I need ...

From the Victoria Memorial, Kolkata.

On my way to office in the morning, I start early to office these days, about 8.30 in the morning, to beat the traffic mainly, and its about that time all the little kids ride out to their schools. And today, I was rather slowly riding, listening to by black cat's sweet purring, and this queer scene caught my eyes.

She was a very little girl, tiny infact, perched on the back of a black Bajaj Avenger cruiser bike, and her dad was in front, on the way to drop her at school. She had a typical oversized green school sweater that reached almost till her knees, covering her skirt. A bit of her checquered skirt was though still visible on one of her legs. She had one feet of her placed on the pillion's footrest, and this left her in a queer position of having to hang the other leg free in the air on the other side as her legs were not long enough to rest both of them on footrests. Still, her tiny shoes were not falling off for the little buckles. She had nowhere to hold on that black beast, and could only huddle onto her dad's shirt in a full embrace, but even in full stretch, her hands were barely reaching till his rib cage. Her head as a result had to be held to a side, with her cropped hair constantly being ruffled by the wind. She had a pale face and I couldn't exactly decide whether she was smiling as the wind caressed her face.

I passed the Avenger in a minute, and for a moment, she looked up and through my helmet's visor, my eyes locked with hers. They still had that indecipherable expression in them.

Would he be loving his daughter so much, doting on to her, like Rhett Butler, when he would pet and love his little blue eyed girl, Bonnie Blue Butler? Taking her to walk with him in the evenings, adjusting his large strides with her tiny steps, and answering her thousand questions. Maybe taking her for a ride in his black beast, with her perched in the front, her hair blown back by the wind.

And she, what would she be feeling. Her life is just starting, there's so much of it awaiting for her to breeze through. So far away from now, would she need him then, just the way she needs him now? And ... would she ever regret having to need him like this now?

Take me back, to the rivers of belief ...

Take me back, to the rivers of belief
Take me back, to the rivers of belief,
My friend
I look inside my heart
I look inside my soul
I promise you,
I will return

-- The Rivers of Belief, Enigma, MCMXC a. D.

Dreamless ...

From an exhibition of fashion illustration at Alliance Francaise ...

At night my mind does not much care
If what it thinks is here or there.
It tells me stories it invents
And makes up things that don't make sense,
I don't know why it does this stuff.
The real world seems quite weird enough.

-- Bill Watterson, The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes.

Cue ...

There's nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly ....

.....

.... but he remembered how he stood on the terrace and saw her leaping over a high green hedge at the end of the lawn. The hedge seemed too high for her little body; he had time to think that she could not make it, in the very moment when he saw her flying triumphantly over the green barrier. He could not remember the beginning nor the end of that leap; but he still saw, clearly and sharply, as on a square of movie film cut out and held motionless forever, the one instant when her body hung in space, her long legs flung wide, her thin arms thrown up, hands braced against the air, her white dress and blond hair spread in two broad, flat mats on the wind, a single moment, the flash of a small body in the greatest burst of ecstatic freedom ....

 -- Gurusagaram, O. V. Vijayan.

Resonance ...

Blue guitar of mine ...

Taking my guitar out after eons, I undertook the painstaking task of tuning it. Tuning the guitar is some part of this whole exercise that I like much. The blue guitar, tuned long long back, I had kept it with slacked strings so as not to bend the bow over a long period. Now how does this process of tuning it makes you smile? Resonance. You tighten the lower string, listen to it, and as you have no reference, what you can do is make sure that it sounds sweet. Now you tighten the upper string, to just about the same tautness. Then you start from the first fret of the upper string, press your left index finger on the string, and strum it together with the lower. And you listen for resonance. No, it is not to be heard, they are both beating in frequencies off by miles, and the beats die down fast. You move to the second fret, press the finger again, and strum. Beats, but you note with a little dismay, no resonance yet. You move again, to the next fret. Same dying beats. Next, and the next and the next. And then just about when your starting to frown, you have pressed your finger on some fret, and strummed it together with the lower.

'Clinggggg ...' .. again .. 'Clinggggg ...'

Like a distant church bell tolling, the strings are beating together, resonating, like a beautiful circle that feeds itself, and you, have that stupid smile on your face, just the same one you'd have inside when your girl bursts out laughing for the horrible PJ you just cracked.

And I smile for a few seconds more, listening to the church bells again ... and again.

:-)