Slices Of Life

The childhood experience when a few boys in a group peep through a hole in a lodge to watch people having sex becomes a vantage point to analyze physical events when the main character grows into adulthood. The idea of the main character to distinguish moral and amoral habits in society becomes his philosophy toward life, coming to him like memories. His present life gets ruled by the memory of the past. He makes his decisions in present life looking at his past. He succeeds to make good decisions and finds moment of solace, while some decisions go wrong. The religious beliefs that he comes close to, the people that he meets, the places he travels, the thought that he harbors all come to grip him in its entirety. He visualizes life of past in the present only because past is so evident, and it keeps forming a layer. Future being the unseen and unplanned.

————

Chapter I

Memory

Before I wrote poetry in my room, I was born in a hospital bed three decades ago and I had wailed baby tears. In memories the past woke up. The faces in the crowd began to get clearer after draft and draft of poems. When life gave you gifts you need to open up your gift boxes. Certainly, a claim in poetry is a lot to forecast, but it worked with the flow of life.

I met my mother in a hospital bed, but I do not have associated memories with it. I am told so. I only remember that I cried when I was born. Life can release you with no memories which you can lose as you grow up. Trajectories make life run. To define life would be like plunging into an ocean of not forecasted events.

A house needs someone to look after. My mother was a woman who frequently asked the maids to make the house clean. The maids were hired based on that capacity. They were also urged to make few conversations among themselves. But Martha had a silent memory. Martha was a maid in my household, she told me that I caught the fingers of my sick and old grandmother and I led her to restroom. I was three years old then, and I somehow have the memory of that event. Lots of Marthas came and went. The word was on the air that I caught the fingers of my old grandmother and led her to the restroom. This event stands for my nascent memory as a person in this planet. I cannot dramatize with this event now, since it's a memory.

I began with poetry as a quite young fellow. Poetry was just imagination then and it was not a memory. I am happy to have escorted my grandma to the restroom when she was sick. On the other hand, I happen to have a different event with my grandfather when he was old, but not sick. I lost my grandmother when I was three and I could not hold her hand any longer after that. I grew up and started taking Karate classes. My grandfather nurtured me with every sand bag, and kicks that went high up in the air. We were like friends. Now when I think while I write poetry, I remember my grandfather a lot. He was a mythical storyteller to me because he made alive the characters from Ramayana and Mahabharata to my young tabula rasa. When I was a child, the holy books flashed before my eyes. I can easily catch hold of the holy serials when I see them on screen now.

I switched on the evening light and thought am I so pure to switch the light of my porch. Something holy must guide me to meet my good lord. That piousness could be like a brilliant touch and maybe it also had a memory. It is like what John Keats said: "Touch has a memory." If light could be touched, sensed and felt more it would have a memory. The morning light would never hurt you. Those who found night for their own darkness were only mistaken.

The neighbourhood I stayed in was a mixture of moral and amoral caricatures. From a nearby furniture shop to a house with a holy praying room on its roof everyone seemed like a character. They were a part of a play that was seeking coherence. Kids that listened to their grandparents often told the stories to their friends in circles. The kids could observe grown-ups play in the playground, for fun. Childhood was a memory and to remember how one grew up was like being alive in that memory. That is how past came to life. Holding hands of my grandmother and listening stories from my grandfather made me recall life differently. The circle I grew up valued these things, and the fun of it was not diminished.

Talking about amoral caricatures of my neighbourhood, lodging houses made their establishments. There were guests who longed to spend nights alone and youngsters who preferred company. The company was not limited to talking and listening, it involved being closed physically. Some boys I knew sneaked their way to the lodging house and watched the physical amoral activity through the spot, a hole they called "pretty eye." Every night the lodging house would open its "pretty eye." The lodging house charged to the young boys for that, just for watching people on bed getting close physically. In a way it got expensive for the boys. They would spend their day trying to find cash for their night spot "pretty eye." They were on a rush.

Paul made a cash register, and he collected money for the occasion pretty eye. Earlier in the day Leo had asked me the money and told me he would register my name for pretty eye.

"Hey, Marvin. You are not going to miss the show tonight, are you?" Paul had called out to me.

"It's a dirty game," I had replied.

"Marvin, you need to appreciate the beauty, man. You need to take a look at those bodies," Paul told me.

The business of the hole "pretty eye" ran like selling a movie ticket. I wondered whether the prettiness was more of a desire to look, rather than the activity itself. Boys and girls falling with their naked bodies. I always thought it was something beautiful when it was not sold as a good for display of affection. I only loved to toy just with the idea of beautiful bodies after looking at them all stark. I lost the thrill after looking at them. It was beautiful, but after looking at the naked bodies I felt like I have attained a whole while I still loved to value unattainable things and, in a way, things not reachable so easily. Loving someone was also an idea that I liked to hide inside me, like poetry. It came to me, but I kept it to myself. I liked to play with it, and script it. If I tried to share it I would lose the essence of it. The uniqueness of these ideas like beauty and love appeared to my real pretty eyes, and my heart thumped with that.

There developed two groups. The first one would narrate tales in circles or groups. The other one would just wander in the neighbourhood and experience unconventional treats. That was just how the world where I grew up looked like, just like the real world with its good charm and bad fall. In between good charm and bad fall there existed the path in between. It was like purgatory, in between heaven and hell. The path that someone took could be the measure of rise or fall. The time taken to lean toward bad things went unnoticed.

When I went home after talking with Paul and Leo that day, I couldn't stop thinking about human bodies. The exhibit of human body as a sight was my concern. The pleasure it drove to the watchers. The show that was thriving in my neighbourhood. I could remember my first view from the "pretty eye." I was made to watch two to three times after the first visit. I saw a body of a young woman, who was totally naked with a not-so-handsome man. I was just a kid, I couldn’t understand how they were sleeping together. What was the social semantics which brought them together or how did they choose each other for the playful act of sex? There was beauty in one body and another body seemed to lack it. You never know, how bodies can act to be together for an hour of conjugality. What would they say together when such bodies departed

By Sushant Thapa

Facebook URL: https://www.facebook.com/sushant.thapa.56