The Yellow Sands and the desolation......

BITS Pilani - 1966...

The desert sands stretched as far as one could see. The road meandered through the yellow dunes, rocks and scattered thorny bushes. Stunted keekars stood like lost sentinels guarding that emptiness.

Drip irrigation was something only read about in articles on Israel and still a long way away in the future.

The oasis of the campus consisted of buildings with typically colonial arches and faded yellow and white structures. The gardens though were lush and green. The trees with their red flowers spread their branches over neatly laid out roads.

Unknown to us, each moment there was an experience, forging links that were to last a lifetime. Time and distance had no essence in this closeness that was developing. The strands forming the bonds were flexible and could pick-up and let-go at will. These in the future were to form the basis of our relationships.

And thrown into that cauldron of life was also the intensity of youth. And it carried with it the un-chartered depths of anger, joy, laughter, despair - and a passionate search for answers to the purpose of life.

We would lie on the lush lawns of the Saraswati Temple, listening in melancholy to the throaty rendering of 'Mere hatheel Shyam..'

Or listen in the darkening silence to the resounding calls of the peacocks, lost in their loneliness, looking for a mate.

And the outcome from one such period flows below:

Life.... 1969?

Life

Like holes in the cheese

Cliche riddled.

Truths dusty and lost in the smog of years

To become half-believed

Half truths.

It's like sailing on an emerald sea

Of increasing stillness;

An indifference that nothing shakes.

And those islands:

Isolated pangs of remorse, joy, pity,

Of emotion and feeling

Decreasing

And becoming far between.

And finally

To lie still on the glassy sea

Like some ancient mariner,

Lost

Without his albatross

And to die

Of slow decay

In stagnation.