A Stranger's Pose | Iduma's Journey | EkChaupal

A Stranger’s Pose is a book by Emmanuel Iduma. It is a travel diary and I loved it immensely. These are my notes on the book.

Between those facts and what is recorded here – in the twilight world between experience and memory, fiction and criticism – I can only hope I have left a space large and conceited enough for the reader to inhabit.

भविष्य की असुरक्षा के सवाल के सामने सुख की आशा में –

A body that wanders without the fear of getting lost.

Imagine the enchantment of unerring musicality, of a love story inside a love story, of a care for those things that are seen by all but noted only by a stranger.

Night after night
Hope is gathered in the
Sacks of the unknown.

I envy the ardour in their gait, a lack of hurry, as if by walking they possess a piece of the earth. I want to be these men.

I sought familiarity with the streets around my hotel.

If I could show my face, it would indicate the creases and frowns of a mute observer.

धीमे। प्रेम से बुदबुदाते हुए अपने जिये को बताते। बहुत कुछ छन जाता है जीवन की कटोरी से। जो बचा रहता है वो मोती है। वही सत्य है। वही मैं चख रहा हूँ। संबंध यहाँ बनता है। कोमल यात्रा के बीज। इदुमा हल्के से हाथ दबाते हैं। दुपहरी है और मैं उनके साथ यात्रा कर रहा हूँ।

Wave falls on wave, as one dialect inflects on another. All rivers are multilingual.

भाषा की यात्रा। भाषा जीवित है। क्या भाषा को समझना जीवन को समझना नहीं है?

भाषा की कमी को जीवन का सार बताते इदुमा मनुष्य होने की पहेली को छूते दिखते हैं। मैं पास में बैठ जाता हूँ।

When will I see you again?
I’ve made my days into dispatches and unsent letters. I sleep a little. I switch beds, and night after night hope is gathered in the sacks of the unknown.

इतना सत्य, इतना निजी! आश्चर्य! जीवन! प्रेम! सुंदरता इसकी सरलता में है। यहाँ कोई दिखावा नहीं है।

The woman in hijab still comoforted the weeping man, who, in addition to being inconsolable, now threw dust, from time to time, at people walking past.

सांस। तुम समझ सकते हो उस चीख को? अपने निज को बचा लेने की गुहार? कोमलता बचाने में हम कितने सफल हैं?

Things are in bad shape, worn by time, and layered with dust. Some of the dust will leave with us.

Sometimes it takes five decades for a photograph to unravel itself.

There is a photo in the book. Where the photographer (artist) is the fringe or coroner of his art. Isn’t that the goal? To let the art come and take the space of your life… You are blurred by the effect of your art.

At the moment of posing, they make themselves into the people they want to be. And in being photographed, in the creation of a document of their pose they affirm their place in the city.

I understand that my pose as a boy and as a young man depicts the fraught moments I have carried within myself all these years: the tenseness of belonging in part, of being certain of departure. This attempt at steadying is a lot of those who are one day in a place, the next day elsewhere. They are the innumerable wayfarers of this world, migrants of great number.

I could understand the nature of the separation. I might know that by posing for the photograph, I create evidence of absence.

Reading Iduma is like reading a memory in pictures! Images conjured from the past or present or eternal time where it doesn’t matter – the distinction. Where all is now all is forgotten all is going to happen, Now lost, now to come and now happening. All at the same time. Compressed in one single moment.

इदुमा लिख नहीं रहे। वो दोबारा जी रहे हैं। जो उनके शरीर में जीवन से छनकर बचा है। दृश्य, तस्वीरें, भाव, आतम, छोटी छोटी हरक्तें, शरीर और मन की इछाएँ… क्या लिखना जीवन समेटकर फिरसे जीना नहीं है? अपनी सरलता में?

She pondered what to leave unsaid.

How long would it take for letters of my alphabet to form an impression, moving from reading to sensuous heart?

घटना। प्रेम। पत्र। वो रास्ते जो नियति ने हमारे लिए चुने और हमने झूठ कह दिया कि ये हमारा चुनाव है। हम कितना भी भागें… नियति पकड़ ही लेती है। भागना यात्रा नहीं है। पकड़कर रखना यात्रा नहीं है। झरने के बीच पानी नहीं पकड़ते और ना पत्थर। बस छूकर जी लेते हैं और आगे बढ़ जाते हैं।

There are those who believe cameras carry ghosts whithin them, and that ghost come into view when a photograph is made.

We search for nothing in particular, hoping isntead for chance encounters with past events.

The tree that spoke about loneliness
To a traveller lost deliberately.
They shared a laugh & then
Traveller gifted the tree
Gift of a reading.

To see & to be seen
The sheer hindrance in images of self
Your loneliness is your
companion
Loyal, forever.

The borders that don’t cross but hold you
My gaze
Relationship between ours.

A walking eye sees itself blind
A roving leg crumbles into a pause
The only thing a man needs
is a suitcase and a soul.

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness.