Half moon, half river.
The half moon over the western peaks, straight before me from Vashisht. Straight but not exactly — for nothing is exactly straight in the Himalaya that is as crooked as my brain. The half white fruit rests right between my eyes as I look up.
It’s almost midnight.
My gaze shuttles between the moon and the river in the valley, the lovely little Beas that is dazzling in pale white, in the half-baked light of the 50% moon. The two are far from me, but not equally far, but look equally far, so they are equally far from me and I’m equally far from them. The three of us are as far from each other as we should be. The four of us actually, including the mountains. And now I want to talk about one of us, the river. The river that is suddenly white tonight.
As if she is smuggling milk from the nearby villages. As if she is slurping away snow from the mountains with her long, wet tongue. As if she had a savage desire to destroy those who have been destroying her and swallowed half the moon to keep her cool.
Now she is beaming from the half moon in her belly, under the other half in the sky. The dangerous little Beas in a pale white dress, borrowed yet her own. Half moon, half river. Half beast, half beauty.
An argumentative Indian.
Amartya Sen should have had conversations and arguments with me before writing The Argumentative Indian. The book would have been far better.
(By the way, I haven’t read the book.)
A mountain selfie.
A selfie from and into the mountains of Uttarkashi almost exactly a year ago on March 6 2021.
Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand, India. March 2021.
This blog is taking over my life.
This blog is taking over my life. I hate it (because it’s taking over my life) and I love it (because it’s making art possible out of life).
It’s been 4 months since November 4 when I started this blog, and already I feel so occupied by it. It is starting to take over. My life, my mind, my dreams, my sleep. Over the last few years, I had made efforts to gradually stop being so serious, walking around always thinking of something— and now this blog is turning me serious, as if I wasn’t still serious enough in spite of my efforts against it. I had made efforts to gradually stop thinking so much— and now I’m thinking more than sleeping, so much so that I’m thinking while dreaming and making notes of my dreams.
It’s quite annoying, to be honest, to live like this. It’s so lame.
When I think of the blog taking control of me, I think of these lines from Morning Bird Songs, one of my most favourite poems, by Tomas Tranströmer:
Like Tranströmer’s poem,
my blog is getting bigger, it’s taking my place,
it’s pressing against me.
It is shoving me out of the nest.
Though, unlike his poem, the blog is not finished yet.
The blog is everywhere. When I look at the ceiling while resting, I see it crawling around—ultramarine blue lines on a white canvas. When I stare at the mountains outside my home, it forces me to think of something beautiful, something new to say about the mountains, even if it’s vulgarly mundane. It is making me go back in time and dig up old wounds and other things I had forgotten. It is sitting on my shoulders like a cat, watching me churn out posts like an attentive potter. Against my will, it wants me to create draft posts even when I have nothing to say.
Now I can’t think of anything without thinking of whether I can blog it. I can’t dream normal dreams.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Artistic pursuits are consuming. It can destroy without destroying. The dilemma of my rebel self and my desire for expression echoes perfectly in the words of Albert Camus:
There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.
I can’t wait to be done with this blog, I can’t wait until it’s no longer a blog but a book, a blue book in my hands. Until then, I won’t sleep, I won’t live freely. Until then, may it burn and with it I burn too.
Burn but with a fine balance. Balance the two imbalances, the two chief confusions of life, as keenly noted by the great Frank Herbert:
To observe everything that happens:
Confine yourself to observing and you always miss the point of your own life.
To let everything happen and not confine myself to observing:
Some people never observe anything. Life just happens to them.
Ask me about how to catch the moonlight on snowy mountains on dark nights.
I can’t believe I wrote the last post.
Goddamn, I can’t believe it was me who wrote the last post, Firefly on a starry night.
The original thought that came to me two days ago, the thought that was going to be the entire post, is no longer the heart or essence of the post. It was this line—
“If I keep looking at all this glitter while my ears are fixed to the river, I feel as if the sound is coming not from the river but the heavens above.”
—that occurred to me while stargazing with my dear friend Yash, and he was the first to hear it. And look what I made out of that one line, in less than two hours.
When I produce something like this and so swiftly, which I have done occasionally throughout this blog and throughout my life, I think to myself that this big head that I have been given, big in proportion to the body, the headache of carrying it all my life on my tired neck has been so worth it.
Therefore, I prove myself to be as smart as I think I am, and I prove it for myself alone, not caring for whether anyone else cares.
Firefly on a starry night.
It is past midnight on a clear night after the recent snow. I’m in Vashisht and the Beas flows as ever in the dark of the valley below. The cheerful sound of the river, a persistent reminder of her presence, it whispers to me: feel the waves and live boldly.
I raise my gaze from the river that I can’t see to the mountains that are faint but full of snow.
I look up further, now at the black expanse, the profound outside, enthralled by the glittering and flickering dots. Without the moon, the black of the night rules and over it rules the stars, swarming in luminous clusters. Each star so clear to my eyes and so hypnotising.
If I keep looking at all this glitter while my ears are fixed to the river, I feel as if the sound is coming not from the river but the heavens above.
I keep looking and listening and realise that the stars are not stars but flakes of snow.
I keep looking still and it starts to snow.
I throw my hands out to catch some, little stars on my black gloves, stars that landed from distant corners of the eternal night.
I eat a few off the gloves and begin to glow like a firefly.
Starry night after snow. Vashisht, Himachal Pradesh, India. February 2022.
Two seconds five years ago.
Visitors at the Sheesh Mahal, the Palace of Mirrors, in the Amer fort of Jaipur, Rajasthan, on December 30 2016.
At 12:19:42.
At 12:19:47.
Two frames separated by five seconds, two memories separated from today by over five years. Two moments in time recorded by the camera through me, two seconds saved out of the six that came our way. Two out of six out of infinite.
Two seconds that multiply in the mirrors of the Sheesh Mahal and become too many. Two priceless specks of dust among my digital photographs: can’t be touched, can’t be wiped, but here still.
Birds of prey.
Who ever thought of these unbelievable birds of prey, who came up with the idea first? Who gave a body and a breath to eagles and kites and peregrines? Who dreamed up flight for the Himalayan griffon vulture? Who ever knew to give to them all such extraordinary eyes, eyes that can spot a rat struggling to go into its burrow from heights seemingly higher than the Himalaya?
I want those eyes, I want those wings, I want those lungs.
Once I have all three, I want to fly.
I want to fly and see the world anew with eyes that have never seen a computer. I want to soar close to the sun with lungs that have never had to suffocate any viruses.
Until then, I’ll continue to daydream, continue to practice flying by flinging my clothes into the air.
T-shirt flying at the beach. Goa, India. February 2019. Taken w iPhone 7.