Formless Meanderings
Description:
Author: Bharath Srinivasan
Pages: 352
Year of Publication: 2009
Price: HB Rs 500, FB Rs 300
ISBN:
HB 81-8157-945-4 (8181579454)
FB 81-8157-946-1 (8181579461)
About the Author:
Bharath Srinivasan was born in 1980 in the small township of Karaikudi in Tamil Nadu. His father was employed in the paramilitary organization, General Reserve Engineering Force (GREF), by virtue of which he was transferred every five years. As a result, Bharath has travelled across India, and has lived in Rajasthan, Assam, Sikkim and Jammu and Kashmir. He completed his graduation in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from Bangalore. Apart from writing, he enjoys painting and clay sculpting. This is his first book.
Teaser:
“On dark days and distant nights, when the moon seems half asleep and sun seems to laze around, when the sky is overcast with clouds of disturbances and the human soul cries out in anguish, when the sound of a single sob gets amplified to represent the silent suffering of the collective humanity, when the stones melt at the elegiac songs of desperation sung by wandering monks, when I see a blur at the horizon and, unable to differentiate between land and sky, cry out at my inability, when the marine creatures look at the shores and yearn for that other world that they know they can’t ever visit, when death becomes a plaything in the hands of callous memory, when I know and yet feel insufficient, when the bus that I am waiting for doesn’t stop and the crowd around me merges into a potpourri of colors and sounds, when they sow me deep within the darkness of the earth expecting me to sprout when I am dead, and water my grave regularly waiting for the flowers that they would harvest to make a garland for their gods, when I struggle in the suffocation of my grave and soak wet in the water they dump over it, when my skin wilts rather than blooming, when I know that I wouldn’t return to my childhood ever and yet anticipate my return, when the silent fluttering of wings and guttural cooing of pigeons on my sill stops completely to give way to soundless silence, when I think and know that thoughts aren’t leading me where I would like to go, when the distinction between the backyards of the obscure city and the vanguard of its glittering display merge blithely for me, when the allures of material comforts are obliterated to such an extent that I am incapable of differentiating between the smell of a discard bin and the scent of a hybrid rose, when dark gullies leads to still darker lanes, when the ominous shadow of material objects obstruct the moonlight from falling onto the surface, when there is a taste of granular chalk in the mouth at the sight of an overclouded day, when I leave and yet feel the essence of the left object on my back, when I love and don’t know what love is, I know that the unknown and the known merge.”
[From Chapter XXIV]