You wake me up in the middle of the night and give me a dream to follow.
I once used to chase dreams like a little boy chases butterflies – with joy in his eyes, jumping over the rocks in his path with ease – until my innocence was stolen and the world became ugly.
The dream you show me stirs me up. I don’t know if now’s any different, but I will take it. Chase it against the setting sun and the puffy clouds and alpine forests. As long as it will keep me alive. This dream.
Part Two of a post I’d written earlier. Follows the invention of reproduction (asexual).
* * *
Why sex was one of life’s greatest inventions.
1. Organisms (molecule systems, qv) were reproducing by fragmentation and continued survival.
2. The pieces that resulted could live, and found new ways of doing old things / new things to do.
3. Therefore, most new babies belonged to different groups, some closer to a few others in structure / mechanisms, and farther from others.
4. In another accident, two forms which were different came close and fused together when say, a wave hit them into togetherness.
5. The wall between them dissolved (?), and they became one system.
6. It was one hell of an uncomfortable situation. But they found they were having a lot of new things inside them (which actually has now become “it”). This was nature’s first act of sex. Divine. Beautiful.
7. It liked the new things. It was happier than the rest of the “singles.”
8. When this chimera fragmented into new babies, they lived better. They were the first family.
9. More and more of these sexual acts happened. More and more organisms found mates and had sex. They together became their own babies before they fragmented.
10. These sexual beings lived better.
Ergo, sex.
Ergo, improvement.
Ergo, diversity.
One of the few theories about life that I’ve been trying to write down over the past few months / years. Not as much a theory as a celebration of the beauties of life.
* * *
Why reproduction was one of life’s greatest inventions:
1. There were a few molecules.
2. They reacted with one another, again and again, for millions of years.
3. They learnt to do things.
4. They were happy.
5. They learnt to do more things.
6. Not all of them stayed organised for long periods. Some of them got hit by waves / rocks / whatever, and disintegrated (read died), no longer able to “do things.” However, more accidents happened as time went by, and more molecule systems appeared.
7. One day, one of the molecule systems which could do things, accidentally broke in half (?).
8. At least one of the halves survived.
9. More of the pieces became larger, and more of them broke apart. More of them survived.
10. A group of molecule systems had found a new thing to do: be able to break apart and try to make the pieces continue “living.
11. These molecule systems were happier, for as the pieces grew larger, disintegration to oblivion was prevented by their own “break but preserve” mechanism.
12. These happier systems continued to live through their pieces.
13. The mechanisms of “doing things” did not have to be invented all over again each time by each new molecule system, as those that lived through fragmentation carried all / most of those mechanisms in them. So the ones that lived on now could concentrate on improvisation – finding newer things to do, and newer ways to do older things.
14. Some of these newer ways were better than the older ones. They lived longer and made more (successful and surviving) babies than the systems with the older ways of doing things.
Ergo, reproduction.
Ergo, selection.
Ergo, life.
Writing this poem has been to me the end of a delusion and the beginning of a search. It is long, but do read it all: you might understand what I mean when I say that this has been a deeply personal pilgrimage for me.
(Blogger doesn’t allow me to use the tab key. Hence I’ve used bold fonts for alternating lines to improve readability. Using bold fonts has no other significance.)
* * *
Nightly train journeys
lead me to the inevitable:
The chilly winds stir up memories of a winter
we refused to pull down the shutters,
And the incessant sway of the coach makes me thank
the long, long train journey that brought you to me.
I promised myself to get over this nostalgia;
But that was a promise that couldn’t stand against
an unyielding love, or the night train home.
My mind wandered on into abandoned territory,
and I let it:
Perhaps a little pain can cure the numbness
of my heart.
I bypass the lunches under the margosa
and the cycling on flat tyres,
And walk to the day of the missing mistletoe
and the quick hug on the doorstep:
That was the day you opened the windows
and showed me the stars.
Then there was the story of a seer who predicted
an inseparable friendship;
There were days when we discussed
part-time gods and misshapen universes.
There were nights with Gibran
and storms in inkpots,
And there was the magic of an addictive smile
that did what a thousand battles couldn’t.
When you met me on those corridors that summer, you and your fragrance
defined home to me like nothing else.
You gave me colour and meaning,
and the memory of a sleepless, frigid summer.
You gave me Gandalf in return for my Dumbledore,
and a love story that kills and resurrects.
We built an eternal soap bubble and sucked time out of it,
and filled it with our souls and quizbooks.
And then the days when under a fan with four blades
you fed me a spoonful of life,
Followed by the night I spent under the moon
looking at your face and guessing your dreams;
And there’s the bittersweet pain in the memory of the day
I feared I didn’t deserve you:
You took me so close in your arms and whispered,
“Would you talk about you deserving yourself?”
You gave me a challenge, a box of chocolates and questions to answer.
You gave me dreams to chase, that will overflow a lifetime.
That was a long ago summer in a far away country,
and a far away happiness –
Because for reasons that I do not know exist,
I lost the soap bubble and my soul along with it:
My deciduous delights were exactly that.
–
By another train journey I reach our semi-arid tropics;
it is summer again.
I’ve made this journey many times before
but it never was this painful;
Down pour memories of a violet ink and yellow envelopes
I no longer use,
And of the very next summer I came to say goodbye
and you gave me a mock embrace.
I’ve been many things and places since, but one thing I haven’t felt
in five years, is home.
That mocking, jeering, disheartening hug of yours,
made the first crack in my heart.
Then one day you crossed the road
forgetting me, and leaving me behind you.
Then came the day you told me your dreams were your own
and your plans are but your business.
You told me you wouldn’t correct me any longer, nor should I,
for there are limits!
Because however close two universes come, you said,
there is always a fine line separating them.
That was when we stopped debating and started arguing –
we were on that one way road.
What followed wasn’t a blur, it was one long moment
of unacknowledged oblivion
My silence and your insouciance,
broken promises and fatal changes –
Were you tired of me, or was it somebody else?
Was it the different places that we had to go?
Or was I just a compromise and a stand-in until
somebody else walked in?
There was a day I said I was going to miss you,
that I will wait, come back for you.
(Such a cliché. You answered with a line that could be
a writer’s delight).
You said you wouldn’t miss me, that you will stay
with yourself, wherever you go.
That was the last time I expected someone to wait for me;
the last time I ever counted myself in.
I befriended the moon and conducted a lunar love affair,
and added my tale to his long repertoire.
There were long nights on the stairs when
tears wiped all thought away.
I shredded your letters and burnt my diaries, but still you haunt my dreams –
this is the one promise you’ve kept.
Disappointment. Humiliation. These were your choicest words for me when I needed you.
Was acceptance impossible? Had understanding gone out of fashion?
That was the final blow, the final crack in my crumbling heart.
That was when I forgot what emotion meant.
The chirping of birds and glorious sunsets no longer meant anything:
I went to bed with the Reaper’s daughter called despair.
The passage of time didn’t make sense anymore.
Years passed and my wounds didn’t heal, didn’t bleed.
Worldly fortune was fair to me and humoured
the glutton I became trying to fill an invisible void;
But all the cities I’ve been to had nothing to offer
to fill this obstinately dead void.
I tried to run away from it, tried to
wash myself of everything life refused to give me;
I absconded the man in white and the smiling woman who taught us life;
in a happy, happening rich world, I became numb.
I only did not realize that in this great escapade,
I was running away from myself.
But today, here I stand in this grand little town
we once called home.
The green patch where once we sat entwined, and the bench where I waited for you,
are still there and enquire about you;
Someone mentions Physics and my heart skips a beat, and I visit
shady Attar shops in search of a lost Arabian perfume;
The noisy summer wind however, is not accompanied
by your voice, nor do I feel your breath on my face.
And I realize, the melody in your arms
might never again claim me.
Our library asks me questions I dared not acknowledge,
and our corridors rebuke my numbness;
People ask me where you are and I say
somewhere up north, having fun;
And my eyes lose their dryness
and regain a depth I deemed impossible.
In our dusty little town that gave us raw mangoes
and exalted purposes,
I realised it was time I looked for the pieces
and started picking them up.
Plaques and pictures brought me home
from the emptiness I madly sought:
I can’t live in an uninviting yesterday
in a lost world;
Because I am human and my search for permanence
is capable of looking beyond one eternity that decided to be ephemeral.
Nor can I annihilate those memories
which lie at the heart of all I am;
Nor can I desert our dreams which still fuel my days
and court the stars.
–
Epilogue
I don’t want to be a dead phoenix.
I want to rise again, just like I did every time I fell
before you happened.
There is a world you gave me.
There is a world you stole from me.
And there is an insane moment when the two come frighteningly close,
and a moment of horror when they converge.
I live in that impossible moment.
Anything else would be just a mediocre imitation of life.
A decision is imminent:
The lights are dimmed, and I need to take
a blind turn.
Yes, I am ready.
For if the Giver of Things asks me now,
what’s the one thing I want to clutch to my bosom forever,
I am no longer sure what the answer would be.
And I want to find out.
KISHORE KUMAR
I remember the days
Of the green vales
And the blue lakes
And the long drives along them
I have later moved
From small town to city
From Faber-Castell to Staedtler
From basic science to medicine
Now I miss the vales
And the lakes and the drives
But what I miss most
Is the face in the passenger seat
KISHORE KUMAR
The old dreams were good dreams. They didn’t work out, but I’m glad I had them
ROBERT JAMES WALLER, The Bridges of Madison County
kilroykishore 