Beside the lake, Beneath the trees

On the IIT Campus, Powai Lake is the more respectable lake. The Director’s bungalow is adjacent to the lake, so is the Guest House and so is a temple and you can walk or cycle along its length at any time though I have known the odd mugging to happen. On the other hand, Vihar Lake is its much wilder cousin. It lies outside the campus and behind a swathe of hostels and when I was a student at the Institute it was well known for illicit swims, illicit pot and police patrols. Not much I think has changed though the campus itself has. On my last visit a few years back I was stopped by men in uniform for trespassing and rescued myself and my companions by a simple show of temper.

I like Vihar Lake because I feel at ease with it, I never tire of it.

It was in IIT that I had my first serious relationship. In the beginning it was sweet, tender and passionate and of course the deepening of a relationship signifies a transition into adulthood when you begin to make plans to marry, to last the distance. But that phase didn’t last very long and it got caught up with other events in my life, mainly my mother’s illness. There was a long period of confusion and pain before whatever lay at its core disintegrated. In retrospect, it is surprising that both of us lasted the five odd years in a suspended state unable to step off or go ahead. In that period and even before we began the relationship, we used to go often to Vihar Lake. Then of course it all ended - and The End was bold, italicised and underlined. In its aftermath I felt unmoored, unhinged and then tender with hurt, much had been lost far too quickly. For a long time I felt adrift and tired. I think I wanted peace between us, instead everything was silent and cold. And any attempts to change that went badly awry so it was left at that and life resumed its normal rhythms. The poem below was written around that time. Sometime after writing the poem, I destroyed the pictures taken at Vihar as I did everything else. Yet you don’t bargain for the fact that despite this you remember the details of the pictures.

When we meet again
Green lava is softly poured
Mud is moulded, paths bored
And hills are sculpted by falling rain

When we meet again
The lake lies spread beneath
Grasses are trampled underneath
Bedraggled by the falling rain

When we meet again
You trail heavy equipment
To capture hills, lake, contentment
And us under falling rain

When we meet again
Set aside a few hours of idleness
Set aside the recent bitterness
And watch silently the falling rain.

Many years have passed since I wrote the poem. I recognise the sentiments in it, in many ways I am still the same person. Yet I have changed and been tempered by life and subsequent experiences so it’s not a poem I would write today. People are always eagerly bustling into the future and claiming that the past is a forgotten land. But the past is always with us, it’s how we look at it that changes. Now when I read the poem I feel regret for the past. I remember us not saying enough and declaring every passing emotion. I miss our foolish young selves, I miss our earnestness. But I also recognise these feelings as a simple nostalgia for my youth. Slightly rearranging the quote from In the Mood for Love, though the things that belonged to it by and large exist, that era has passed.

Image taken from the IIT Site