Lamenting the dusk, Eclipsing twilights—and Gaussian geometries (cont. I)

Lamenting the Dusk, Eclipsing twilights—and Gaussian geometries is an essay in progress.

This night in the late seventies exemplified the blackness of Sumi, its wide spectrum which incloud’s a deafening depth through a range of luscious gradation: sumi no notan. This analogy, and metaphor has been gifted by my journey having led me to study Shodo and Boku-ga. It was in Batim, Ilhas Goa; the birthplace of my mother, where the night howled a storm, spraying its gaussian distribution of electricity in streaks of lighting, appearing to stand still above as if these spectaculars was meant only for this quiet village. The palm trees were fleetingly projecting shivering shadows, changing shapes, with forms intermingling and presenting fresher frights. Perhaps if one were to make ink out of the soot of burnt palm trees — would it be as dark as the Japanese and Chinese made sumi? The blacks appeared blacker than the Cardinal India Ink, through which I had been introduced to the concept of blackness, abysmal in density, a  richness of material form, far distant from any analogy to wealth. This was a richness of tone: in depth, in texture, coalescing into phantasmal umbras, conjured by sudden flashes into the darkness. It all begins here.

The wagons crept silently up the shunting slope, a low hillock upon which two rail lines delineated a broad-gauge track. The track had borne countless freight loads as they slowly lumbered their way up the mound, to be shunted according to destinations where their arrival was awaited. It must have been one of those mildly chilly late mornings, when the smoke and dust from the steam engines, the haze from fumes of the large diesels, and the shigris (coal fired stoves) hung close to the ground. Only the other day yet another individual had been run over by a train, on the local Harbour Line. The level crossing had been there for years but discipline had always been lacking. Some mother lost her child on that crossing about fifty meters as the crow flies. A woman with an infant across her breast was slowly making her way approaching the shunting slope, and would soon reach the top. It really all begins here.

The crow cawed that morning in the shade of the parapet, and she took that as a sign. Kitem re cawlea. Borro murre tum—kavo kit. What Sir Crow. You are something: rich in your blackness. She regarded every spell of cawing, even the briefest one as a sign to her and her alone. It was a call to gather her self up, focus a bit, and make sure things were in order. One never knew what the day or even the morrow would bring. The bridge would be built in a few years, until then it meant crossing the shunting yard.

She had perhaps looked in the direction in which wagons appeared over the hump and not seen a thing to elicit any concern. Or yet, she had simply missed the contour of the lead wagon as it stealthily trundled up the slope coupled as it was to others behind it, and propelled by the steam engine at the back, to be shunted down the hill to form consists, to mean complete train sets — a trajectory reaching somewhere into the vast Indian nation. All she remembered later upon having stepped across the rail of the broad gauge track, was seeing two vague details in a trembling of painted brick red of what could only be a wagon: the knuckle which couples wagons, and the bumper zooming in indecently close to her face. And then, a strong force pulled her from behind clear of the bumper which had almost kissed her. She realized being on her feet, as though she has been placed there, but on looking back there was silence. All was still. A crow cawed somewhere nearby. The presence had vanished. 

The bridge finally got built, years later looking down from it she would sometimes see herself walking across the tracks with her precious bundle, a gift she had high hopes for, and for which she had chosen a nome especial. It had survived and so had she. She always nurtured high hopes for him.

The child that day on the shunting hillock developed a predilection to think in the visual. Folds and falls in gowns, sarees, salwars, dhotis, and parkars, the creases in rumals, patkas, churidhars and shawls postures and actions: lezim (martial exercises) squatting, spitting, dancing with abandon, grime ingrained in surfaces, pock marked faces, all tonalities of brown complexions. There was a lot to see and absorb in the railway colony. The rumors that the disappearance of the deaf-mute in the colony could only mean that he had been sacrificed in the piling of the bridge — never quite died. And then the ideas began crashing upon him.