By Srijani Dutta
The image of India Gate, Delhi (I)
2021/ 2022
Delhi (II)
12.02.2023
The Call of Delhi
I am driven by the megalomaniac,
Metropolitan force of Delhi,
I also want to walk on the same path,
The paths of Delhi.
In my dreams, Delhi brings hopes, joys,
In some nightmares,
Delhi becomes sorrow,
A little sadness.
I am handcuffed with my dreams
I do not want to get out of it.
Otherwise,
I will become a fish in a dry land,
A land without water.
Something is brewing inside me,
Something is boiling in my head,
Someone is juggling with my peace and stability
And I am becoming a puppet
At the mere hand of my destiny.
I cannot escape my fate,
I can make friendship with my fate
And proceed with glee,
I am torn between insecurities and expectations
Though I can smile
For my present reality.
Let me be the girl of my soul,
The neon lights, stones, streets, sound of Delhi
Will show me the light
Even in the dark tunnel of my cries.
Delhi, Delhi, Delhi-
Words are echoing in my ears
And spreading its wings
Over the canvas of my body.
2019
Experiences: 2023
It’s 2023. I am witnessing the physical appearance of this place. Time has done a thing to my mind and even to the body of all the inhabitants of Delhi or the Delhi aspirants. Add the psychological, geographical changes into the body of this place and in the world map. I am walking, and I am trying to make a bridge between the image and its material existence. Maybe, the childlike expectation has somehow faded into the haze of hollowness of maturity and adulthood. Time makes a transformation. Time makes one standstill. In short, it is called Dilli as if it is the pet name. Something close, cordial and informal. To some, it is not Delhi. They call her as dilli dil se. Here, you feel you are not static anymore. You do not want to run but feel a strange push from back. And you start running. The auto rickshaws are running. The food sellers are running. Running out of words, running out of feelings. Running under the open sky. Apparently, it is cool but the heat of Delhi can metamorphose anyone into a fried potato or into a tawa roti.
Here, time passes by like wind. How can you measure time? One cannot measure time by counting the footsteps of the walking figures. One cannot see the faces. It is a terrifying crowd, and you are trying to assimilate yourself into the motion of the crowd.
The image of Delhi was very poetic in my mind but the encounter with it makes it prosaic. I, somehow, failed to find the jouissance, fluidity or verses in the veins of Delhi. It changes its feelings, shapes, times, time of drowsiness, beautiful weather. Afternoon was unbearable but the dusk was charismatic. People like moth, got attracted towards the artificial lights hanging from the ceilings and roofs of the shops. The city arose in the evening after the evaporation of the natural light.
Mind: Self-Reflection
2021
The passage of nine years is a long time. Long enough to forget or remember minutely. I went to Haridwar for the second time.
Nobody knows how time passes by.
The dirt you carry in your heart or the goodness you bear, gets assimilated into the water of Ganga. People kneel down before the river and fold hands to express their deepest words. Worshippers, pedestrians, vagabonds, watchers, young soul and others. Everyone. The holy river embraces all like our grandmothers used to embrace all of her grandchildren. The mountains are the laps of our aged or long-forgotten grandmothers where we used to sleep and listen to lullabies. Haridwar has her lullabies too. It flows with water; it carries the smell of diyas.
They had belief in their hearts that the diyas would float for the thousand miles. My heart crumbled down seeing all those loitering figures in the lands. Loitering like tiny insects. But, their belief was like the match boxes. What were they offering?
They were offering prayers.
I stood in front of the river and whispered to her ears to make me a river. I told the river to make me a river. Like river, like stream, life is ever flowing, ever becoming. I wanted to be myself.
The Origin of Ganga
2022
The impression of bright colours in my work may allude to my interest for the pathos of nostalgia, spaces, mental state and bodies. Something comes naturally out of me, and I am just being sincere to it by giving it a shape. I record my feelings when I feel the creative urge boiling inside me. Recording to me is like talking with oneself, trying to mirror the mind. It is a pure subjectivity with a personal gaze or maybe with a little bit of objective lens. Why am I bringing up so much things regarding self-reflexivity? The reason is obvious, and it is the land that demands a certain kind of dissection of oneself. In that land, sunrises and mountains slay together. Sunsets and rivers warm up the entire mind.
I thought that my visit after nine years would make me more attracted towards the space. I was remembering some snippets from my last travel. The only thing that made me feel calm was the Ganga puja and the evening puja at the Okhimath. Throughout the entire roads, I was observing the construction of the roads; how they cut the mountains to formulate the roads. The image of the last visit was stored on my mind and I was desperately trying to bring the image into its material reality.
I was sitting at Har ki Pauri ghat keeping an eye at the temple doors from where the priests would come out to offer prayers to the holy river. The flames of the fire, the ripples on water, unmistakably enabled one to self-reflect. You saw your reflection in the water. You could lie to the world but not to yourself.
To ageing:
Early 20s is like a fine morning when you have a cup of fresh, cold water. A mild breeze blows over your head. It touches your skin, and you feel wet. There is no drizzle outside. Still, you feel fresh and feel rejuvenated like a newly drenched grass furnished with dew. From a free butterfly to a sad, nihilistic soul, you go through the journey. Journey towards the old age.
The Sailor
2021
The Voyage
2021
The age of 22-23 is the age of youth. Like a stream, it flows. When 24-25 comes, you start realizing something- maybe you want to become something. Gradually, you become something.
You feel a pressure in your head.
You feel the presence of the insects
Mumbling around you,
Bees buzzing and hovering above your head
You start comparing yourself with wastages,
Shit and dirt
And you want to clean.
You take a broom
To take the charge of cleaning of your own room
cleaning what?
Body, mind or apparition!
You want to exist
You want to erase your existence from
The room
You want to exist
You stay there
You look around
You do not like the emergence
Of grey
Hairs on your head
You think it is unholy
Stained with soot
You sprinkle water
On your body to find coolness
You feel free
You feel trampled by your own thoughts
You feel trapped inside your own body
You feel stimulated by your mind
Flowing like breeze,
Ageing makes you
Clean your
Mind, soul and body.
The breeding ground
Of idealistic ideas, shattered dreams
Rejuvenation and rush of adrenaline-
All flow
From dawn to dusk
Like mutilated figures, shapes, voices
Like viruses
To become river
From youthful streams
From charming fountains.
Human existence is like a wine. The older it gets, the tastier it becomes. The trails of life make the existence pathetic yet beautiful just the way the grapes are made rot only to produce the raw juice in the form of wine. And haplessly, this age of existence gets reflected in the face of an individual through the appearance of wrinkles, dark baggy circles under eyes, pimples around the nose. But alas! life’s misery or life’s boon. It spreads. It spreads like volcano. Youth like a latent magma can sometimes be overshadowed by the stable and steady flow of a river. The origin of the river is tumultuous but the more it crosses lands, the more it loses its youth. It cuts through the merciless stones, the unavoidable pebbles, the dark ditches only to meet the sea. Ironically, the sea is tumultuous, uncertain like its origin. In the meantime, the river dies for hundred times; gets dry; waits for monsoon like a distressed farmer kneeling down in the cracked half dead, crop-less meadow. How can one describe it? The circle of life or rebirth of beings in every seconds. Like rivers, the old age appears with beauty. That beauty is neither like a youthful stream nor a less speedy river. Rather, it is a calm fountain whose existential beauty diminishes the hollowness of any kind of existential crisis. Our mind is like a fountain. It always flows. The mark of it spreads all over the body. It trespasses. It may inundate the locality. It may get vanished into the dense laps of the mountains. The lone tourist or the group travellers may find this beauty even without the assistance of the route maps. This beauty can only be felt through words, through eyes as the tragedies of all the years rest in the eyes of these fountains. Ageing is a beautiful thing if we keep our soul away from biological ageing.
To callings:
The creative restlessness is my forte. My one and only tantrum that I can deliberately use upon others, including me. The tumultuous sea in me waits for sunlight to get drenched by it. The giant force of ideal idea, beauteous beauty attracts its prey by making the comfy maze. Who says it is the cobwebs? The prism like maze radiates images in every possible direction. I surrender myself to the colourful words that move around my mind like thin air and hover around like bee.
I cannot bypass my fascination with spiders, spider webs
That I see in the washrooms;
It reminds me of the
Long theories, texts of verses,
I surrender to it
I want to keep a plant
In the corner of my room
Instead of it,
I notice the spiders
Crawling on their invisible tombs,
They make the shelter
Only to get martyred
By some species of greater
Prowess
Called humans,
I am not a picturesque painting
My ideas are not like Renoir’s sunsets
I try to assimilate with my mild creative restlessness.
Self -reflection happens in various ways. Some spaces, especially rivers make you self-reflect, contemplate. In the reflection of water, I see the pimples, acnes like the sudden appearance of drizzles during winter. And unfortunately, one is not carrying umbrella. You see the wrinkles, cracked cracks under eyes.
After some days, I along with my parents came back to Delhi. Though Delhi is associated with recklessness, it is the hub of creative, intellectual, administrative, questioning mind. It is the dwelling place for the students. Another interesting thing of Delhi is NSD ( National school of Drama) the breeding place of some people who are taught to encounter world and express existence through truth disguised in falsehood and through lies disguised in truth. I did not have enough time to witness NSD as I had to catch the train. Delhi appears to be more materialistic than Haridwar and its adjacent areas. You need body to realize the arteries of Delhi whereas you need soul, blank mind to seek for blessings in the riverbed of Haridwar.
Memory is fluid and in flux. Memory is political and varied in nature just like a performance. So is writing.
May, 2023