continuum.
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 10:57 PM
0
Foreign toad
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 2:39 PM
0
There are colours, everywhere. Some dark, some pondering like sun. This place is no less then a heaven, bliss flickering torches light. I couldn’t have asked for more, my Polaroid lens quietly weeps into my ears and heart.
[Frida’s voice still enchants my mind. Zaira use to say ABBA is the reason why she grew up in 70s. But I couldn’t stand ‘em for one reason. She had met her manicorn after all. Adelaide it was, summer of 77’, she met Arif over a concert.]
Mumbai, I have been here before with my father as a kid. I remember the hustle in the air here. Smells still the same. Like standing in front of a magnifying mirror, an enlarged version of self. Colaba is what the address read. Zaira used to describe it to me, the old school roads light by the lamp poles like chandeliers of the sky. The people dragging as they speak, hitting chords of intellectual artists. It is SF of India yet has a pale coloured aristocracy and elegance to it. The Colaba causeway is “the place”. Every one wants a piece of meat here. The real deal.
Too much of everything. But hell. This is my story and am not ready to spill the beans yet, perhaps. But, may be for the better, just may be. I am a 43 year old female.
Before hitting the four lined piece of paper, I wandered around for over a week. Not that I wasn’t too keen, but I was scared that these were the last rights of Zaira. And it would take away everything. May be am too old to incubate this. But then am being honest. At gateway, I met this fogy old guy. His name was Ranjnikanth, at least that’s what he told me but, some grass; he sold it to me saying this is “Indian maal”. I wouldn’t know what he meant, but Indian maal was trippy like Jesus. I remember being high as a kite but that would totally be out of place to mention, but what wouldn’t be is that Ranjnikanth was an epic scalper.
Zaira Karrah, brought up in NYC, was an amalgamation of flamboyance and nattiness. Zaira and I started seeing each other when she had come down to my exhibition. She was there with Shantanu Das, an upcoming photographer from Kolkata back then. Zaira’s wealth of knowledge always reflected in her conversations. That’s what everyone fell for. She could buy you for peanuts. We struck a date the day next to the day we met. I went purblind just moments after knowing her. She said she liked my work, but then I knew she didn’t mean nothing. But that couldn’t help me not falling for her. I had always been proud to be only the second person in her life with whom she had struck stable long relationship. Zaira had had a whole galaxy abounding of riches around her. You wouldn’t know what she is thinking, you wouldn’t even know if she liked the meal you fixed her. But she would say she did. She had never let me enter even an inch deep into her past. But all she cared to tell me about was her 3 months long relationship with Arif, which she branded as a stable one. They had met over one of ABBA’s concerts that held during the band’s Australia tour. They got married that summer. I had never been able to figure out Zaira, but I knew one thing that most of her life had a frivolous sense to it but Arif. Zaira and I were together for more then 9 years. She passed away last fall. She fell to cancer. I had no idea what so ever when I met her back then. But then, that was Zaira.
Arif. I had never seen him; Zaira never had a picture of them both. But from what she told me, Arif was an Adonis. He had Middle Eastern roots she said, but was an Indian at heart and by birth of course. Arif was a poet and was trying to get into the film industry as a lyricist. Meanwhile he worked for some Hindi newspapers and magazines. I am sure it wouldn’t surprise if I told you he was from Mumbai. He was orphaned at the age of 17 and then he moved to Mumbai to live with his cousins and make out a living in the city of dreams. His cousin Arnab was a journalist and often had to go out of the country to cover events for his magazine. That is how Arif landed up in Australia.
Me. well yes. I am River Callahan. Photographer. I used to work with few weeklies but now, I am much of a freelancer. Free of work perhaps is more apt coinage. The last two years, I spent nursing Zaira. She was slowly ripping into a different world. At times we would sit in the same room but I wouldn’t know if she existed. Her pain was the most traumatic thing I have witnessed in my life. There used to be nights when I cried out my eyes. The doctors and medics had given me no reason to believe she would make it. Death is a marginal irony of life, but probably because I had seen her die every day for these two years, death was a happy ending. She knew how much a world she meant to me and also that it wouldn’t replete by mere laws of nature, death. It was the day before she left that she gave me a box and a paper with the address. She didn’t tell me anything, but I knew what she wanted me to do with it. I knew whose address that was. It was only obvious, isn’t it?
I did not have the heart to find out what the box caged. But I was sure it had the leverage of being called as Zaira’s epilogue. I had taken an indefinite break from work. It only made sense to give myself a little time before I could do it. I felt I had been in Seattle forever now. I needed a different air. I burnt all the pictures of me and her, I remember that mahogany fire. Zaira had asked me to do so and you can never question her. I spent days in places like Bordeaux, Malaga, Durban… before finally ending up in Bombay. I visited few villages and temples. I realized how conveniently we loose ourselves over searching the “American Dream”, we foster and impel ourselves into the entourage of cynical clowns. The words we speak and the bread we break seems deprived of austere. But here, the smell of lakes and fields attract skylight in an absolute sense.
I felt the week tour of anterior parts of India had given me enough strength. I had to do what I set out for. I wasn’t putting up far, so I decided to walk down to the place. It wasn’t a difficult place to find. I knocked on the dilapidated door as there wasn’t any bell. A young girl into her teens welcomed me in; she gave me a glass of water. She didn’t ask me a thing and neither did I. It was as if she had been expecting me. Someone called her from inside and I could only smile. Her name was Zaira.
“I had been expecting you”.
I turned my head, a shady voice called from behind.
“You look exactly like the way she described; perhaps it’s the age that figures” I said.
Arif had tears in his eyes but he wouldn’t let them fall. I gave him what belonged to him. I told him I could not open the box myself and he understood exactly why. The reason why he named his daughter after Zaira, the reason why Zaira wanted me to give him that box and the reason why I travelled all the way was only justified now. He opened it. There was a harmonica, a very old one and a picture of them both together. Arif told me that he used to play it, he had lost it, but it only figures what actually happened. Zaira perhaps knew that they weren’t meant to be. Arif smiled. Zaira, am sure was reverting from where ever she was.
“How did you find Bombay?” he asked.
I smiled.
“I have relived Zaira, I have lived Bombay”.
…beyond frames and portraits, the unfolding of the story of it undergoes “amendments” by the on lookers, like selling irony from the satchel of happiness for nickels. Sounds alarming, doesn’t it? But then, we hail from the same genre of wisdom, we are nothing but the henchmen cutting the strings of balloons held by a kid.
The unheard stories and dreams are never welcomed into the dark shadows of our hearts, the chasing of fairytales are rather conspicuous to the crystals in our eyes. Picture a fate being written on the hands of that kid, probably just into his teens, by the sandpapers and leather skins of our shoes? We adore the glitter and glisten of our nails and skin, the timely cup of coffee at home, the coloured pigments of that forty inch screen in living room, life is easy, after all the moolah has bought us the “remotecontrols”
(as it exists, on the other side of the staircase of the railway station)
the professional choices to wonder in their attic is not as fat as it is to us. The deaths by the tracks, the ‘thanedar’ searching for liberty sale on board, chapel wearing gentleman, helpful but as he himself puts it “constrained by the law” magistrate are nothing but some of the occupational hazards, and the occupations? Well hawking, shoe polishing, chai walas etc. the bread and butter are a royalty, so allying with some chillum would release the thrust of hunger, wouldn’t it?
This is the life beside the lines of metal - bricks and bones aren’t unparelled, the ocean is besieged. But we are not anchoring in this muddy water, its atrocious even to have a hunch to spoil the portals of our self inflicted heavens and rhapsodies. We wouldn’t . The fatal tales of numbers and masses, being captured in mere lenses and making more molaah out of it.
The brackets and pyramids are made, with perfections of god…
..when all the compartments are fetching the same destinations, only difference is the colour of the piece of paper you have.
A piteous affectation.
and woefulness of it is, we are still paying to garnish the addendums of our fairytales.
Anchored in Oblivion
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 1:34 PM
0
"world sees what it chooses to see", an interesting statment per se...
'castaways', are they???
a sublime form of human mockery....
'castaways', are they???
a sublime form of human mockery....
orthodoxy embargo
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 1:20 PM
0
in a breath full of time, we try to avail the showers upon us, falling on our eyes, engulfing us with ardor. We seek for the just, we seek for what couldn't be.
We are weaving the fabrics to curtain our pasts against the skylight.
We are weaving the fabrics to curtain our pasts against the skylight.
an open parchment
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 9:44 AM
0
Could you see this?
Or could you not
The empty clouds above
Veiling blood and bargains
Like a parody
Akin to mundane ghosts
Hey you gamine
This is no place to cry
Tramp along with me
Through the whistling woods of irony
Look at
The open windows here
The sky lights in your eyes
Against the shadows and silhouettes
We are all nothing
But street urchins on this land
For we were condemned
While we were asleep
Deep into the lights and oceans of
The superior rule, love
Sing along you little one
For this day of spring
Shan’t be the same
You and I will break bread
You and I shall be friends
You and I shall ride together
The giant wheel
For the people to know
May be just once
You are at the acme
In a niggling time frame
You touch the ground
For he, who is from heaven
Is for heaven!
For all who is gold
Will eventually grow old
For all who live
Shall fall one day
I will be here with you
I will be around
And I will mellow down
With the infinite skies
and a canopy of rains….
Scarlet Capulet, Juliet
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 7:03 PM
0
ROMEO:
Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
JULIET:
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name?
THAT WHICH WE CALL A ROSE
BY OTHER NAME WOULD SMELL AS SWEET
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.
JULIET:
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy.
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name?
THAT WHICH WE CALL A ROSE
BY OTHER NAME WOULD SMELL AS SWEET
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name;
And for that name, which is no part of thee,
Take all myself.
brush strokes, a torn page from Walden, a notepad, a lighter, a gifted parker and half empty bottle of whisky.......
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in hand with two thumbs, hunter thompson, lunacy | Posted on 1:53 AM
0
The peculiarity of a revolving surrounding is that no matter how much alcohol you have in you, the revolutions at a point don’t get faster beyond that very point and even in this muscle abating moments all you see is what you shouldn’t be. From the beginning of these grossly intense moments to the very end of it, your whole life falls apart and before you even know, all the unanswered questions and messes of life are wiped off. A week full of filth and purples of life suddenly become seven pleasant days. The week which saw piling up of files in office, yet another day in solitude which single dome arduously offers, unpaid telephone bills or any other arbitrary bill for that matter and everyday hitting the bells of monotony to a rather excruciating detail and then suddenly, none of it ever existed. All I remember is that old lady at the subway who makes a call every day from the phone- booth, Henry Thoreau, that weird little man and his funny hat standing at the porch , the mirror, the fat lady singing outrageously at the bridge and my empty pack of cigarettes.
A sleep after the macabre times of the night shift would probably have sufficed, but when you ally with Canned Heat, the tendency is to push it as far as u can. It’s funny how your worthlessness is worth celebrating, how your maggot brain finds bliss in your own requiem. I was probably busy planning my funeral. But none of it even slightly had a hint of despair, that’s the beauty of funk—it was getting on me and I was going hubbly bubbly.
Lying there, I was nothing but a morbid soul, it took me a good while to figure out that the vibrations of the train passing by the subway wasn’t an earthquake, it dint haunt me anyways. There were butterflies in me, moving from my one ear to the other, my pupil were following them. I was living a thousand life times with every passing second, envying those light weighted and highly agile insects. In this moment, and off course the subsequent ones to come and also the ones gone by, I played my part of being just a human. Being human, pheww… like we haven’t been pent-up enough, the quinque senses barged in an assault rifle and atrociously shot at us. It’s not worth a damn; after all we smell dough from far but not the smell of rain or earth and are comfortably framed inside our mundane lives surrounded by disdain stares and glares.
How could I not love my relentless path of echoing companionship with the funk filled joints and tipsy boats and have three sheets in the wind and walk drenching in the rain of confetti… bliss ain’t it!?
suspended animation
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 9:39 PM
0
I gaze, amidst the circles
No end ever ends
No beginnings
No pointers in the speedometers
Comfortably drenched
In the waters down the shore
Measures, depths, hours, needs
Non existent to my saline skin
The compass
Failing at all navigations
For the magnetic poles
Are running away from the centre
Hysteria Hysteria
My plight calls
feeding me with definitions
A plunge, a fall…
beyond the conjugation of parallels
________________________________
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 10:54 PM
2
...every second,
every hour,
every day...
whose shoes are you filling?
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 10:13 PM
0
…………...measures, parameters, qualities, worthiness.............
life doesn’t answer questions, it helps frame them… expectations to out do the other, even if it requires to dip out self, grows every second, every day....
why are we looking to fill empty spaces? Rather measure self at least once, find self at least once in the most ancient of the human conditions
…I will meet myself again there and I will know…
"Society, you're a crazy breed. I hope you're not lonely, without me" - from Society by Eddie Vedder.
IF end wasn’t nigh…..
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 10:14 PM
0
if I could rise up
as a Homer's character
and call for ruler
to ebb the inevitable
if I could call you
before its too late
and move my pawns upon you
casting alchemy
if I were to ever know
to define needs and desires
to be hysterically deviant
before it mattered
if I could have seen
what it would been
walking pavements with you
and having an alfresco meal
if I would have keyed
my grandfather’s watch
to exist again in the moment
and dwell on the thought
if I were to ever understand
the sound of clock and
fading pulse of our hearts
to be nigh analogues
if I could have
seen the world’s ends
and ranged my life
between the extremes
if I could have
borrowed your wings
for a span dolled over time
till the lapse of angst
could this be gnarling fate?
or just our folly?
leaving bated breaths and sighs
for there is no time
for there is no tomorrow
to accord with or may be confute
all the static beliefs and floating IFs
absolute blah
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 9:53 PM
2
My being vehement for not-concealing “atrocities” of my ultra magnetic mind must not be misunderstood… after all, the entire world is where it is because of the slender fact that humans have been busy concealing themselves, wrenching to the bone...and still!!...the mordant soul beneath the plane of happiness (not to mention disoriented happiness similar to other corresponding emotions in “present mankind’s” atrocious definitions) claims it to be heartening for the fact that…we conceal ingeniously!!
WHEN...the moon gives it away
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 10:30 PM
1
undone journeys
where do they end?
passing through placid colours
even horizons pretend
scarlets of an early dawn
blues of a cold night
wondering about white dot
a cursed mole or a blurred divine?
is this misery?
on part of the ruler
albeit the clear sky
hearts not lighten enough to comply
behind the walls of disguise
we are piling up nickels
waiting for a serpent's kiss
palms hover around the grey clouds
the warm shallows hound us
to instill a spectacle, but
the zest, the zeal, all succumb
to the pale truth of social grail….
…and here we are, moving on and trying to veil….
Orientation…….UNDO!!
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 9:13 PM
0
where am I standing?
and I don’t really understand.....
horizons, rainy seasons and off season rains for that matter, infant crying for no good reason, being an infant for no good reason, sound of a bottle half filled with water when struck, frowns, national heritage, politikss, misery, fashion, money....
my disoriented profile of time leaves me between the "sky" and "why?"...I love moustaches!!!
Where is the sun?
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 10:23 PM
0
ohh....I stopped only to realise I have come too far...searching and searching...may be I don’t even remember the way back...I wish I had marked my path in some sort of nerdy fashion...
I kept searching and kept digging into the dark...into the virgin realms of my world...places so dark where I could even have seen it’s eyes shine...but I still can’t find it...the only extra baggage on my way back are the memories of my ordeal...and that cent I found...
In this fourth dimension of matter that I am stuck in, I realised that it has been in my palm all the while...it has been inside me all the while...I have now emancipated from the worldly desires...after all I have found my sun!!!
I kept searching and kept digging into the dark...into the virgin realms of my world...places so dark where I could even have seen it’s eyes shine...but I still can’t find it...the only extra baggage on my way back are the memories of my ordeal...and that cent I found...
In this fourth dimension of matter that I am stuck in, I realised that it has been in my palm all the while...it has been inside me all the while...I have now emancipated from the worldly desires...after all I have found my sun!!!
leakage in the tube
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 10:24 PM
0
the hair band slips away and so does the sand, neither of ‘em agree to house in my palm. hold on hold on...i used to be stanch believer of my alma mater…but now I happen to be beneath the shadow of this bizarre tree where cosmic forces conspire together to contradict the obvious…what do I do?? What do I do??
I need to catch my breath now, but I wasn’t running neither was I afraid and yet the lunatic in me urges me to prowl down the causeway… the flag on the spire of the temple is flying…but I don’t feel the gust…my heart is not shrinking, my pulse is not fading…the smell of earth is emboldening me to dwell on my stay here…may be even rinse away the idea of heading back…….
metamorphosis
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 1:22 PM
1
The outlandish in me breeds...suppressing the plausiblities of reasoning. The woods await me, and i await for my rejuvenating self to outgrow my rationalisations.
Characteristics of madness
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 12:08 AM
4
Let me dissolve
With this wind
Thwarts are too many
But not as many as sins
My eccentric revolution
Was I really me?
Or a false being within?
I let go
The bits of papers
Let them fly with the gust
Neither I have no choice
Nor I have an ironic gun
My eccentric revolution
Making me read
The unattributed passages
The words hitting
Faster then bullets
Precarious verbs, I read unperturbed
Was it me,
Or the soul flying,
Lying over that stream of falls
My eccentric revolution
I carry the mystic satchel
Replete with my true self
Untamed, free spirited soul
Confined within perceptions
Like a vividly colourless tree of desire
Floating in an acid bath
Burnt muscles and frail limbs
Unusual pigments in the leaves
My eccentric revolution
Chilling unjust, heaving melodies
Of my voyage to the never land
post-FORENSICS
Posted by ronrage9 | Posted in | Posted on 6:40 PM
3
I see unsolved puzzles
Of broken bricks and bones
Creating shadows, within us
Every step I move towards you
I find myself distant from truth
Then I reach this place
Only to find myself under the sun
But here unlike elsewhere,
The light defines,
Contours of darkness
I confide in this darkness,
What I couldn’t tell you
For I was always condemned
I feel loved in this solitude
I sit by the river and see stones shaping
Just like, my muppet mind
I feel the bliss, I feel life
From my experiences
Running the gamut from mountains to ponds,
I burn those puppets of papers
I say hello to the world
For there is no one to listen
But the trees and the wild...
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
Posts
