The Final Knock

The Final Knock

Just the Blessed heartbeats

Echoed by the void inside 

A black veil of darkness 

Impenetrable and foreboding 

An ever spreading frost

Of being deserted, alone 

Amidst the teeming crowd

No kindred faces

Deafening, drowning silence 

Drums on without end

Surrounded by the sea

An unquenched thirst 

The head without the crown 

The throne without the King

No way out of the labyrinth 

No angel to guide the way

The Night draws on endless 

No sunrise in sight 

Signs visible in darkness 

Say the end is near 

Each breath slips by

Without fulfilment of resolve

The heart beats slower

The eyes’ glow dimmed 

The Final knock on the door 

And lo the end has come. 

Ambarish Singh Roy 

20th September, 2018.

Raga Darbari - Alaap & Vilambit Bandish - Ambarish Singh Roy

Raga Darbari - Alaap & Vilambit - Ambarish Singh Roy

A Sobering Experience

I'm not an ornithologist, and apart from keeping an odd parrot or macaw in my home or enjoying the sounds of parrots and white owls at my ancestral place, I've never delved very deeply into the subject. That is, till a month back, when a pair of eagles made a nest right outside my bedroom on the 5th floor and had a baby. 

For the past month they were a pest! We couldn't open our window or even step out into the balcony. So fierce were their parental instincts that the moment we stepped out, they would circle around and attack us. They even scared off my Beagle a couple of times he ventured out. We were terrorised! They would guard their baby round the clock, taking turns and shriek their heads off all day!

Last evening, the baby suddenly died, probably due to some infection. This morning, around 5: 30 AM, I heard what I can only describe as the 'crying' of the parent eagles. It was a 'cry' which only a parent can understand. I have heard their shrieks incessantly for the past month, but this was different. They 'cried' for about 20 minutes and left. Never to return. They had made the nest for their baby, without the baby, perhaps they had no need for it. 

A nest, a house, is made of materials or bricks and mortar, if we have nobody in it who we can care about, or who cares about us, it's not a home, it's an empty void.