Of the few wonderful memories one associates with places and faces, the art of candle making, clay modelling and pottery is what I associate with my school. Beyond the regular academic cramming, also known as formal education, these three activities represented the small joys of life and taught precious lessons in patience. Constitutionally an obedient one, I quite enjoyed my lessons, but then there were things I could never come to accept or understand (of course my own retardation being the cause). Say for instance, Force is equal to Mass multiplied by Acceleration. Well, how about Forces with no discernible mass or accelaration...! But then that's a stupid question, by all means. Any question beyond proven finitude of formulaic prophecies is a stupid question. Anytime. Candles, clay and lumps of softened mud on the potter's wheel were refuge to the intrinsic restlessness of unanswered stupid questions, where formulas didn't apply. With Christmas around, focus shifted to candle making. Tiny fingers with all their might hammered slabs of coloured wax into small pieces and stuffed a kettle (which seemed larger than oneself) with the wax thus collected. The kettle was then carefully placed upon a burner. Metamorphosis. Magic. All resistance of separate entities melted and fused as the heat permeated the frozen rigidities of the wax slabs. Colours mingled like tiny streams merging melodiously and the little hands felt the slight tremors as a new entity took shape within the kettle. A new colour would evolve soon...with traces of the original and yet a uniqueness of its own. As the process headed towards completion, the moulds were kept ready into which this molten wax would be poured, sealed and solidified. Funny things. Moulds. Made at another's wish, to create several more in the same shape. So around Christmas, amidst a multitude of moulds, was this one mould I never tried - the Christmas-tree mould. Never made one. Never lit one. Somehow this entire idea of a candle shaped like a Christmas tree being lit up, was difficult to accept. For, trees were always precious. And the Christmas-tree was that once-a-year promise of dreams. To strike a match and light it up was always unacceptable. Strangely enough, it still is. The innocent perception of the tree lives untainted though hopes and dreams become things of the past as years roll by. That's how we grow up I guess. Grow up and grey, while the obstinate child within refuses to give in and we pacify it with the rehearsed regular hopscotch of measured mundane footsteps.

Vacuum, momentary or otherwise, symbolically manifests itself in a curved line with a quite redundant dot below. We call it a question, mostly. Perceived through a thin veil of liquid in the eyes, it seems like a snake, ready to strike. Once it's there, you cannot help but acknowledge its existence, its venom. And you begin speculating. Weaving a web of possible articulations which will make it disappear - the vile interrogation mark. You seek answers, you seek people to answer, you seek sticks and skills in knowledge reserves to pacify the snake. Sometimes, you simply seek shelters to run away and escape it, even if for a while. But it returns. Sooner or later. You repeat strategies. Sometimes you win over its existence. Until it is reincarnated.

A question. A momentary retardation of faculties of perception. A discomfort in normal functionality. A dis-ease of the mind. As much a construct of the first person latent jackass within, as the possible answers from within or elsewhere.   


Essentially, there are no questions.
Consequently, there are no answers.

Is a pause bereft of meaning...?

When you speak, and you pause, looking for the holy content  of the next meaningful articulation, does the pause mean anything...?

When you pause for the other person to respond, holding (and if asthmatic perhaps, counting) your breath, does the pause mean anything?

When you stop someone in the midst of a divine pronouncement (for each human being thinks as much of his/ her words), does that pause have a meaning?

When the other fellow human being/s silently listen/s to your words (of wisdom or otherwise) pausing his/ her/ their instinct to shed holy light of analyses at the end of each utterance, does that pause have a meaning?

Does it ever seem that a pause is not an innocent void, but an emotion, at times too intense to be handled?

Sometimes, in fact, a pause seems so much more meaningful than the words which tend to subsume its existence. For words are logically assessed articulations performing within the web of defined language - almost like trained monkeys in an act of trapeze. Pause is the lost child of intrinsic human wilderness. Considered or ignored, it has no ambition to become a word!

They dress you in a gown and send you to a room on a stretcher, carried by two complete strangers. In the biting cold of the new arena which claims to be a Sterile Zone, you chuckle to yourself at the irony of binaries, for who knows how contaminated the sterile can be. You lie there silently waiting for things to happen. It's nothing new, for that's what each day is like. Another stranger arrives. He tells you with a smile how he will inject a medicine down one of your nerves which he says will hurt just a bit. By this time, you are laughing in your head at the natural amusement of reassuring polite lies. Which was the last time, dear fellow Sapien, that a knowledgeable being, though compassionate, could gauge the intensity of hurt or sense how much pain a painkiller kills. You smile at him politely, in consent, still fanning your ego, as if you had an option! He does his work with perfection and covers your hand in a white bed sheet. He tells you it's done. You tell him you know, what has been done and what still remains. The theatre is ready for the act by then. You are taken in and placed on the stage. Two fancy spotlights alight your being. For a moment, you feel almost angelic, washed as if, by the lights of heaven! Privacy is a myth. There's a crowd around, busy with parts of what you had always known to have been Your body. Copyright floats around like a nonsense rhyme, but under those lights you no longer care. There's a flash of a thought about anxious dear ones waiting outside, but that's another world, and it's almost the same as any other day - each in his world through an eternal wait. You can't afford nostalgia anymore for the stage is set, the scene is ready and the characters are here. Your role is little. No dialogues. Just two deep breaths, and then lights out. Words are heavy, words are dense. Oblivion is one of them. Too many syllables. Little content. 

Wings are prone to flight, as life is prone to death - the meaning of each, self-contained.

The newspaper had never wanted to be one. But perhaps it was so destined. And so, one fine morning it reached the doorstep, slid through the gap above the doormat and lay silently anticipating the worse. Suddenly it found itself hurled onto the top of the table unmindfully by a lady. It knew more was to come. And soon began rounds of careful scrutiny, dirty glances, serious considerations and discussions.The content might not have been its will but the comments were certainly its predicament. People kept it carelessly upon the tea table, as they exchanged opinions. Some commented upon the nature of the event, some expressed shock and awe, while some simply chuckled. Horror reached its climax when a rebel of sorts within the house rolled it into a cylindrical entity and began beating it upon the table expressing discontent about some injustice. Vernal showers - nothing was left out - from amusement to sympathy to disrespect and finally, dismissal. And it was a lengthy day. But even the night brought no peace. When all excitement was over, a bored member of the household took upon the desire to scribble on the little white space available. Silent submission was the only option available, with ardent prayers to reach the shelf of old useless newpapers.   

The prayer was granted at long last. Faces disappeared, voices faded and darkness reigned supreme. Tomorrow would be a new day for sure, with a new substitute to go through this burden of civilization. And just when life seemed to draw towards that much desired end, the lights went on once again. A little girl came out and walked towards the shelf. Hadn't it been enough for the day, it wondered...! And just as feared, it was dragged out of the shelf yet again. There seemed something new this time. The girl handled it differently. She was, unlike the others, so not-interested in the content. She tore off a section, opened the folds and gently added to its being new marks of existence. It found itself turned and folded in various patterns, until a result was achieved to her satisfaction. She now called it a boat.   

She then placed it upon her table in her room and looked up at the sky.

"Ma'am I could not attend the class because I was dancing for independence"

"I'm sorry, you were what?"

(A Pause) "I was dancing for independence day"

Most comedies these days begin on a sombre note. 

This child isn't alone in her dancing for independence day. You wake up to sales, offers and discounts being offered by mega merchants on the pious occasion of independence day, which never forget to add "offer valid till stocks last" or, better still, "conditions apply". No one quite clearly specifies the conditions which apply. There are parades, speeches, songs, Bollywood releases and, not to forget, intellectual debates, conversations and discussions. In short, the river of 'patriotism' overflows. Martyrdom is not a narrative. When narrativized, it severs the passion and faith which had led the one being represented, into the act of sacrifice. Stories are sensitive things, especially those about martyrdom in an age when the line of demarcation between a scapegoat and a martyr has become very thin. While the former four categories of performance are motivated towards a particular school of mainstream indoctrination, the last category is potentially disturbing in bridging the gap between the ridiculous and the dangerous as organizers and speakers pat each other's back and an elitist educated audience claps in approval certifying the fruitfulness of the endeavour. Funny. In-house circus of sorts. Futile nonetheless, for being an exercise in self-gratification of refined egos - quite self-contained and all-knowing. 

The child that dances for independence day doesn't realize the expanse of this date-specific national dance.

Alas! This dated-ness of independence!

The children who perform on independence day return to their smartphones and self-congratulatory social networks thoughtlessly, like everyday. The people get an additional holiday and return to work mechanically the next day, like any other day. Rivers are polluted, crimes are committed, violence is inflicted, like everyday. The child who sells balloons at the traffic signal each day, sells miniatures of the national flag on this occasion. His customers are few, like everyday. The woman who sits on the footpath asking for food has few to look at her, like everyday. 

Only, the smell of water droplets on the dry earth, astonished at its own dryness perhaps, feels just the same, any day.

A day isn't hours; neither thoughts nor deeds. It seems to be more like a bouquet of random snippets. Fleeting sights internalized, rather thoughtlessly. Like busy people scurrying down the streets - earphones intact, as if the world were to end shortly and survival is at stake, while silent blooms sway to the breeze, almost cracking a joke at the agitation around. Revolutions are rampant these days. Intellectual proclamations stating God is dead have opened up new vacancies for many haloed beings. Lesser gods reclaim the Ptolemaic system - just that this time the logic behind earth being at the centre of the universe is supported by notions of self-supremacy and authority. Science can mind its business for purposes of theory. For, earth isn't just a planet anymore. It is the abode of the lesser gods - alpha males and females. They rule, they oppose, they establish, they contradict - till death draws a finishing line to this self-driven circus.

A little girl in a striped shabby blue tunic, on her way back from school in the desolate afternoon, quenches her thirst from a roadside blue drum reflecting the sun still. Her software isn't updated. She hasn't heard of the new world order yet. Her tattered ballerina stop in front of a local temple as she bows her head in reverence. Another child crawls by, heading towards the corner of the footpath also known as, home. Leaves fall at random in the wind and a little golden pouch with 'Statutory Warning' printed on it, emptied of its contents, flies across  haphazardly.

And so there was this crumpled little piece of paper on which someone had scribbled with great enthusiasm - yesterday is history,  tomorrow is a mystery,  today is a gift etc. Rubbish.  Language, at times,  has been guilty of the craziest crimes.

Yesterday is a shadow, today is an accident,  tomorrow is a threat. The moment you open your eyes into a today,  you know it has happened and you can't really help it. The best thing to do if you must pull through is to survive the accident as gracefully as possible until the next threat called tomorrow steps in.

As the sun gently kisses those fine nets safeguarding two photosensitive upturned rusty buckets within a well of fluid possibilities, two little blankets are involuntarily drawn to the point of blindness. As sight recedes, visions emerge. The soul takes a break, basking in metarealist perceptions. Soul truth. Soulful truth. Between shades of a distant celestial palette designed to perfection at ease. There's this world; and then there are worlds, till light returns enveloped in eternal darkness.

And sometimes, Life becomes a dog. Much loved, much lived, much cherished. And just too much loyal. You show it the door with a warm hug in acknowledgement of the much you have shared in togetherness. You shut the door and turn back only to realize it is still out there, in perfect silence staring back at you with glassy eyes, wagging the little tail out there as a remnant of being in silent stubborn refusal to leave. You walk off and it follows you with random antics and funny sounds. You deny it all recognition, only to realize it hardly cares for your wish. You ignore its presence waiting for it to eventually leave and disappear it does for a while, only to fetch memories you had hidden long time back as a sort of casual existential sport.

It's no use trying to explain exactly how much is enough. It's no use verbalizing to it the cliff that separates the pastness of subjectivity from the presentness of alienation.

 Dogs do not understand tense; neither does Life.

At a very tender age, the time when the mind is still negotiating with the idea of words as sounds falling freely in the air at random, they introduce a sudden presence of meaning allotted to these random sounds. In comes the wise old stout odd Dictionary with its imposing presence that would last a lifetime. Certainty is ascribed to uncertainties of the unknown. Fixed meanings begin to form and chambers of rigid associations between sound and concept are framed in the mind, forever. Sound gradually graduates into language, so far so that the existence of a determined meaning to a free falling sound becomes the very criteria of recognizing it as a word. And only words placed together in an accepted structure of codes begin to constitute the notion of language. You begin to verbalize. Verbalize everything, each moment of being into the known paradigm of recognized meaning. This illusion of meaning lasts till you encounter the vast domains of the meaningless. And when you do, you encounter the fragility of this chimera called the Dictionary which promised you the certainty of meanings at a very tender age. For, meaning constitutes knowledge. Meaning spells boundaries. Meaning ensures social acceptability of your existence. You know meanings, till you recognize the essentially thin line of difference between knowledge and understanding. As you do, you realize that understanding is the real counterpart of your non-stop breathing exercise called being, while knowledge, as a component of inherent nasty narcissism had just been faking it all this while through illusory but reassuring meanings. Say for instance, the word 'fatigue'. The good old D will tell you it is a feeling of extreme tiredness, sometimes caused by physical and mental exertion, till you live to understand that it is perhaps the quietened flow of the river as silt settles in the course of its flow. You realize the daftness of subjective realities based upon meanings when the wise old D tells you that 'feeling' means 'an emotion', while 'emotion' means a 'feeling'. You understand the joke you have lived by when 'life' is said to mean simply 'the period between birth and death' or ' the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment' - all neatly summed up in a line or two, while You (poor thing!), are still figuring it out like a perfectly useless mark of interrogation, day in, day out.