LIFE AND LIES #22 | One more Light

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July 20, 2020

As a teenager 
All I needed was 
A pocketful of cash 
To make my dream come true 
To see a man in person 
Whose only words I knew 
Towering over the crowd 
Amid cheers and applause 

More than sometimes 
Screaming in angst 
He was – still is 
The voice in my head 
For when I open my eyes 
The room is empty 
There is no crowd 
Nobody to applaud 

The teenage dream is lost 
As he is long gone 
But, why dismay 
Life ends, ends the disarray 
I close my eyes 
Words pour out 
And for a brief moment 
He and I are one and the same 


July 20, 2019

Another year and another day have gone by.

I am alone in my room, far away from family and friends; as if that had ever comforted me. I pore over the words scribbled before me. Random fragment of sentences, written haphazardly, they don’t make sense. I had jotted it down last year but couldn’t produce something meaningful out of it. I give it another try. After several hours, nothing worthwhile comes out. I throw it away in disgust and retire to bed.

There I twist and turn, rendered sleepless by a short poem that I had read sometime back.

The best often die by their own hand 
Just to get away 
And those left behind 
Can never quite understand 
Why anybody 
Would ever want to 
Get away 
From 
Them 


July 20, 2018

I am in the middle of an important meeting when a sudden sadness fills me up. I realize it has been a year. The new job has kept me busy. Later on, when the meeting breaks for lunch, I pen down something, a tribute of sort. Nothing coherent comes out. Still, I scribble whatever comes to my mind.

The meeting resumes. The day passes. 


Oct 27, 2017

The amphitheatre is immersed in darkness. A tune rings out accompanied by a narrow beam of light that falls on the centre of the stage, illuminating a mic, decorated with a garland of green leaves. There’s no singer present. Still, the music continues carrying with it a collective whisper, a faint sound at first but it slowly gains volume.

It’s the audience singing in unison, on its own.

I’ve become so numb. I can’t feel you there. Become so tired. So much more… 

Slowly and gradually, the audience emerges from the dark; thousands singing as one, led by no frontman, just the music.

Eventually, the song ends. All that remains is…

Chester 
Chester 
Chester 


July 20, 2017

I am in my college room, hanging out with my friends when I come to know. Some unknown algorithm must have tied its relevance to me for the news pops as a notification.

I look at my friends. They don’t know yet. I don’t know how to tell them. I stay in my chair, thinking. I don’t know how to react to this. He’s gone. 

My expressions composed, I head to the washroom. There, I look at my reflection in the mirror. It’s contorted. My eyes have welled up and before I know a tear trickles down. I am not a crying person. I wash my face before returning to the room.

Sometime later, courtesy of the internet, my friends come to know too. It’s satisfying to know that that they too had grown up listening to Linkin Park. The casual hangout turns into a night of commemoration as one by one everyone plays their favourite track. I have no recommendation. I just sit and listen.

At a time, when everyone streamed songs online, I still have each and every song of the band in mp3, a collection that had begun long back, starting from getting the songs burned on a CD at a cyber café, then having landed a mobile set, transferring all the songs to a 2GB memory card. Followed by Bluetooth came the internet, serving as a boon; all the song videos could now be downloaded in 3gp and subsequently in mp4, not just the official video but the live performances too. Sometime during that period, a dream took shape of wanting to be a part of the crowd that was cheering and applauding, in awe of the people on the stage; that someday, I’ll be there too. Someday… 

After my friends call it a night and leave, I lie on my bed with my headphones plugged in, going through one song after another. Is it enough to know a man if you know all his songs by heart; apparently not. There’s always the hindsight, though. Death adds meaning to life, I have heard often. But when an artist dies, his death weighs in on his work. I listen attentively to every song sung by him, scrutinising the words, looking for signs, a cry for help that I had previously ignored or worse, related to the pain of the troubled soul but couldn’t gauge the depth, the intensity of it. The confirmation bias doesn’t help. In my head, each song sang by him now becomes a roadmap to the destination he was always heading towards and, in the end, reached.

A song from his last album comes up. I have listened to it many times before but now I perceive it in a totally different way. Another layer, which wasn’t there before, has been added to the song.

Who cares if one more light goes out
In a sky of a million stars

Well, I do.

***

Rest in Peace, 

€#£$+£R ]}£][][][G+O][




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