All the Colours in the World: A.K. Ramanujan’s Journal Entry on His Mescalin Experience

This week in Daak:

1. All the Colours in the World: A.K. Ramanujan’s Journal Entry on his Mescalin Experience

2. Daily Poetry for 2024

3. Daak Recommends

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1. All the Colours in the World: A.K. Ramanujan’s Journal Entry on His Mescalin Experience

Stream of consciousness, a term coined by psychologist William James in 1893, referred to “consciousness as an uninterrupted flow.” This uninterrupted record of visual and sensory impressions at the pre-speech level (not limited by rational thoughts and feelings) came to be adopted as a narrative technique by many writers, notably Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, and James Joyce.

Closer to home, we have a unique example in the form of A.K. Ramanujan’s journal entries, particularly a journal entry from 1971 where he records his experience of taking the drug mescalin. Committed to documenting his intellectual and emotional life in writing, Ramanujan dutifully records the progression of his hallucinations or as some might call it, clarity of vision.

Vivaldi – flowing –
expectancy – surveying all the objects in front,
slight weakness and tremor of limbs –
lying down – evening sunlight fell on my
stretched hand with watch, golden-yellow
hair – the sun was really a reflection in a west-facing
window

Dry chalk-like feeling in the throat – shiver
in the calves.

My handwriting isn’t clear, getting less coordinated
as my forearm muscles are aquiver –
a coursing of blood all over –
earlier on, I took count of all fearful
objects, tribal spears, the pufferfish
over- hanging – but i’m not going to be
afraid – I’m going to meditate,
put on Vivaldi again – sitting at centre for stereo.

As expected, he experiences an explosion of sights, sounds and colours. Despite this sensory overload, however, his bemused writer’s mind retains its grip on grammar and spelling.

I’m seeing all
the colours in the world I’ve wanted to see –
mists, mingling, waves, diffusion,
never really white or black, only
aquamarines – laughter in street, a creak
at the next door – child’s cry – door hinge –

how can you read or write anything in such
a state except this? I close my eyes on a
multiplicity of metallic glints in self –
reproducing dynamics of vessels,
suddenly all edges in
a neon (keep saying nylon)
glow –
(still spelling right! – O language
you win everywhere
don’t you!)

As his trance-like state deepens, his mind grasps at the love he’d recently lost. His estranged wife Molly, who had left for India with their two children, is present even as the lines between reality and unreality are blurred — a reminder that love, after all, is the thing we always return to.

Only Molly could have been here, all else I’d
have felt guilty – for no one else
would have given me all of themselves –
would have wanted to be with
someone else.

Others, I’m glad you were
not here – I’d have wanted to be
close yet would have been distant as
you’d have been – would be unfair –
yet I wish you were here.

This summarizes a lifetime’s restlessness –
tossings – and not finding utter sleep
because of continuous dream, body-ache,
being here and yet not here but in the
crystal forest.

Source: Journeys: A Poet’s Diary, AK Ramanujan, edited by Krishna Ramanujan and Guillermo Rodriguez

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2. Daily Poetry for 2024

If you want to read or learn more poetry in this new year, check out our Poetry Calendar. It has a new poem for each day and can be year after year! It makes for a fantastic desk companion and an inspiring gift for poetry lovers.

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3. Daak Recommends

An ending always brings the promise of a new beginning, the opportunity to bury the past hurt and start afresh. If you need a reminder to let go and move on, listen to this recitation of Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s Jo Beet Gayi So Baat Gayi. We wish you a hopeful and inspiring new year!