The Moving Finger Writes

The moving finger writes and having writ moves on
Not all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel
Half a line; nor all thy tears
Wash out a word of it.

…Thus spake Omar Khayyam, the philosopher poet who romanticized the transience of life and the eternity of death in his literary masterpiece Rubaiyat.

When did I last write?

Somewhere, some day, I have left my pencils and pens and all those sheets of white paper on the table of oblivion in some study room of the past…and left. I have forgotten to remember them again. Where could that peacock-blue pen that used to be my cherished possession now be? It has gone quietly out of my life, unannounced and I have not even missed it to this day. My finger tips fly over a keyboard. The pens and the pencils and the white sheets of paper that were once my precious belongings have all been relegated to the limbo of long beyond.

Yet the other day, in my childhood house when I went to the attic just to explore the things there, I chanced upon this wooden chest…left there to be forgotten. It has been decades since I saw it. But I remembered it as if I had seen it, just yesterday. It belonged to a little boy. It was his treasure chest. Yes, I remember, that in the hot afternoons when the elders would be taking their nap, the little boy, instead of lying on the bed beside his grandmother and taking a rest as ordered, would sneak upstairs, open the chest and amuse himself by looking at the things he had managed to procure and hide away in his treasure box. Some of his prized possessions were still in tact—three big silver-coated vest buttons, a metallic whistle, an unusually big orange colored marble, a collection of match box labels in a cigarette case, an earthen piggy bank shaped like a curious pumpkin, and then this note book.

It has become weathered, dog-eared, and tattered. Yet, I recognized it immediately. It was my rough note book. I recognize the sprawling handwriting of a child…written in pencil. Yes, he would—or rather could—never write the letter r correctly. “Is it the letter r, or is it a pair of ears of grass?” The teacher had often asked him. “Look at this gentleman’s r!” She had held up this very rough note book for the class to see his r. The children had laughed; and he too had laughed along with them, to prevent himself from crying. The pencils were then, so heavy that his little fingers had often ached. That is why the writing is very light towards the end of the lessons. And then I remember these dark spots with small tails like comets. These are the places where the point of his pencil had broken and someone had shouted at him for writing too hard.
The rough note book, the coat buttons, the whistles, the belt buckles, the shinning bottle caps, the stolen paper weight, they all still remain though cruelly consigned to the world of things left to be lost and forgotten. And the little boy? On which shore of time did I leave him behind? Where did I lose him? Why did I? That silly little boy so full of wonder and play so readily laughing and crying? Does he still not know to count money, does he still not know friend from foe, does he still not know the meaning of revenge, spite, envy, guilt, or statuses of any kind?

Sometimes when I look through the windows of memories, through their time-tainted glass panes, I fancy I espy him afar. I try to call him back…but he is too far away to hear me…and he is engrossed in some silly little game! Or is it that he hears me, but pretends not to? Perhaps, he fears for his treasures. His pockets are full of them…little whistles, bright-colored marbles, odd-shaped pebbles, rubber bands of various widths and lengths, paper boats, and so on. No my dear boy, I won’t take any of them from you. No…but please...give me back my innocence. My innocence that I lost along with you.

And I can give you all my tears for it.

V K Rajan