part 2 of fiction writing

Of all the things why a distant thumri? Why is nascent love like a distant thumri?

She sat in her suburban habitat, having murdered all cockroaches and having won the battle with the omnipresent dust for the day, she sat back and wondered.

She sat back on the borrowed divan with the freshly spread Gujarat cotton sheet with symmetrical black and white squares with a little haziness creeping into their edges. The house was either black or white with a little fuzziness at the edges. There cannot be that stark a demarcation, right?


The distant thumri....


There's an allure that is so promisingly enchanting. One doesn't know the source of the melody, but then, for the moment all that matters is catching some strains of that exquisite tune. And, a thumri is not just a melody, it has those words and those words make all the difference.

Words set to music have a supernatural status. Take a banal line like "tum aa jao", could be a part of any telephonic conversation anywhere. But then, set it to say Bhairav and you have a dimension that cannot be calibrated in any system which constrains. It needs a system that measures only immeasurables. Another arresting paradox which probably only art could give birth to.



She says 'another' paradox. The most recent one she witnessed to was in a play. But more shall have to be written only about it. The threads woven in that require a separate tapestry not to be blended within this ancient rug, for not all colours match in perfect harmony.


Whatever.

Digressions should be banned from the mind. A holiday for digressions for say, a century or so. Everyone will be so focused with everything, we could invent the sun, conquer nature and then finally infuse everyone with a benevolence vaccine that we don't see retrograde bloodshed anymore.

It is nascent love. Like the thumri from a distance,one has slowly begun to unwind, warm upto the notes. The same words are repeated, but for now, each line is suffused with an emotion that seems to be so incipient, rare, unexplored and unknown. Every line becomes an experience to be cherished, remembered and recalled fondly, and only fondly. For this is new experience, not marred by experience itself.


For that moment, one is alive.
And, one has to recall those moments, when one has decided to set one life to the rhythm of a melody, ever present, here, which has a very organized tune, clean and fresh like washed linen. Like that Gujarat cotton sheet. Symmetrical, black and white with that slight haziness.

And in that border life continues....

Comments

achal rangaswamy said…
thanks for the feedback on the rafi blog post.
i shall surely write soon about the places visited by me..but for the time being i hv posted something out of the talk that i gave when i visited IMNU.
do you remember this part?
take care
August 17, 2009 at 5:38 AM
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