RONY NAIR - NOCTURNE. IMAGINARY PICTOGRAPHS

Rony Nair slogs as an oil and gas Risk Management “expert/ director/ Vice resident/consultant”-up on the greasy pole! He’s been 20 years in the industry since starting off as an Industrial engineer a long time ago. Extensively traveled. Dangers fronted often. But that’s his day job. The one that pays for bread and bills. He’s been a worshipper at the altar of prose and poetry for almost as long as he could think. They have been the shadows of his life. (They’ve been) the bedsit at the end of a long day; the repository that does the sound of silence inimitably well. Not unlike a pet; but with one core difference- the books do suggest, educate and weave a texture that marginally provides streams of thought that are new. And one of the biggest pleasures of his life, is certainly holding a treasured edition in one’s hands. Physically. Rony’s been writing poetry since 1985 and was a published columnist with the Indian Express in the early 1990’s. He is also a published photographer about to hold his first major exhibition and currently writes a regular column for two online journals; one of them widely read over South India. Rony has been profiled by the Economic Times of Delhi and has also written for them. He cites V.S Naipaul, A.J Cronin, Patrick Hamilton, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Nevil Shute in addition to FS Fitzgerald as influences on his life; and Philip Larkin, Dom Moraes and Ted Hughes as his personal poetry idols. Larkin’s’ collected poems would be the one book he would like to die with. When the poems perish, as do the thoughts!

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Nocturne. Imaginary Pictographs. by Rony Nair

        I

I think about life behind an e-mail address... I do not even know if it is still valid. I don't even know if this will be read by you. The only way i can write is if i picture you reading this in my head. 
Writing used to be a release. And i could write whenever i pictured you reading it. Now i visualize the night. I see the darkness. I see a curved terrace that looks out over green spaces. Over ponds being rapidly filled up, like spandex in flight. Of water bodies that flow, and narrow walls that take flight as pedestrians struggle to remain unsandwiched.  Between the latest fast car; and the oldest crumbling wall. 

The old high street. Night. Middle of somewhere. Copyright: Rony Nair

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Every bit I used to write, I used to think of a person with a small balcony and lots of color on the inner walls reading it. A small plant perhaps growing in a corner. Occasionally tended. Someone who quizzically read with their eyebrows bending in. sometimes with the hint of a smile on the corners of their eyes. Sometimes with the glaze of irritation in them. But at least there was a thought that perhaps it was worth all the writing it if she smiled when spoke about it. Later.

And now. And I can't not think of you all the time. How you are, how absent minded you become sometimes when asking favors of your foes. How your most unloving pith, provides the most affectionate sanctuary they need. To be ephemeral. To be themselves. 

How you juggle so many things with élan, your passion for the greater good, your essential sincerity.
Before the most abject brutality. Before the most unloving gesture. Before the lights fade and the darkness reins in.
We used to talk about the bike and the trip. You and me. India. The works. Driving through the night. Watching out, we always said, for trucks without lights. For those monsters stationed on the road, waiting to gorge their fill. On impact.

And now I am struggling to write. I can't write. Without knowing you look at it.

I don't know the exact nature of my crime but i miss you all the time, and then i get to speak to you, i say things in anger. When essentially all i am is being angry with myself.
And this night, through the rains. It seems so apt. That the minders wander. And the TV squeaks. And there is the night. The silence. And two curved terraces some distance apart. With a person in each perhaps looking at the sky and thinking of each other.

II

You and me. And the slow fade. Copyright: Rony Nair

Let me write of a day. Some years ago.
I first saw you I think come September. It was a Friday filled with old friends from a public school childhood. We were grabbing a bite on an upper floor quasi-place run by a distant friend of mine. An early lunch. Reminiscing about old school times. 
We've had one leap year since that day. With 29 days in February 2012. So today, it’s probably 4 years or so. To the day. To the night.
Professional. Courteous.
The eyes were kind. Half mooned. They were your eyes.
I overheard snatches of conversation. The smile. The sense of humor. The cut to the chase perspective you had on things. The no-nonsense demeanor. 
Yet the kindness in the eyes.
I doubted then, if you even noticed me when you said a polite, curt, hello.
You are always courteous, no-nonsense, humorous, firm; and incredibly kind. You were the same that day too.
It felt secure. The clouds rolled in a few hours ago. Night. Not a night that discharges cliché and obligation. But a night with an edge. A resonance. A somnambulist’s grace.

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The next day I heard of where you lived. The first time. I walked that way. Saw this:

I went away and dealt with those feelings the only way i knew. By pretending that i had control over my feelings. Pretending to myself that it was fun, that it was a lark. Not daring to think too hard. Or too deep about you. Putting it away in a corner. But always thinking of you.
Not a day has passed since that first day in September all those years ago when I don't think of you, I don't feel your eyes on me, that crackle when you're about to say something funny, that way you have when you look.. Not a darn day. 
I knew then; and I know now, how much everybody likes you. You have tons of friends. You are much admired. You are busy with doing things that matter. You've taught me that life should be about giving, about putting others first, about having time to reflect, about not sacrificing the essence of one's being, about being brave, about being true to oneself. 
You've taught me so much. Just by being yourself. your innate loyalty to your friends, the time you give to the less privileged, the ability to understand what really counts in life, I could go on...thoughts of you have kept me going in some far corners of the world. Through a lot of late nights, through the "what will she say question" that i asked myself daily...
I still do. 
And that night when I drove myself round the bend. As the dusk gradually played with the palavers that slithered through a humidity that was almost painful. It felt strange. To feel. All that was familiar.
And this night, through the rains. It seems so apt. That the minders wander. And the TV squeaks. And there is the night. The silence. And two curved terraces some distance apart. With a person in each perhaps looking at the sky and thinking of each other.

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III

We drove past the haze and the early hours could have been night for all I cared. I held your hand and it almost could have been night for all I cared.
And I saw the flush. The rising sun on your tropical skin. And then you smiled. And the hands stayed firm until we could have seen this on the culvert near the bund. 
Late nights? Early mornings? 
Interchangeable angst.
A saree. A first. 
A gasp.
Copyright Rony Nair


When people like me get to the age we’re at, they start thinking of obituaries and the small print in the newspaper. The 2 inches of column space along with the 100 other people on page 4 in a local newspaper. I will get two inches not because i was any good. It is too late for that, but because everybody gets it in the papers.
You will have dumped me by then. Another messianic cause to replace all the emotion that one saw in your eyes that day. You will have cast away the strings, the imagery, and the flush you felt when the splinters of glass rained through the half open car window. You will have discovered that a “cause” however tenuous, can compensate for being true to oneself.
And another September will come and go. And this time, we wouldn’t be speaking. 
And this night, through the rains. It seems so apt. That the minders wander. And the TV squeaks. And there is the night. 
The silence. 
There is only the night.

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