Ruminations
Bohemian memories
Was it the spirit of good people or the good spirit that allowed for celebration of goodness in people? Whatever it was, the harmony between laughter and Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu was blending well. She was sitting under the blue sky in the middle of verdant green of a winery cleansed and freshened by the previous day's rain shower. The twilight was fused with amber warmth. The hint of slight fragrance in the air came from the south side of the pond where the dense foliage of honeysuckle was growing wild and left untouched. It was empyrean beauty. She sat still, closing her eyes, while savouring the blended crescendo of wind, music and laughter, but not words. Hers is the boundary that crosses speech into silence. In it she finds an outpouring of self through the compulsion to reach within, a kind of oblivion to her history of becoming. It is a terrain on which she has come to depend as some kind of transcendence to the sprinklings of finding her real self. And then, for a fleeting few seconds, she lingered over a set of recent palaver. "Are you awake? Where hast thou gone missing?" "Ah, what a delicious idea to go missing! But why do you do this? It's too early for a call. Dakle keno?" "Daak diyechhi tomar hashi upobhog korar jonno. Je ankhi te ato hashi lukano shei ankhi te shopno kurhabar jonno. Listen. Listen gently. Can you hear the bird songs?" "Yes. Beautiful. What a magical way to begin the day." "Enjoy this offering as much I enjoy hearing your morning voice. It lights up a whole world!" There was in his prose some signal of sensitivity and empathy that she sensed as a kindred spirit in some way. Someone who might understand, hear. When it was time to speak, in him a listener appeared. In silence she contemplated: in you, through you, for me there are moments to understand, to balance. Yet, you are not a friend who can hold caringly in times of need. I speak with you as an existence out there somewhere. Thus you take a form and become real. She wanted to give herself permission to be friends. How do I outlaw this feeling? A feeling just is; it is not right or wrong. 'Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. It is a prison.' She smiled while affirming with Shakespeare's Hamlet! For her, it was an aesthetically valid self-realization. She wanted to be unbiased, to commit to herself, to her own rights. In her there was a constant need to remove her subjective self from happenings. She felt a lack of some things, a strange sense of being lost in the soul; a sense of some things she needed. Overall, hers was a happy story, yet tucked away somewhere were gray days. When she looked closely at the context, the sequence, a story not of a day but of a lifetime, she asked what was the price of happiness. Was she a prisoner of her own predilection? She opened her eyes and tried to reconnect with the argument Barkha was pursuing so passionately. "In the scheme of life we all do the needful. Is that not normal? With the coming of age and experience a sense of vacuum, a challenge always remains. No matter how we arrange words to rationalize commitments, it is after all our interpretation when it comes to relationships. The parameters we define for ourselves; is it really self-imposed or is it the unconscious acceptance of the prescribed?" "It is intriguingly elementary. In naturalness of living I discovered beautiful nuances in many, some carried dialogues well, a few had melodious voice, others recited well, others were well read, and yet others carried themselves well. I appreciate these qualities, to the discomfort of many and mine. And yet neither did I love nor make love to any. When I am closer to my truth, I am me. When one dissociates from such figurations there is less pain, but also less joy. One only half lives. We are equal to life's givings. Why not live the fullness of life?" She laughed, adding, "And so I live in the midst of a paradox are my passions, my desires, acts of an amateur? Someone whose best attempt at living life never exceeds the payoffs of mere dabbling…is it ever enough to discover oneself? And so, should I curse or laugh at myself and life?" Coming down the slope, balancing a tray filled with ambrosial delicacies, Pawan interjected. "Ah, yes! Do I hear the rhetoric of self and I? Remember the tidings of D. H.: 'This accidental meeting of possibilities calls itself I. I ask: what am I doing here? And, at once, this I becomes unreal.' My dear, this I is not yours! Our frames of assumptions are constructed. What self wants I cannot get, because of that invisible reach of impositions." To which Barkha added, 'Eloquently put. Now let me borrow from him, 'My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life!' Sipping the aged Porto Tawny she made a mental note: these two are a pair in their thoughts and deliberations. "So, let us continue. Here is to incredible life. Cheers!" Pawan's vigorous gesture of Cheers caught her by surprise. Streams of memories are like pearl hyacinths. In spite of a tempestuous touch they persist in stubborn constancy. Cheers, my Lady is what he ended his conversations with. The same words wove a different story, for another time, for another instance. At this moment it was the unsayable for her. She reached for the invisible mien within and said quietly, 'Cheers!'
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