{"id":360,"date":"2011-05-21T18:59:42","date_gmt":"2011-05-21T18:59:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue9\/?page_id=360"},"modified":"2011-09-20T22:11:15","modified_gmt":"2011-09-20T22:11:15","slug":"prosenjit-dey-chaudhury","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/writings\/creative-non-fiction\/prosenjit-dey-chaudhury\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosenjit Dey Chaudhury"},"content":{"rendered":"

Like a Happy Driftwood on the Sea <\/strong><\/h1>\n
Prosenjit Dey Chaudhury<\/h6>\n

The journey over a hidden, unflinching ocean was simple, with mist swirling and tossing under the window in the sky to give niggardly glimpses of a grey adamantine surface that made the bosom of the earth. No life was present upon that surface, no untoward crease cut across its troughs; and the traveller was bid to fly by swiftly to a destination solid more in its touch of welcome than in its share of the desolate sublunary crust.<\/p>\n

The window of his present room in the city is large, very large, and it shows a stern, leaden sky, below which the rim of an extensive edifice in the offsetting colour of cream makes the summit of a cascade of rims down to the sill of the window. He learnt early to identify the oak, pine and maple trees outside by their leaves and needles. The step of the cascade immediately above the sill is that of the bar of the lozenge fence outside, on which chordate leaves burnt with the light of primeval, healthy green spread their palms to the sky. The sprigs of the oak stir with the breath of the wind while the rain-wet, leafier branches of the maple move reluctantly to that breath. Inside a window in a gallery next to the pine there is a light that betokens warmth against the chill that must be descending on the world outside. Occasionally a car flits across the alley skirting the fence and birds appear to be cheeping somewhere. Apart from these and the light in the window, and, of course, the drunken, hearty drawl on the telephone in the adjoining apartment, there are no other signs of life.<\/p>\n

He likes the world as it spreads in crepuscular solemnity and becomes replete with secrets. In every approach of the dark from without he knows, nonetheless, that he lives in a sunshine city that has become one of his vital members: perhaps he made the city a member, perhaps the city decided to live inside him. He grew an arm every time he went out and forgot every name in history till he thought he was the only person alive in a world of houses and snow. If ever he cut one of these arms he felt the pang of the loss and tried to grow it again. He knows he walked out into a dizzying entrancement that is not usually within the contemplation of the inner spirit. Straight streets and straight houses arose from the city and were alive; a certain uplifting ozone made a capture of the mind from a cobalt blue firmament and a whisper in the air became a fragrance when the moon was sailing among dishevelled clouds. The straight lines of the roads and the houses suddenly left behind their straight, linguistic meaning and the world gave a sense of something prehensile that is meant to live forever.<\/p>\n

In looking out of the window he wonders what is to happen in the cascading rush of time into which everyone must fall. Nothing may have changed outside, certainly nothing seems to have changed in the walls that are touched with the hands and the hands that are seen with the eyes; there is change in the constitution of each season such that this one may be more warped than the one before and that one may be more illustrative of a consensual prediction of the climate than this one; yet, in this flux, the calm for the individual often arrives when the seeds of momentous change have been sown so deep that they cannot be seen. Such is his calm and he must tell himself that something has changed inside. \u201cI still trace with a shudder the contours of the world I have seen, for they made this whole jangling self prick up and give attention to a voice, to a realization, a constat<\/em>, a merveille<\/em>, a sentiment, a promise, a fulfilment, the giddiness of ozone and the whisper of the dark.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was pause in the breath and the sound of breath in the pause. And then the coruscating white veil of cloud over the hill moved between the ends of the alley and reached to the far square; a journey had been made above and a journey was being made here upon the soil on which the feet were placed: the island was sailing in the river and he was sailing to the aroma of the island. Music flowed from a cabin decked in the cockeyed impression of graffiti in the proximity of a sidewalk; it trailed in the air like the smoke from the great funnels of a crawling steamship. He might have been the only human being upon this earth from the silence of the streets, the absence of fellow and the muteness of the mansions. The stolid calm of the streets and of the masts of joined houses told of a sly, fairy world bound to the lighted freedom of the sky. \u201cThe street was descending rapidly in the way tributaries descend to a river and I was going to tumble into the lap of the clouds that floated over this river.\u201d<\/p>\n

Above a broad, stately street etched out along the breast of this sailing island such that the hill stood above and the earth plunged below, a spectacle of clouds in the sky left the furious sun shining between the crevices of perpendicular buildings and throwing a part of itself upon the opposite sidewalk. The temptation to cross to the opposite side was strong, not only to escape for a while the horripilating blasts that tear through such a broad street from every direction at almost every time\u2014placed as the flying island is to the rush of universal winds\u2014but also for a close observation of the ornamentation of light upon the camber of grey tiled roofs, upon inverted flower pots with corner fleurs-de-lys that make the crown of many a coloured dormer door with a balcony, and on crenellations dyed in snuff that run along roof edges in imitation of turrets for a defended fortress. \u201cI shall call this street I was in not by its proper name but simply Gracious Street; it affords the grace of the broad steps of museums, the fine grounds of universities and the retreated walls of an ancient seminary shielded by orchards, besides leafy lining maples and oaks with trunks that are hardened with the crust of epochs.\u201d From the street, one sees the sweeping hill looking down in shades of orange and buff on a stormy day in autumn when rain falls in cordes<\/em> but does not persist, although the clouds continue to churn gruesomely and prevent the reappearance of the sun.<\/p>\n

It was indeed elevating and heady to walk into this world in the days following his own arrival in the city, to relent the steps at a corner with a little park in which a bench was dominated by a wall thickened with vinery, and to pass thence to another avenue apparently aligned with the one left behind in which the balcony on the loft of a house at the corner was topped by an outrageous mound that settled squarely and smugly as if nothing else was sufficiently apt to make the decoration. More people came into view but they were not enough to cause a loosening in the step as he might be prepared for from his previous outings in cities, the only pause coming from the red light at the other end that bespoke a friendliness in its stand. A fir seemed to stand in the middle of the path on the other side and stony anchored vessels teemed with a variety of petals at a short space from it. People ate behind glass walls and seemed to eat there always. Out where the walk led smoothly up to a view of the statue with wings at the foot of the hill and then descended to provide a vista of towers and open roads, he was conscious of flying in the air with few observers around to mark the flight, propelled as he was by the buoyancy of the sun and the settled luminescence burgeoning from the soil of the city. There it was: the elemental liveliness of sun and air such as the demanding spirit inside was long waiting to drown in, and the awareness of a necessary, distinctive, quaint, imperious, stylish relief for a city upon a masted, rigged, voluminous island; this revelation was one of the many apercus in the persisting, riveting corpus of air and space, and in the detonation of sound and soul, in this city. \u201cAnd I still have not dwelled on the traits of the bewildering rare people, rare for their mix, flair, panache, caprice, circumstance, and simple denial of the absence of bewilderment!\u201d<\/p>\n

He slides the panel of fine netting in the window and feels a surge of cold air that is bracing after it has slapped him. The sun itself will not burst so easily in the days that are to come. Up in the air, the wind is not content to rattle and loosen the leaves but is even turning around clouds that are blindingly white, speeding them and crisping their stranding edges as in a griddle. \u201cI think of the city out there beyond the rims and under this sky. The keenness of the air today and its transience may be apparent all over the province and people may breathe in it before it is gone; but some of these people will be happy to breathe the tonic in this city, closing their eyes and dreaming uniquely of wonder from what is actual and what is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

As if to underscore all the gamut of experience and sensation, the next morning silent rain is falling. The sullen sky watches as the puddles in the empty alley receive an occasional rippling splat. No pouchy cat crouches in the tangle outside the window nor does any dapper squirrel with a dominating tail dart upon the fence rail or on the black cables. It is cold as only a blast from the North can be cold. It is necessary to brace against the wind to gather the morning papers from the local station m\u00e9tro<\/em>. The morning commuters, the stragglers and the dashers are walled up for the most part against this grey morning, their hands in their pockets and their postures in a certain rigid slouch. The umbrella may be laid aside to feel the reviving slap of the fresh air upon the face, but fine rain is coming with no surcease and it is best to put up this unsteady little sky-dome over the head.<\/p>\n

In the Parc not far away from the station m\u00e9tro<\/em> no dogs are to be seen gambolling upon the grassed slopes as they usually do. The gulls look wise in the jasp\u00e9<\/em> splatter of dark colour on their bodies; they cluster on the edge of the crescent lake, reluctant to swoop in and float with the ducks, which carry the rainbow upon them. On such a bleak day all warmth will seem to go out of the universe; yet upon the few faces that pass by and that are passed on a straight street towards the north\u2014some of them muffled and poised over the swaying handlebar of a cycle plied on the sidewalk\u2014there is contentment and even a smile in delighting self-contemplation, and one warms to this emanation of life from the straight but dulled brick buildings and the ashen houses with walls of knobbed stone. \u201cI wonder that something so strong can rise forth from behind those walls and emerge into the open when all the sobbing mournfulness of time is here. I warm to the people I see and I want to be happy in their joy and my own joy.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is another day of language class. From pauses in the cours de fran\u00e7ais \u00e9crit<\/em> on the highest storey of the \u00e9cole<\/em> one looks through the thick-glass windows; layer upon layer of swollen cloud in the more sombre tones of grisaille extend to the horizon where the leaning tower of the stadium drops lines that clutch a mound of white such as to make it peak in parts without distorting its roundness. \u201cI have christened this dome Petit Mont Blanc, for it is white and when all else is in shadow across many a mile it can sometimes stand out in snowy conspicuousness.\u201d The clouds are undulating but they do not budge as a very inky, shapeless shroud begins to spread upon them, or rather under them. The trees beside the rail tracks are colouring and from this position at the windows they are really reduced to midgets. The matronly dove outside on the window sill is fabulously distending her body and burying her head entirely in herself. Strangely, from the other end of the sky, sun falls upon large matured leaves of almost canary yellow on stately arboreals next to the windows on the westward side. Although the leaves end in a taper they are generously wide and carry a catchy reflection to the eye. All at once the sun is swelling; these blades begin to tingle with a glint while mellowed foils of yellow and green of the same tree compete for the attention and the light. The frolicking leaves are impressed upon the soft but radiant azure behind the trees. The scene comes directly from a deeper suggestion of a distant childhood when winters were fleeting and leaves sprung against the sky on quiet, sunny afternoons. The mount under the tour<\/em> is now agleam but the sky above it becomes more and more ominous. Then, gradually, the most distant long clouds take on a shine and all the underbellies that were coalesced break apart to reveal sparingly the simple blue of the sky.<\/p>\n

Outside, a chill grips the pedestrian round the throat and wraps itself around the face. This is surely a grasp of none other than the deepening mould of the coming winter and one must forbear henceforth to brave the air and even the sun with a bared caput. At the bus stop puddles of water stay in small depressions on the asphalt next to the sidewalk. Brownish leaves are pasted next to them as cars speed or skid by. Someone in stiletto heels gingerly crosses to the median of the lavishly wide road while the light is green. The trees at the opposite corner are still full of foliage and still so green; one will wonder about their names and of those at the Parc when they become bare in the following season. At the nearest corner a hoarding hanging close to the join of two high brick walls announces a process in interior decoration.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I emerge from the depths of my own local station m\u00e9tro<\/em> I walk ahead to see how the hill appears under the continuingly solemn sky.\u201d Drapes of quivering cloud lurid and livid overhang the hill, and just above its brow a flare of light diffuses and rips through the obstinate sheets, making a silhouette of the rise and throwing into undeserved dullness the deaf, huddling woods that withal exhibit some colour. The cross upon the hill will not blink or flutter and the two communication pylons that loom at respectful distances make no word. \u201cThe hill watches and perhaps waits and welcomes as it did when we first came to this island.\u201d<\/em> Up the street to the grocer\u2019s two maples almost face each other; the one on the left is decked for a large part in orange gold while that on the right is so steeped in Burgundy red that it has shed all memory of affinity with yellow, brown, gold and even orange and pink.<\/p>\n

In the following morning, the sun is so prominent that outside the glass windows of the classroom for the cours <\/em>the sky and the earth are imbued in a freshening citron hue that heralds a moment of awakening. Not a jot of cloud is to be seen. Leaves between roofs in the near distance exhibit a realisation of the pastel hue; they shimmer and they flutter in unison such as they might in a jet stream up in the heavens. Is not this island in flying sail after all? Yet the walk to class has been glacial enough to leave the eyes streaming. This is some of the caprice that makes this city, this place, this construction, this reality painstakingly versatil<\/em>. \u201cEvery day, be it ever so familiar, is a fresh act in the dramatic voyage of which we are part, of which we at times are keenly conscious, of which we at other times are ignorant in our daily ordered routines.\u201d Vistas of skyscrapers open up from bending freeways and from streets ending in a very blue river, beyond which paler hills keep the company of mini puffed clouds; there is no sense more unique to the eye of the finitude and at the same time the munificence of space, the way in which it accommodates the inhabitants; and even the sense of its frailty as it swoops away to uncover much of itself, making those inhabitants privileged partners in a sailing quest that takes the character of a trip just under the celestial sphere. Perchance beyond that sphere when all is in silence and one is aware that something is moving.<\/p>\n

At a crossing an avenue darts away point blank-straight in a manner so visible, so palpable, that nothing is hid to the view; and when the eye beholds a truly magnificent length of the street, there is a clock tower at its termination that seems to be on the street but which has really jumped across the river and planted itself upon a small island. Diagonally across at the crossing, the trees of the Parc ruffle their proud foliage which is nonetheless dwarfed by the brief but intense morning sky, as in a scene from the chequered start of a planetary life. Gracious Street swoops to the left and makes between itself and the street adjoining the Parc two enclaves of grass and tree that offer themselves to the lengthy steps of an ancienne biblioth\u00e8que<\/em> with a lavish number of polished columns in its porch. Within the larger islet disciplined shrubs with buttons of colour encircle a manicured plot of many flowers, their tall leaves fading to the colour of ash in places such that they contrast most sharply with the red of geraniums, though the yellow of daffodils and marigolds and the topping purple spikes of a wort strike out in colour too, in addition to the multitudinous other petals whose names must be found.<\/p>\n

When the sun is behind a haze it glows with its suppressed fire, restless to be free of the unctuous web that binds it, but content to rise slowly, throwing a faint rotund rainbow much farther in the firmament, the position to which one day billions of years hence it might expand and remain for a while in searching desperately for more reserves of its fuel. Though the glow makes its warmth known the cold on the ground swirls as the hours pass in the morning, assuming the character of a liquid that dissolves the members of the human body into its own constituent. The clouds invade the whole sky and descend to the earth. From the class, the tour of the stadium is eclipsed and Petit Mont Blanc appears as a faint mirage in a veil. A very black doggie trots with a swing ahead of her master in the path beside the rail tracks. Almost as if in a few moments, the mist begins to dissipate and, from inside looking out, one regards sunshine to the horizon in a clear air; greased urchins of cloud are present far yonder, just two or three, and they might well be the hanging smoke from the funnel of the coasting steamship upon which pioneers are\u00a0 embarked on an odyssey, a ship now arrived upon a vast new world redolent with the tinge of freshness and discovery, green, free, untouched and quiet until suddenly, from among the tree trunks, there appear whooping men with feathers on their heads, paint on their bodies and axes in their hands. \u201cGod, behold! This is what our mothers and fathers might have witnessed quite a few centuries ago when they arrived in their pinnaces!\u201d<\/p>\n

He believed that every thing partook of the spectacular if he only kept his eyes open; he found confirmation in this belief by the transition before his eyes from one dormered slope to another, each if not changing in form, then transforming in colour and certainly enriching the suggestion of a tale. Then going up an incline in the direction of Gracious Street, indeed trudging slow with shopping purchases, he passed by flowery plots of consummate variety and resplendent short trees blazing in their own colours; there were sun-drenched zinnias, daisies, asters, peonies and more along with bushes that were also vibrant if not royally brazen in purple, although some of the ground was being rolled up as if the season of fruition was already over. The street was empty and as the houses climbed up with the gradient, the sun stood to the left and was on a closer level with the eyes; the sheeting membrane was all apparent in the sky and this time the houses succeeded one another in a cadence lento, with each having a distinct bearing. The pirouetting dangles running along the tops of the dormers truly embellished the contained frames and the almost vertical roofs again held the eye; but it was the house walls with white intersticing lines through sharp bricks in low relief, and walls of sober, salient fieldstones, that now told stories in charitable chocolate, ruby and ash. They retold stories from a long time ago in which one was wondrously alive. \u201cIt is here, at such moments, in this city that I have chosen, that I am aware of an invested spirituality of the unique that is personal enough to capture the inmost pith of the happy side of my own spirit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just some days after the reflections that set in motion this narrative, the yellow leaves of the cottonwood poplars that used to burn outside the classroom are browning and withering higher up where no shadow but that of cloud can fall. There is no cloud on this day. The boughs are white. Even before he watches more closely the motion of the leaves, the sense of their spread and colour against the white of the trees and the lustrous blue beyond is enough to wrench a cry. \u201cCrisse<\/em>! This is what used to set me all a-flutter and here it actually is! May the isolated roofs, clusters, ducts, smoke, yards, paths and fences over all the wide expanse before the eye, as well as the ascending aeroplane in the sky, retain their pounding novelty and never become banal.\u201d The leaves about turn their faces a million dancing times upon the weakening fingers that still link them to their tree. Their dance is merry in a giddy and shrilly way as if farewells never had any sadness. Lower down, in the heart of long shades made by striding egg-shaped foliation and the crisscrossing blades of a broad-green maple, the rich sappy yellow still runs in festal abundance through much of the poplars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like a Happy Driftwood on the Sea Prosenjit Dey Chaudhury The journey over a hidden, unflinching ocean was simple, with mist swirling and tossing under the window in the sky to give niggardly glimpses of a grey adamantine surface that made the bosom of the earth. No life was present upon that surface, no untoward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":339,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"authorpage.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-360","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":662,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/360\/revisions\/662"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}