Through the Looking Glass: A Garden of Words.

Books are not just pages filled with inks, scribbled thoughts, voiced opinions, uttered pains; they are a medium, a very sublime medium through which you find connectivity. It's not important that you be an avid reader but books are that kind of friends of yours who are with you through the thickest of sadness and the thinnest of happiness that comes into your life. It's like a patient doorknob to a world of inner peace which waits always for you to open that door and walk through its exotic garden of variety. 'Book', the very word is soothingly mysterious. People wonder how readers read books; it is just as mysterious for the reader's to think why people cannot read the 'book'. It might be baffling to even listen to each group on their views on reading as a hobby, nevertheless more or less we return to books.

I personally have a soft corner, a very delicate soft corner towards books. I don't prefer the course books much but the other books, the autobiographies, the fictional world, the non-fiction attract me like a magnet. The fresh smell emerging from within the books have an aroma worth deeply inhaling. The pages, the words, the meanings lying within them have always invoked in me a desire to divulge into this Ocean of written word. Starting with the course books of English Literature, reading those excerpts from the varied novels which succeeded in creating a thirst in me to know more as to what happened next, my reading flowered from its nascent bud at a very early stage. Marking my first destination as reading the fables and the folk tales and then moving onto The Arabian Nights and not much later I was reading, grasping and sinking into Mark Twain novels. Characters like Tom Sawyer and Finn lighted the mischievous candle within me. The abridged versions of various contemporary classic novels such as Moby Dick, The Count of Monte Cristo and the like and the prose forms of Shakespearean plays made me look at human perspective through an entirely different angle.

My 7^th grade final examinations were approaching. I was supposed to study but my eyes fell on The Famous Five and my hands gripped it. That was the start of my first addiction towards detective or rather suspense, adventure kind of books. I remember being chided by my father sorely when he discovered that I had story books below my course books but I couldn’t help. The novels were so engrossing, addictive that in the following year I ended up either buying or reading them from the library and finished all the 21 books of The Famous Five series. The book infused me a confidence that size doesn’t matter as long as you have presence of mind and are a keen observer. Slowly, I moved to Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys’ collection. This new found interest made me observe more of all that occurred around me, made me feel for the characters. Books are not just some pages, they have an entire life trapped within them and the readers through reading it, give it a chance of freedom, a sense of satisfaction of having been able to invoke human emotions through its words.

The journey continued and I started reading novels in my mother tongue. The classic novels by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee have made a special place in my heart. The way he portrayed the problems faced by the women in those days, the capability of a women in times of stress, the problems of the society as a whole and the scorches of the British Raj is worth stirring a thought in our minds: We are in a much better luxurious world but we have lost that enthusiasm to live and enjoy the simple things of life. We have become lazy and have become dependent on non-human brains rather than extending the horizons of our human minds which researches is the most advanced on this planet. Tagore’s novels, poetry, short stories dealing with everyday human relationships and the connection between nature and humans gives an insight how we humans irrevocably and irrefragably turn towards who provide us with solace and how fragile we are despite the materialistic riches. The detective genre has a tinge of native suspense and thrill which creates a chill in our spine. Works by Sarath Chandra Chatterjee extensively on women in the household scenario holds in front of us a neglected but important issue of how we treat those who rock the cradle and rock the world.

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of Library!!! 

The years rolled by, the surroundings changed, human priorities changed but all through this my love for books hasn’t diminished but increased manifold. I hover around books, sleep with them, wake up with them, spend my days with them. They say next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books. Works of Khaled Hosseini, Paulo Coelho inspired me that beyond all evils lies a deep layer of truth, humanity that is still intact. Their works showed that circumstances are not the fate of men, but men are the fate of circumstances. It filled me with a hope, instilled in me a belief that “When someone leaves, it’s because someone else is about to arrive – I’ll find love again.”

Today, I figure that it was these books which made me evolve and developed into a person I am today. Sometimes, we just need to listen for it is an art to listen to someone patiently. These books, the characters in these books, they made me a patient listener, invoked in me that spark of humanity which might go unnoticed but is extremely vital: Listening. Sometimes, I feel them in real life and they help me to deal with situations. Sometimes, I need answers and they are there patiently giving me answers to my countless queries. Sometimes, I just need a friend and they are there to divide my grief with them and double their joy with me. These books have proved to be an all-in-one and one-in-all combination.

For:

As Charles William Eliot put in and I quote, “Books are the quietest and the most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors and the most patient of teachers.” and unquote.

The House That Shelters All!!

Memories bring with it a grinding pain. A pain so distraught, so pinching that it can drive away the cheeriness from your soul. True, there are happy memories but they have a feeble count as compared to the enormous count of bad memories. They do not come on being summoned. They knock the hearts door without a notice and invade the brain without warrant. Memories make you grope and make you vulnerable and force you to stretch your visions wide to make yourselves calm. But the turbulence it has caused in the heart, the memory it has formed  in your mind, the way it has mixed up with your soul causing a lump in the throat at the very instant you are reminded of it is hard to go unnoticed. You feel like literally chopping yourselves to atleast relieve yourself of this staggering pain but you are unable to do so. They make a film of themselves and run a fast motion picture or rather an animation to make you live every moment again that you struggle hard to forget. Yes, time heals all wounds but the scar is hard to go, itching forever and making you feel the pain of it no matter how little.

Looking before me, I stare at a ruined, almost mixed with the soil, broken down house; A house which used to be my home; A home where I have stacked so many memories that it would fill an entire encyclopaedia. I stepped foot in that house just short of a few days before my fifth birthday. I still not have found out the reason why the fifth birthday in many households is celebrated with such glamour. I remember a hundred over guests being there on my fifth birthday and I remember running all over that big house every now and then just to get used to it. It’s not that I was in a small house before but this once seems special. I was in my lower kindergarten class then. I remember measuring my height by marking them against the wall and checking each month. I had a bus stop in that shed belonging to the colliery office. I was the youngest of the lot then and I vividly remember the games we used to play every morning , the hideouts we used to discover, the prank on the poor night-shift office workers and the flowers growing wild in that office. I remember, visiting my neighbour’s house in the morning to find out why that particular girl isn’t out of the house yet. It was an half an hour ride from my house to the school and I remember my mother looking out of the house to wave bye to me. Slowly, the years rolled by. My sister came by to keep my company then and we had the first accidents. I remember spotting snake thrice on my courtyard. Our house was very near to the forest and I used to hear hyenas and foxes howl at the dead of night, see rabbits crossing our way and a variety of owls perched now and then on our neem tree.  I remember the diwalis spent lighting the diyas on the roof, the durga puja held a few hundred feet away and I remember the chatt puja being celebrated down the way towards where the stream flowed.  I remember the changes made in the house since we have been living. I have heard it’s over 85 years old and from a single room in the beginning it had expanded a lot and has been modified a lot.

I am reminded of a countless other memories when suddenly i stumble over a big stone and come back to reality. I am now facing the debris of this house, this house which has witnessed my entire school life, has witnessed the lessons I learnt here, has tried to keep itself unaffected from the rains, suffered the mine explosions silently. I look for marks, for signs that I might have left but all I can see is our name scratched on the drawing room wall by my sister on the last day we left the house. I was at my college getting all the news from my family about the progress the mining project is making, of the other houses which have been brought down, of the numerous letters my father has been receiving with an immediate order to vacate this house and move elsewhere. The shovels are nearing, the explosions are causing much deeper cracks in the walls than before, the windows, doors and other objects are rattling more than ever now and we all shall be leaving that house forever. Soon, the stuff is packed, the memories on the walls of house abandoned and left to decay and fade away and we move into another house.  This one is bigger, has a garden even: something which I always have wanted to have and in one word: good as a house.

East or west, Home is THE Best!!!

But will it be as good as the old house which is my home still in my subconscious mind, will it be able to imprint upon me in a way, my home has been able to? Will it be able to give me that secure feeling that I always had while at home? Mining away coal, people have had to move from their homes to new places. They say the mining business is some 200 year old. Have they not been able to find the kind of machinery needed to dug deep down and get the coal that they say is lying beneath us without parting us from my home? Since childhood, I have read of “rehabilitation and resettlement” but having faced the torment it creates—I come to realise that the effects are devastating than we can ever imagine it to be. I believe myself to be lucky in that way but what about those who have lived all their lives here and have made their livelihood out of here. What about the culture we had here? Reading about these does cause a stir but as a wise man once put it: you cannot feel the level of a pain unless you have experienced it.

You may have got new homes, got new means of earning your living, maybe in dire consequences your economic conditions might have been improved but you can never erase that pain of being detached from your home, you can never wash out that burning pain of seeing the house of memories before you all crumble to pieces. Today, as I stand before my house, looking all over and trying to fix as much as I can in my mind about how my home looked, I feel a sting of pain, an wave of nostalgia passing over my heart and tears starting to roll down my eyes as I finally spot the mark where I marked my height. I wish I could hug it one last time.

Through the years I shall live, yes life will go on as it always went, I shall not forget thee. I shall return to you and be grateful to you for having sheltered me all through thick and thin.