It is raining outside; a persistent thrum peopled by the footsteps of this relentless drizzle. It will stop in some time, though. The naala outside my blacony is swollen with the city’s detritus - the plastic, e-waste and filth will soon clog the drainage, and people will be lowered into that hell to unclog our excesses, and let the earth breathe again. Streets would be wiped clean, much like the sky whose long face will be hung out to dry.
Riding my bicycle in this weather, just after the rains, is something I like to do. With the post monsoon chatter of birds and squirrels, or Snarky Puppy in my ears, I seek out less congested roads, parks and semi-green corridoors, in this concrete jungle - not the Central Vista, I guess. Cycling, like swimming, running or riyaz, allows me to think, to let happenings and the heart’s palpitations wash over the shore of my body. Then, when I reach a beautiful place - some corner that has taken root in the city’s hard earth, whose character has now become indistinguishible from its place, usually a quiet marriage of the past, and the everyday - I stop, take a breath, and then let my thoughts dissolve in the details of where I am. Perhaps this is a kind of prayer, or communion, who knows. It gives peace.
I discovered a poem recently that loiters with quite the same pace, speaking about heavy things with lightness, and spreading on the surface of a philosophy of living, a glaze of ordinary wonder. The notion of poetry finding you, and words jumping out from the page with the eagerness of epiphany, is probably tiresome by now. But you will know what I mean when you read Jane Hirshfield’s (I want poem, well, almost) - I would like. Hirshfield jumps straight into description of a desire, an imagination of her ‘living’. This living is a forest, and she walks different paths through the undergrowth, at times, soaking in the wild, and, at times pausing, being tentative, anxious, despondent, exhilirated, or just an observer. In her hands, this forest turns into a magical place, with unexpected offerings, but she is always a silent participant in all that comes her way. The persona finds in nature the essence of feeling and survival, and the quality of living each experience as if it was the first. When she arrives at that ‘taste’, after a journey of different visions and metaphors on which she has taken you as a fellow traveler, there is the barefaced curiosity of newness, and the excitement.
I read this poem many times. I am very fond of it.
I will ride now, with these words ringing in my ears, as I ride, and once again, as I ‘taste/ as if something tasted for the first time’.
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