The Starry Night

I have often feared that the getting cozy with the romances stage, was never going to come to an end. But as with all the things in life, it had met with its end too, though I was never sure about the exact beginning or end of that “end”. It had been a life-long romance, with the world of books. And as with all great romances, I don’t think , it will ever come to an end. Enid Blyton, The Faraway Tree series, The Toy Stories, The Famous Fives, The Secret Sevens, The Nancy Drews all done and dusted. There were certain phases, when certain kind of books were the in-thing. Hours went together with the Mills and Boons classics, the Barbara Cartlands and the Kathleen Woodiwisses. The prescribed and recommended Classics too were of course always a part of the repertoire, and they were always an absolute favorite.

But biographies? The first brush with Boswell was, I remember so tedious and a painstaking part of Sister B’s plain, precise lectures in English. Sister B believed in mathematicising English, and of course she was also in charge of all our terrorizing Grammar classes. Johnson, this and Johnson that, series of notes, by the side, page by page reading and explaining , and some more reading and expansions by the margin … Where was the romance in that? I was never left for a moment alone with that book. The relation between the book and me was up for dissection at her hands. And fearing the bitter after-taste I never did attempt that book alone again.I vowed to have nothing to do with another biography for a long time to come. And then, I came upon Irving Stone and his “Lust for Life”.

And the world of words opened to me, the world of paintings. So much has been spoken about and written about Irving Stone’s work and his Vincent, that I feel myself to be a speck of dirt even in attempting to comment about it. Nevertheless, all that I have become, rather all that I have not become, all that I have come to cherish and appreciate about life, it all started with the profound impact this book had on me. There were sure many more books to come, that have deeply affected me, but this was one of the first. And the first time I came across the “Starry Night” (one of the shabbiest of copies in some book on Impressionism), I couldn’t even pinpoint what moved me or how it moved me. This small entry, at some remote corner of my years old diary, I etch it again. And that first experience kicks alive inside me all over again.

The stretch of my imagination..
the dip into your world..
the breadth of your sky
and its lanterns eternal
glow within me…

my world converges in yours
as your colors divulge their meanings
I am one with your strokes
as every hue burns
and bores into me

I know your madness
I feel your aches
I blend with your brush
as the starry- starry night
engulfs me, encases me in its magic….