Twilight Reflections
Warm words, cold days
It's cold, not the kind that makes you frozen but the one that touches your bones, makes you shiver from the bottom of your spine. It's cold and your soul stops and tries to breathe warmly but can't, because it is in between and confused, because your soul loves all things comfortable, food, weather, bed. She is born in the land of obhiman and allad, she is not used to such metallic shocks. When the fog travels to your veranda and creates the illusion of a fantasy, and through it all you see the outline of children far away in the streets sharing a blanket and body warmth, you step out and give them a sweater or two. But you know and they know you do not have enough for all of them. Yet they still smile, some follow you home, others run to find the last parked bus to sleep under. At home, you look through your books, the pile that needs to be organized and reorganized. You seek words that will hug your inside. You pick up 'Master and Margarita', Mikhail Bulgakov's devil's visit. You quickly put it down because it reminds you of Russia in its darkest hours and perhaps the most creative. But creativity alone does not bring warmth and so you move on to something that you read more than once, like 'Catcher in the Rye' by J.D. Salinger. You think of your teenage years and how this book had summed up all things inside so well. But that too seems distant and phony, so you skip Holden Caulfield. You touch Sarat Chandra and 'Borodidi' makes you want to cry, so you move on to Rabindranath's short stories, and luckily they keep you distracted for a while, until you touch 'Noshto Neer'. And Tagore reminds you, “Shohoj sukh, shohoj noi†- easy comfort isn't easily achieved. So you put that down as well, no books about home wrecks and lost love is a match for the winter. Almost lost between Jhumpa Lahiri and Vikram Seth you find Arvind Adiga's 'White Tiger'. The first chapter might warm you up, even if there is a smell of cold blooded murder. You laugh because Adiga knows how to make you do so. You move on to Daniyal Mueenuddin's “In other room other wonders,†and that is when you realize winter is for short stories. Winter cannot be a novel, because all things you touch in the winter must have the sense of a quick ending; you must know it is temporary. And you must remember that all throughout. While the children look for buses and pipes to sleep under and inside, and the thought of them makes you feel colder inside, you do not have enough sweaters to keep them warm. But you hope some others do. You distract yourself. You pick up a new collection of short stories, though perhaps not the ones of Edgar Allan Poe or Bankim but those of Shirsendu and Zafar Iqbal, of Tom Rachman and Jennifer Egan. You stay away from all things that last long and make your soul heavier than it already is. You take it all in ---small bites, warm bites, and you know it will be over soon. And you wait for the universe to lift up its heaviness from all shivering souls and warm words enter and exit your eyesight, like a winter fling. And that is how you realize winter does not last forever. All things, absolutely all things, have an end.
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