MEMORABLE ART
How do we remember? Not with calendars or clocks. Certainly not with the eponymous temporal lobe.
We remember by looking at old photographs, their wear and tear telling time. We remember in a grandfather's waist belt that we no longer know how to wear or by the taste of fake sugar cigarettes that we couldn't smoke. We remember by tasting a spice used in biryani or by feeling the wee corners of our ears turn icy cold.
Some cities have their writers. Lisbon, for instance, will forever be Fernando Pessoa’s ~ steeped in the saudade of his words, frozen by his poetry, restless as the disquiet between his journal pages. Paris is haunted by the ghost of Hemingway, tied to his heart and bleeding sweet, bitter wine.
Somewhere in Montmarte’s winding alleys lurks the shadow of Henry Miller, in love with his grey city, captured by the Sacre Coeur, lusting after the broken and the beautiful. Some cities have their filmmakers. In Fellini’s hands, Rome is caressed like a rare and rough-cut jewel, in Wyler’s it bears silent black-and-white witness to a princess and a pauper falling in love.
Also in this issue
Second row from the stage – I felt smug in my seat of privileged view. It wasn't going to be the usual evening of taking a test for hypermetropia or digging out wax from my ears. I would have a crystal clear vision of the dilating of the eyes of the actor-lovers as they cast amorous glances towards each other. The lights dimmed, the curtains parted and I was ferried to a realm where I had a corps a corps relationship with the players. 'There's nothing to surpass the magic of live theatre and the communion it creates among performers and spectators', I applauded, in admiration of the form.
Dhrupadi Ghosh is an old friend of mine. We have often had long sessions of adda late at night, discussing her dream projects since her college days at Santiniketan, where she majored in Sculpture. I always marveled at her erudition and political views.
My library work was over, and we often caught up for tea and cigarettes. Then one evening Chinmoy was busy: after weeks of waiting the department had just received some stone.
