Back to Issue 7

Misty Mountain by Avishek Parui

  Once upon a time there lived a beautiful little girl called Poetry. She lived in a wood where there were lots of flowers, a beautiful brook and a sweet spring. Here there was always day, the trees were always filled with beautiful fruits which never fell. Whenever there was a breeze in the wood, the trees whistled in various tunes as the soft breeze caressed them. The flowers would then sway happily and perform a rhythmic dance movement, always the same beautiful movement, as the rays of a special sun played hide-and-seek among themselves through the many leaves and branches which never grew old. Poetry was the darling of all- the flowers, the leaves, the rays of the special sun, the beautiful birds which were always beautiful- all loved her and they were together a beautiful family. Nobody knew who Poetry's parents were, as nobody else lived in that wood. Only, sometimes some lonely traveler would happen to sit down to rest near the fringes of the wood. The tired soul could then hear the soft music swirling out of it, touching the senses and healing the wounds within. They would sit and hear the beautiful music from the woods till they felt fresh to journey again. Something told them that they were not to search for the wood and seek to enter it; they were only to feel its presence for a while. In that wood, nobody who could grow or die could enter. In it, nobody grew or died. It was a happy space.

                                But Poetry had an evil twin-brother, Perversity. They were born  of the same parents (though nobody knew who they were). But although they were twins and had many common features, Poetry and Perversity were essentially different; they grew up till they stopped growing; in separate ways and in separate spaces. Perversity lived in a wood of his own which was filled with cactus plants, rocky mounds and many many snakes. The wood was cut all into lots of ditches, which, viewed from above, looked like the word SIX. The only sounds coming from this wood was the cacophony of the cacti hitting against each other in a steady, dusty storm; along with the incessant hissing of the many snakes gleaming in their blackness. This wood was always semi-dark as no sun or moon  rose in its sky. Instead, it had a fixed, red star which created many mazes on its surface with its malignant maroon light. Perversity would mostly sit on the strongest cactus' stem and laugh loudly at the red star. Sometimes, some travelers, often groups journeying together, would come to the rocky borders of this wood, and- their bodies and parts of their souls drawn to the eerie blackness and cacophony of this wood- they would enter it. The entry would always be perfectly willing , there would just be the attraction. If they entered far enough for Perversity to spot them or the maroon light of the red star to fall on them, they would stand fixed for sometime. While in that state, an ugly dwarf with a stinky, syrupy substance smeared all over, would leap from somewhere within each of them and fall on the nearest cactus-plant. There would be no blood-dropping; only another cactus-stem would spring sprightly from that point. The travelers, often quite a few of them together, would then drag their bodies and sickened souls out of this wood. It was an evil space.

                              Sometimes, the Mother of both Poetry and Perversity, whose name or identity nobody knew, would ask them to meet each other on the foot of a Fold Mountain. In these meetings none of them exchanged any word. They would just look at each other's eyes- Poetry's soft and sky-blue, Perversity's hard and dark-red. They would stand under the Fold Mountain for ninety-six and sixty-nine seconds at alternate meetings. At the end of that time, they always performed a ritual. They put forth their right arms and touched each other's finger-tips in perfect proportions. They would hold their breaths for exactly the same span of time and then release them on each other's face with equal intensity. At that moment, in Poetry's wood the birds would chime out most sweetly and the flowers gleam in the sunlight with all the seven colors seen together. In Perversity's wood, the snakes would all hiss out loudly together, so loud that the noise would reach the red star which would then sparkle with an added intensity. After that, Poetry and Perversity would walk back to their respective woods, surer and stronger in their perfect intensities.

                            One day, a naughty boy who used to run away from school wandered aimlessly along the roads of the hill-town where he was staying with his father on a long vacation. He wandered with the pleasure of not knowing where he was going until he entered a swirling path that led into a forest. The naughty boy loved sunrays- his name Robi, was another name for the sun in his mother tongue- and he ran after the little paths lit-up by the setting sun which, like the naughty boy, was gradually getting tired. Very soon, the boy realized that he has lost his way and reached a vast open space with a mountain some distance away. As his friend, the sun, had gone off to sleep, the naughty boy who used to run away from school, walked very slowly towards a kind-looking tree. Before long, he was fast asleep.

                At the moment when some force seemed to have squeezed out the feel of time, the little boy woke up with a start. There was darkness all around him but somewhere in the not-so-distant horizon, the boy thought he saw a sky-blue vapor and a red mist by it. As he was a naughty boy, instead of staying where was, he ran towards the point where he thought he saw the faint gleams. As soon as he reached a big stone with a little brook flowing by it, the little boy felt a shiver that shook all his senses. He could see in the open space in front of the mountain two hazy bodies of light that seemed to reach and touch each other. The boy could see the feeling that took a form at the touch of the two figures the feelings which traveled and entered him through the flowers at his feet, a feeling with the smell of the incense the boy had seen his mother set in their home's beautiful temple. The boy thought the distant body in red light tried to turn towards him. There was something scary about it. But it was held fixedly, the boy thought, by the other figure in sky-blue light. The boy felt a strange mixture of ecstasy and pain, triumph and guilt. He thought he had seen something pure, sacred, too perfect maybe. He shivered, trembled, mind, body, soul, heart, legs, arms, all together, together, together...in perfect proportion to each other. Then, with a thud, the naughty boy fell on the soft grass beneath him, painlessly, and passed out. He felt he had felt too much for his little frame. It's a feeling which would grow with him, shaping up his joys and pains into his poetic persona.

                            The boy-poet awoke with the slanting rays of the rising sun. He remembered he ought not to remember  what he had seen the previous night , in the timeless space in front of the Fold Mountain. A voice within seemed to tell him so. It was probably the same voice which enabled the boy-poet to trace the path he had taken to enter the forest last night. Very soon he could see the small hill town and walked steadily towards it. A bird chimed from somewhere close, the boy-poet crossed a stream he had not seen last evening, a stream which seemed to carry the freshness of birth. While walking across it, the boy felt something dark and slippery cross his feet, the thorn of  a wild mountain plant cut his knee, but the boy-poet walked on.

              The sunrays were gradually beginning to spread and criss-cross the wee hill town as the beautiful boy-poet descended the mountain. He did not bring any testament but a feeling, a feeling which would well up in him in many forms, eager to be expressed in words. The boy-poet knew already that he would write many poems in future, poems that would reveal a perfect union, a blend of form and content, of pattern and passion , order and force, body and spirit, into a harmonious madness. He had seen and felt something he must not and cannot fully reveal and yet must keep expressing on and on, in various forms and guises, like a river which never knows if it would ever see the sea  by itself  but still journeys with gusto, reaching as far as it can, picking all the happiness that it comes by.

                The boy-poet's young feet carried him back to the waking hill-town. Thought...like various birds of various shapes and colours, were already perching in the tree which had already begun to grow in his mind. With each step of the boy the tree spread out another branch to collect another thought-bird. For now, the boy felt, he must set to write.