Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man

It has been raining for past three days non-stop and I’m stuck inside my house, unable to go anywhere outside. In this overwhelming boredom I drowsily watch the rain drops play hide and seek on my window panes. Outside the heavy gunmetal-grey clouds with its long drawn out face hover silently, covering the whole length and breadth of the sky, much like a tiger who scratches the trees, thereby marking its territory. Disillusioned, I walk back inside. With nothing in immediate sight that I could occupy myself with, I decide to tune into some old Bob Dylan track and drown myself in one of his songs. It’s the Tambourine Man that I somehow feel like listening. There is some strange quality, something almost mystic, that time and again draws me to this song, a reason that I just simply can’t express in words. And since it was the first ever song that got me, perhaps for ever, hooked to Dylan, I do have a somewhat nostalgic attitude towards it.
My love affair with Bob Dylan began when I was twelve years old. It was a school prom and the theme of the event was the Turbulent Sixties. Some of my seniors, who had already belonged to some rock band, instead of playing some groovy number, began out of the blue to play the quintessential Dylan track, Tambourine Man. I’m still at a loss to explain as to why they did that. But the effect, at least on me, was electric. I never heard something as mellifluous and heart-rending as this song. At that time I couldn’t grasp what the singer was trying to say. It was too over the top for me, child that I was. But as time went by I began to explore more of Dylan, and comprehension, albeit slowly, began to dawn on me. However, even now I can’t describe fully as to why I’m so drawn towards this particular number of his. The anti-war track Blowin’ in the Wind and the totally surreal, almost nightmarish vision of a nuclear holocaust in It’s a Hard Rain’s A-gonna Fall were beautiful. But there was something in Tambourine Man that I could so very well identify with. The song is pretty much simple. But the profound meaning that it seeks to convey and through such striking words, like take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind/down the foggy ruins of time, is what endears the song close to my heart. It’s interesting how some have interpreted the song as a covert hymn to drugs [savor these lines: take me on a trip/on your magic swirling ship]. But to me nowhere do I find any allusion, whether covert or overt, to drugs, even though the words “Trip” do suggest a sly reference to drugs. To me the song encapsulates within it the ultimate desire of a person to become one with Music so much so that all the pain and sorrow of this corporeal world recedes to some remote aberration of the mind. But the song is much more than that. It can also be read as a passionate plea to remove the stultifying effects of politics and religion from the face of civilization and to devote oneself into the true religion of Art. Moreover, this song through its sensuous lyricism speaks of poetry and music and even painting [suggested by its painterly imagery] as being one and the same thing, in other words, as part of the same subject, and that’s where the ultimate power of the song resides. At the end of the day, it’s a song that seeks to define an Artist as the harbinger of hope and optimism to a whole multitude of humans torn apart in greed and hatred.

A Crossword Safari

It was only the other day when having received my much awaited pocket-money, I decided to hit the humble portals of Crossword. For the unaccustomed, I would like to chirp in that it’s an invigorating experience, after a month long hiatus, to rummage through the cream colored leaves of a luscious new paperback. And for an unrepentant bibliophile, for whom I’ll proudly qualify, it’s like discovering an oasis in the midst of the deserts of Arizona. Anyway, off I went striding on a Nagpur safari, a khaki hat perched on my head and my wallet for a gun. For us bibliophiles spending some time in a book shop can be very analogous to a brief stint in Heaven, or better still in a Mughal harem! It certainly won’t be an exaggeration to say that while hunting for the book that would satiate my intellectual appetite for the next coming month, I had no idea that an hour had already elapsed. I could visualize myself as Robert Langdon going after the Holy Grail! It was a nerve racking hunt though, through the Amazon of wood pulp and dog-eared copies of my favorite books. No matter how pleasurable an experience this could be, yet one tragic thing about book hunting is that you are placed in the company of the books that you always wanted to pour yourself into but can’t, perhaps because your pocket ain’t heavy enough to sustain the weight of these volumes. It’s like an individual suffering from loose motion, one who is placed in a sanctuary of meals that he can’t eat, much because his stomach ain’t heavy enough to sustain the weight of all the food. In short, suffice it to say, that I was in a fix. Several books loomed before me, their fresh aroma, like an enchantress, trying to entice me, but I had to choose only one. There on that bookshelf was kept a collection of Wordsworth’s complete sonnets, a volume I really wanted to possess. As I began towards it my eyes caught a second shelf where Keats was awaiting me or the third shelf where Dickens was standing with open arms…All these volumes swirled around my head and I began to feel a little inebriated. I began to look hither and thither, trying with all my might to focus my attention on a single book, but to no avail. Having drenched all my energies, I sat down with a thump on a nearby stool, my face in my hands, like Rodin’s The Thinker.
You must be wondering how I resolved my predicament. Well the simple answer is that I couldn’t. I committed one of the most unpardonable crimes that can ex-communicate me from the Society of Geeks and Bibliophiles; I quitted Crossword without buying a single book. Back at home, with a heavy heart, I try jotting down my painful story and like all bibliophiles I take refuge in philosophy, and a comforting thought surges from within me: “life is like spending an hour in Crossword; you never know what you’re gonna get”.

Morning Blues

Early morning, I wake up
Toaster burnin',
The stove turnin',
My cell-phone ringin'
A hot black coffee
Against the techno beat.
A dusty sunlight filters in
Through the ragged curtains
Gotta go uptown
But the car ain't workin'
An iron monster clogged in the road.
Time, that old fool
Just a crawling corpse now
Gotta go uptown
Another tavern to cross
Another signal to break
Achy, breaky day
Where will you take me?

A Reunion

It was 7:00 a.m. The alarm was ringing in full swing. My mother (as if the alarm wasn’t enough) told me, in a very curt way of course, to show a leg. When I retorted back saying this was Sunday, she in her usual calm way reminded me that my college assignment was pending which I need to submit in a week’s time. Just great! Sometimes I kind of wonder how I’m living a life equivalent of a cheese macaroni gone stale!
Anyway, I woke up and did my daily chores. Just as I was about to sit for my assignment when the phone rang. It was my friend who had called in to wish me for the Friendship’s Day. Its funny how one can get so entangled in his daily humdrum life that days such as this slips from the vortex of one’s mind. After talking about a little bit, my friend invited me for a small reunion of our school mates. But I curtly declined the offer saying I was busy with my assignment. My friend did not coax or cajole me but said that it would have been better if I could join them. For a while I debated my possible options. I knew that this was a rare opportunity to get together with old school mates I had long lost touch with. So after a little contemplation I decided to go for the reunion.
When I reached the venue, I felt as I was standing in the midst of strangers for I could no longer recognize my friends. Some whom I had always known to be of short stature were now suddenly looking tall and full grown. For a minute I felt as if this was some illusion, a mirage perhaps. But no it was something stranger than a mirage. It was Time. We went for a long drive through the city, shouting, yelling and pulling each other’s leg as we used to do when in school. Assignments, project reports and exams shifted to some deep aberration of our minds. Just for a little while we had all lost our maturity and behaved like a child. Some of my friends were now doctors, some engineers and some into other fields. But there was something that bound us all together no matter how different fields we were in – our memories. We knew that in just a little while we would all be dispersed again, lost again in our daily routine. Yet we lived for the present.
Four years after leaving school when I look back at those carefree days, I do get a little nostalgic. Now in the silence of the midday sun, working strenuously on my assignment, I crave desperately for those days when life didn’t mean planning ahead for the future but living in the present.

My dreams begin to fade as I linger listlessly through this deserted town. The streets are all empty and a doleful breeze blows gently singing a dirge for faces long forgotten and memories long lost. The trees seem bent with an eternal grief and I could hear the silent, moaning whisper of the leaves as Beauty slowly dissolves, like sugar in the rain.

A day in a Coffee House

Darkness falls and colors begin to fade. A low, faint light illuminates the coffee house, anonymous and unknown in this nameless town where dreams die as soon as they are born. The not-so-hot-not-so-cold coffee slowly brews as I rummage through my worn out copy of Ulysses.

Come up Kinch. Come up you fearful Jesuit

Yes thats better. The half-ajar door opens with a silent creaking sound and a man with a long drawn face slowly enters and occupies a lonely seat in a secluded corner.

In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning between their grey attires....

The man's cell phone suddenly rings.

"Yes honey I'm speaking."

"Yes I know."

"I've signed the papers and you can sign them too. They are in our bedroom drawers.”

“I understand.”

“I’ll hang up now….take care….see you someday soon…bye…"

The man’s long drawn face suddenly turns ashen. He clings closer to his black over-coat, taking refuge in its warmth. Joey comes near him, a notebook in hand.

“What would you like to have sir?”

The man looks up and stares at Joey’s plump face for what seems like an eternity. Barely audible, he replies as if words had died somewhere in his throat:

“Nothing. I was just about to leave.”

He slowly gets up and walks to the door. As he passes by me, the fringe of his black coat gently brushes against my skin, and at what seemed, from a distance, tiny pearls trickling down, I saw tears glistening in his eyes. Outside thin drops of rain falls in the darkness. With a deep sigh I return back to my Ulysses. Yes reading, the only true source of oblivion.

Outside my window

        Here I am
        A worn out man staring outside a worn out window
        At dilapidated houses with dilapidated people.
        Above me the spider slowly weaves its nest
        And a mosquito sings its lonely strain
        Outside, the grimy cars come and go
        Dry, droning, despair
        A little afar off, a woman cries
        A little afar off, a child laughs
        Under the afternoon sun, the kids are playing with their hoopla-hoop
        And Tommy the dog barking at Gina the maid.