A River Runs Through Her Cloud

A cloud may love forever the river it chooses

Long to have itself shower into her belovedly bosom

Wait for a point of mutuality

To merge with her measureless love

And flow into the vastness of their shared end

But what does a cloud know about fate

A loving river may abide by his unpredictability, and rage

Devotedly follow his shadow through reckless turns and ways

And beckon still its soul with love;

The cloud then may cascade wholly,

Taking its last drop, into the heart of the river’s soul.

To sail unbelonged but the cloud must learn

For, born it is, to one day

Unmerge and to ether, return

And float again desolate,

Observe from its lonely space

The same river flow how it did before they’d merged

Watch her find a passionate closure

In the infiniteness of a worthy ocean's bosom.

The cloud, is but meant not, to belong to a river

Learn it must the indignity of being

Drunk and vomited by many beds of water and stone

Only circle above the one river

That gave it more than a sparse cloth of brevity

Though brief in length only, their child a universe of memories

Of the epigrammatic union within the safe depths of

Her shelter he worshiped as their home.

The one river whose devout resolve

Had promised his closure by her bosom

And deliver him from his empty journey of drift.

The Price of Absolution

Whenever I hear or read about forgiving or being forgiven, I recollect a story that never fails to probe the limits of the act. You may find its events controversial or you may consider those justifiable, holding equal potential to evoke revulsion and compassion. Personally, I've found it hard to judge or pass any opinion about it because I have never lived inside the souls of its characters, never known the size of the shoes they had to walk in and because my own life is riddled with a long list of terrible choices. But I prefer not to judge mainly because I believe that some choices in life so inevitably lead to struggles and sufferings that their making cannot be weighed in the everyday one-dimensional scale of right or wrong. 

A friend of mine fell in love with a married woman. He was himself married for three years. They had come to know of each other in the virtual recesses of expressions, drifting from their own loveless unions, waiting for something they were not even sure of at the time. And right from the moment of their first exchange of emails something clicked too perfectly between them. There was no introspection, there wasn’t the usual delay and weighing of the sides – none of those things; they hurtled themselves at each other with the accumulated velocity of too old and too strong a desire. Having wandered for years in search of what they’d finally found, my friend and this woman had an understandably intense affair, filling the long looming void in each other’s existence. They fit into their mutual needs like pieces of puzzle. It was as if their union bore cosmic proportions, and they came into it showering endless affection and passion. She flew across two continents to meet him. And they spent three memorable days fulfilling every void, every corner of darkness in their hearts with the light of love. I was there when he saw her off. Who’d have known then that the kiss she blew across from the far end of the boarding gate while disappearing into the conveyance bus would be the last one in their story.

All this time I’ve been hearing from my friend me why there never will be another woman like her, why he’d give up everything to relive those three days. She was beautiful, smart, sensitive, kind and she loved my friend with all her heart. Often when I ask myself as to what could have propelled them so irreversibly at each other I realize that apart from deep, binding and overwhelming love there could be no other reason.

It was the perfect kind of love. Except that the only imperfection in their story made all the difference. Distance. What initially helped them fight the separation of a thousand miles was their mutual longing for love and a shared proclivity to express it. They proclaimed what they felt through endless trade of words. But in the end their story set itself for a sad realization that love can fight off many things yet its own demons sometimes conquer it. Living away gradually began to choke them. The apparent jealousy, the blank spaces in time when neither could be certain of the other’s state, the demands of their respective families began to surround the innocence of their affections. She was the first one who sensed it and immediately voiced the hope of a home.

She knew that their relationship needed to be given a formal foundation. She was confident that it was too real to be denied the dignity of recognition it deserved. But my friend couldn’t summon the will to suspend the people concerned, the families involved, in misery. He felt it would be betrayal. I remember once asking him ‘Why don’t you choose? It’s terrible to see you like this. Dying for a woman who is ready to live with you but cannot since you’re not able to leave your wife for whom you nurture no feeling at all’ All he said was ‘I owe it to her family. They never came asking for the marriage. It was mine which had gone seeking her hand. I can’t do this.’

‘But this suffering? This is too much. How long will you be able to last like this?’

‘I can’t trample upon the happiness of others for finding mine’.

‘What about her happiness? The woman you pledge your devotion to?’

‘Not being able to be with her is death for me. But it is a death I cannot avoid. For the choices I’ve made in my life mandate my bondage’

When you feel so strongly for a person but cannot love her the way your heart longs to, it wrenches the life out of your soul. What followed was a haunting ordeal. She tried to take her life, stayed at the hospital for three days. The effects of that act had the most tragic consequence for her health. She had to give up something precious to every woman. These were powerful wounds. Powerful enough to devastate to shreds the most sacred ties of affection. They separated. She took a call. She had to. He forced her to by his denial to hold her hand before the world.

A couple of years have flown by. I do not know what happened with the wonderful lady but I see my friend trying to perfect the pretense of living a normal life, in his home with his family, and relatives, doing his job. I see him celebrating festivals and laughing loudly and greeting neighbors. The world sees it too. But as his close companion I alone am privy to the nights he wanders away from sanity carrying the weight of emptiness, trying to beat his solitude with whatever he can grab, the unhelpful company of friends he can't relate to or some pointless indulgence here and there, searching for a semblance of meaning and purpose to his existence, scanning the shallowness of his being in the shadows of the dark. I quietly watch the reckless things he does as though there is this secret endeavor he is making to reach a point of no return. I observe the loss of aspiration that he suffers bit by bit, adding up, readying him for a final withdrawal. The very mention of the woman’s name makes him tremble like a child under the influence of something stunning.

He knows he cannot ever make good for what the woman lost.  He can never give her back those days, those moments she gave away from her life. That is why I hope she moves on. Maybe, as I write this memoir, she has already approached that tipping point. I know my friend would want the same thing. Even though it would break his heart, I know he’d wish her to settle down. Find a man and make a home with him. He knows how dearly she dreams of those simple joys.  

As for my friend, I admit, it devastates me to see him long hopelessly for her, who is one simple choice away, the choice of following his heart. A choice, I know too well he won’t make. I know the chains that tie him cannot be broken. For there is no one who can break those but him. And he won’t ever lift the axe.

Sometimes it occurs to me that he shouldn’t have married without love. If he did then he shouldn’t have had the affair. And if he had it then he should have seen it through. For all the immeasurable pain he inflicted on her by being unable to marry her, I pray that she is happy again, in real. She is a kind woman. She is loyal. She is truthful and brave. I know that she craves real love. Therefore I pray that she finds the love that she deserves, that she is made for.

And one day, when all this is over, when she is finally gone to a home, to another comforting pair of arms, to another path to her dreams; when all this is a memory, will then my friend be able to forgive himself? For not standing up when it would have made a difference? For not respecting the longings of his soul and failing it? From whom else should my friend seek forgiveness? From the woman he loved, the one whom he wronged by not taking their momentous love story to its logical end, or from his wife whom he is going to keep inside a smokescreen for the rest of their lives pretending to be in her need? And what price must he pay for absolution, if at all there would be any, given all the things he took away from the woman and the terribleness of the sufferings he let her undergo and the excruciating anguish he immersed his own poor soul in by giving it a temporary taste of what should only have been forever.

As for me. Well, I grudge time. It should have never let the two of them meet in the first place. It knew all too well how their souls are and what inescapable levels of attraction they would wield on each other once their paths crossed. Time knew that their future was not under one roof. Therefore, for the sake of love and the falling it took in the story, must not time remain unforgivable?

As I said at the start I won't judge anyone. Who am I to judge? All I can think of today, after living with their story for so long (June marked two years of the kiss she blew at the terminal) is that man cannot be created for such suffering, such disenchantment. Not unless some sort of a divine reprisal is the reason behind all of it. Maybe therefore, before anyone else, my friend and the woman of his dreams need forgiveness, for whatever wrong in whichever timeline of whichever birth they may have committed, the one that happens to foster the origins of their agony. As a helpless bystander I can only offer my prayers seeking that forgiveness for them and hope that the price of their absolution is no more dearer than it already has been.

The Little Spaces in Void

Forgive my lack of exactness but it seems like a couple of years ago that the chord which tied me to this cherished space snapped.

Two years is a long time. Many things can happen in the period. It was during this time that I lost my doting grandfather to everlasting sleep, turned a few pages in travelling, met some amazing persons in the journey yet back home friends walked out of my life.  I dreamt for things that are nearly impossible to accomplish. I made more and more mistakes than ever. It's hard to say whether that made me a better or worse person. Incidents which would forever etch their marks on my soul came to occur and pass. In the hardest possible way I was taught by providence that there is something unalterable about the shape which has been cast for the course of our lives no matter how hard we try or how cleverly we may attempt to recast it or elude it. And finally I saw time’s malleability through experiences that sped and slowed it. 

Whatever happened took forever a part of me while leaving, one I won’t ever get back. I reckon it was because of those circumstances that I found it hard to gather the requisite will to write something worthy of anyone's time. 

While the design of destiny was unfolding per its prefixed scheme a part of me missed being here, missed all of you. Your presence, cynical or constructive, sweet or sarcastic, was a symbol of a life which I adored regardless of its virtual existence. It sort of gave an unmatched sense of self even in the midst of all kind of clutter and chaos. Just like a safe haven. Therefore all this time that I was away I felt what being away from home must make you feel. I have always cherished this one place, this tiny window inside my desktop, this minuscule web space where I often found expression for my thoughts which you my friends have always embraced and considered with nothing but encouragement. This vibrant medium which reflects the beauty of its dwellers with serenity and fortitude as it gives recognition to whosoever aspires and works for it. That alone makes it a home like no other.

Maybe all what I have seen and felt during my time away is likely to reflect in my words. If it is much of a pain or embarrassment guide me as you always have. If I tend to amble into darkness be kind and remind me of the beauty of light. If I manage to summon whatever part of me it was which wrote once, the one that you guys wholeheartedly adored then tell me that I still have it in me to keep going, that there is something worthy of salvaging about the whole endeavor. It may be a little selfish of me, I concede, to hold these expectations. But we’re all artists and dreamers who sketch with words and I trust that you will agree life is never easy for dreamers. This is my way of holding out my hand to hold yours, so that our shared journey of expressions becomes a little less arduous and increasingly meaningful.

I do not know if I can ever infuse in my words qualities which I had once managed to imbibe in them, most of which art I learnt from amazing writers I came across here. I do not know if my words will ever evoke what they once did. Regardless I intend to apply myself to the task. Because it is a way of liberation. These very moments that our words conjure seemingly beyond the prefixed, mundane and unchangeable twenty four hours, words which earn for us the little yet beautiful and immortal spaces in void.  

Much Love,

Anupam

Have you ever allowed yourself to be convinced by nature?

When I was much younger, like many in that age, I went through a major disappointment following a certain incident. Knowing not what else to do other than lie aimlessly on my bed for hours, I agreed to a prefixed schedule of going to my village. I never used to visit my village since I believed I had all that I needed here in the city I lived in. Nothing attracted me elsewhere. So my decision came as a matter of delight for my parents particularly my father who always encouraged me to stay connected with the place my ancestors had built and lived in for decades. I went the same day. 

The next morning my cousin forced me out of bed at five and dragged me to the fields. But he didn't have to pull me for much long. Once I reached the dense fields something amazing caught hold of my will. It was in the lap of nature that I found something remarkably life saving. Believe me. I was feeling so hopeless that I had begun to show symptoms of rejecting life itself in that early age. But once I walked the fields on my bare feet and and reached its heart, I forgot everything. I saw the mist soaked sun which filled my spirit with unparalleled tenderness and I was pampered by the breeze of 'Baitarani' and the mud under my feet permeated some medicinal magic into my system. I plucked a wild marigold and held it close to my face, vicariously absorbing all its wisdom. I randomly gathered leaves and rubbed them turning my palm green and earthen. The birds had a strangely high state of courage for they alighted so near to me that I felt like I had always been a part of that greenery, their undiluted habitat. I was touched by their instant approval of me. I felt belonged. The haunting sense of abandonment went away amidst the thousands of leaves and hundreds of butterflies and birds and tiny innocent insects which nibbled at the soft dirt for food.

Something revived in me. Something which never seemed to have even existed before. A throbbing sense of faith and contentment. Even when I closed my eyes I could see brightness all around. Maybe I could see that brightness because of what had illuminated within me by that experience. Everything felt in place. Including me. Everything made sense. The moment felt nothing short of divine.

Nature has this thing. It can caress you and while so doing it can cleverly plant a sense of resilience. It can prepare us to face the most difficult times like nothing can. Isn't it sort of a dependable scheme that the troubles of life be taken care of by nature itself. Its lasting effects can delight us with what every man is entitled to enjoy by virtue of his existence in this world. We often tend to forget that. Maybe because we have given ourselves up to our concrete confinements. We have perhaps forgotten where we really come from in our madness to reach places reaching where may not necessarily matter.

I woke up early today after months and saw that softer sun and those birds and insects and walked bare feet on my garden. I resigned myself from anything contrary. And I found myself after a long long time. I saw myself. Like no mirror can show. I breathed life itself.

A moment like this can turn things around in ways we cannot imagine. Take my word for that.

My Home - Lost and Found

A few days ago, work required me to travel to my old city, my birthplace. At first I felt a strange lack of proclivity towards revisiting the city where I was born and raised. It felt indeed very odd, not to sense the quintessential joy, normally felt upon being offered an opportunity to walk down memory lane. I concealed that oddity and thought better than sharing it with anyone. Frankly, I was embarrassed deep down. I was feeling almost ashamed of myself for not feeling any longing for a place where I grew to become what I am. The whole night I kept loathing myself for the insensitive person that I have reduced into. Or may be a part of me had not forgotten what I had suffered at that place. When we had left the city almost five years ago, it was sort of an escape from perpetual humiliation and dejection. It had to be the only plausible explanation for such a startling erosion of affection. An ominous sensation, a looming fear that comes intertwined with its biggest symbol. The sadness and degradation comes to haunt me every time that place is mentioned to my ears. The greater sad part is that before the miseries began unfolding and also even for quite a substantial duration thereafter, while multiple distresses were being perpetrated by the powers that be, I had lived the most memorable moments of my life there.

A series of five speed breaking road humps jolted me out of my trance and I noticed that I was on the last bridge  before the southern perimeter of the city. I pulled down the window panes despite past experience of headache and sinus attacks. The gusts of wind born of the river flanking the city unmistakably persuaded me to reminisce the good old days of my life. I forgot all the darkness which I feared would surround me under broad daylight. As we entered the city, the velocity of our vehicle was forced to drastic reduction by the debilitating traffic, and there I found my first memory. I recalled my father presaging me by saying that I would never truly learn driving as long as I don't drive in the thick traffic of our city during the peak hour of the day. What I saw from thereon opened a window of a long shut space within me. As I was guided through, softly held by the tip of my index finger.

When I saw my school I recalled how I managed to  finish my schooling of twelve years in the same school but struggled miserably in my twelfth board exams. The playground area where we offered countless prayers in chorus and heard zillion sermons. Then I noticed the nearby medical college, whose best memories remain etched in the form of heart numbing glimpses of truly 'beautiful' doctors. During the age of raging hormones it could be a very difficult place to spend nearly eight hours of your day, since every other lady I saw coming out of it, appeared worthy of my heart. The tragedy was that some of them already had boyfriends and for the rest I could simply never summon the courage. My law school wasn't far away. I did my law just near the place where lived my high school sweetheart. Though by then we had broken up and she had discovered truer love elsewhere. I saw her house. I'd seen it so many times, under the scorching sun and blinding rain just to catch a glimpse of her vague moving silhouette beyond the curtains. The roads, the traffic islands, joints, the cinema halls where I fell in love, again and again. Not only with some unforgettable people but with places, moments & indulgences to the point of addiction. There was this place where we friends hung out. There is a colloquial term ascribed to it. It's called "Khatti". I remember braving gales and torrents and chilly winters to make it in time to 'khatti'. I had made some wonderful friends here. Friends who would go far away later in life leaving only nostalgia in my custody . It was the city where I learnt to ride my grandfather's bicycle and my father's scooter. When I fell, people who I never knew came to pick me up and gave me smart tips to ride better. The best part was that the next time when we ran into each other, both of us would pause momentarily, thinking whether the other remembers the last meeting, before finally smiling away at each other's face.

The fast food vendor at my college gate did not think twice before letting me and my friends feast away on credit. We were showered with his elderly affection in shape of liberty to pay as and when we liked. When one of my friends made it big in college placement, he did not forget to touch the vendor's feet who reciprocated with his sincere blessings. It's the place where I have received unconditional love and deep hatred alike. I've been adored and whistled at by pals all along the street from home to my college in consistent display of camaraderie.I have also been in stupid, regretful fist fights and have been hounded by armed hooligans. I've had the fortunate company of friends who did not budge anywhere without me and others who got up and walked away at the very mention of my name. I have been adored & respected, looked down upon, betrayed and back stabbed in the days I spent in this city. I bagged my maiden professional engagement and earned my first income here. I've been called 'worthless' by my teachers and been given an "EXCELLENT - AA" remark by my the then boss upon drafting my first ever petition for a Court Case. In this city I wrote my first love letter, my first prize winning essay and my worst answer papers ever. In one of its oldest galleries I fought my fear of public speaking and indulged in my first ever overt oratory. I learnt to smoke and gulped my first mug of beer here. I ran every year to the Mahanadi river barrage near my house to see it's brim and the crowd swelling together. I experienced my maiden kiss and the agonizing sweet numbness of first love in its serene winter.

When I finally drifted to my old house, I found that it had lost much of its familiar identity. But the moment I peeped into the backyard and saw the trees and the overgrown grass surrounding them, a rainbow of memories filled me with glorious images of my life's long departed days. I felt melancholy slowly creeping into my heart . Something snapped, but I held myself together. I didn't want to embarrass myself by being moist eyed and all, before strangers. Though I doubt that they missed my urge. So many afternoons of my childhood, I'd spent under the shade of those twin trees. They weren't just trees anymore. That had blended into human form looking at me through tears, fraught with age. As if to say that I betrayed them by abandoning them in their last days. All I could do was move my hands reassuringly over their weary trunks to convey how sincerely I wanted at that moment, to relinquish everything and play a game of hide and seek under their shades. The saplings that my father had made me plant then, had grown into handsome young trunks decorated with enviable branches and lush leaves. I felt content with what they looked like. Finally as tired birds returned to their abodes on their higher parts, I felt glad that my trees are not lonely after all. On the way back through the clustered lanes of my old residence I saw the temple from where penetrating conch shell sound used to wake me up early every morning, its purity demystifying the anxieties of the night and where God's deity alone knew my deepest yearnings all through out my adolescence.



I returned with dusk but not before having "Dahi Vada Aloo Dum", the customary spicy Odia delicacy. (I've always considered it Odisha's answer to Chinese Fast Food for which it was my regular breakfast / brunch during college days.) And not before realizing that I've not gotten over and probably never will get over the love for my hometown. It's where I was born and became the person that I'm today.