Continued Musings and Journal Entries of a Lazy Author

Sabarna Roy is a much awarded, critically acclaimed bestselling author of 6 literary books: Pentacles; Frosted Glass; Abyss; Winter Poems; Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012 – 2018, and Etchings of the First Quarter of 2020. He is the lead author of a technical book, which has been published from the European Union and has been translated into 8 major European languages.

He has been awarded the Literoma Laureate Award in 2019, Literoma Star Achiever Award 2020, Random Subterranean Mosaic: 2012 – 2018 won the best book of the year 2019, the A List Award for excellence in fiction by the NewsX Media House, Certificate for The Real Super Heroes for spreading a spirit of positivity and hope during the COVID-19 Pandemic from Forever Star India Award 2020, and the Certificate for Participation in the Indo Russian Friendship Celebration 2020.

Half my life I have spent wondering: what is home; what constitutes a home. Lastly, I have concluded home is a place, a shelter that primarily protects you from the ravages of nature. The ancient definition still holds good for me. The secondary add-ons are fringe elements. Still the idea of home is illusive. And: what is love; what constitutes love. I am ultimately reduced to the idea that love is a transient expansive feeling reverberating in our chest that rides on the passion of conquering another person primarily initiated by lust for that person; while the passion of lust withers away with time, the propensity of conquest lingers on. So don’t I read love stories/poems or watch films made around love stories? I do but do not enjoy them much. At times I wonder if love was this as portrayed; life would have been a blessing. Still the idea of love is illusive. I hate the romantic approach to life. Romanticism is part sentimentalism and part mythologizing and takes away objectivity (which is the building block for serious art) in approach and attitude. Romanticism is also an antidote to black humour and being truly passionate about something. My son asked me how I wanted him to prepare for his Semester 3 (which is critical to his summer internship at the University of Surrey); I replied, with the intensity of Nawazuddin Siddiqui in Gangs of Wasseypur 2! I like the detachment of Meaursalt in The Outsider (Albert Camus) or that of Dr Rieaux in The Plague (Albert Camus) or that of Michael Corleone in Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola).
People love exotic birds. Go after them. Shoot them. Put the prints up in exhibitions. Other people are awed by their multi-layered existence. I am moved by – crows and mynas, whom we experience almost every day. I am drawn to tears by the sighting of – crows flying against a blue azure sky, a bunch of crows waiting on transmission wires against an overcast gray sky, a herd of mynas bobbing on a green wet field. The lucidity and nativity of crows and mynas remind me of Chinese folk poems.
It was between the autumn and the winter. A mysterious, pleasant transition phase. It was raining. The sky was overcast with thick clouds and looked menacingly gray. Chitragupta melancholically traversed through the cobblestoned alleys of his private garden. The rabbit was in his hands. He kept on stroking its head to which it purred. They got drenched. Chitragupta and his rabbit seemed to like the wetness in the cool breeze. He looked languishingly at the greens, woods and the colors of the flowers almost in an erotic chasm. A deer came from nowhere and confronted Chitragupta. As he looked into her ocean-like-eyes, the velvety touch of her skin and the firmness of her horns, Chitragupta’s secret was revealed to Chitragupta. Chitragupta felt unending love for Chitrangada. However, he was hardly aroused by her. Chitraganda was aroused by Chitragupta but he failed to satisfy her in love-making and of course, Chitrangada doubted the foundations of Chitragupta’s platonic love. While he was ravenous in his harem of the choicest concubines and mistresses selected from all across the world, he was cold to Chitrangada in bed. What Chitrangada did not know was: Chitragupta in his moments of orgasm repeatedly was filled with a secret guilt for Chitrangada and he longed to escape his harem and return to his palace to drown his face and tears in the voluptuous bosoms of Chitrangada. Chitrangada tired of waiting for Chitragupta in bed developed an interest for men gradually: especially, soldiers and sailors, for they knew all the secrets of pleasing a woman for they imported their magic from distant lands. She climaxed sweating in their rustic hands blindfolded dreaming of Chitragupta and crying stealthily.
The dream returned to Kingshuk. Sitting on the cliff of his technology empire at the twenty-third Annual General Meeting looking at the ocean of his empire’s expectant stakeholders’ eyes, leisurely cuddled up in a behemoth banquet – well done – of a super-deluxe resort. The dream returned to Kingshuk. The night Ma abandoned him and Baba, she crooned in his ears [he was well-asleep; the words penetrated his semi-conscious nervous system and got embedded there in labyrinthine layers]: ‘’What if, the planet is no longer an oblong spheroid but a plateau such that you could reach the end of the planet and jump into dark space. King, it is not important to know what others tell you as facts; it is important to know them for yourself. It is thus significant to be unbound and unfettered in life like the medieval explorers, merchants and pirates.” The dream had returned to Kingshuk. And, he wavered a little. After some time he went up to the podium to speak out his well-rehearsed chilly speech and in the end, announced an annual dividend of 75%, in these times of legendary economic mess, to which his shareholders rejoiced and clapped boisterously and chanted that, Data-mining is the future of all money-making in the years to come. That is, Corporations making money out of controlling people’s lives and choices most directly, like never before. Meanwhile, Kingshuk sipped in small measures his Cognac and smiled a wry smile remembering Ma and the dream.
A bluish dark night – a star studded night notwithstanding. On a mountain-top. Sitting alone on a rock head staring at the sky for the stars to fall on the fields of acacia like burnt-out rockets of doom … Distant thunder … War cries of emaciated bodies booming from the jungles …

Source: schoollife.in