Rummaging through old photographs, I'm suddenly driving the wrong way on a one-way street. There's an old photograph of me - eight or nine years younger perhaps. Maybe if I shed some flab, lose that double chin and some of the gloominess - You think, I can go back to that fresh-faced twenty-something look? There's one of my sister's friends taken some years back. Pretty bachelorettes worth a whistle - when no one's looking, of course - but they'll not be bachelorettes now, perhaps not pretty even. Who knows? Further back in the pile, a few snaps of my coming-of-age ceremony or perhaps a losing-of-innocence ceremony. There's me - eight years old - being initiated into rites I'm going to abjure a teenage rebellion later. And randomly there's one I see of Gomateshwara - a tourist souvenir of a visit to Shravanabelagola - head too far up to capture in the camera (probably the sun glared). If he weren't a god or saint,...
The message is supreme;
Born in the heart,
and lilting itself
from tongue to tongue,
throwing its scent
over wind and wave;
travelling on dots
or fingers
when blindness
or silence bar its way.
It hews itself into stone
or burns itself onto magnetic discs;
it is the message that lives
and I exist
solely to pass it on.