The Strange Library

On his way from school, a boy visits the library. He is a dutiful reader and library-user as returns his book on time:

“I’m always on time, and I never hand things in late. That’s the way my mother taught me. Shepherds are the same. If they don’t stick to their schedule, the sheep go completely bananas.”

He wants to find out how taxes were collected in the Ottomon empire and because such a thought strikes his mind, he wants to find out more as his mother has taught him. On asking about this, he is directed to a special section of the library. 

He meets a strange old man who assists him by bringing him three thick tomes on the subject-The Ottoman Tax System, The Diary of an Ottoman Tax Collector, and Tax Revolts and Their Suppression in the Ottoman Turkish Empire- and lets him read them on the condition that he should sit in the library and read them.

He tells the old man that his mother will get upset if he doesn’t return home on time just like the time when he was bitten by a big black dog. The old man is furious that the boy wants to go home in spite of the assistance that he has provided:

“When I was your age I felt fortunate just to have the chance to read. And here you are, whining about the time and being late for dinner. What nerve!”

The buy promises to sit and read for thirty minutes and he is taken to a “Reading Room”, an enormous labyrinth in the basement of the library. 

He meets  a sheep man who makes good doughnuts and obeys all the orders of the Old man. He discovers that the Old man wants to eat his brains and when he asks the reason for that the sheep man replies : “Because brains packed with knowledge are yummy, that’s why. And sort of grainy at the same time”. 

A girl comes in bringing him a sumptuous meal and he is struck by her beauty. She can only speak with her hands and she tells him that her vocal cords were destroyed when she was a child. He finds that the library has turned out be a prison and he is not able to get out.He finds that the sheep man and the beautiful girl belong to two different worlds; that the boy concludes : “Our worlds are all jumbled together- your world, my world, the sheep man’s world. Sometimes they overlap and sometimes they don’t. That’s what you mean, right?” 

He worries about his mother and his pet magpie. As if to make his fears true he is held a prisoner and his pet magpie is eaten by a dog before his very eyes.  What happens to the boy? 

A little Kafkaesque and absurd, the novel captures an atmosphere similar to The Trial and brings in a sense of terror to the act of  visiting a library. In spite of the  way in which it portrays the strangeness of life, this illustrated novella can make you feel hungry too!

Photographs

I have so many photographs of mine
In my cupboard, old and new,
So many faces that I once disliked
But with the passing years
I have come to see how
That me was so different,
So pretty and beautiful. 

Long-haired, wild-haired,
Short-haired, grumpy,
No two faces look alike,
The one on identity cards
Look even more grotesque,
Even taking a snap
Is like finding a new me.

But I wonder when will I ever
Get over all my self-doubts
Embrace me completely
Forget the self-critical nagging
And tell myself in the mirror,
"I am incredible you know,
Because I love myself so!"

These days

There may be millions of people in this world;

The count increasing second by second daily;

Millions, I hardly know; thousands neither,

But these days, what I want to study is, you.

There may be many songs that I have heard;

Countless in number, peppy, soulful or sad;

But these days, don’t want anything except

The song you were humming all day long.

These days, when togetherness is what matters,

I want to trace your contours with my fingers

I want to feel the warm love-light in your eyes,

And make you my entire world, my soul melody.

Medicines and remedies, there may be around;

But these days, the only cure that I have is you.

Evening View

Summer shower

Come to me in a summer shower

When the clouds burst in thunder

When the earth dances with the sky

Come here, come here, come here,

With your hair wet

With your eyes tender

Come home to me.

Come to me in a summer shower

When the clouds burst in thunder

When the earth dances with joy

Come here, come here, come here,

With your heart desirous

With your fond words

Come home to me.

Calculations

For you and me, the numbers are important. We spent most of our days counting and performing the basic acts of arithmetic. Neither your joy nor your sorrows reach me except as vague waves of depression that may be carried into the next age as well.

It has happened more than a single time that the numbers showed how between the cup and the lip, a victory was lost and a dream was crushed into nothingness.

This mad heart still loves to make vague calculations that makes it easy to swallow the hurt and the pain of the past and the present that never lets it be. This dream might appear after a century or never but the days are full of expectations and the nights full of longing.

Whatever time may bring, the days are spent in tying a few words together that appear without embellishments but form a perfect crown of flowers for my king. These are seen by many as calculations meant to trap or attract but this heart knows well that they are calculations to write away a foolish love.

My River Green

The river flows, the first memory in mind,
A huge sheet of green glass; not blue hue,
Like they do in usual children’s watercolours,
A shade of muddy green with trees around. 

It’s Onam, the spring is here, day bright,
We run to the songs from the snakeboats;
We forget our food and rush to the middle
Much to the angst of our seething mother.

Again, we run to watch the fast snakeboats
Rushing to the beat of the peppy boatsong,
The sun shining against our tired eyes,
Then playing in the water for hours long.

A taste of childhood, onasadyas from home,
So long, so far, from the present lone time.