“And I was free like the wolf I dreamed of, had lost all memory of men, was licking my wounds tenderly. Softly treading on the Siberian snow, I slipped in among the pines. My sweet shadow and I are one now. “
-From Badbaksh Miyan's diary of his Russian journey
Up late. Woke to dark cold surroundings,cuddled up in a soft blanket. Someone came up and drew back the curtains. Light from the street, an unnatural amber glow. A moment or two later, the shriek call of a cat in the distance. Or maybe cats. Two cats.
And the crickets. Why do they always chirp only when it’s dark?
Here,in a boy’s room,a man sits hunched up on the side of a bed, undersized, the bedsheet with its wicked greedy Bugs Bunny faces all over, crying out in angry undertones, Where's my carrot,Doc? Yet he feels so well-fed, so content, so blissfully sleepy.
And as I get out of bed, I step on one of those pencil crayons we no longer get in the market. How I lovingly scrawled all over the walls of our rented apartment with just such a crayon,( how I drew a princess with a sweet smile, and a pretty hat, and a sympathetic uncle came up and told me it looked like a hairy baboon)
I held the stick against the light, and sighed. Even in the amber light, it glowed a magical blue.
I flashed it about, and saw to my utter surprise, a ten key toy synthesizer I’d long given up for lost, lying safely on the glass top table. Almost out of breath,I played the only song I’d ever learnt, a four note wonder that always filled me with a sad joy.
“Silent night,Holy night”,wept my toy.
Yet,even as I played, I discovered that the chair I was sitting on was a bit too small for me, it almost broke under my weight. And my fingers. Oh they’d grown fat and clumsy! (In another world, I would be this long haired, sad-faced pianist-(Felix Mendelssohn?Not Chopin!), staring deep into the void, while made-up women danced to his dark melancholic waltzes, and a certain red-haired countess kept time with her left foot.)
A sudden urge overtook me to look for my collection of toys, all those little men I’d made friends with, and fought battles with. There were the evil Doctor X, whose arm had been broken in a skirmish with the Bowman, and Skeletor, whose head was turned the other side and wouldn’t straighten up no matter how hard you’d try.Maybe I might give it a go tonight, ease things for the poor ugly slob.
Yet of course, there are somethings you arent allowed even in your dreams. Like playing with toys in the deep of the night.
Ghosts arose from the past, as they always do at that hour of the night. A boy servant who had taught me how to draw a deer. And who was too much of a free spirit to clean the toilets. And when he did run away, I had made a resolve to seek him out. For he had taught me all but how to draw the ears and the nose! And I had soon filled out notebooks with portraits of faceless deer, on the run from hunters who looked like schoolteachers. I imagined just such a creature arising from the shadows around me, deer-faced men, but the buzzing of the mosquitoes kept me from getting too scared.
As they bit at my ankles, I noticed my body after a very long time. Of course, I had grown over the years, but yet it all felt so same from within. One tug at my socks. Still, the gaping holes at the ankles. As always. One finger across my hair. As unkempt as ever. One hand over my heart. Still, like the swallow’s heart in winter, aching for love and warmth.
And reluctantly, I drew myself outside my dream and looked out the window. In the distance, the moths flocked to the streetlights, and a dumb silence kept everything still. Even the crickets seemed to have dozed off.
And I tried to wake up. And I tried to escape the body of this “rational” adult, this pretentious fool who knew his algebra and geometry, who knew how to make things work, and who could kill a man with his formidable frown.
With great reluctance, I walked over to the wall with the crayon in my hand.
No comments:
Post a Comment