Author Archives: Arun

When you worry in vain like a mute caged bird… and you realise you can only hope for the best, wish things would turn around but you don’t have the right to ask or know.

Each time I say goodbye my heart breaks into a million pieces. I tell a cliché joke, feign a smile and don’t turn back lest the sadness in my eyes turns you gloomier. And with each receding footstep I strive to prepare myself to repeat it.

What’s the point of music if it can’t reach and illuminate man’s darkest depths?

The reason I go on a trip each year is the anonymity. I hardly care about the place or the people or the diversity. All places are unique, all men are predictable. My mind occasionally wanders off to far better places.

Something you yearn for so long that when you get it, it has turned meaningless.

No matter what I hear, I always find my solace in Tagore. My heart overflows in inexplicable joy when it’s Rabindrasangeet, my soul surrenders itself to the overwhelming influence of a power beyond my limited comprehension, my insignificant life offers itself to the prospects of becoming one with the eternity. No wish, no sorrow, no regret left… the irresistible lure of a void that’s complete in itself.

And then there are those days I would crave to be the companion of a Baul or a Fakir and walk into the remotest places in Bengal, where people still remember how to love folk music, live within nature, offer a stranger a lunch or a dinner and a warm corner to sleep at night. I would love to know them, see the smiles in their wrinkled faces despite the hardship in their daily lives.
I design complex systems, but I am ever-jealous of the design in simplicity.

It was a cold drizzling day. I spent most of the time in the balcony working till I realised it’s dark. I stared at the disappearing sky for a while. All of it resembled the widening distance between us. Soon nothing will be left. This old apartment was sealed a few years ago. Someone jumped from the balcony.

I drifted so far in my slumber… when I woke up, all the signs leading back home were erased. I stood up, finally awake… and consumed by my new reality filled with nothingness. I could build a new world again… but our memories were too heavy to try anything fresh. So I collapsed and let the quicksand of time and the dead leaves blown by the dry wind bury me.

And we’ll sit at the window that opens to the sublime beauty of the blue ocean or the lofty mountain and gaze and murmur and squabble till the end of time.