Dear muse

Dear hills,

Writing to you while I am sandwiched between three unknown people who looks like they belong from your territory.
Writing to you while I stoop forward in the last seat of the jeep as it slips down in one of those snaky curves of your green lush body.

I see you taking houses butt-way sticking out from your pine forests. I travel through you as people dig through your skin and put cement and sand to seal that pattern. And you stand, protest-less, mute, observant, still peaceful, still a mother.

I keep coming back, like a little kid does, to the garden where he finds his favourite flower. I keep coming back, guilty to wipe out the last drop of peace you have to offer; but then you dont have a last drop. You keep refilling.

I keep coming back like a voyeur to see how you make love to the clouds, all through the day, from the first drop of sunlight that dilutes all over the sky till the darkness of the night kills the last bit of the sun.

And then there are people who choose you, over advantages of a city, over privileges of an easier life.
I see them choosing you over everything that every other textures of the nature can offer.

And I feel more guilty.

I keep coming back and you keep smiling, arms out with your rhododendrons, mosses out from rocks untouched, valleys that are slowly turning into lifeless cemented snakes.
You breathe into me calm as birds return back trading through a golden sky changing leads, as squirrels carry nuts into one of their holes in your soil that they call home.

People call you an escape. People call you a momentary vacation. People choose you selfishly only when they want to breathe little different from their luxury-spread sofas back in the plains, and I choose you as homecoming.

I choose you because you make me cry just by being there, just by groping the sun back into your curves, just by showing me that after one uphill road of sweat comes another easy downhill of leisure, just by whispering into me oxygen when all my mind can think of is violence.

I have so much more to write to you but just then the jeep passes dangerously almost-hanging the cliff's side, and I see clouds possessively trying to hide your curves with it's shadows from the sun, which shines selectively through the clouds into your valleys.
I have so much more to tell you but just then it begins to rain and I see every bit of you celebrating the showers.
I have so much more to say but your beauty numbs me, and this numbness is so addictive, I keep coming back.

And finally I realise why 'hill' and 'heal' sound similar.


From someone,
who drinks shamelessly from your valleys, the elixir of peace;
a drunkard.

Little aesthetics please?

Mine's been nearly a year in Bolpur. People keep saying there is something very addictive in it's air; once you're here you keep coming back hopelessly for another little bit of dosage.

Well, I can't tell you anything about that. Almost a whole year here and it's been not addiction for me, but a habit, like you brush your teeth in mornings, and let me tell you, some days I simply hate brushing my teeth.
Anyway, the only thing I like here is how disturbingly quiet it is, and how disturbing silence can be for nights, in a place that merged solitude and loneliness for me.

I have a lover here, and a bicycle that I took, borrowed. So, afternoons of cloudy days, or days when the sun is just little less hard on us, we ride away slowly to places undiscovered.

The lover is always the one doing all the labour of circling his feet on the paddle, managing the balance, and also carrying this weight behind him who is mostly shifting in her seat screwing his balance scheme, asking bizarre questions; answering which demands some mind off the street and into contemplation.

I usually have nothing to do, except gazing at slowly fading landscapes, people, trees that hug the sky and lush greenary.
This whole idea of writing came to me when my lover told himself in half consciousness of appreciating a golden-hour lit stretch of green beauty, that how perfect a village it is.

And it occured to me, that indeed it is; a perfect village. Sad that it forcibly keeps trying to change to a town. Imagine the failure a poet would get if he tries his hand at cricket!

And for the most of the journey, I kept looking at how perfect it is. How perfect the sunset looks with the green farmlands in off-focus, and how awkward the smoke looks that is puked out by a nearby factory that the village could do without.

I pass mud houses set in the middle of the stretches randomly, with perfect petite black windows, mostly closed. And when they are open, they let in to the visuals of dark walls with marks left by raindrops that ran down through leaks in the terrace, Hindu devotee pictures in ornamental attire whose brightness has been smudged by regular smoke from incense sticks, polythene bags randomly hanged from hooks on the wall.

I keep passing, and the sky grows darker.

By the time I reach the nearby market, each shops have electrical lamps put up, and I wonder how aesthetically correct it would have been if they had fire-lit lamps put out hanged. How aesthetically soothing it could have been if the perfect evening had a perfect halogen flavour to it!

How perfect it could have been it the perfect village would not have tried to be something that wipes away the remaining beauty from it?!