Notes – June 2003. A strange time. After data collection in Bangalore for my thesis, I come back and talk to my Prof. We share a few stupid jokes about how the interviews went. Two days later, I get a phone call telling me he fell to his death from the balcony of his house on the ninth floor.
In the silence that followed, so much of my own life fell into perspective. My prof was like a father figure, and the loss made a lot of the complaints sound like trivial screeches.
She makes little circles in the sand with her toe. The waves of sand that are bulldozed to the sides by her relentless toe make little shadows. Shadows so tiny that no one even sees. Nobody stopped to decipher the mysteries of these little shadows.
Shadows have meanings.. or .. meanings have shadows.
When she held his hand, the shadow showed two hands entwined. Two hands together, hair flying in the wind, and toe circling. Anatomy redefined in the artist’s indigo ink. The shadow couldn’t show the tears in his eyes, and the distance in hers. Meanings have shadows that plunge them into darkness.
I think of the man who dived to death from the ninth floor of a building. 8 PM. Did his shadow fall with him, or was it waiting for him to land on the turf below. 8 PM. Or maybe 9 PM.
Did I tell you the moon is out now? In a little while, it will move further, and the sharp moon shadow will become fuzzy. Music has no shadows, but if it did, it would be like the fuzzy moon shadow. Bathed in silver and floating upon dark green leaves. Shadows have no life and yet they move, blithely. If she were to die tonight, I ask, would her shadow die too? He cries. Because he sees no light in his shadows. The colours of the skin, red rashes, and purple bruises, white mountains of pimples, all turn dark.
She looks for hope. And shadows, devoid of colours. Shadows are not even black. They are dark. Where there is no light. Shadows were small nocturnal creatures out in the day, by mistake.
By mistake.
He says, I have been chasing my shadow for so long. And he cries again, and looks at her, why didn’t you chase my shadow? Why?
I look down in the water, and sometimes there is so much darkness, that you don’t know if it its your reflection, or your shadow you look at. Are you going to count the number of times I used the word ‘shadow’. Obsessed with the form rather than the spirit?
The sky is empty, and so are your eyes.
Posted on February 25th, 2005 by Neha Viswanathan
Filed under: Random Links
