These days technology is good, the ink does not blacken your fingers.
I used to like that, the smell of it, the look of it smudged as though I had not merely read something but let it reach right into my soul.
I did not read the newspapers today because they say news has to be fresh and crackling. In new deaths I see old skeletons.
Please tell me, why is it so important to forget?
Let me reproduce one of my old poems; I have done a hurried rough translation:
Yaadein
Agar yaad-daasht buree hoti
To kaafi maslein hal ho jaate
Kal ke dard ka ehsaas nahin hota
Aansoon sookh jaate
Lamhein udd jaate
Phool dafnaye jaate
Murdon ki tarah
Koi kal ki baatein
Aaj nahin dauhrata
Agar yaadein nahin hoti
To gham ka bahaana nahin hota
Khushi ki talash mein
Nikal padne ke liye
Utar aati yaadein
Kisi rail ki patree par
Aur chal padte hum
Pairon ko zameen ki
Asliyat samjhaane ke liye
- - -
If only I could forget
Then no answers would be needed
The pain of the past
Would leave me untouched
Tears would dry
Moments fly
Like corpses
Flowers would be laid to rest
No one would talk about yesterday
If there were no memories
We’d not use the ruse of sorrow
To go seek happiness for the morrow
Derailed nostalgia would recoil
And step down on the rail tracks
Forcing me to walk
And teach my feet the truth about the soil
~ FV
4 comments:
FV:
Is this forgetting a denial? Escapism. Why? I am not convinced.
Forgetting,,,,,All of us should have "Selective amnesia" ..I forgot today what i learned yesterday for the first time that I am a "Hindu Zionist"....also have "lacunar amnesia" because I happily forgot the fact that my maternal grandparents came from a small town called Girot in NW Punjab ,spoke same language as media claims our prized catch "kasab" speaks ...
this amnesia has helped me forget that everytime I have come back to India and the moment I felt that peculiar Phenyle stench at the airport and told myself ....oh no ...
I need to be proud of my country ....whether I am a Hindu Zionist or not is a choice I make :)
It is imperative that an exquisitely elevated soul which can bring forth lines such as “Agar yaad-daasht buree hoti, To kafee maslein hal ho jate…” should not only be tenderly preserved but nourished with the utmost care so that we enable you to mitigate the miseries of this planet by your elegant prose and beautiful poetry. Too much pain carried from the past can actually hurt one’s heart biologically. There is a body of clinical and epidemiological data to confirm that. Talent as precious as yours shall surely be capable of both forgiving and forgetting past brutalities. I suspect , despite your posture, you in reality possess a childlike and gentle heart.
PS:
It is both - denial and escapism. Why? Why do people watch candyfloss films?
Manish:
If only I knew what to select and what to discard...so I suffer from nothing? Making choices is imperative in my POV. And I like the 'scent' of phenyl...thanks for teaching me a new meaning of patriotism!
Deepak:
You are new here...and now this blog is moderated or you'd have heard tell you all kinds of things :)See, I am kind enough to forewarn.
Thank you for appreciating my attempts at writing. Had I not nursed memories - good and bad - I might have lost my heart to waywardness anyway!
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