Only through words comes a silence
Only through pain, bliss
The way into unknown is through the known
Journey into spirit begins in the flesh
Through travels a realisation of stillness
Be alive, dying every moment.
------
Break free & breathe
Night has birthed light
Rejoice-
Din is silenced into a song,
This moment is your eternity.
I'm a killer - rather, I used to be one - professionally speaking. How I came to be one is another story. This is a story of how I stopped being one. I started my profession at an early age. I was quite successful and thus was able to be a family man and also a good provider. I married a beautiful girl from a wealthy family, we lived in an old bungalow in the hills of Vagamon, and the kids went to the best of schools. My son is now a doctor with a thriving practice and my daughter a successful lawyer in Thiruvananthapuram. My family accepted that I was a busy travelling salesman. Death is and has always been in demand - and I don't complain.
I am now retired with sufficient wealth that I don't need to work anymore. However, I found that retirement did not really suit me - I got quickly tired of watching TV all day or listening to my wife gossip with neighbours. I kept mostly to myself - a wise practice for one with my background. Being a person of limited other interests or skills, I decided to "remain in touch" with my craft - I really didn't need to be paid for it. I was finally practicing it for its own sake and getting better at it than ever before. My speciality was staging accidental deaths, suicides, medical emergencies with DOA, where no foul play was ever suspected. It was indeed a pleasant retirement once I'd decided to hone my skills and expand my creative licence.
Victims were often chosen on whim, when the urge set in. Some required meticulous planning and others were spontaneous masterpieces of utter simplicity and polished execution - I hope you caught the pun there :))
Now to the day it all came to an end. I was wandering near Varkala cliff one evening - having come here for a change of scene. Wife was looking at shops and I decided to take a brisk stroll along the cliff to the north. Odayam coastal road is dramatic with rugged cliffs of red laterite and the Arabian sea that's aquamarine to opalescent jade. It's then that I saw this young child, about 5-6 years old, running with a little kite near the cliff. My old heart lurched with a sorrow that's hard to explain. What kind of life could this beautiful child be expected to have - what a terrible world we live in, full of sorrows, injustices and misery at human level and ecological destruction with climate change as the fate of the natural world. I had found my next victim.
Two women were standing nearby in an intense and engrossed discussion. I casually approached the child, who was still running around with that silly kite - close enough to shove with all my might, while screaming loudly " Be Careful!!!!!" It was All over. Everyone believed that I had rushed there to stop an accident. However I am haunted to this day by the happy, innocent, and trusting look with which the child had turned to me saying "thatha"(grandfather) with a smile.
These days I have taken to painting. I often paint a child with a kite.
In Kerala, Angels live on coconut trees...
I'm sure you must have noticed them...swaying the fronds on windless days, their wings flying towards heavens or circling our homes, sound of their laughter at human follies or their whispers helping a particular card player cheat at his game of rummy.
I have recently started collecting their wings - golden, light, but strong enough for flight - I find them discarded here and there on walks and marvel that I get so lucky. You see, they do this when they find humans asleep in coconut groves - men do this a lot in Kerala. And they do this with laughter and chuckle - for mischief and play- mostly for sport.
That's why one frequently hears, here and there - I don't understand why so-and-so is behaving in such ridiculous, irrational or loony fashion. One hears this a lot about men in Kerala. It's just these rascal angels, tossing away their wings, to make mischief.
Sitting in a candle's glow
Deepening darkness, evening slow
Sea murmuring nearby
Stars glittering in the sky.
Rapt in candle's dancing flame
Frogs crooning their mating game
Cicadas chorus, night's awake
Fragrance filled - this haunting ache.
Leaning forward, I blow off the light
Nature's revealed in a Prussian sight
Pain's soothed - a mere attachment to glow
At ease in dark, and timeless eons flow.
I just close my eyes
To space-travel inside
Swirling lights of blue and gold
Many mysterious sights unfold
Zooming past gazillion stars
Swinging around a centre far
Milky Way is too small for me
Rushing past there's much to see
Annihilating galaxies, jet-streams and more
Endless joys of Cosmic allure
Moving towards a source unknown
Going past a no-return zone
Crossing boundaries of space-time
Fractal structures govern its paradigm
Veils of darkness hiding that Light
Eternally burning bright, Inside.
This heartbreak is your gift to me
I couldn't grow in dullness of complacency.
Nor break in cycles, shattering into pieces
For alchemy's distillation to purer reaches.
Only dark winters fulfill spring's abundance,
And, pain's a requisite for transcendence.
Entropy's dissolution kindles all deflagration
Into music, dance, and colours of creation.
Withered twigs, now tipped with Earth's fire, first hints of spring.
---
Winter silence, endless bamboo sonatas, shishi-odoshi
