A fat friend of mine whom I know from schooldays (or at least that's how I would like to remember him even if he loses his weight) wrote an entry on his blog about "7 random things about you" at the behest of some other friend of his. My initial reaction was to ridicule him for claiming that he is tidy (or what he calls as his 'organized chaos') since I know from college days that his room was far from it. It was littered with the junk and filth he collected from his seniors. But then I refrained from calling him out on it, mainly because I had started to think whether I also have 7 random things that I could write about myself, that is, do I know myself well enough to write 7 such things? After a bit of struggle, I finally managed to write them down:
1. I like to imagine myself sitting at a window in an old English style cottage on some remote East Coast island. From there I watch the gentle waves of the ocean as they caress the pebbly beach lying beyond a vast patch of sun dried beach grass. I sit at that window all day, envying the playful gulls as they hover above fishing boats in fearless joy. But when I hear the whistle of the occasional ferries that arrive at this island's harbor, I get reminded of the mainland to which I belong, and from which I am always eager to escape, even if only for a moment, even if only on a flight of fantasy.
I did manage to escape to this island once on a cold and misty December morning. It goes by the name of Block Island.
2. I like to wander through a city's streets and back alleys, like a ghost, free of all commitments, worries and squabbles of everyday life, indifferent to all feelings of pain and joy, and just content to watch other people as they go about with their miserable and mundane life. They are all performers on a stage who are blissfully unaware that I am one of their greatest admirers. And so, as a ghost I am fully free to enjoy my anonymity amidst these teeming millions of gifted playwrights and talented performers. They all can act without memorizing any script or having any rehearsals. They come and go, shouting out their lines at random, but still behaving as if their cacophony has some definite meaning. Does this play belong to the Theater of the Absurd? Am I watching Ionesco's The Bald Soprano? But no, this is not it. Gradually I have realized that although this play is meaningless, it is still an epic drama -one whose plot and scenes are totally unknown to the entire cast, and even to a ghost.
3. I like to read fiction and to watch movies. They allow me to forget the burden of existence, which according to me, like almost everything else, is completely meaningless. And any attempt by human beings to assign meanings will be quite arbitrary, and therefore, must be rejected. Some of my friends say that I am a 'nihilist', maybe so, but such labels have no meaning for either me or any true nihilists as far as I can tell.
4. I like to sit in coffee shops and bookstores, and preferably in bookstores with coffee shops. One awakens the mind, the other awakens the senses.
The Rittenhouse Square Barnes & Nobles has a cafe that is particularly interesting; you get to enjoy your coffee under the watchful eyes of Kafka, Joyce, Shaw, Wilde, Woolf, Twain, Tagore, and a host of other literary geniuses, who all share the cafe walls with many yellow hued photos of 19th century Philadelphia.
5. I have a love-hate relationship with my hobbies of painting and sculpting. I have a habit of destroying these works, and I have been like that since childhood. I am very self-destructive; it brings me great suffering and melancholy -the two basic ingredients I need to transform me into my ghost.
6. I am anti-religion to the core.
Religions are the most dangerous invention of human imagination. If mankind has to progress and survive, religions must die, along with all their delusional saints, prophets, charlatans, fanatics, gods and goddesses (yes, I refuse to use capital letters for them). All that should survive this purge are the elaborate tales about these beings that we have spun for our impromptu script, so ardently and desperately with the hope of giving some meaning to our wretched lives, or perhaps to convince ourselves that receiving justice is our birth-right, and that we all will get it someday, if not in this life then in the afterlife for sure. Till then we can only seek pity. The idea of an unfair world is so terrifying that we prefer to live in hope than to face reality. Some like me turn to fiction and fantasy instead. That way they can live in a much fairer and colorful world and carry it around within the modest enclosure of their skull, at least as long as the chemicals inside it permit them to do so.
7. I like to travel.
In my memory, Chicago is Steel Gray, New York is Blue, San Francisco is Orange, Seattle is Bluish Gray, Rome is Brick Orange, Venice is Ocean Blue, Portland (Oregon) is Green, Boston and Delhi are Red, and Calcutta is faded Yellow, like the shades of old photographs from an album that was locked up in a chest and later forgotten along with other memories of yesteryears. I have also seen many photos of the same hue lining the walls of a Philadelphia bookstore's cafe; they were pictures of busy markets, trams, and horse drawn carriages -like the ones I saw in front of the Victoria Memorial when I was a boy growing up in Calcutta.
The yellow photos of Calcutta that my mind has preserved, although somewhat damped and discolored, remind me of the city's lawless yellow taxis and policemen in yellow khakis who have to regularly teach them the law for a nominal bribe; the yellow school building where I wasted twelve years of my life; the yellow pages of the used books bought in College Street; the yellow facade of Medical College where patients and their relatives lie scattered on the front stairs like victims of a massacre; the yellow coaches of metro rail that slither in the city's underground passages and the decrepit yellow trams that once ruled the city's surface; the yellow rajbhogs and yellow kachuris that my grandma liked; the yellow saree that my mother sometimes wore; the yellow goddess with ten arms and four children who comes to Baghbazzar year after year without any slightest change in her routine; the yellow marigold garlands that adorn her neckline; the penniless yellow eyed drunks who having fallen out of the goddess' grace lie next to the drains overflowing with yellow urine; the yellow dump trucks of KMC (formerly CMC) that collect all this shit and garbage from the city, and the yellow river Ganga that dutifully washes away all the city's filth and sins into the heart of Sunderbans -the islands where yellow tigers live, and where playful gulls hover above fishing boats in fearless joy as I watch them from another continent, miles and miles away, through the imaginary window of an old English cottage on a remote island, where I travel freely in space and time, seeking refuge from the realities of my unscripted life.
1. I like to imagine myself sitting at a window in an old English style cottage on some remote East Coast island. From there I watch the gentle waves of the ocean as they caress the pebbly beach lying beyond a vast patch of sun dried beach grass. I sit at that window all day, envying the playful gulls as they hover above fishing boats in fearless joy. But when I hear the whistle of the occasional ferries that arrive at this island's harbor, I get reminded of the mainland to which I belong, and from which I am always eager to escape, even if only for a moment, even if only on a flight of fantasy.
I did manage to escape to this island once on a cold and misty December morning. It goes by the name of Block Island.
2. I like to wander through a city's streets and back alleys, like a ghost, free of all commitments, worries and squabbles of everyday life, indifferent to all feelings of pain and joy, and just content to watch other people as they go about with their miserable and mundane life. They are all performers on a stage who are blissfully unaware that I am one of their greatest admirers. And so, as a ghost I am fully free to enjoy my anonymity amidst these teeming millions of gifted playwrights and talented performers. They all can act without memorizing any script or having any rehearsals. They come and go, shouting out their lines at random, but still behaving as if their cacophony has some definite meaning. Does this play belong to the Theater of the Absurd? Am I watching Ionesco's The Bald Soprano? But no, this is not it. Gradually I have realized that although this play is meaningless, it is still an epic drama -one whose plot and scenes are totally unknown to the entire cast, and even to a ghost.
3. I like to read fiction and to watch movies. They allow me to forget the burden of existence, which according to me, like almost everything else, is completely meaningless. And any attempt by human beings to assign meanings will be quite arbitrary, and therefore, must be rejected. Some of my friends say that I am a 'nihilist', maybe so, but such labels have no meaning for either me or any true nihilists as far as I can tell.
4. I like to sit in coffee shops and bookstores, and preferably in bookstores with coffee shops. One awakens the mind, the other awakens the senses.
The Rittenhouse Square Barnes & Nobles has a cafe that is particularly interesting; you get to enjoy your coffee under the watchful eyes of Kafka, Joyce, Shaw, Wilde, Woolf, Twain, Tagore, and a host of other literary geniuses, who all share the cafe walls with many yellow hued photos of 19th century Philadelphia.
5. I have a love-hate relationship with my hobbies of painting and sculpting. I have a habit of destroying these works, and I have been like that since childhood. I am very self-destructive; it brings me great suffering and melancholy -the two basic ingredients I need to transform me into my ghost.
6. I am anti-religion to the core.
Religions are the most dangerous invention of human imagination. If mankind has to progress and survive, religions must die, along with all their delusional saints, prophets, charlatans, fanatics, gods and goddesses (yes, I refuse to use capital letters for them). All that should survive this purge are the elaborate tales about these beings that we have spun for our impromptu script, so ardently and desperately with the hope of giving some meaning to our wretched lives, or perhaps to convince ourselves that receiving justice is our birth-right, and that we all will get it someday, if not in this life then in the afterlife for sure. Till then we can only seek pity. The idea of an unfair world is so terrifying that we prefer to live in hope than to face reality. Some like me turn to fiction and fantasy instead. That way they can live in a much fairer and colorful world and carry it around within the modest enclosure of their skull, at least as long as the chemicals inside it permit them to do so.
7. I like to travel.
In my memory, Chicago is Steel Gray, New York is Blue, San Francisco is Orange, Seattle is Bluish Gray, Rome is Brick Orange, Venice is Ocean Blue, Portland (Oregon) is Green, Boston and Delhi are Red, and Calcutta is faded Yellow, like the shades of old photographs from an album that was locked up in a chest and later forgotten along with other memories of yesteryears. I have also seen many photos of the same hue lining the walls of a Philadelphia bookstore's cafe; they were pictures of busy markets, trams, and horse drawn carriages -like the ones I saw in front of the Victoria Memorial when I was a boy growing up in Calcutta.
The yellow photos of Calcutta that my mind has preserved, although somewhat damped and discolored, remind me of the city's lawless yellow taxis and policemen in yellow khakis who have to regularly teach them the law for a nominal bribe; the yellow school building where I wasted twelve years of my life; the yellow pages of the used books bought in College Street; the yellow facade of Medical College where patients and their relatives lie scattered on the front stairs like victims of a massacre; the yellow coaches of metro rail that slither in the city's underground passages and the decrepit yellow trams that once ruled the city's surface; the yellow rajbhogs and yellow kachuris that my grandma liked; the yellow saree that my mother sometimes wore; the yellow goddess with ten arms and four children who comes to Baghbazzar year after year without any slightest change in her routine; the yellow marigold garlands that adorn her neckline; the penniless yellow eyed drunks who having fallen out of the goddess' grace lie next to the drains overflowing with yellow urine; the yellow dump trucks of KMC (formerly CMC) that collect all this shit and garbage from the city, and the yellow river Ganga that dutifully washes away all the city's filth and sins into the heart of Sunderbans -the islands where yellow tigers live, and where playful gulls hover above fishing boats in fearless joy as I watch them from another continent, miles and miles away, through the imaginary window of an old English cottage on a remote island, where I travel freely in space and time, seeking refuge from the realities of my unscripted life.
2 comments:
Loved this. Though I don't collect junk and I believe religion is important :) Maybe I should refute this.
well, let's just say that among many other things, that broken bicycle and that horrible stereo set easily qualified as junk. They were too ugly.
Ok, will wait to hear your pro-religion arguments and when I get time I will launch into an anti-religion diatribe.
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