Small hours of the evening, a cool evening in Balichak,sitting on the canal bank with Maniak, preseumtously fishing, the string unsteady in the breeze, hanging from the end of the bamboo pole,it was more to be there than to fish, however Mainak doesn't recognise this and catches fish with a mechanical efficieny, puts them in the small basket he brought along, well then Mainak couldn't afford to buy fish in the market, Debu the killer shark could.A small boy rdies a cow further up the stream and dives in with a splah into the water, joyous laughter.Women returning home from work,sarees a careful quilt of repair work, strangely beautiful in this setting sun.They must be masters at economics to wear the same wrap of cloth so many times,he knows that how terrifying is poverty, he was born in that, so he doesn't glorify being poor, just notices how much content these women would be if they could buy a piece of cloth in the weelky fair.And back in Bombay he remeber going out one evening with Helena, one of his colleuges, just out of loneliness, and on going to her flat and seeing two whole wardrobes of clothes and being mildly shocked.She laughed at him and said maybe he should have been born when that naked fakir, as Churchill had called Gandhi was around.He laughed yet at a level the discomfort didn't go away.Maybe he should bring Helena here and show her these women, with the sarees or whatever one can call those colorful quilts of cloth,dusty elbows from working in the rice fields all day.Maybe beauty will be redefined.

    The season of monsoons had begun and Mainak doesn't seem to particularly like this

season,well then he hates how hard it rains and how much his hurt leaks.It feels strange for Debu to be sitting in that one room hut and listen to the sound of rain above on the thatched roof, it almost feels like it's raining on his skin,how foriegn had this sound become.It had been almost ten days since he had come to Balichak,travelling on that old train that turns at the bend, ten miles from here.Soon his truosers were replaced by a simple wrap and a vest, it seemed obscene, almost overdressed to wear anything else. And impractical too in that moist wetness that the air used to take when almost bright sun used to come out when it stopped raining.Croak of the frogs at night,just a small earthen lamp for light and sound of Mainak's flute on some nights when Mainak was too tierd to sleep.It used to soothe them both.

    Somehow now the recollections seem to happen less often and with less sharpness.He couldn't make sense of things when Varsha left,he still doesn't understand why, though he took the blame for the fall when it came. This place where he was born somehow took him back to the womb and

makes him not seek answers to those insistent questions of why and why.He is content to just watch the stars on blanket of darkness when the clouds used to clear their wreath of gloom.And those stars those infinite large number of infinitely small points of light for these nights subsist for Varsha's eyes whom he loved to kiss everynight before he slept.

Notes: Kgp and Bengal when I was there I couldn't wait to get out.Now I remember the whole place so vividly.Those few miles I used to ride down with Kuppa to sit on a canal bank and watch bullock carts and village women walk on by, old t shirts wet with sweat,old faithful hawwai slippers on the feet,Kuppa smoking a ciggy sometimes, we used to sit there for sometimes late into the evening and ride back as small earthen lamps used to glow from the inside of small huts that used to line the road.I think I loved those smells and somehow some of the character of that place still remains within me, as i sit here in the shadows of skyscapers and the miracle of airconditioning.There was some greater force at work at those times.

2001-04-28 Atlanta,12.20 AM

Standing a few feet above in the air,between the symmetry of the street, watching the old light dim, over old buildings and older memories,when I see two lovers kiss amongst garnled dogwood in a bloom of gaudy white, I sigh to myself again, in this new colorful spring and burn.

2001-04-05,Atlanta

Dostovesky's White Night flashed,followed by the reds of a twirling flamenco skirt.The old main street of the university framed in the whites and blues of a new spring, drawfed by the spires pushing out of the ground not too far off,I somehow saw beauty in that instant and when I turned and looked at the lane again, I saw that the carpet of flowers had caught fire and this spring was burning again!

Full moon night tonight. sweet smell of trees in bloom at the end of the season of spring.Ram sits on the deck, watching the breeze ruffle the pines, the customary beer in hand.It reminds him of Rashmi, the girl who loved him or maybe who though she did. That was many days ago, sometimes on meditative nights like this, where the peace is like sheet ice on a white winter lake, solid those memories come back. Gulzar's gruff voice wafts out of the dining room, and Vangogh's irises glow irridiscient in the moonlight.On nights like this,after having cooked a small meal and having run through the fund figures for one last time for the night, he tries to scan those far reaches of his memory for words, those old conversations in that language of home, that mongrel mix of two languages, Hindi and English.

    Words are just words, and they are hard to recall with time, but memories are a different thing, they remain and when recalled come forth sometimes as torrents sometimes as trickles. But still he tries, as he needs the words for these conversations with himself. Rashmi used to fight him rather his customary beer after work, she belonged to the

old school and though it used to bother him a lot then all it now brings back is a smile.There was pain too involved the day she came to him, free flowing tears and said that she loved him.

He was speachless for that second, and oh yes he remebers how he was cracking peanuts and eating them as she walked down the road to him, and yes he remebers the look on old Badri's face,that was the name of the old man who used to sell peanuts and channa, opposite to the school,ofcourse he remembers Badri's toothless smile and his two wifes.It was inscurtable for him to see that those badgering talks or teasing with Rashmi meant anything more than words he needed to speak, to exhale to mark his cycle of exsistance. He remebers that feeling of dread, that bewilderment at her tears and more at her words. And when those memories only the memories, for he had long forgotten the exact words,not that the verbatim of those words spoke on someday in September 8 years ago would help, he wonders where Rashmi would be at this point of time, if probablility goes she would be married, probably she would have some children and more accurately would be more happy than she would have been with him.And thus he soothes those memories dancing within him,maybe to quench that pheripheral guilt and to stop the thought of his solitariness that hangs around at the edge of vision.

    Marriage brings back the telephone conversations he used to have with his mother,

"Son you are getting older, please think about marriage, marry whom you choose, son we are getting old and so are you". For a while he evaded that with goals,buisness school, money or bust and other priorities.Though now he had run out of any more reasons to give and though now he is beyond that set golden treshold of youth,had hit thirty couple of months ago, with a receding hairline, flung faraway from home though sometime he wonders if born nomads can ever hope to claim anyplace as home, maybe not.These questions haunt him on somedays, as he sees the circling night that comes and goes and as he pauses to exhale in the space in between those shades of light and dark.