Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense.

- Rumi


Wednesday, June 12, 2013

ഒളിത്താവളം

പറ എടുക്കാൻ ആന വരുമ്പോൾ ഓടി മുറിയുടെ ഒരു കോണിൽ ഒളിക്കുന്നത്‌ പോലെ, ആരെയോ നഷ്ട്ടപെടും എന്നോർത്ത് സങ്കടം   വരുമ്പോൾ രാത്രി പുതപ്പിന്റെ അടിയിൽ മൂടി ഒളിക്കുനതുപോലെ, മഴ  വരുമ്പോൾ വഴിവക്കിലെ ഒരു വാർത്ത‍ മേല്ക്കൂരയ്ക്ക് കീഴെ ഒളിക്കുന്നതുപോലെ, ഒറ്റയ്കാകുമ്പോ ഓടി ഒളിക്കാൻ ഉള്ള ഒളിത്താവളങ്ങൾ ആണ് നമുക്ക് ഇഷ്ട്ടമുള്ള ഓരോ ആളും, ഓരോ വിനോദവും. എല്ലാ ഇഷ്ട്ടങ്ങളിലും നാം കണ്ടെത്തുന്നത്   നമ്മളെ തന്നെ ഭദ്രമായി ഒളിപിക്കാൻ പറ്റിയ  ഒരു ഇടമാണ്. ആ ഇടത്തിൽ   ഒതുങ്ങി ഇരികുമ്പോൾ നമുക്ക് ഉണ്ടായിരുന്നു   എന്ന് കുറച്ചു മുൻപ് വരെ തോന്നിയ ആ ഭാരം ഇല്ലാതായത് പോലെ ഒരു തൊന്നൽ ഉണ്ടാകും. ആ ഒളിത്താവളത്തിൽ ഇരുന്നുള്ള നമ്മുടെ നോട്ടങ്ങൾ നീളുന്നത് വിശാലമായ മറ്റൊരു ലോകവീക്ഷനതിലെക്കാന്. ആ വീക്ഷണത്തിൽ നമ്മുക്ക് ചിറകുകൾ   മുളയ്ക്കുന്നതായി അനുഭവപെടും,നമുക്ക് മുന്നിലെ സീമകൾ   മെല്ലെ ഇല്ലാതെയാകും. ആ ഒളിത്താവളത്തിന്റെ  ർത്ത ഒരു ചൂടിൽ നമ്മുക്ക് നമ്മളെ തന്നെ ഉയർത് എഴുന്നെള്പിക്കാനുള്ള ഒരു അപൂർവ ഊർജ്യം ഉണ്ടായി വരുന്നതായി തോന്നും.

പക്ഷെ ഒളിത്താവളങ്ങൾ എപ്പോഴും ഇടനേരങ്ങൾ മാത്രമാണ്. ഇടനേരത്തെ ഒളിച്ചുകളി കഴിഞ്ഞാൽ മടങ്ങി പോകേണ്ടത് പരിചിതമായ ആ ഇരുട്ടിലേക്ക് തന്നെയാണ്. ആ ഇരുട്ടാണ്‌ നമ്മുടെ എല്ലാവരുടെയും യഥാര്ത്യം. ഉള്ളിലെ ഏതോ താഴച്ചയിൽ തളം  കെട്ടി കിടക്കുന്ന ആ ഇരുട്ട് എന്താണ്?

            ജനിച്ചു വീണ നിമിഷങ്ങളിൽ അനുഭവിച്ച ആ ഭീതി, മരണം വരെ നമ്മെ പിന്തുടർന്ന്, എത്ര ശ്രമിച്ചാലും നമ്മുടെ ഉൾപ്രപഞ്ചത്തിൽ   നിന്ന് വേർതിരിച്ചു അടർത്തി മാറ്റാൻ കഴിയാത്ത ആ നിശബ്ദമായ, സ്വയം വിമർശനാത്മകമായ ഏകാന്തത  തന്നെയാണ് ആ ഇരുട്ട്.


ഒരു ഒളിത്താവളത്തിനും വെളിച്ചം വീശാൻ കഴിയാത്ത ഉള്ളിലെ ഏകാന്തമായ ആ ഇരുട്ടിൽ നിന്നും   വീണ്ടും വീണ്ടും ഓടി മരയേണ്ട കാര്യം ഇല്ല. ആ ഏകാന്തത  ഒരുതരത്തിൽ വളർച്ചയുടെ വിത്താണ്. നമ്മുടെ ഉള്ളിൽ ആഴത്തിൽ നട്ടു വെച്ചിരിക്കുന്ന ഒരു വിത്ത്. ചിന്തയാണ് ആ വിത്തിനു വളം, സ്വപ്‌നങ്ങൾ ആണ് ആ വിത്തിനു വെളിച്ചം, മൌനമാണ് ആ വിത്തിനു വായു.


ഉള്ളിലേ ഏകാന്തമായ ഇരുട്ട് തന്നെയാണ് ശാശ്വതമായ ഒളിത്താവളം. ആ ഇരുട്ട് ഒരു പുതപ്പു പോലെ ചേർത്ത് വെച്ച് നോക്കു, ആശ്വാസം കാലൊച്ചകൾ ഇല്ലാതെ മെല്ലെ വന്നടുക്കും. ഒരിക്കലും നിലയ്ക്കാത്ത, ശാശ്വതമായ ശാന്തിയുടെ   നേർത്ത ഉറവ പോലെ.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Identifying and Enacting an Epic Woman


“Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal capacities. By sheer force of vicious custom, even the most ignorant and worthless men have been enjoying a superiority over women which they don’t deserve and ought not to have.”
- Mahathma Gandhi





                                      
The interpretation of epic characters has at all times been the fond interest of artists associated with all forms of expressions. The relevance of such associations is needless to question because of the foresight and depth of the epics upon which their modern interpretations are based. Be it the case of the caste based humiliation faced by Karna or the politics of war between Rama and Ravana, or the lament of Duryodhana, every instance in the epic texts can be given a contemporary colour and linked to the lives of the people we see around us today, ages ahead of the timeline during which the epic characters are believed to have lived. As against the generality of this observation, the case seems to get more complicated and confusing when it comes to making contemporary interpretations of the female characters of the epics. The deep rooted societal archetypes with respect to the notions of femininity add multiple layers to the fabric of the characters of epic women. Hence, understanding them and placing them into the contemporary scene becomes difficult but at the same time very intriguing.
Among the prominent women of the Mahabharata, Draupadi, the daughter of the Drupada king is an almost ideal example of the contemporary Indian womanhood. She is believed to have been born as an adult from a holy pyre, and, according to the text, the purpose of her birth was to initiate the final war between the Pandavas and Kauravas.  Draupadi is a largely misunderstood and misinterpreted woman of the Mahabharatha. She is pictured as the voluptuous woman who gave in to all the 5 Pandava brothers and lived the life of a dignified, married, whore. The assumption that a woman who had to yield sexually to 5 different men with 5 distinct needs is a vamp who enjoyed such a fate is the starting point where my interest in understanding the character germinated. I was intrigued by the image of that of a royal whore which is attached to Draupadi, who was publically disrobed and humiliated in the open court of the Kauravas. It seemed paradoxical to me that a woman who had undergone such suffering is alleged to have enjoyed it all and, in fact, brought it upon herself by choice. It was from this feeling of curiosity and empathy that the investigation into the character, and, the social and moral circumstances of women in general began in my mind.



  • ·Draupadi – My first thoughts
It was the English translation of the Oriya novel ‘Yajnaseni’ by Dr. Pratibha Rai that threw significant light into the episodes of the life of Draupadi for me. I was in high school back then when I first read it upon the suggestion made to me by my father. The book interprets the episodes of the Mahabharatha from Draupadi’s perspective and brings out effectively the plethora of issues she faces as a woman and as the wife of the Pandava brothers. Upon the first reading itself a feeling of self identification took over and my mind immediately raced to the possibilities of presenting Draupadi as a representative of Indian womanhood through my vocabulary of expression, i.e. theatre.
I was certain that Draupadi’s story definitely can be placed into the lives of almost all women around the globe but the thought was too general and vague. It had to be condensed and transformed into episodes that can be theatrically represented and woven together as a story that makes sense.

Over the next few years, I made deliberate efforts to read and re-read books about Draupadi as well as about women in general to mould my thoughts into concrete shape. ‘Ini Njan Urangatte’, ‘The Second Sex’, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ and a number of various other books came across my horizon of reading and after every book I collected some significant observation about the lives of women. The insight gained from many cult classic movies that I happened to watch was also very vital to the fixation of my own convictions about women in general.



  • The task of becoming her
During my investigations into Draupadi and as an effect of my general reading experiences, I realised that the first thing I needed to build was conviction. I had to identify and confirm my own personal stand about the plight of women before I could perform the same using Draupadi as a medium. This, to me, was the most difficult and confusing phase. I was barely 19 years old and I sometimes found myself totally lost in the middle of the information I got from the books I came across and the observations I made around myself. There were times when I felt I could never feel stable about my changing thoughts and even decided to stop thinking and give it all up. That was when I got help from my mentor in theatre Professor Chandradasan. With his help I would try to sort my mind and put things into better perspective.
Slowly I started preparing myself to feel Draupadi and relate her to my own life though my real life experiences are not as intense as her’s.

My efforts and thoughts were taken to a higher level when I was chosen to portray ‘Janaki’, in the Malayalam play ‘Abhayarthikal’, written by the learned G.Shankara Pillai. The play is believed to be the Indian version of the famous Scandinavian play ‘The Dolls House’, written by Henrik Yohan Ibsen. The Ibsenic influence caught me and I read other plays written by him. I was introduced to a style of playwriting which made me feel a sense of solidarity for the portrayal of human emotions with a stoical expressiveness that penetrated deep into the conscience of the reader.
The performance of the play instilled in me the confidence that my thought process was on the right track and that my Draupadi would certainly communicate to the present day women.
Slowly and steadily, the woman in me began to shed all ornamental notions administered to me by my surrounding society and think independently and address issues of women from a humane perspective. It was during this phase that I realised how hard-hitting the similarities between Draupadi and every other woman of this era is.
Each time I went out or travelled and experienced the male gaze molest me, I would think about Draupadi  on the day of her wedding when she was suffocated by eyes of men who had gathered to win her over in the swayamvara. Each time I saw how political games affected women and children the most, my mind would travel to the episode where Draupadi laments the incidence of the Kurukshethra war and its pointlessness.
Each time I would act a certain way to survive my day, my thoughts would go back to the identity crisis Draupadi faced. She was the shadow of every man she was with and never had the opportunity to be herself.
Above all, each time I experienced a sense of loneliness and emotional turmoil I would sit back and think of how needy a woman Draupadi was and how deprived of companionship she might have been, even in the abundance of marital partners and societal status as a queen.
My doubts had all gradually ceased to emerge and I was ideologically and emotionally sure of what I wanted to portray through Draupadi.
My mind had reached a consensus finally.



  •  The process of converting ideas into performance
After I made myself emotionally sure of how I wanted my Draupadi to think and feel, the next and the major challenge was to build a definite storyline and convert the thoughts into gestures and actions that can be performed theatrically. After repeated discussions with Professor Chandradasan, we devised a body language and structure of performance for Draupadi.
We decided to use a semi stylised pattern of acting. The emotional scenes were decided to be performed using a realistic style of acting whereas for the other areas we choose to rely on forms like Kalari Payattu, Kathakali, Chau and Kathak. This hybrid, we felt, was the most suitable to depict our theme. To aid in the process of storytelling, Professor Chandradasan also brought in paintings and decided to use them to give more insight into the fabric of the play.
In the middle of building the play, I happened to have an opportunity to play ‘Mandodhari’ in C.N.Srikandhan Nair’s ‘Lankalakshmi’. The experience further empowered me emotionally and equipped me physically as it exposed me to the culture of traditional, physical theatre. The self sufficiency of Mandodhari and her sense of resilience helped me mould my Draupadi better.


Finally, on August 20, 2012 the play was staged at the Changampuzha Park, Edapally. The journey of being and analysing Draupadi continues in my conscience even after the performance. My Draupadi is a woman of deep understanding and intelligence. The fact that distinguishes her from the other women of the Mahabharatha is that she was very well aware of her circumstances. She was never an all-suffering woman who did not rebel against the decisions about her life which were made by other people on her behalf. Neither did she owe everything to fate like any other conventional Indian woman. She choose to keep silent and go through whatever came her way with the full knowledge that it was unjust and that she deserved better than what she got. Even when she rebelled against the odds in her own individual ways, she was also not all that empowered to break out of the constraints and abandon the people who she believed were her family. She found solace in her evergreen lover Krishna whom she considered as the epitome of an ideal lover. She confided in him and dreamt of him and those were the only moments of consolation Draupadi ever experienced during the entire span of her life.
This is where she becomes the representative of the contemporary Indian woman who is not only educated and aware but also tied into the archetypes of family and morality fed into her head by the collective conscience of her roots.
She thus is an apt tool which can be used to draw relevant analogies with the lives of the modern day Indian women. The underlying feeling of agony and the longing to break free and also the inability to shake off the shackles of social conditionings that Draupadi went through is the very same feeling of being burdened that almost every normal Indian woman faces today.
In that sense, Draupadi is even today, a character that gives scope for interpretations of various kinds and dimensions.



As published in the Kulashekara Festival Souvenir 2013) 

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Thanksgiving


I am about to spill more ink over a topic, the possibilities of which are so exhausted by constant discussion that there remains almost no angle of it that is to be explored - Rape.

Everyone talks about laws and the victims and their experiences and keeps playing the blame game and the cover up game when it comes to crimes. When the issue in question is a rape, the voices particularly strengthen up and have a tone of specific solidarity, rage and revolt.And, what is the demand? Kill the perpetrator they say. That seems to be their silver bullet to put an end to the happening of the act.
After all the candle lights burn out and the temporary political hullabaloo settles down and the silent protestors disperse, there comes to surface a silence. A silence so cold that it has the same inertness of the winter snow. And then, well who bothers!
Everything and everyone moves on but what about the fear that seeps into the minds of a sensitive few? There seems to be no remedy, no help, and sometimes no escape. The possibility of a sexual assault at any moment becomes as inevitable as the possibility of death. If the probability of death seems to be at par with the probability of a rape, then I shudder to think what the relevance is of a government and an organised citizenry. 
Our lives sure have no guarantee but our safety ought to have some assurance and the reason is simple - we are human beings who live in the most technologically advanced, culturally evolved, politically mature era. The state cannot be callous. It has to let go of its shackles of colonial slavery and stop chasing the ghosts of superficial development and vote bank politics. People have issues, grave ones that ruin their sleep and mental frame.It is hard to live under anxiety. It is hard to read about the most crude forms of sexual perversions in the newspapers and forget them and get back to routine life. It is hard to stop thinking of the agony of the affected and focus on individual goals. It is hard to live with a sense of helplessness and guilt about not being able to do anything to change things.It is hard to sleep and hard to kill the fear. It is hard to empower the self because the rat race for success leaves no time to spare. 
These hardships seem especially hard when no one acknowledges,no one listens and no one consoles. These thoughts they say are trivial and not worthy to disturb a sound night's sleep for.

Thanks be to whoever and whatever, because, because of you we can no longer trust, believe or give in. We can no longer put faith in those happily ever after fairy tales. We no longer have childhood.
Suspicion rules our lives and so does apperehension.

Thank you government, thank you schools and colleges, thank you religions.
And,never the least, thank you gentlemen.

Monday, March 4, 2013

My Disheartened Dream

Dive,
Until you see your depths,
Until you conquer your fear,
Until you can stay underneath no more.
My disheartened dream,
Dive.

Float,
Until you loose your faith,
Until you outnumber your trials,
Until you can take no more.
My disheartened dream,
Float.

Drown,
When you know there is no purpose,
When you see your shore blur,
When your tears mingle the blue,
My disheartened dream,
Drown.


Thursday, October 11, 2012

God





‘GOD’ -
The word in itself has an aura of ambiguity as well as certainty. Its inherent meaning seems constant and dynamic at the same time. God seems to have many names like Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, Brahma or Zeus for the religious believers and God is expressions like The Universe, The Great Void, The Force or in the most poetic manifestation(from the Gnostic Gospels) 'The Shadow of the Turning' for the much more liberated, yet agnostic believers in spirituality.

I have absolutely nothing against these terms. They are all equally adequate as well as inadequate definitions of the definition-less. Culturally, though not theologically, I am a Hindu but having been brought up in a secular environment where there was enough space to embrace my own sense of spirituality and at the same time learn to not discard other people's beliefs, I have my own Personal God. Agnostic (Agnostic Theist) by belief, if somebody asks me about my God, I would say I believe in a God who is not judgmental and dosent expect money or other rites in return for His patience and Presence. He would also never get angry if you were not able to attend mass one Sunday or committed a folly which is quite human and would never ask you to roll on the ground as penance for the very same. ‘I believe in a Magnificent God’.

‘God’ to me is a warm term. A Presence so Personal that even the absence of its physicality does not bring in any element of Non-Personality. My God is ‘The King of the Dark Chamber’ as Tagore says where the dark chamber is my own conscience and my God can be seen only when I close myself in my Dark Chamber. He is a Ponder. An Experience of Stability for a few split seconds amidst the testing moments of a destructively chaotic life.

I am not coming to the most popularly arrived at conclusion that God is an Abstract or that His definitions are the same in every Religion though they manifest differently. In fact I am not trying to draw inferences or derivations at all.
Rather, on a very personal note, I would like to make an honest account of how I have reached out and connected to My God. I have seen God. Felt Him and conversed with Him.
Every night when I lay alone in my bed, the remoteness of my room tells me My God is breathing in me which is why I survive the lonely night.(The loneliness here has nothing to do with my relationship status, the reference is to the inescapable human loneliness which surfaces itself as the night approaches) Every time I heave a sigh of relief after I wake up from a bad dream, I thank God. Each time I find I have someone to push me forth and boost my ego when I find myself totally lost, I know thats because My God sees everything that is happening to me.
 The vast and intriguing nature as well as the small and simple decencies of human life all are filled with a spiritual aura of serenity, which, to me is that of My God. My God is the Pace of Time – Steady, always present but very Quiet.
This is not a romanticized description made exclusively for this post but as I said, this honestly to me is My God. That entity which is everywhere, that entity which can be both the molecule and the mass, that which is both Life and Death is God for me.
Many ask- If God exists, how would you explain the suffering of the poor? Well, I have no answer but I believe its all part of a larger design which has its own balance and economics. Or to put it more specifically, I don’t know why that happens.
God for me,is not an economist or a political activist. He is A Quest and an Answer. A search for the self within the self. He is personal and has nothing to do with social welfare or economic equality. He can be looked for and found by anyone who seeks irrespective of the seeker’s social condition.

My God is Smile, Tears, Love and Peace. He is the resurrected Faith I carry after it gets demolished each time by the merciless thing called life. He is the Willingness in me to Trust, to Forget and to Forgive(whenever I can). He is the Stillness of my chaos and the pandemonium of my Silence.

I am Agnostic, but I have a God. And He is entirely Mine.



Sunday, June 3, 2012

മൂടല്‍


കണ്ണാടിയില്‍ തങ്ങി നിന്ന ഈര്‍പ്പം തുടച്ചു വൃത്തി ആക്കിയിട്ട് ഒരു മിനിറ്റ് പോലും ആയില്ല, വീണ്ടും കണ്ണടകളില്‍ പാട പോലെ അത് വന്നു മൂടി.
കണ്ണട തുടച്ചു മുഖത്തേക്ക് വച്ച ആ രണ്ടു നിമിഷം മാത്രം കാഴ്ച വ്യക്തം ആയിരുന്നു. ഒരു മിന്നായം പോലെ കണ്ണിന്നു മുന്നിലെ കാഴ്ചയുടെ നേരു തൊട്ടറിഞ്ഞ പോലെ ഒരു തോന്നല്‍. ആ നിമിഷം കഴിഞ്ഞപ്പൊ വീണ്ടും കണ്ണടകള്‍ ഈര്‍പ്പം കൊണ്ട് മൂടി. കാഴ്ച മങ്ങി.

മഴക്കാലത്ത് പതിവായിരുന്നു ഈ അനുഭവം. രാവിലെ തനിയെ നടക്കാന്‍ ഇറങ്ങുന്ന മിക്ക ദിവസങ്ങളിലും കാഴ്ചയുടെ ഈ ആള്‍മാറാട്ടം കൌതുകത്തോടെ അനുഭവിച്ചിട്ടുണ്ട് അവള്‍.പക്ഷെ ഇന്ന് മാത്രം കന്നടയില്‍ തങ്ങി നിന്ന ആ മൂടല്‍ മായ്ച്ചിട്ടും തുടച്ചിട്ടും മാറാത്ത പോലെ. വഴി തെറ്റിയ പോലെ. ചുറ്റും ഉള്ള മരങ്ങളും, അവയില്‍ വന്നിരിക്കാറുള്ള പക്ഷികളും വരെ വളരെ പരിചിതര്‍ ആയിട്ടിപോലും ഇന്ന് എന്തോ, വഴി ഒരു നിശ്ചയം കിട്ടാത്ത പോലെ.
കണ്ണട മുഖത്ത് നിന്നും മാറ്റിയിട്ടും ഒരു  മൂടല്‍.

തിരിച്ചും മറിച്ചും ഒക്കെ നോക്കി.പൊട്ടിയിട്ടില്ല. ഈര്‍പ്പം തുടച്ചു കളഞ്ഞു. എന്നിട്ടും കാഴ്ച ശേരിയാകുന്നില്ല.

മനസ്സില്‍ ഒരു മൂടല്‍മഞ്ഞും മഴക്കാരും ഉരുണ്ടുകൂടുന്നത് കൊണ്ടാണോ കണ്ണുകളില്‍ ഈ മങ്ങല്‍? കണ്ണുനീര്‍ വരുന്നുണ്ടോ? ഉണ്ടാവും. വരട്ടെ, അതൊരു നല്ല ലക്ഷണം അല്ലെ? നല്ലത് എന്തൊക്കെയോ ഇപ്പോഴും മനസ്സില്‍ ഉണ്ട് എന്നുള്ളതിന്റെ ലക്ഷണം!

പണ്ട് കണ്ട ഏതോ സിനിമയില്‍ ആരോ പറഞ്ഞ ഒരു ഡയലോഗ് സ്വയം പറഞ്ഞുകൊണ്ട് അവള്‍ വീണ്ടും നടന്നു-  we  are  women  and  our  choices  are  not  easy .

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രാത്രി വളരെ ആയി. മഴയുടെ മണം പോലും ഇല്ല. പകുതി തെളിഞ്ഞു നില്‍കുന്ന ചന്ദ്രന്‍. അവളുടെ മനസ്സ് പോലെ വ്യക്തമല്ലാത്ത ആകാശവും.
ഉറക്കം ഇല്ലാതെ തിരിഞ്ഞും മറിഞ്ഞും കിടന്ന അവളുടെ ആലോചനകളില്‍ മുഴുവനും അവള്‍ കണ്ടിട്ടില്ലാത്ത ഭൂമികകളും കേള്‍ക്കാന്‍ ആഗ്രഹിച്ചിരുന്ന ആശയങ്ങളും ആയിരുന്നു. ഈ വല്യ ഭൂമിയില്‍ അവള്‍ക്ക് അറിയാനും അവളെ അറിയ്യനും കാത്തിരിക്കുന്ന കുറെ തീരങ്ങള്‍. അവിടെ അവളുടെ വിശ്വാസങ്ങളെ വീണ്ടും കീഴ്മേല്‍ മറിക്കാന്‍ കെല്‍പ്പുള്ള നൂറു നൂറു പുതിയ പാഠങ്ങള്‍. ഇതുവരെ ശെരി എന്ന് വിചാരിച്ചിരുന്നതിനെ ഒക്കെ തകിടം മറിക്കാനും,അവള്‍ക്കു അവളെ തന്നെ തിരിച്ചറിയാനും ഉള്ള അനന്തമായ അവസരം. ഒരു പുനര്‍ജനി.

മനസ്സ് വളര്‍ന്നു കഴിഞ്ഞിരുന്നു.പ്രായത്തിന്റെ അതിരുകളില്‍ തട്ടി, പിന്നെ അവയെ നാണം കെടുത്തും വിധം പക്വത കാട്ടിയും  മനസ്സ് ജീവിതത്തെ അറിയാന്‍ തുടങ്ങിയിരുന്നു. ഇനി ഒരു തിരിച്ചു പോക്ക് സാധ്യം അല്ല. അടുത്ത തലത്തിലേക്ക്    വളരുക എന്നത് മാത്രമാണ് ഇനി മുന്നോട്ടുള്ള യാത്രയില്‍ സാധ്യം.അല്ലെങ്ങില്‍ ഇവിടെ തന്നെ കേട്ടികിടക്കുക.
അത് അവള്‍ക് വയ്യ. അവള്‍ ജീവിക്കാന്‍ ആഗ്രഹിക്കുനവല്‍ ആണ്.

ഇവിടം വരെ ചിന്തകള്‍ വ്യക്തമാണ്. പക്ഷെ ഇവിടെ നിന്ന് അതാ വീണ്ടും രാവിലെ തോന്നിയ അതെ മങ്ങല്‍. കണ്ണട വച്ചിട്ടില്ല.കണ്ണുകള്‍ അടച്ചിരിക്കുന്നു. മനസ്സില്‍ പാടകെട്ടിയ പോലെ.

ആ പാടയ്ക്കു അപ്പുറം ഒരു രൂപം ഉണ്ട്. പരിചിതമായ ഒരു നിഴല്‍.

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രാവിലെ ഉണര്‍ന്നപ്പോ കുറെ ആലോചിച്ചു. അപ്പൊ കാഴ്ചയുടെ മങ്ങല്‍ ഒരു നിഴലിന്റെ സാനിദ്ധ്യം ആണ്. പരിചിതമായ ഒരു നിഴല്‍ മനസ്സില്‍ ഒരു മൂടല്‍ ഉണ്ടാക്കുന്നുണ്ട്.
ആ നിഴലിനു ആരുടെ രൂപം ആണ്?

ഒരു പുരുഷനെ പോലെ തോന്നി കണ്ടിട്ട്. അച്ഛന്‍ ആണോ? അല്ല!

വീണ്ടും കണ്ണുകള്‍ അടച്ചു ആലോചിച്ചു. അടിവയറ്റില്‍ ഒരു താഴ്ച പോലെ. കാറില്‍ ഇരുന്നു കയറ്റം ഇറങ്ങുമ്പോള്‍ തോന്നുന്ന പോലെ ഒരു തോന്നല്‍.

കണ്ണില്‍ നിന്നും തുള്ളികള്‍ മെല്ലെ മെല്ലെ താഴേക്ക്‌ വീണു.

വീണ്ടും കിടക്കയില്‍ കിടന്നു മുഖം മെത്തയില്‍ അമര്‍ത്തി കണ്ണടച്ചു.

മനസ്സ് പതുക്കെ ആശ്വസിപ്പിക്കുന്നുണ്ടായിരുന്നു  -

നീയാണോ ഇങ്ങനെ confused ആയി കരയുന്നത്! നിന്നോട് ഞാന്‍ പണ്ടും   പറഞ്ഞിരുന്നു, ഒന്നുങ്കില്‍ honest ആയി പ്രണയിക്കുക .അല്ലെങ്കില്‍  നിനക്ക് വേണ്ടി ജീവിക്കുക.
solution  എളുപ്പം ആണ്, എല്ലാവരേം പോലെ ചിന്തിക്കുക.Practical ആയി.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

The Tree Within


It grows,
It grows inside me,
Not willing to stop,
Not willing to heed,
Not willing to die.
It twitches and turns
Runs its roots all inside me,
It sometimes uproots
Only to root itself again, stronger than before.

I live,
Bearing  its heavy branches,
Carrying its thorny stem,
Waiting for it to flower within me
And make my breath fragrant again,
Hoping for it to fruit
And make my blood regain its red,
Expecting birds to sit on its curves
And sing to me the song of the soul.
I live trying to love
Its coarse body and tiny leaves,
Time goes on and nothing changes,
It still keeps growing unwilling to halt.

I have now begun to submerge,
Heavy with the weight of this tree that is planted within,
The tree that has neither flowered nor borne fruit,
The tree that has never seen birds fly to it and sing,
The tree that has never known spring.
I try to weed it out,
I scar its branches,
I crumble its fallen leaves,
I try all I can but it dosent move.
The weight of its bark is making me sink,
Its existence in me is a sensation so peculiar
Like that of a mermaid fidgeting to grow legs.
This tree has been growing ever since I saw
The reflections of you in the mirage of my soul,
Your illusionary love has been its manure,
The oasis of my tears has been its drink,
It grows heavier and heavier
Making me stoop,
It sulks my eyes and shrinks my skin,
Maybe someday it will outgrow me,
Maybe my tree has its own destiny,
Maybe it will see its spring soon,
Or maybe time has other plans for it,
Maybe its meant to kill me one day
And then grow tall from the bed of my grave.