Soiree

What strange days these are - 

You might even think me a little insane,

But am I really glad to hear, 

My neighbours above sing a song again

There was a time, not long ago

‘Noise!’ I would cry, in anger, plight

‘Have they nothing better?’ 

A bunch of friends, one Saturday night

And every weekend I would drear,

That the noisy friends would join anew,

Bete noire, I would grumble,

Alas, good times and friends: they are always few

Then, the exile got worse, the summer cold

Solitude felt lonelier than never before,

And empty were the indigo skies, 

With no more clouds and no downpour 

The silence hard, the world had changed - 

Unforgiving was the melancholy,

Give me something from the past I knew - 

That jostling world, where could you be?

As an island,then, I got to see

The beauty of the waves that splashed,

All that I thought of noise before,

Came back to me as sound, unabashed

Then, when silence killed just all the days,

I heard the guitar strum on a Saturday,

The soiree back, I blessed those souls,

They had brought with them some yesterday…

17th Jan’ 2021

Covid has changed our world for good - the old order has been extinguished, newness has never felt so demotivating and un-inspiring. Yet the solitude, the isolation, the melancholy has taught us to see the world anew. For example, my nepali neighbours staying on the floor above, seemed to create a ruckus - I was on the verge of issuing a complaint against them for their rambunctious nights. But then one day, I felt they were no different than me, souls in exile, finding solace in the music of the homeland, very few of their past that they could bring with them to the new world. And just then, covid struck the world - the music was no more, the world split in corrals for the living souls. 

So much loneliness, so much melancholy, sometimes I felt there were hardly souls in my apartment anymore. Where were my boisterous friends? Why were they not singing? One day, I even walked out to check if the balcony above was really cleared of goods -tell tale signs that they had moved on. Imagine my joy to find they existed, but then, where was the ebullience… 

Life carried on, in deafening silence, and un-adulated quietude, when one day, the guitars strummed again, and the songs of the mountains and valleys came back to the desert sands to remind of rains that would never fall. Yet somewhere, the drought was over, even if temporarily.

Man after all, is a social beast - one may sit on the edge of society, yet there is an energy in the construct of humanity that pushes us all forward, reminding us time and again, that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts...