Irregular Prose 2.. Nirmal bhattacharya

 

I had met a man years ago. It was some experience!
Now it's become a deep-seated  memory.
It was a train journey, the train being bound for a destination across atleast over a thousand kilometres.
He loved to dine in the light of the full moon.That was a kind of healing pleasure. " If you have a moon-struck youth at home you can give him this treatment for some time and  he will be so cured as to durably learn how to love without being moon-struck.", said the man. Asked how old, he strangely answered that he was far from being much older than me. Right at that moment, I really felt to be much older than him.
At a point during our journey, he took a short class for me and taught that time was not more abstract than a name attached to a man or a river or a particular arrangement of notations. I just felt jolted into awe. Put back into balance by the physics of my physique, the first thing I could think was the kiss I had planted in the lift on the maddeningly curved lips of my beloved. Was the whole thing an abstract venture? Or the chargesheet I handed out to a shouting subordinate of mine? Was this also abstract? The moment I was about to sort these things out with him, I felt a strong pull backward. Was it because I was head over heels in love with some light-fearing darkness in me?
The man sprinkled his sight outside the window he was sitting by. Sometimes he was groping for something in his breast-pocket. And somewhat later he was mumbling something beyond anybody's hearing.
After an hour or so, he suddenly, with his eyes aimed at me, said: do not dare to believe that that there is a vast blue sky, there has to be a sun.
The train was slowing to a halt. A very low platform and the train exchanged wishes. Where the man had been sitting up until then, a vacancy covered with a red blanket was snoring happily.

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