Bedlam of battle

Here, in a room of one’s own, we collect the detritus of yester years. We present to any reader who cares to listen, vignettes of the wasteful war. We who have never lain maimed under the drilled corpse of a comrade or looked at physical brutalities with shell-shocked stupor.What shall we ever know of hell’s upsurge in the dark story of arms and the men? But then ‘English poetry is not yet fit to speak of them’ and battle shall always remain the enervating truth glossed over by whispers of Pro Patria Mori.

Geisha

:P...thats David. By the way, thought you should know that the liberties taken have nothing to do with symbolism[like- the yawning gap in the place of the face do not depict the effacing effects of modernity]

Two to Tango

Ballerina

After one year and a handful of months, I went back to sketching on photoshop...so am feeling quite good. This one remotely resembles a ballerina[hopefully] although I initially wanted to draw a couple waltzing.

20th September '07

I saw a particularly insufferable B-grade horror flick today which would have made the devil nosedive straight into the deep blue sea if he were to see it. It had this schmuck suffering from a perpetual bad hair night and whose pancake make-up seemed to have given her a bad case of anaphylactic shock. She sprinted with a dagger; she whirled around in a Brownian motion and did other things which any self respecting spirit wouldn’t do. So I took out my shoes and took myself out in the al fresco.

The Dhakuria Bridge is like a carelessly cluttered montage of sorts. You can stand still while people hustle by and watch a solitary stranger fan out bright red rags on the railroad tracks. Or the kite frozen in suspended animation while street children caper around with arms splayed. Mottled skyline as the light peters out. Birds on their flight back home. And an occasional heart etched out on the bridge by nameless lovers. Once upon a half forgotten time I walked up and saw the lightening flash across the length of the sky.

Starry Night

The night crawls in and lengthens the shadows across the room. A flattened, larger than life parody in two dimensions that flickers on the wall, bends at the corners, looms from the ceiling. So an aphonic giant keeps you company tonight and counts love’s abuses on your face. What seamless dream sequence woke you up from your troubled sleep and what spasmodic memories keep you awake? Do you bury your ears between your knees to stop the ticking of the bifurcated arms of time or do you lie on the floor and stare at the piece of sky outside your matchbox apartment? Do you try to talk to God, perchance He is still awake or will you hide behind your smokescreen?

Look, while we talk soft grey pencil lines of willowy clouds break and the stars chart their silent pilgrimage across night’s immutable face. Don’t say that maybe we shall lose this tonight as it turns into yet another yesterday; for I have learnt that nothing is really lost. Fast fading faces of loved ones, blurred memory of a happy day, the indefinite felicity of childhood when we thought the sun shone for us …they coalesce till they can no longer be evaluated objectively but stay with us as ‘spots of time’. The fact that we can’t see something doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. Maybe it just walked by while you were trapped in a phantasmagoria of your own making. So put out the light and siphon off the shadows on the wall. Go to sleep…it’s a new day tomorrow.

Hey you, juggling pieces of fragmented dreams, are you going my way? I see you standing on sidelines, riddled with your run of the mill existence, too afraid to move, too tired to stay. Shrug…you don’t have to carry your weight and if you had enough of seeing giants in windmills…look elsewhere for you don’t have to die today. Who told you life would answer some questions? Instead it made you question some answers. Life doesn’t come with subtitles, darling or with user friendly manuals. It just comes with an offer you can’t refuse.