A Familiar Station: After Twelve Years There was a red brick building here: A red dot under the horizon. A thousand sighs used to pass every day over the rails by its side. They are still a painting in his eye’s mirror. Some unseen hand has removed the red bricks one by one. Their unfamiliar faces return to him on a dark glass. They move in between the brief sighs Each floating on a piece of nothingness. They disappear behind the vacant spot where once was The red brick building. A moving red light suddenly appears with a familiar whistle--- A red dot jumping onto his eye’s expectant canvas. Note: In my childhood, one item that fascinated me endlessly was the red brick building of our railway station at Tinsukia., the other was the rail lines that stretched endlessly (to my mind) towards the horizon and beyond. A vague notion that there was some unseen “beyond” past the horizon thrilled me. The beauty of the black steam engine chugging majestically over the railway tracks was a real delight. The three items all in one space formed a painting in my mind’s eyes, not unlike the painting of Monet, which I saw much later. The painter in my case was none other than my imagination. I left Tinsukia after my matriculation examination for higher studies and after a few years returned to my childhood base very infrequently due to circumstances. Once there was a long gap of several years and when I returned to the place, I wistfully looked for the image of my familiar station that was etched in my memory. I was shocked to see my favourite red brick building gone, a new drab building standing there but not at the same spot. Nostalgia overtook me and the result was a poem written in Assamese. The English poem is its adaptation only. The original poem was written in 1973. “Twelve Years” here is metaphoric suggesting a watershed of time. Twelve years constitute a ‘yuga’ in a cultural concept of our folk life (different from 4 Yugas of Puranas).
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 01:39:38 +0000
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