That 'deja Vu' Sensation Poem by Ananta Madhavan

Sometimes when you go out to a shop
Or visit a spot you have meant to see,
Or touring in a town beyond your ken,
You may have an uncanny prescience
That you have been there before;

Trodden down the very same footpath,
Gazed in wonder at the same bungalow,
Still vacant, with the upstairs roof caved in,
And letting in a diagonal of dusk.

When I was at College three score years ago,
I read with ambitious curiosity
A paperback, 'Three Time Plays', by an English writer,
J.B. Priestley. He had been sorely perplexed
By this 'deja vu' of 'pre-cognised' places,
Lanes and people; even snatches of talk
He had heard before this Now.

His off-beat dramas were performed
In theatres, applauded and well-reviewed.
He acknowledged being influenced
By John W. Dunne, an aero-engineer,
Who philosophised his intuition
Of serial time beyond calendars;
Chronometers that cannot agree,
Beyond meridians, eons and history,
In a book he dared to call 'Nothing Dies'.

I too have wondered about Time.
Do we humans have the faculty of Reason
To understand that Time is just a notion?
We need not personify Time as delusive,
A deceptive dodger or treacherous tyrant.
Our'deja vu' is but a variant, perhaps,
Of 'deja lu', turning the page we feel
When reading another shameful story
In the morning papers: another car accident,
Another terror strike, another abduction or rape.

In Tamil the word 'kala' can mean
Both 'time' and 'death'. It is not morbid
To live our lifetime of recurrent customs,
When the 'Now' moments, though familiar
And patterned into singular identity,
Are still our own. 'La Vie' for you and me
Is still unique. There is no 'deja vecu'.

- - - - - April,2016