The Anatomy Of Melancholy: February 2007

The sky wavers between sunny and gloaming. The light is a dull clang, old, an echo of light from some forgotten time which still tarries here. Except for the electricity lines you would hardly believe that you in the present 21st Century, remove these silent sentinels from the landscape and you could be anywhere in the sixth to seventh century.

I feel Time enveloping me, taking me back to a place where it stood still unwilling to leave...

There is a haunting quality to the landscape. The Road through the passes is dotted by chortens and sometimes you see by the roadside the Speaking Stones of Spiti . Small Villages & Thousand year old Monastery Towns , or past stony clapboard cottages boarded up awaiting visitors that will never come

In the distance perched on a hill another monastery with stupendous views across the valley floor.

All of them keep their memories to themselves, as you whiz past. Here they have stood long before you and will remain but you will pass away. The air laced with wood smoke, and small butter lamps lit in small houses. I breathe it all in, savour it and hide it in my memory so I can come back whenever I wish.

Atop on my Aerie I pan my vision to the valley below...Far below, the valley spans out in a sweep across the plain below here and there filled with flowers, the wind wafts up to me & pulls the heavy scent of Azalea's into the air, the fragrance drowns, sweet purple, in piercing blue.

The sweetness drowns with a sound of the river beyond.

The river modest knife of history, carving its blade deeper into the earth, rusty blood seeping through the cracked face of the landscape. A fine mesh of colors. Ocher Lichen, Rust, Grays and the awesome vaulted dome above.

On the Way to Manirang Lahul Valley

Nay I can't ask for more.....Its perfection & it leaves me spellbound, Ecstatic.

The leaves of the trees , a million hands exuding energy,

The cold room, the smell of wooden sills and floors slowly being heated in a tepid sun as they have done for centuries in this place.

Looking out at the dry hills so bright, the eye manufactures shadows. Gradations of shades, ice topped hills surround fresh water lakes which reflect shades of turquoise and vivid blues and totally astound . The water reflects the sky and one can forget which side is up and down, the horizion on the sky melt into each other.

If I could draw, I'd hold a square of paper up to this view from yonder window and let the landscape burn into it.

Seep into it like a grasp leaving its stain...

Photosensitive paper turning dark with desire for a place no one will ever apprehend except you & me..

For the past couple of weeks I have missed you..... I wish you were alongside me here . This place has a rugged beauty not unlike Ladakh nowhere else do mountains attain different shades according to the light of the day. I could watch such mountains forever as they dress themselves up in a panoply of vivid hues.

I am sure you would have soaked in the experience as I have.

As I leave I take away the smell of the room again fated to be long closed, the hills and monasteries, the people and the places are all in me. The hills dissolve as I look back ; From the open door, the wafting fumes of scorched grass which is not unlike the acrid smell of all my burned poetry for you.... but the loss I feel is that of one who has already passed the point of apprehension.

Like writing to a man who no longer wishes to be found.

So its sayonara for now, look not for me ....Until the plums bending that branch, the weight of the shadow separating one leaf from another, presses that place into you.

- Until the hills burns your eyes, until you give in.

- Until a seam of density that that separates leaf from air/ is not a gap but a seal.

- A seal to my solitude in this vast expanse.

- Until the beautiful buzzing of the bees wakes me.

Seldom do you visit places which seem to feel like home, places which appeal to your soul and the desire is almost overwhelming to remain forever. This is one such place cut off from the whole world, one of the most sparsely populated region in our overfilled country, which exists out of time and bereft of reason. A place I could easily call home. But for now the road beckons to other places but where shall I find such splendor & such a feeling of peace I don't know.