you answers that you don’t regret. I don’t really know, why I like people as they are but I have never ever liked people in groups. That was my childhood condition that made me feel bad, because of how the world around is. But I have always found people so interesting, just as they are.

I remember shattering many people when I used to tell them, that I didn’t mind going to the movies alone- if it was a good movie, why not? I know in the era of ‘masala’ and ‘chat’ good is pretty ‘subjective’. (I like masala in the morning and chat in the evening.) I remember someone telling me that
 ‘’those who can go to the ‘theater’ alone, are capable of murder.’’ 
Bob Biswas (baby faced assassin) even made that a possibility for me. But it’s true whatever people don’t do or can’t understand- it overwhelms them. In a way perhaps it threatens them too. We have all been there. I don’t understand why people become smokers. I try to sometimes- free will and all that shit. Age will provide me that answer I hope. I had never been good in asking the things I want- fearing judgment and mostly rejection and yet I believe that as I will turn a year older this time I will be pretty alright. I am saying all of this to myself, you know, sometimes you do that to help your own self. Let me rewind exactly two years, back to when I was stuck in my hostel room surrounded by warm people who wanted to greet me- realizing that it wasn’t my cup of tea-I shut myself off and didn’t meet anyone. I was sad and dramatic. What more can I say? Just a year back, I was pretty sad too and whiny- the world outside didn’t match the one inside me, but this time I had seen so much of 'happy' people in the virtual forum that I wanted to play that role- so I invited everyone and we had a birthday party, where I got photographs and said, ‘hey look- I am so happy.’ I was like them who deliberately told the world that they were fine rendering it believable. You don’t like this version, I understand, but I am just being honest. Happiness and you perhaps exist and I write this only to help myself, just like all of you do from time to time. Sadness as I have observed doesn’t exist in stupid people. It’s true. Don’t be sad though since it’s my birthday tomorrow. I am not much excited this time, because there’s some contentment and there’s this sense of age that asks me not to pursue lower pleasures. I don’t need to be like everyone else (how often do i say that?), because I am privileged in a way. If you are listening, wish me a happy birthday only if you mean it, because like many of you I do mean the words I say and I don’t enjoy formalities. Happiness is perhaps in the daydreams, it’s perhaps by a seaside resort, perhaps in a home made by a little mountain hut, but as of now I like it here in this concrete apartment of my
humid metropolis.

Yours
The fool on the Sill
‘
11th August, 2014
Calcutta

The Skies that could Rain.

The rain has subdued.

Soon there will be cicadas blowing their noses
and frogs gurgling for another spell of heaven.
If you are awake a little longer you will 
see that,  it will rain again because such 
honest voices are always answered 
by the skies. Yet we will go on sleeping,
ignoring those nightly calls of 
lovers.  


So as the years rolled by,
we did become poets but we could 
never become the skies that could 
rain. 

Letters to the Self?

Dear People of the Earth,

Do you write letters to yourself? (Because, I have been doing this for a long time now and it suits me since I have absolutely no other work.) But I realized that sometimes it’s perhaps beneficial (sounds selfish, I know) to share what you say to yourself, so I write this with my heart filled with an adolescent hope that some of you might read it and help me understand what I have written. More than often I do not understand what I write, you know.
I know in times of riots and war my words are not only insignificant but perhaps impertinent to many. Yet, I write in the hope that some of you will perhaps relate. I have often believed in gestures like this. I do not know if they have any meaning but these little gestures like writing letters, like sending little notes over digital drives, remembering little dates of little events are the anodynes that used to keep me happy once. But as I grew older I realized that I forgot all the dates, I grew lazy and I stuck myself in cramped spaces only writing letters to myself- to make sure that they always get answered. In some ways all my trust riposted back to me. I could not trust people with words and more than that I could not trust them with feelings. In some of the places where I lived it was told that-be a man, goddamn it, hide your love away, like that Beatles song, and in some ways it worked miracles too, I think. There was no possibility of being hurt, there was no possibility of being loved much either, the usual story.
Sometimes when you like someone, you do things that may seem stupid, still they mean a lot you, and if you are lucky they might mean a lot to that person too, so I think one should take that chance. Just one life. How many times do we say that to ourselves? Despite my cowardice, and all that fear of getting shattered by indifference I took the little joy of sending a book to Her- with an anonymous note (where I definitely got to be a Superhero). That’s how I do things anyway.

'When the war is over the letters remain, don’t they? That's why you must write them, more in times of war.'

And sometimes you got to wait through the rainy days and the pallid winters, sometimes you got to wait just a little longer. And for some people, a thousand days over.

Yours
The Fool on the Sill 

Out in the dark

One hazy woman
throws out the dregs of leftovers
from the tenement window. Four dogs
come running through the darkened alley,
wary of bloodsuckers. The golden
streetlight hides everything that darkness
could have shown- like those hungry dogs,
like that vampire scuttling veins.

One of these nights when the streets
are half-empty and with no lights,
our feelings like fragrant balls shall collide
and there will be nothing but the
nakedness of
sight. 

Little Rhyme Rhemee.

My obsession with capturing sounds of delight
led me to record the wailing winds of a monsoon night. 
It was only after I played it over
I realized that I had a snoring neighbor.

We Shall Overcome. (The times of Israel-Gaza conflict.)

Every morning when you wake up, you have a choice-to go through the newspaper or not to go through it. If you decide to go through it, then you have a choice again- to feel bad about all the ills (do I dare mention?) that's happening in the world around you- printed in a piece of dead wood or to ignore this and browse through 'page three' to look for things that might satiate your soul. 
In a world where everyone is looking for contentment or the idea of happiness who in their right mind would choose to look into the real world to see it how it is and feel bad, and most of the time just hopeless?
No people don't do that.

'Happiness is not watching photos of a dead kid in social forum.' Sure it isn't.

But some people do not get contentment in the bottle of a wine or in the lives of plastic people, some people like to think for themselves, some people want their lives to be more than the cattle class around them- so when you tell them why they are making a fuss over issues they can't do 'shit' about, you are not being wholly human. No, I am not accusing you of anything- I am just asking you to feel bad about these things, to feel just a little, say for five minutes, for people whom you have never met.

There is this word smart people often use: 'decadence' - they like to ascribe it to humanity these days. But I think decadence has been a pervasive element in every epoch of human history. Even in those golden periods that you might have read about in your history book, there have been occurrences that must have piqued the morality of certain men, which must have numbed them with this hopeless feeling that often plagues your heart.

By why do you think- humanity as a whole, still in some ways function stably beyond rogue states and rapists, beyond slaughterhouses and slave owners, beyond jealous acts of lovers?

Half the problems in the world are created by us, by men like us, misdirected people, insensible people, stupid people, but then the problems that we create are solved by another set of people- who like to wake up in the morning and who like to belong to this class of people who would rather feel, who would be sad at times for people they don't know, who would scream and shout, who would rather refuse to accept the standards the world set for them, who would rather banter out than ignore the sensibilities other people points out as 'mawkish'.

No, you don't have to be them but just be on their side, for once, say a word or two There's nothing wrong with being verbose, it only magnifies your feelings. Stand with them. Feel.
Our consciousness is all we have got, and if we want to act like humans we must use it till 'decadence' itself withers away from the heart of every thinking man.

We shall overcome?
Yes, some of us who write poetry,
would like to believe
so.