I remember looking at rain one fine afternoon from the second-floor window (Kanee Dhaeer) of my ancestral house in Kashmir. My grandfather Tathya, while sipping hot Kahva, Kashmiri tea, was telling me a story about some king who had lost his kingdom. I had irked him by asking continuously why the king had lost his kingdom, why he had to leave his land. Tathya loved to tell stories and I loved to listen them. I loved the way he would punctuate them with his inimitable Te che maej deevi raksha karinay (And may Mother Goddess protect you).
The trail of the long forgotten scents is set in exile. The ancient seeds lost in the belly of earth feel the coming of the drops.
It is raining here today. Some ancient water wells up in my searching eyes. I know windows are absences, absences in the walls. But sometimes windows can themselves get walled in one’s memory as a fixture of a sorts.
I know, there in my village when it rains that empty window, where Tathya told me numerous stories, misses me too. Its empty frame is a picture pregnant with thousand questions. Everybody who has an eye can see the ‘familiar absence’.
Empty windows have always seemed to me as big questions marks. But that was my first window to the world, literally and metaphorically. It was from that window I had for the first time seen the wonders of rain and seasons and the few pretty neighbour girls, whom I later knew I could not have loved any way. So no regrets. Really? Am I speaking the truth! Zorba must be laughing somewhere.
Whenever there is a downpour, I miss that window here. We were the companions of so
many rainy days for years. Those were the days when I would let raindrops fall in my eyes-wide-open that always liked their pure crystal coolness.
I have lost my little window to rain, to my past, to my own small world. I don’t know how that window feels, when no body looks to the new blossoms through it, or the rain or those chirpy red-bottomed Bulbuls.
Today it is raining and night is immensely beautiful. Whenever it rains here, in my room, a few drops of gratitude for that window also fall from my eyes. The absence of that window has somehow added perspective to my life.
Wherever I see, I feel I am seeing through it, or so I imagine or so I want this world to be seen through.
The sound of rain in the windy winter night is immensely beautiful. Cold shivers go down my spine and some ancient longing is awakened. In rain, I feel some one in the distance calling, someone beyond ages, and someone beyond mountains and clouds. I feel the ancient movement and struggles. I feel the beat of ages in the patter of rain. I feel the mystic wriggle.
The primal urges of animal origin or may be the memories of my childhood, or of even beyond, touch the inner strings. Does rain remind us of the comfort of mother’s womb, where everything one needed was showered, just like earth showers rain, sunshine, air on us without asking?
I can still see it clearly, like it was yesterday. The childhood image of looking towards the sky, from the window of my ancestral house. It never leaves me. I used to wonder, from where all these drops come and how high in the sky I could see a single drop and follow its flight and final kiss with earth. Those small pools and the reflection of those cloudy skies in the pools. And the small concentric ripples in those reflections. I used to watch the play of drops for hours. It was then I understood the power of a single drop, how far the ripples go and the fact that they never actually stop.
When it rains a strange unrest clouds my inner sky. There are flashes. In the darkness I see something in the distance so beautiful. I want to go out, far away. Somewhere far far away, where I can dance in the rain, leaving all my clothes far behind–all that covers me, far behind. Just rain and me. Wish Zorba could jump out of Kazantkis’s book and dance with me and become rain.
To a worldly wise it all might seem romanticism. May be that is true. In this shrinking world, and expanding universe, romanticism is a soft lens that masks the imperfections and gives you a feel of the translucent beauty amidst the harsh market realities.
Somewhere an all-pervading voyeuristic eye is noticing our all moves. From orgasm to dress sense, everything possible is being commodified. How to see a dream , how to make love, and how to say no to “How to..” books. Economics is increasingly shaping international relations as well as domestic relations. A simple glass of drinking water is being sold to us with the label “ Ingredients Zero”.
Don’t we need to leave behind our raincoats, and have a direct contact with out any simulation substitutes? Has not the remote controller become our most intimate controller? Has not the window of the computer screen become our Window to the world?
Does a deliberate romanticism or self chosen illusions help us to make the harsh edges palpable. Is mouse taking us down the virtual hole , in a world of end less loops and links.
In the world dominated by media generated hyper-realities, romanticism is at times very therapeutic, a timely antidote, a nice silky cushion over which one sleeps and tries to forget the unforgettable. Did Ghalib say the same thing, when he hummed - ‘Hum ko maloom hian jannat ki hakekat, Par dil ke khush rakhnein ka Ghalib yeh khayal aschha hain’?.
Somewhere in the distance a familiar faint song is in the air. Song of Rajinder Kumar’s film Arzoo. How I love the snow ambience in the song, reminding me of the snowy mountains, near which we lived in Kashmir. Scientists say the Himalayas are still rising, a few centimeters every year. They have grown in these 18 years, like me. Will we also get distanced from our roots slowly, like this? Inch by inch. Will folds obliterate our view ?
This reminds me of what Tathya told me once near the window, when I was low after having lost a cricket match to a rival team, whose captain eyed my neighbour girl: “Nothing stops, in the eternal flux- a drop that we drink today has passed the bellies and veins of billions of organisms. The raindrops the girl next-door receives in her fist must have been once a part of some earlyman’s urine or semen. Learn to see things differently and you will never feel low again. See a thing or a face as if you seeing it for the first time. See thing or a face, as if you are looking a it for the last time ”.
Music, memories and rain have some common link. Some times I feel rain is music of life meandering rhythmically ahead, of falling back into the womb with a thud. The very throb of life. When the first drop fell on the waiting parched lips of earth, was not it the Primal music, the primal sound, the mother of all sounds, that set the symphony going.
Rain saturates my being. Night is immensely dark and wind makes the leaves rustle and stirs primal desires in me. Here they stop. Here it starts again, slowly. Each leaf dances its own unique dance. Unique music. Unique songs.
Rain becomes more severe and patter on the roof is more audible now.
If death comes, it should come in a moment like this–silently without sound of any footsteps. Like a downy feather falling slowly from the nest. Like a long forgotten friend suddenly opening the door and embracing you. Like a song you had heard in the childhood.
Rain. Wafting desire.
Longing. Grey restlessness.
Forgotten umbrella.
Empty wrinkled hands of my nani. The face of mist.
Fading sepia memories.
New seasons. Rain on weathered petals.
Waiting branches of an old decaying tree (Brunn Kull).
Old crow perched on the electric line, drenched in rain, in an intellectual pose.
The shivering puppy looking for a shelter.
The undrenched smile of that girl.
The drop kissing the seed, sleeping in the lap of earth. And the seed sacrificing itself for some future seed, for some future branch, for some future flower dreaming of romancing the elusive moon.
Isn’t rain earth’s answer to eternal quest, eternal invitation for the penetration of its deeper mysteries? Isn’t every raindrop a love letter- of the distant clouds to beloved earth, of desires hidden to the fragrances adrift, of the oceans to the mighty mountains? And doesn’t earth take every letter to its heart and answers later in blossoms, in the freshness of the green grass, in the sweetness of the fruits, in the crystalliness of the gushing mountain springs.
Wish, before my frame returns to the elements or the frame of that window returns to the elements, we meet each other and I am able to watch change of seasons again as I used to with my grandfather Tathya.
Let Tathya’s stories never end, though his own ended half a decade after exodus, exactly on his eightieth birthday, with eyes wide open and looking across Pirpanjal. Tathya still tells stories through me, but in the absence of that familiar window, the stories are missing something. Familiar absence.
Tathya, I still do not understand why the King had lost his kingdom?
The trail of the long forgotten scents is set in exile. The ancient seeds lost in the belly of earth feel the coming of the drops.
It is raining here today. Some ancient water wells up in my searching eyes. I know windows are absences, absences in the walls. But sometimes windows can themselves get walled in one’s memory as a fixture of a sorts.
I know, there in my village when it rains that empty window, where Tathya told me numerous stories, misses me too. Its empty frame is a picture pregnant with thousand questions. Everybody who has an eye can see the ‘familiar absence’.
Empty windows have always seemed to me as big questions marks. But that was my first window to the world, literally and metaphorically. It was from that window I had for the first time seen the wonders of rain and seasons and the few pretty neighbour girls, whom I later knew I could not have loved any way. So no regrets. Really? Am I speaking the truth! Zorba must be laughing somewhere.
Whenever there is a downpour, I miss that window here. We were the companions of so
many rainy days for years. Those were the days when I would let raindrops fall in my eyes-wide-open that always liked their pure crystal coolness.
I have lost my little window to rain, to my past, to my own small world. I don’t know how that window feels, when no body looks to the new blossoms through it, or the rain or those chirpy red-bottomed Bulbuls.
Today it is raining and night is immensely beautiful. Whenever it rains here, in my room, a few drops of gratitude for that window also fall from my eyes. The absence of that window has somehow added perspective to my life.
Wherever I see, I feel I am seeing through it, or so I imagine or so I want this world to be seen through.
The sound of rain in the windy winter night is immensely beautiful. Cold shivers go down my spine and some ancient longing is awakened. In rain, I feel some one in the distance calling, someone beyond ages, and someone beyond mountains and clouds. I feel the ancient movement and struggles. I feel the beat of ages in the patter of rain. I feel the mystic wriggle.
The primal urges of animal origin or may be the memories of my childhood, or of even beyond, touch the inner strings. Does rain remind us of the comfort of mother’s womb, where everything one needed was showered, just like earth showers rain, sunshine, air on us without asking?
I can still see it clearly, like it was yesterday. The childhood image of looking towards the sky, from the window of my ancestral house. It never leaves me. I used to wonder, from where all these drops come and how high in the sky I could see a single drop and follow its flight and final kiss with earth. Those small pools and the reflection of those cloudy skies in the pools. And the small concentric ripples in those reflections. I used to watch the play of drops for hours. It was then I understood the power of a single drop, how far the ripples go and the fact that they never actually stop.
When it rains a strange unrest clouds my inner sky. There are flashes. In the darkness I see something in the distance so beautiful. I want to go out, far away. Somewhere far far away, where I can dance in the rain, leaving all my clothes far behind–all that covers me, far behind. Just rain and me. Wish Zorba could jump out of Kazantkis’s book and dance with me and become rain.
To a worldly wise it all might seem romanticism. May be that is true. In this shrinking world, and expanding universe, romanticism is a soft lens that masks the imperfections and gives you a feel of the translucent beauty amidst the harsh market realities.
Somewhere an all-pervading voyeuristic eye is noticing our all moves. From orgasm to dress sense, everything possible is being commodified. How to see a dream , how to make love, and how to say no to “How to..” books. Economics is increasingly shaping international relations as well as domestic relations. A simple glass of drinking water is being sold to us with the label “ Ingredients Zero”.
Don’t we need to leave behind our raincoats, and have a direct contact with out any simulation substitutes? Has not the remote controller become our most intimate controller? Has not the window of the computer screen become our Window to the world?
Does a deliberate romanticism or self chosen illusions help us to make the harsh edges palpable. Is mouse taking us down the virtual hole , in a world of end less loops and links.
In the world dominated by media generated hyper-realities, romanticism is at times very therapeutic, a timely antidote, a nice silky cushion over which one sleeps and tries to forget the unforgettable. Did Ghalib say the same thing, when he hummed - ‘Hum ko maloom hian jannat ki hakekat, Par dil ke khush rakhnein ka Ghalib yeh khayal aschha hain’?.
Somewhere in the distance a familiar faint song is in the air. Song of Rajinder Kumar’s film Arzoo. How I love the snow ambience in the song, reminding me of the snowy mountains, near which we lived in Kashmir. Scientists say the Himalayas are still rising, a few centimeters every year. They have grown in these 18 years, like me. Will we also get distanced from our roots slowly, like this? Inch by inch. Will folds obliterate our view ?
This reminds me of what Tathya told me once near the window, when I was low after having lost a cricket match to a rival team, whose captain eyed my neighbour girl: “Nothing stops, in the eternal flux- a drop that we drink today has passed the bellies and veins of billions of organisms. The raindrops the girl next-door receives in her fist must have been once a part of some earlyman’s urine or semen. Learn to see things differently and you will never feel low again. See a thing or a face as if you seeing it for the first time. See thing or a face, as if you are looking a it for the last time ”.
Music, memories and rain have some common link. Some times I feel rain is music of life meandering rhythmically ahead, of falling back into the womb with a thud. The very throb of life. When the first drop fell on the waiting parched lips of earth, was not it the Primal music, the primal sound, the mother of all sounds, that set the symphony going.
Rain saturates my being. Night is immensely dark and wind makes the leaves rustle and stirs primal desires in me. Here they stop. Here it starts again, slowly. Each leaf dances its own unique dance. Unique music. Unique songs.
Rain becomes more severe and patter on the roof is more audible now.
If death comes, it should come in a moment like this–silently without sound of any footsteps. Like a downy feather falling slowly from the nest. Like a long forgotten friend suddenly opening the door and embracing you. Like a song you had heard in the childhood.
Rain. Wafting desire.
Longing. Grey restlessness.
Forgotten umbrella.
Empty wrinkled hands of my nani. The face of mist.
Fading sepia memories.
New seasons. Rain on weathered petals.
Waiting branches of an old decaying tree (Brunn Kull).
Old crow perched on the electric line, drenched in rain, in an intellectual pose.
The shivering puppy looking for a shelter.
The undrenched smile of that girl.
The drop kissing the seed, sleeping in the lap of earth. And the seed sacrificing itself for some future seed, for some future branch, for some future flower dreaming of romancing the elusive moon.
Isn’t rain earth’s answer to eternal quest, eternal invitation for the penetration of its deeper mysteries? Isn’t every raindrop a love letter- of the distant clouds to beloved earth, of desires hidden to the fragrances adrift, of the oceans to the mighty mountains? And doesn’t earth take every letter to its heart and answers later in blossoms, in the freshness of the green grass, in the sweetness of the fruits, in the crystalliness of the gushing mountain springs.
Wish, before my frame returns to the elements or the frame of that window returns to the elements, we meet each other and I am able to watch change of seasons again as I used to with my grandfather Tathya.
Let Tathya’s stories never end, though his own ended half a decade after exodus, exactly on his eightieth birthday, with eyes wide open and looking across Pirpanjal. Tathya still tells stories through me, but in the absence of that familiar window, the stories are missing something. Familiar absence.
Tathya, I still do not understand why the King had lost his kingdom?
This is a very moving piece Neeraj. Please keep writing and posting on your blog. We are following.
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