Immortalizing Some Moments of Joy

   

From the pen-APN

In life’s journey, sometimes you stop for a while, not because you are caught in a storm but because the journey seems more delightful than your desired destination. And you with your good companion discover joy, beauty and sunshine all dancing around you on a musical note of togetherness……

And maybe your companion, who loves you now most, draws her cell phone and clicks your photos because all such blessed moments may slip away in the passage of time but the memories will linger for all times to come .    

Musings of a Footpath Dweller

From the pen-APN

I am sleeping on the footpath and the only torn blanket that I have wrapped around my body is my world. The blinding street lights, colossal edifices, crowded malls, wide roads, the bustling traffic and restless crowd around me cannot excite me. I am a non-entity in the fast-moving and fast-changing world. For years, the footpath has given me shelter and the glittery world by the sides of footpath has thoroughly convinced me of my littleness. All know I am in poverty and poverty is in me and I am alive like grass which is crushed under feet but stubbornly clings to life……..My life pitiably lingers on the footpath.

Needless to say…..I experience the gnawing poverty and at the same time, I bear testimony to the moral poverty of my country’s rulers and the insatiable greed of big shots who are seated at the helm of power.  

My impoverished shabbiness is jarringly out of place with the glitters of the swanky supermarkets and the posh city culture but I am undone. I have to stay in them unwanted like a cacophony in a beautiful piece of music. I cannot do much to mend my fate but, in these days, I have learnt to stay oblivious to the tall promises of “Achhe din ayenge” made by many politicians who hold power, wield power and swag power.   

Today morning, I was hired to carry a political party’s banner in a rally for half a day’s wage. I carried my old body and hurriedly advanced in spite of my advanced age because the party worker won’t pay me unless I held his banner high and walked straight in the rally. The pity is that my back is irrevocably bent by my leaders and by their faulty policies whereas I have no option but to hold their banner high in exchange of a half day’s wage or a few kilograms of subsidized rice.

They frame laws for me to make poorer so that I can hold their banner high in rallies at a little expense. I am no statesman but from deep within my heart a voice painfully cries and asks a question, “What is the value of that progress which cannot touch the lives of the poorest of the poor?”

Tomorrow, I may be hired by some other party but the question will remain the same.

Now I am almost dead with my own struggles and I am assured of one thing that I have to go on like this a few more days till my body lies motionless on the footpath and the municipality people come to remove my corpse. But until that day I have to carry their flag because the show must continue…..

A Revelation That Comes with 5 September, 2018

                                                                                         

From the pen-APN

Life finds a meaning when one’s own familial well-being is ensured and the individual’s inner attitude to serve others shines spontaneously and out of gratitude towards society. It feels good to be an instrument of progress in peace of mind and accompanying ease of action arising from a clear conscience. I will say it is God’s grace when your life is blessed with such invaluable gifts. The first gift is that all the minimum requirements for a decent life are fulfilled and the second gift is that you are in good health and in sound state of mind to serve the world around. When these two things meet together life becomes a beautiful song.  

September 5, the special day dedicated to teachers, made my heart supple and made me understand the above truth amidst the love and joy of some happy students.  

Into a Life Mechanical

From the pen-APN

In the fast-changing world, every moment the norms of life are changing. Man is continually changing. His/her attitudes, beliefs, thinking and the situations around him/her are changing from moment to moment. In such an ever-transforming world, every individual is toiling hard to keep balance.

Newly invented tools, new scientific discoveries and use of modern technology in all walks of life have given super speed to these processes of change. In short, the world has become super-dynamic. The world shows kaleidoscopic changes as if it was the trailer of a super-fast Hollywood action film with time-lapse effect.

Today a preschooler of the twenty-first century can amaze an adult of the 80’s by his/her agility to deal with modern gadgets, computers, smart-phones and allied technologies.  

In such a world where there is steep competition to survive and where everything is valued on the basis of utility and where everything is judges basing on skills, profit-loss implications, the vocation of poetry, drama, literature and fine arts seem incongruous.

It seems Literature will soon fashion itself on the notes of some jarring metallic sounds of industrial machines. Now, literature is losing the charm of the morning sunrise and the magic of dew-laden grass. In the opposite, Literature has started to accommodate in its body the digital rhythms of robotic operations, breathless run of automobiles, the strife between warring zones, the extreme fight for depleting resources and the dying voice of morality.

The nature-poetry, the fresh puff of breeze, the burbling cascades, the varied tall and short plants, which give a characteristic green to earth, are all going to fade away in the closed cubicles, which are artificially chilled with air-conditioners.    

If all things run like machines and with machines disrespecting the fine sensibilities of literature, we will soon turn into some robots and we will be no more the human beings. We will be like the battery-powered doll which mechanically beats the drums to declare that there is some life in it but all know that such liveliness is without a heart. It is simply mechanical and functional.

Whitish Ash of Burnt Memories

From the pen-APN

A lamp was glimmering somewhere but its light was visible to me in the night. It was a starless night and the atmosphere was humid and the soil was wet because for two days it had rained continuously.

The glowing lamp’s hope , the dark night’s despair and the teary rain’s anguish were somehow whispering my life’s tale.  

I was standing inhaling the smell of wet ground and listening to the mixed sounds of so many nocturnal insects. In the shrill noise of those unseen creatures and in the thickness of darkness, I was experiencing a fleeting night, which would soon end, heralding a new morning with some sunshine.

As I internalized my attention to read the scars on my own heart, to my surprise, I discovered no scars but some burnt out whitish ash all ready to manure the substratum of my heart with more feelings, with more compassion and more humanity. And the ash was nothing but my burnt out memories arising out of an unhappy relation.

Fixing my eyes in the distant starless dark sky, my lips produced a faint smile and  a thought-wave crossed my mind bringing a conclusion that  “she was nothing but a strong fire and she burnt me like hellfire. But, lo! I was not killed and the remnant dusty ash deep in my heart is but a sign that I am now a purified one- free and blest, like a winged creature chasing the morning sun.”

The night had passed and a smiling sun was rising in the east sky.