The Other Side

The Other Side

Part 1: The City Boy

On an upholstered seat, sat the anxious boy,

With his head on the window pane.

Watching the world pass fleeting by,

As homeward chugged the train.

Dreading the maddening drive to school,

Now that the vacation was done.

Through a soot choked city, behind high walls,

To a school that was devoid of fun.

Then, just for a moment, under an azure sky –

Like a pearl, in an ocean of green.

In a tranquil village; a shepherd with his flock –

He saw a beauty never before seen.

Woken by the sun, after a blissful sleep,

He imagined what his life might be.

Dancing through life in joyous abandon,

As on a flower dances the bee.

“If our lives could swap, through a slice of magic,

Or perhaps through blessings divine!”

“What fun would life be then”, he wondered,

“O, only if his life could be mine!”

Part 2: The Village Boy

On the stubby grass, sat the shepherd boy,

On the western field by the brook.

Beyond lay his village, remote and still, where –

E’en clouds stopped not to look.

His means were meagre, the elements, harsh,

No roads to their village ever came.

The herd that he tended, belonged to his father –

Alas! Life remained ever the same.

Then all of a sudden, as a sharp long whistle,

Shattered the still of the sky.

He stood up straight, watchful, intent –

As a train, like a dream, passed by.

He thought of the boy, in finery clad –

Perhaps, seated by that window pane.

Of the lands that he travelled, of the sights that he saw,

And of the wealth that he did attain.

“If our lives could swap, through a slice of magic,

Or perhaps through blessings divine!”

“What fun would life be then”, he wondered,

“O, only if his life could be mine!”

Chinmoy Bhattacharjee

11^th April 2020, Reading

Decades ago, in 1993, I had spent a few eventful days in a village called Kayasthagram – deep in the hinterland of the Barak Valley region of Assam. During one of those evenings, I had joined the village lads for a game of volleyball. As we played the game, far in the distant tracks, a train hurtled past – to who knows where. For a few moments, I had simply watched – it was one of those rare moments in life when I got to see what it felt like to watch the same thing from a different perspective, a different view. That vision forever remained with me.

I have used this imagery today to express a universal truth – that truth itself is relative. It always depends on one’s perspective, the advantage of one’s reference of vision. The same event will inevitably trigger different thoughts, different conclusions, different aspirations – even different truths. Truth therefore is always a shade of grey.

In this poem, for a few isolated, random moments – a city bred boy and a village lad share a moment. Only they know their circumstances. Alas, they can only infer the other’s circumstance. For them this inference is their truth. And for them, like everyone else, the grass is always greener on the other side.