How Can I Remain Calm

I had gone deep into the Sunderbans a few days back. And visited a school, which gave free education to the most deprived of children staying in the vicinity. I met them - and they were the happiest kids I have ever seen. And they talked of becoming astronauts and pilots and teachers and soldiers….hundreds of pairs of eyes shone brightly at us and so did their dreams, in that faraway place, in those thatched hut classrooms.

Outside, ducks softly paddled in sunlit ponds and paddy fields waved gently in the breeze…

Photo - Niki Boon

I have seen the future hold stars

in its hands not knowing

how plastic were dreams.

I didn’t want the sound of my

breaking heart resound such

that the solar system be proved

wrong but I have seen seamless

skies filled with light and wonder

to be only refractions from the jagged

shards of broken hearts. I see instead

backyards of wild weeds and ducks

paddling in sky-filled ponds

and I ask of myself if these

could ever fill them with the joy

I felt and whether I could tell them

these were also destinations. But

it is the nature of the beast to know

everything in its complexity before

we embrace what is simple - and

for the dawn to tell it’s a lie that

everyone and everything is equal.

And I would tell them to hold

this one truth as a talisman against

all inequities they will face as surely

as their breath hastens on thinking

of getting out of this heaven because

other heavens called. And I ask why

can’t dreams find homes inside, because

we always find the gold where we start

but still seek pain as surely as the daily breath.

I wish I could hold them tight to my chest

and let them hear the sound

of an ageing heart which knows

that heaven is always around the corner

but never in our fists, and the search

is all that matters, if only we knew

it from the start of our yearning.

Photo: Nike Boon

I have seen the most deprived child dream. Dream to become an astronaut, nothing less. Her family eats one meal a day, sends her to a school to give alphabets to her dreams, and tells her in the night before she goes to sleep hungry that this is her life, there’s nothing beyond. But nothing can stop her from dreaming.

When I talk to her, her eyes have still not dimmed of their stars, and she speaks in broken English and tells me why she loves the school. It is her escape from reality, which she hopes will be the wormhole out of her black hole. Into another dimension, into another realm, into another world.

At what juncture of their lives, do the dreams of children start to break?

As I try in my own ways to find a trapdoor to get them out of the swelter of their hopeless basement lives, I know it’s a battle. I focus on one, and the faces of a multitude appear - with the largest eyes and the brightest dreams you can imagine. And I’m overwhelmed. And I lose focus. And I lose sight of the fact that change occurs one at a time. One dream at a time. One pair of bright eyes at a time.

In the infinity of inequities, what might feel like the Sisyphean rock, is actually the journey inside - because destinations are never reached through a single highway, but invariably transverse the small dirt tracks and country roads, where we drive through clouds of dust, hoping to find clear skies and pellucid streams.

As we work together, they holding on to their dreams and I seeking out roads from reality to find the highway to their dreams, I often find the enormity of inequity. But what in our lives, if ever, is easy. And I can only tell, about ageless truths which say - if you hold on long enough, if you badger the universe inexorably, if you keep battling bad fortune with your sweat and blood pouring out of you, something will change - maybe as a principle, maybe as luck, maybe as a mere dent. And I will tell them each battle is an opening, a ladder, a progression into a different future - and nothing ever goes waste.

Photo: Niki Boon

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Hear the Poem:

And this lovely nostalgic piece!

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