Daylight Saving and a Tribute

When I first moved to the United States for my higher studies, I used to dread the winter season. I would hate walking on the snow and I would be annoyed by the early yet long, dark nights. Over these few years, I started to rethink my relationship with winter as an experience of discomfort to a lesson about acceptance and adaptability. I found ways to make my personal space cozy in the wintry evenings. As someone who holds interest in mythology and literary symbolisms, I now see winter as a moment of reflection and pause that allows one to find meaning in the darkness within and without. When we learn to embrace the cycle of seasons, we also begin to honor the symbolic cycles and seasons of our inner life.

When clocks changed to “daylight saving” last week, I was partly excited about the late sunset although a part of me strangely longed for the 5 pm sunset. I was also sad to lose an hour of sleep. Amid these changes in hours of light and darkness, another stream of thought kept running wildly in my mind. Or should I say waves of memories instead? I lost my father right before Christmas last year. In that sense, the winter also allowed me to embrace and accept fully the complex and overwhelming journey of grief, loss, remembrance, and healing. Among other coping mechanisms, I found solace in the ever transient and changing rhythms of seasons. Scholars of mythology often talk about the archetypal journeys of life, death, and rebirth as exemplified by seasons. For the first time, I had to encounter the reality of death as well as the possibility of a different rebirth within. I’m still dancing between these cycles and phases embracing each lesson as it is offered to me.

I chose to title this random post as “Daylight Saving.” I have been pondering what might mean metaphorically to save a day, save day light, and save light itself. Can light and darkness be truly saved? Can moments of life be saved and preserved forever? What if the point about everything is to release control and surrender to the truths, realities, and mysteries without the need to control and make sense of everything? Everything has its own time and space whether it is grief or celebration. How about we remain receptive? Of course, there is a practical side to the world and I still love late sunsets with daylight saving. The only difference is I now hold a different perspective. I’m no longer anxious about winter whenever it is meant to arrive next. Sunsets are my wise teachers regardless of whether they arrive early or late~

My Relationship with Writing

I often ponder about my relationship with writing. As an academic who holds degrees in English literature, the experience of writing has become an integral part of my life. In this post, however, I’m not reflecting on academic writing per se in the form of journal papers, publications, conference presentations etc. I’m more curious about the genre of creative writing although it’s true that I have slowly started to experiment and blur the boundary between academic and creative writing. I take inspiration from contemporary authors and scholars who challenge conventional genres and foreground personal voices in academic writing. Without digressing any further, let me share how my understanding of writing has changed over these years.

I was always drawn towards the genre of poetry, but I never felt particularly inclined towards getting any of poems published. In fact, I recall several years between my 12th grade and Masters program when I did not feel any strong creative inspiration at all. Even when I wrote a few pieces during that phase, I mostly took inspiration from other literary works. I remember, for instance, getting fascinated with Sylvia Plath’s poetry and trying to mimic her rebellious, confessional style. Of course, I too had my share of teenage angst and discomfort with the world and I found a cathartic release in Plath’s poetry. At the same time, it felt as if there was a gap between my words and my soul. Perhaps that was an early phase of my writing when I was seeking true inspiration.

I recall a distinct moment in late 2011 when life introduced me to the first ever bittersweet pangs of unrequited love. It was one significant moment when I found inspiration from within. I started writing and posting a whole sequence of poems on a shared public poetry blog. In the eternal history of human emotions, I was definitely not the only person who found solace in writing poetry to grapple with love and loss although it’s also true that each of us also create our own unique legacies of longing. The poetics of love, after all, is both common and unique at the same time. Unfortunately, I wasn’t careful enough to save those poems on my computer, and some years later, I could no longer retrieve those poems as the blog itself was taken down. In retrospect, I do not regret my carelessness as I believe their erasure from the online space was also a symbolic expression of my healing journey. They were perhaps a part of my younger self when I was still learning to let go of unhealthy attachments. Isn’t that a conundrum between life and art itself? What inspires art need might not necessarily nourish life. For a long time, I utilized poetry as a dreamy escape, as an emotional release, as a denial of life’s realities. That was a totally valid experience, but I eventually realized that sometimes healing has to happen outside of writing too!

Somewhere around late 2013, I experienced another phase in my writing journey. My life also taken a different direction that year as I left the sheltered life on a college campus and took up an adjunct teaching job while encountering the real challenges of off-campus, urban life. I remember taking the busy metro (subway) on my way home and when I got down at the station close to my home, I suddenly felt a different kind of inspiration-one that wasn’t external or that which came from within. It was a deep momentary awareness that made me appreciate the moment itself for the sake of it. Although I hated the evening rush hours, I felt a sense of peace and acceptance in my new phase of life. When I got home, I immediately logged into my facebook account as I felt the urge to write something: it was neither prose, nor poetry. I just posted a single line that tried to capture the mundane yet deep essence of that evening. From that point on, I almost got into the daily habit of posting brief, poetic-prose snippets of life’s moments of facebook as a combination of vivid imagery and personal reflections. Writing, in other words, became my way of comprehending life itself through some personal and transient yet deeply meaningful moments. It was as if I discovered a new genre I truly resonated with! I also wanted to reclaim social media as a personal, creative space while forming a meaningful community of like-minded readers.

Similar to the trajectory of life, writing is always a process and a work in progress. I again find myself at a different stage in my long-term relationship with writing. Since the past year or so, I have stopped posting notes on social media. Apart from concerns around privacy and online safety, I began to realize that I was unable to sustain a clear boundary between creativity and external validation. While it’s true that any form of art or creative expression finds meaning through the audience or reader, I felt as if I was relying more on validation in the form of likes, reactions, and comments. It struck my mind I do not have to prove any point to anyone. I also do not require writing to affirm my life lessons and epiphanies. There is also something sacred about silence. Healing can also happen in spaces of silence. Sometimes, the magic lies in the moments of pause between language and silence. In some ways, life has come full circle. I’m now learning to honor both inspiration and disconnect, creativity and stillness. I’m now forever open to the surprises and mysteries of life. I will look forward to another form of writing that is waiting to be born~

The (Re)Turn

I suddenly felt inspired to revisit my oldest blog site after almost a decade. As I was reading through some of my old posts that seem to belong to an ancient, mythical past, I felt as if I’m both returning and re-turning to a version of myself that has grown, learned, and evolved over these years. After all, there are always points of revisit and return amid the many twists and turns of life. I have changed places, spaces, and jobs over these years but it is also true that the essence within me has remained the same. I define this essence as the desire to connect and reconnect to my inner voice and knowing where I seek answers, insights, and revelations. I had titled this site “Imperfect Phrases” by taking inspiration from a character in Virginia Woolf’s novel, The Waves (1931). My passion for phrases has remained the same. What has changed though, in a positive way, is my ability now to embrace imperfections. Between my mid-twenties self that started this site and my mid-thirties self in this moment of (re)turn, I have come to understand that we do not experience life as a clear, complete sentence. Life is indeed a series of imperfect phrases in the form of lessons, experiences, and wisdom that we gather along the way. Someday these imperfect phrases will lead to a delightfully perfect story. Hopefully, I will keep (re)turning into my old phrases even as I discover new ones on this journey~~

D.D.

~There is a joke about the initials of my name–“D.D”. A friend once called me “demand draft” with all sweetness intended. I love to think of myself as a “draft”, as a “desire draft” (I am yet to recover from a Modernism course hangover.. never mind ! ) more than a “demand draft”. . It’s wonderful to be a draft, a rough sketch, an outline, a blueprint, particularly when one imagines and prepares endless drafts of desires, dreams and aspirations. A draft has two possible outcomes, it could either translate into something tangible, coherent and complete, just as a random string of phrases fuse and diffuse to create an extraordinary piece of work. But it is also possible that a draft stays forever as a draft filled with mindless typo, clumsy phrases and obscure meanings. And so are the drafted desires that remain forever incomplete, unattainable, unrealized. And this is precisely why drafts are so beautiful. In this game of perpetual demand and desires, I choose to be a drafter, I am the draft of my life~

An Attack of Nostalgia

Another nostalgia attack. While preparing a set of assignment questions on Frankenstein I happened to check the gmail archive and guess what I found there– a soft copy of a seminar paper presented by Shreya Prabhu Jindal (who was my batchmate at Stephen’s, also a co-class representative, and now a promising author) on the same novel sometime around in the last term of our BA final year. That was five years back. As much as her work makes me nostalgic, it also invokes a sense of loss and lament at the gap between an academic culture and pedagogy that nurtured us and an academic practice that we now confront at the moment. In those five years a lot has changed. That was a time when the “annual” mode was the order of the day with its three neat sub-divisions into “terms” based on the seasonal rhythm of autumn, winter and spring. We all miss those bygone autumn and winter breaks!

That was a time when we could spend months on a sonnet, where we could “itemize” (as the late professor Dr Ashish Roy would often call it) each and every imagery/metaphor in Neruda’s poems to blend a personal saga of love with a political narrative of identity. That was the time when the reading and teaching was done leisurely and yet it was close, critical, insightful and thought provoking. That was a time when several drafts had to be approved before the final submission. And that was a also a time when an emotional bond was formed during the undergrad seminar sessions where the paper presenters found support in the assuring gestures, curious questions, responses and smiles and even in moments of conspiratorial silence (in the sense – you are not to ask me difficult questions !) That was a time when pedagogy and the classroom was an immensely emotional, celebratory yet cerebral space.

And slowly things changed. “Semester” became the new word of the changing epoch. Elaborate discussions were transformed into a mechanical process of “structuring” a text, the Odyssean journey was cut short, the Woolfian moments of illumination were reduced to three months, “godot” arrived in the form of two- semester exams, students found Joycean epiphany in the “scores”.

What are we looking forward to? Marquezian years of solitude. To look back in time and to be removed out of one’s time. Nostalgia is a tale of loss-ness, even as it claims to compensate that loss. But thanks Shreya, for offering me (and for a lot of us I believe) a hope and an urge to resist the changing times, for making us “look back in anger” and also look back in beauty !

A snapshot of one of my old college assignment !

In Search of Catharsis

And when I entered the class today to teach Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein I experienced a surreal moment where my personal self was at odds with my professional self… There were these momentary pauses now and then as I mentioned those words– aspiration, creation, devastation, monster, loner, sublime, companionship, downfall……. Perhaps at that moment I was able to understand the novel in its deepest essence and in a way I probably have never done before.. And even as I carry the responsibility of teaching a paper on Romanticism I also believe those shocking moments of my personal and our collective life/s will somewhere deepen my understanding of life and poetry. Probably I need not even consult the margin notes any more… At his point of time my irrational mind is inclined to construct some paranormal pattern in the ongoing scheme of tragic events– the reading of gothic tales, the brooding of the Romantics, and the soul shaking events of life. A few weeks back we even talked about the famous painting “The funeral of Shelley” by Louis Édouard Fournier….
However there was a heart warming moment when one of the students could sense my unease – even as I was at the best of my composure- and said innocently “Sir, I think the novel is not good for you at the moment. Something is wrong about it…” And then immediately a friend of hers responded –“No, it’s just a co-incidence.” They both gently smiled at me. That was truly the moment of catharsis for me. As I said grief brought us together and made us capable of an ethereal communication. While I was dealing with two losses, they too were grappling with the departure of their much loved teacher Bijoy.. Bijoy was my colleague and friend and for them he was the ever inspiring “Bijoy sir”…
In that one hour lecture perhaps we transcended the teacher-student binary, the so called apparatus of pedagogy, and made a spontaneous attempt for a collective “re-reading” of life.. I threw a question at them “So is Victor to be blamed for his ambitions? So is tragedy inevitable?”… And as expected I in fact got a very serious answer.. “Sir, we need to keep our dreams alive. Only a courageous soul can aspire…” Precisely that was the answer I’ve been wanting to hear from them.. And I was glad that they could take out a very powerful meaning from a shared loss. I assume this will inspire them to understand life not just in terms of those mind boggling “concepts, jargons and theory”, but rather in its simplest and most elemental sense— the simple proposition that life is always in the present, in the moment, the truth of a moment , the beauty of a moment which is the eternity of life.. Taking it from there I’m sure they will celebrate the poetry of Shelley, Byron and Keats……. Be it the Keats-ian nightingale —
“Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
or let them be inspired by the Tennyson-ian moment of reconciling faith with doubt–
“to strive, to seek ,to find, and not to yield”
I am also reminded of Bijoy’s own research on the concept of “paratext”—it basically looks at how the real meaning of a text lies in its not-so-significant elements.. And one of my colleagues (Anchala) had succinctly evoked this metaphor in her condolence note for Bijoy… I agree with what she had said– Life too is profoundly paratextual, the mundane moments of life are in fact the most magical”
In the span of four days as friends, colleagues, teachers we have experienced an intensely painful but richly meaningful truth of life… In the chaos of nostalgia, in the storm of grief, catharsis is possible………

The Funeral of Shelley by Louis Édouard Fournier….

Melbic Maibam…….. The person I knew…………….

A dusky, spring evening…. semi-warm tea, peacocks, and a group of MPhil  scholars pondering over their “response papers” . I commented “It’s all performative after all.” Melbic nodded, approved. It meant a lot when he would validate my point… And slowly we dispersed…………

(Photo: with our course supervisor Dr Brinda Bose)

It’s difficult to re-assemble, re-member a person…. And particular when a carefree continuity of life  is halted by a sudden arrival of death. I’ve never been able to deal with death. I have nothing to philosophize. I remember writing an obituary in 2013 when I for the first time confronted the reality of death when one of my professors breathed his last. Till today I haven’t been able to accept the absence, the vacuum ………….the disbelief refuses to  fade away….

(In Brinda Mam’s room….. Woolf gazing at us………… A terrifying foreshadowing)

I don’t wish to continue with these wayward musings….

All I know is my heart wants to be poured on a page. I just want to remember Melbic as a friend, as a person, as a guardian figure… (sounds strange but it’s true)

An introvert’s experience of friendship is slightly different… I knew Melbic through his words, his innocent yet subtle comments, his sense of humour, his passion for life, a genuine simplicity and that assuring smile….  It was in the summer semester of July 2012  when our batch was enrolled for the M.Phil programme. Melbic was a stranger then…..But in the world of ideas, thoughts  and images, friendships can begin with ease, particular when two people share common areas of interest……….Once during a metro ride we ranted and raged against those hyper-masculine cultures, and a so- called breed of “alpha males”… “That was the phrase– hegemonic masculinity….”, Melbic laughed… …. Hence the friendship began…With jargons, with dialogue, with compassion………

(Photo– JNU during the Visual culture course… Yet again with Brinda Maam.. He had a great sense of humour….. He once told Maam about how the gang of male students in the group are popularly known as “Brinda Boys.” Candid…… Innocent………

(Photo– DU conference)…

Melbic ,I remember your literary jokes——- Modernism and Desire (jokes)…. Seminar jokes….. Your popular, mischievous catchphrase “Desiring and Desirous”…. And deep down you had a passionate desire for life……… And yes, alcohol jokes… In the course party you whispered “Deep, try some breezer.” And I got drunk with life…………~

(The Breezer Moments………….. for a recluse each friend is precious…………..)

You always made me feel special….. People would tease me “Deepu, you look younger than your age.” Melbic would assure me “Deep, you are evergreen.” In the summer of 2014 due to health reasons I missed the MPhil dissertation deadline……. He would phone me during those days— “No worry…. You can do it…. Relax…. There is a great future lying ahead for you…………”            His words  meant so much to me………..

December 2012……… I called Melbic from my hometown– “Hey, need a favour.. could you submit my long papers?”….. “anytime…” was the reply………Every ready to help I never heard him utter a single, sarcastic word….. Always benevolent and calm………..

I can’t define Melbic  through words……… He had vibrant shades…. Isn’t his life so complete? He had a JRF, got an M.Phil degree for his engaging dissertation on Manipuri politics and history, his mind  filled with aspirations……..

At the moment we are devastated……….After all it’s so damn unfair, ruthless and bizarre… But pausing for a minute I asked myself————– wasn’t there something Keatsian about his life? A great sense of fulfilment……….. He found meanings in friends, in love, in research, in a relentless dedication…………….

Melbic…….i know you are there buddy…………. You have contributed a lot to my life…………………..

May you rest, a loving, peaceful soul..

Autumn Fragments

Will the dhak be heard

In those endless nights.

Will you come

Before the Mother departs?

 

 

 

(Note: In the eastern region of India during the early autumn Goddess Durga is worshiped as a divine Mother and during the ritual ceremony the dhaks (auspicious drums) are played.  It is believed that in the last day of the festival Mother Durga finally departs from the earthly realm to her celestial home)

 

 

 

On the Rainy Night

You may return home

After the late evening drizzle.

 

I shall stand by the window

Gazing at the wet streetlight

Away from you

And the fragrance of your drenched clothes.

 

Even tonight

I shall not map our silence

With my mystical body.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hermit

I may be a hermit
But I am not the one
Who would be covered with dust
Of trees and earth.
It is not wisdom that I seek.

Like you,
I too love the rain and thunder!
And yearn
For the fire of love.

(C) Deeptangshu Das.