Wavering fortunes of Hotspring

Nowadays a ad for LG television is shown, where a student is asked by the teacher, " Where do you find natural geysers?" Prompt comes the answer 'New Zealand', accompanied by a hilarious aside from his benchmate - bathroom. I have to say 'classroom'. Scores of months back I had tried to interpret the geyser's character in comparison with her name. And while poetic0 wonderment had the better of the day, some close coincidences struck me unawares (in fact, while preparing for this diary entry, I had been trying to locate that same piece of investigation. Unfortunately I cannot find it amidst all the online clutter that is my hard-disk - perhaps I have deleted it at some point of despondency. Anyway, I can assure you that the character analysis really was a piece of genius, and reproducible only in mediocrity).

A geyser or hotspring, usually, spurts water in jerks, and not continuously. There is an element of impetuosity, frivolity in the way it works. And certainly it gushes out hot water. In short, a geyser symbolises youthful extravagance and unreliability. How truly it matches with my subject. She is all of the above. And by virtue of these, she infatuates and renders herself attractive (mark my words- I never said anything of beauty, or love). I was a helpless victim. I was scalded in her hot waters. My whole body filled with painful boils. I moaned. Spent sleepless nights. (Don't get carried away- I am just being poetic). Until I was taken to the cooler confines of a leach infested valley, where the leeches ruptured my boils and rid me of all my bad blood. And I was cured. Or so I thought.

The leeches crept into my soul;
They crept into my bosom
      and messed me with blood;
They crept into my soul
      and picked holes in my body.
They punctured, butchered my tender life
      and left my heart gasping.
They crept unnoticed, they slithered into my flesh
      and made dinner of what makes me.
And I felt it not.

I felt it not as the blood seeped,
As my arm tingled, as the draft
      of cold air sent a lightning shiver.
I felt it not as my trouser soaked,
As the leeches grew fat,
As the crusty scabs in dirty red dried,
As my slippers slipped with slime
      and made the upward climb such a toil.
As my arms got numb,
As my legs screamed in despair,
As my back revolted in pain.

I saw them not
As they clambered for their feast,
I saw them not even as I fell at last-
      hungry, pained, listless, drained.
I sat on the ground
      dirty with dust, grimy with grey grass,
I sat on the spongy grass
And saw a faded world.
Faded sky washed with shapeless, lifeless clouds,
Faded road picked with potholes, and
My faded pair of denims.
My faded pair of denims shining with rosy redness.
My denim full of life, invigourating.
My denim torn to shreds,
Gasping in the last throes of a lost sunshine.
         -5/11/2110, Calcutta 63

What happened in the 'valley of leeches' is a tale too long to be told here (perhaps I shall soon, in a different section). Summary is that infatuation faded, the halo of admiration disappeared and sighs were replaced with a sense of regret that so much tender emotion was wasted. Of course it was wholly vicarious, and there was never any desire of initiation, or expectation of reciprocity- yet the heart laments when the object of admiration turns into a symbol of folly. And there was I, sadder but wiser, regretting but not resentful. What I felt during those days of bliss has been eloquently expressed in these poems:

The blissful illusion

I see her with each rising sun,
The same face, the same smile et all,
And the same eyes speak through ether-
A whisper distinct I hear, a voice sweet.
And it melts into my heart, and then melts it.
No words need intrude, no touch, no caress,
For a bliss more encompassing I possess.
Dare I break the spell? The spell
Which sustains, which gives meaning
To the entering breath, gives the glitter of their eye.
Oh! What’s more sensual than remain far and sigh?
She’s mine I hear, she’s mine so she tells,
I see her in laced gowns, I hear the church bells.
Then she speaks, her head like a lily at noon,
Then she is held, embraced and kissed soon-
But why do I feel that the man is unknown?
Ah! She smiles- see, now she smiles-
But why do I feel she’s away- miles and miles?
       -22/7/2000,Calcutta-63

I had added a very relevant note to the poem, which tells exactly the feelings that prompted the composition, something that is reiterated in the following poem:

The last day in college 

I love you I said;
In front of me the jeering maid:
The leering glances, haughty hands,
Laughing face the lady stands.
Good God! That was just a nightmare
And not fortune's snare.
Why, one whole day remains!
One more day divorced from sense.
For what more would tomorrow hold
If today I am a little bold.
No more would days enthuse,
No more the nights hang loose.
No more shall palms sweat,
No anxious long wait.
It's been fine, these past days
Just one wish- the past stays.
O Certainty!  You steal the charm from the lover's eyes,
With your touch the fleeting day flies;
Love, while it feeds on anxiousness,
Blooms to its fullness
And grows still more with time,
With an unknown, uncertain rhyme.
And dead love is the day you strike.
Why do lovers their own death like?
Glad am I- Still does my love increase,
From you I have got a long lease.
And so today I feel so glad-
One more day when I can be mad.
One more day shorn from age-
       -21/2/2001

As you can sense, folly still reigned while poetic sensibility composed, and certainly there was a loving amusement at this voyeurism. In fact the whole tale can be told in just one phrase- ' The adventures of a voyeur'. Perhaps some day in future I might come out with a semi-fictionalized account of all this frivolousness, aptly titled 'The adventures of a voyeur'. (For another instance of this voyeurism, see Nightmarish encounter with Nosering.)

While relief is the predominant feeling, there is much regret. That she could not understand me. Until recently, there was a short-story in my website titled 'The Courting', which based itself on real characters from my class. While certainly some things were written which should not have been written (and hence I have withdrawn the story from the site, as it now stands; it is too good a story, however, to remain in oblivion- I intend to drastically modify it by removing all threats to tender sensibilities, and then post it again. If you would like a copy of the story as it now stands, you may email me, and I shall post it to you), she forgot the greater issues of imaginative extrapolation, and the writer's right to objective and unhindered composition (deplorable, considering her journalistic credentials). Now, I feel quite like this:

Telephone call to my beloved

Dear beloved,
You might be so much surprised
That I call you after love died,
After we had sung our farewell song
And parted on the beach, long
Into the night, that fateful Monday-
You remember how difficult the way
Seemed with the wet sand, and the boulders
Sparse, and the rushing breakers?
Remember the sun dipped faster than
On other days, how the tide ran
Into where we sat, and we looked other
Ways? We sat and saw how another
Couple walked past us- they must have
Wondered why we didn’t save
Our clothes from the water cold-
Or didn’t our hands hold.
You smiled and said goodbye
And for the first time I didn’t sigh.
And so I call you now- no,
Not to cry like always, so
That you could be that nice girl whom
I loved. You just left a hanky in my room-
It’s so dirty it stinks.
      -16/3/2001, Calcutta-63

End of Part I

Flutter newly starts....vestiges remain....the skeleton turns inside the grave...the ghost shall arise, perhaps....

Beginning of Part II

Dated: March 24, 2002