Now days too have gone hazy with the already dark nights,
Rendering my vision of who I am into a blind murky sight.
Where was it when I had last encountered me I can not say,
As I’m persistently busy escaping from myself as long as I may.
I scheme external calmness while restiveness haunts my soul,
I deceive entirety while deep inside I experience an empty hole.
My past are moments wasted, future is not worth breathing for,
And to stitch worn dreams the unscathed present is a thin chord.
My existence is a helpless trade-off between people and time,
While sands of later swiftly fleets, formers wish not to be mine.
Harmonizing these two phases I’ve lived as one through my plight,
Nakedly switching morals amongst shades of black gray and white.
When the diverse colors merged sweeping my conviction along,
My spirit died beneath the ripples of resignation mounting upon.
Secretly the dead man inside me asks the dusk of last day to end,
For his death will ensure if dawn of new life may perhaps begin.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
That blissful Naked Man…
Long back ago there was a prince, a king in the making, who kept moving towards his throne with little steps called achievements. He kept on keeping on, but not after a target but for the sake of moving. Yet sadly in the course of his little accomplishments, caught up in his talent show, the prince got greatness thrust upon him as people began to believe him and expect a lot in return. He never even once asked for those believe but they indebted him with hope. Thus what just began as a journey of selfhood, with the burden of expectations turned into running behind undesired aims set by spectators. His life wasn’t his but a puppet show. Never once was he asked what he wanted to be, he was told what he should become. He tried to be him, people made him to be them. When he asked rest he was made to run and when wished to fly he was chained to hustle. He asked for silent solitude, he was given an echoing audience. He wanted to be a wandering nomad, he was shown the throne. Unable to sketch a way out, the king in making gave up dreaming and toiled on the path which he hadn’t chosen.
On that path he found himself lost in the labyrinth of anticipations. As it was not his path he was ensured to fail, it was only a matter of time before the axe would fell and one day it did. And all that was there impending since long was over. All the hopes, belief and anticipations died. He had robbed the hopes of many people and thus in return was robbed of their belief. The kingdom abandoned him. The prince had failed for the first time in his life and the failure hit him hard on the face. He wept behind closed doors where no one could listen. Finding it hard to meet the eyes of spectators he went into a state of isolation, hiding behind the ruins of broken dreams to escape from his past. He had once pined for solitude but when that was granted it turned out to be loneliness, which he morbidly accepted as a punishment. He reduced himself into a dead man deprived of everything. He first took pity on himself but then with time he got institutionalized to that state. He realized that now he was not expected to fill in someone’s shoes and since the kingdom had no expectations henceforth he was free. He realized that now he is a naked man with nothing to loose, invisible to spectators; and this realization made him feel blessed. For the first time in life he was naked and therefore liberated, he felt the centre of his life within him. He recognized that what he failed to achieve was not his own wish. He never dreamt to be a king.
With this insight a new hope was generated within and this time it was special, it was his individual hope. He gathered the scraps from past as memoir of failure and stroked another match to go anew. This time he promised himself never to let anyone be a part of the voyage and only listened to his heart to discover directions. Thus the naked abandoned prince moved ahead with resolute passion. Once again he could feel; he felt new life in his soul. On his new journey the only spectators he had were his principles. But habituated to external drive he lacked motivational incentives and thus looked for it around. Once in his path he met someone inimitably spotless, someone first of her kind, close to being called integrity. He found in her seraphical thoughts and was mesmerized by the delightful moments he had talking to her. Those moments instilled in him the vital inspiration which worked out for him and success begin to follow. Enchanted by the magical experience he got smitten enough to forget his promises and made that someone the centre of his journey. He dreamt to make those moments a lifetime event; he wanted to carve up a moment that would have last till his end. But then not every story has a happy ending as not everyone deserves everything. A lettered man he was and thus could never verbalize his truth convincingly.
At the end it had all turned up to be an all-sum-to-zero game. After all the triumphs finally the prince had became weaker than a man should be. Those successes, which at first he had thought of exclusively for himself and later to split half it with only one person, once again brought him in the same old arena of expectations. Once again the spectators were around with revived hopes to welcome there one time missing prince, the king in the making. In his isolation the prince had forgotten that one cannot escape from oneself, one can’t be free of oneself as there is no way out of oneself. While the kingdom was jostling to shine the older throne, the armored prince with his lonely heart cried for shedding his covering as he desolately missed that blissful naked man once he used to be.
On that path he found himself lost in the labyrinth of anticipations. As it was not his path he was ensured to fail, it was only a matter of time before the axe would fell and one day it did. And all that was there impending since long was over. All the hopes, belief and anticipations died. He had robbed the hopes of many people and thus in return was robbed of their belief. The kingdom abandoned him. The prince had failed for the first time in his life and the failure hit him hard on the face. He wept behind closed doors where no one could listen. Finding it hard to meet the eyes of spectators he went into a state of isolation, hiding behind the ruins of broken dreams to escape from his past. He had once pined for solitude but when that was granted it turned out to be loneliness, which he morbidly accepted as a punishment. He reduced himself into a dead man deprived of everything. He first took pity on himself but then with time he got institutionalized to that state. He realized that now he was not expected to fill in someone’s shoes and since the kingdom had no expectations henceforth he was free. He realized that now he is a naked man with nothing to loose, invisible to spectators; and this realization made him feel blessed. For the first time in life he was naked and therefore liberated, he felt the centre of his life within him. He recognized that what he failed to achieve was not his own wish. He never dreamt to be a king.
With this insight a new hope was generated within and this time it was special, it was his individual hope. He gathered the scraps from past as memoir of failure and stroked another match to go anew. This time he promised himself never to let anyone be a part of the voyage and only listened to his heart to discover directions. Thus the naked abandoned prince moved ahead with resolute passion. Once again he could feel; he felt new life in his soul. On his new journey the only spectators he had were his principles. But habituated to external drive he lacked motivational incentives and thus looked for it around. Once in his path he met someone inimitably spotless, someone first of her kind, close to being called integrity. He found in her seraphical thoughts and was mesmerized by the delightful moments he had talking to her. Those moments instilled in him the vital inspiration which worked out for him and success begin to follow. Enchanted by the magical experience he got smitten enough to forget his promises and made that someone the centre of his journey. He dreamt to make those moments a lifetime event; he wanted to carve up a moment that would have last till his end. But then not every story has a happy ending as not everyone deserves everything. A lettered man he was and thus could never verbalize his truth convincingly.
At the end it had all turned up to be an all-sum-to-zero game. After all the triumphs finally the prince had became weaker than a man should be. Those successes, which at first he had thought of exclusively for himself and later to split half it with only one person, once again brought him in the same old arena of expectations. Once again the spectators were around with revived hopes to welcome there one time missing prince, the king in the making. In his isolation the prince had forgotten that one cannot escape from oneself, one can’t be free of oneself as there is no way out of oneself. While the kingdom was jostling to shine the older throne, the armored prince with his lonely heart cried for shedding his covering as he desolately missed that blissful naked man once he used to be.
Saturday, December 5, 2009
The Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!
The world forgetting by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.
Once while being interviewed an ebullient Salman Rushdie, my last post’s buddy, said that during his Oxford days he learned more from the Friday night shows than course books. It may sound unfounded to many but not me. I too can claim with conviction that in this case I have reciprocated him, infact I have even gone few steps further in embracing the first one and almost ditching the later. Once while taking one such learning filmy-session through a 2004 neosurrealistic classic ‘Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind’ directed by Michel Gondry, a brilliant exploration of human memory and relationship, I came across the above mentioned lines. During the movie when Mary Svevo, played by Kirsten Dunst, recited these lines of Alexander pope to Dr. Howard, though totally involved watching, a fascinated I paused to take out my diary and pen it down. Later, as habitually, while surfing through the wiki pages of the movie I came to know that these arresting 4 lines are a part of a 366 lines long poetic epistle ‘Eloisa to Abelard’, a terrible tale of a rebellious love (though the word terrible was unnecessary, love as always is, in any form terrible).
To fathom out the entire poem is a colossal task and will require an understanding far above my meager intellectual capacity. For the time being the uninitiated reader needs to know only this much that Eloisa while suffering from separation and realizing that now a helpless Abelard can never reciprocate her love prays not for forgiveness but forgetfulness.
As now there is no Mrs. Lizzy around to explicate me such enigmatic verses, a seeking me tried googling it out, and not to my surprise there were plentiful explanation by many generous souls. What I found is this that the above lines are in a sardonic tone. Vestals were the virgin maids of ancient times who were devoted to the services of temples soon after birth. They were held as symbol of purity and peace. Ordinary people tangled up in the blues, as man is inherently sadistic, envied them for their so perceived peace of mind. But here Pope doubts there happiness. He argues that what other saw in them as happiness was actually there ignorance. Since they were ignorant of the world around they knew of nothing, neither true happiness nor real sadness. There life was nothing but a hollow and futile existence, as to be blameless is also to be empty, meaningless and blank, without the weight of choice and consequence. If we want only what we're given -is that happiness? No. Sometimes change can be costly, and not always rewarding, but standing costs dreams and desires.
At the any stage in our life we are nothing but the sum total of our memories. We are happy when the memory we cherish dominates our psyche. Similarly unpleasant memories make us downhearted. In a way life is all about collecting good experiences, because we will all relive them umpteen times through our reflections. But the problem with human mind is this that it is more a RAM based device, where the secondary storage is lost in the piles of recent data’s. Sometime a small bitter moment takes over the years of togetherness, as all the sweet memories are buried in the sand of time. It is only in the afterthoughts that we realize the true worth of a relationship gone bad by a small clash, but then mostly it is too hard to make corrections as there always is the ego factor. When Friedrich Nietzsche quoted “Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders” he too displayed similar attitude as a poignant Eloisa. He considered the forgetful lucky as they forgot even there bitter memories but then at same time they were also reduced as creature of the moment, with no treasure of past to live upon. At times when some recent experience troubles us we too urge for forgetfulness to get over the painful part but a mere reflection will suggest that how hollow life will be without memories.
The above mentioned movie approaches the same human dilemma in a splendid manner. It is the story of Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet), a couple as distinct as two extremes, while Joel is reclusive Clementine is vivacious, but both of them find happiness together. However once a small misunderstanding blows out of proportion and an impulsive Clementine had all the memories of Joel erased from her mind by a surgical process ( a liberty which artistic independence allows the storyteller). An angry Joel reciprocates her by opting to obliterate her memories. As if “Look at it out here, it's all falling apart. I'm erasing you and I'm happy! By morning, you'll be gone”.
But in order to wipe out the memories the operating machine first needed to map those particular memory cells thereby enabling the holder to view them one last time while in an unconscious dream like state. It is only when Joel revisits his memories with Clementine, he has afterthoughts; and he recognize that though few moments between them were bitter but majority of them were happy and he understand that it was Clementine who brought meaning and magic to his mundane life through her vivacity. The rest of the movie take place in Joel’s mind, and from here the neo-surreal part begins. Now onward it is shown how in his mind Joel with Clementine struggles to rescue few of their memories from being completely washed, and while leaving them again he realize that these memories are all that are left behind as their life together, and once they are gone a life once lived is gone as well.
The one message that the movie pass is that if only one can stand apart and watch his whole life from a distance than one can realize that how wonderful a life it was, inspite of all the so thought mistakes committed. A second inferential message could be about accepting people as they are because they are still the same wonderful person inspite of their imperfection and if you have found happiness with a person once you will find it with them once again. All you need is to wipe the dirty spots which come in a relationship and this wiping doesn’t needs a spotless mind but a pure heart. Because in real life there is no surgical process to clean dirty spots of memory it could be done only by defocusing from those spots and viewing the larger picture which requires an open heart. And hence it is more important to have a pure heart than a spotless mind.
The world forgetting by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.
Once while being interviewed an ebullient Salman Rushdie, my last post’s buddy, said that during his Oxford days he learned more from the Friday night shows than course books. It may sound unfounded to many but not me. I too can claim with conviction that in this case I have reciprocated him, infact I have even gone few steps further in embracing the first one and almost ditching the later. Once while taking one such learning filmy-session through a 2004 neosurrealistic classic ‘Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind’ directed by Michel Gondry, a brilliant exploration of human memory and relationship, I came across the above mentioned lines. During the movie when Mary Svevo, played by Kirsten Dunst, recited these lines of Alexander pope to Dr. Howard, though totally involved watching, a fascinated I paused to take out my diary and pen it down. Later, as habitually, while surfing through the wiki pages of the movie I came to know that these arresting 4 lines are a part of a 366 lines long poetic epistle ‘Eloisa to Abelard’, a terrible tale of a rebellious love (though the word terrible was unnecessary, love as always is, in any form terrible).
To fathom out the entire poem is a colossal task and will require an understanding far above my meager intellectual capacity. For the time being the uninitiated reader needs to know only this much that Eloisa while suffering from separation and realizing that now a helpless Abelard can never reciprocate her love prays not for forgiveness but forgetfulness.
As now there is no Mrs. Lizzy around to explicate me such enigmatic verses, a seeking me tried googling it out, and not to my surprise there were plentiful explanation by many generous souls. What I found is this that the above lines are in a sardonic tone. Vestals were the virgin maids of ancient times who were devoted to the services of temples soon after birth. They were held as symbol of purity and peace. Ordinary people tangled up in the blues, as man is inherently sadistic, envied them for their so perceived peace of mind. But here Pope doubts there happiness. He argues that what other saw in them as happiness was actually there ignorance. Since they were ignorant of the world around they knew of nothing, neither true happiness nor real sadness. There life was nothing but a hollow and futile existence, as to be blameless is also to be empty, meaningless and blank, without the weight of choice and consequence. If we want only what we're given -is that happiness? No. Sometimes change can be costly, and not always rewarding, but standing costs dreams and desires.
At the any stage in our life we are nothing but the sum total of our memories. We are happy when the memory we cherish dominates our psyche. Similarly unpleasant memories make us downhearted. In a way life is all about collecting good experiences, because we will all relive them umpteen times through our reflections. But the problem with human mind is this that it is more a RAM based device, where the secondary storage is lost in the piles of recent data’s. Sometime a small bitter moment takes over the years of togetherness, as all the sweet memories are buried in the sand of time. It is only in the afterthoughts that we realize the true worth of a relationship gone bad by a small clash, but then mostly it is too hard to make corrections as there always is the ego factor. When Friedrich Nietzsche quoted “Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders” he too displayed similar attitude as a poignant Eloisa. He considered the forgetful lucky as they forgot even there bitter memories but then at same time they were also reduced as creature of the moment, with no treasure of past to live upon. At times when some recent experience troubles us we too urge for forgetfulness to get over the painful part but a mere reflection will suggest that how hollow life will be without memories.
The above mentioned movie approaches the same human dilemma in a splendid manner. It is the story of Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet), a couple as distinct as two extremes, while Joel is reclusive Clementine is vivacious, but both of them find happiness together. However once a small misunderstanding blows out of proportion and an impulsive Clementine had all the memories of Joel erased from her mind by a surgical process ( a liberty which artistic independence allows the storyteller). An angry Joel reciprocates her by opting to obliterate her memories. As if “Look at it out here, it's all falling apart. I'm erasing you and I'm happy! By morning, you'll be gone”.
But in order to wipe out the memories the operating machine first needed to map those particular memory cells thereby enabling the holder to view them one last time while in an unconscious dream like state. It is only when Joel revisits his memories with Clementine, he has afterthoughts; and he recognize that though few moments between them were bitter but majority of them were happy and he understand that it was Clementine who brought meaning and magic to his mundane life through her vivacity. The rest of the movie take place in Joel’s mind, and from here the neo-surreal part begins. Now onward it is shown how in his mind Joel with Clementine struggles to rescue few of their memories from being completely washed, and while leaving them again he realize that these memories are all that are left behind as their life together, and once they are gone a life once lived is gone as well.
The one message that the movie pass is that if only one can stand apart and watch his whole life from a distance than one can realize that how wonderful a life it was, inspite of all the so thought mistakes committed. A second inferential message could be about accepting people as they are because they are still the same wonderful person inspite of their imperfection and if you have found happiness with a person once you will find it with them once again. All you need is to wipe the dirty spots which come in a relationship and this wiping doesn’t needs a spotless mind but a pure heart. Because in real life there is no surgical process to clean dirty spots of memory it could be done only by defocusing from those spots and viewing the larger picture which requires an open heart. And hence it is more important to have a pure heart than a spotless mind.
Friday, November 27, 2009
There’s A Hole In My Soul
These days I have been in retrospective disposition, the first thing I do when sems are around and when I’m only supposed to struggle for GPAs. My retrospection reinforced my yearning if I could go back to the start……IF. But life certainly has no ifs and buts… My contemplation concluded that my past nine months could be best summarized by the opening lines of ‘The tale of two cities’ where Dickens starts paradoxically with “These were the best of times these were the worst of times”. Recently times have changed and I hope may be the worst is over and expect that the best is yet to shower. But such hopes just remind the cynic in me about Morgan Freeman’s “Hope is a dangerous thing my friend”.
About friends wise men say our best friends are the books we really had great time with. Holden Caulfield, The Catcher In The Rye Guy, rephrases them in his trademark rebellious way as “What really knocks me out is a book, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it”. I must be a fortunate being, as unlike Holden I have some really great people to hang around even outside the world of books. But there is one such friend from the world of literature whom I spared some space in my self contemplation, one living legend, Sir Salman Rushdie. Now why so? … you will know.
Despite W. H. Auden's assertion that "Literature makes nothing happen," Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, is one of the relatively few works of fiction to have made a significant and permanent impact outside the enclosed world of literature. It has led to the loss of over twenty lives apart from making its author go into hiding from the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa. Above all, coinciding with the ending of the Cold War, it has played a significant role in redefining the West's image of itself, which now is no longer the threat of Communism, but that of Islamic fundamentalism. Islamic clerics used this work of fiction to reinforce their image of the United States as the Great Satan. Anyway enough of throwing light on well known facts, when right now I don’t give a damn to world affairs. This piece of plausible contemplation is solely about me and a hole inside me, where Rushdie has a role.
The formation of this hole started almost a decade ago during my early teen days. Teenage, as it is, a rebellious stage of life when you question all norms. So even I at its very inception, impressed by my thirteen year old imagination, questioned the religious hypocrisy prevalent around and begun to flirt with the idea of atheism. It’s like when we discover rationality religion doesn’t seem to impress us much, and we look forward to sundry atheist idea to support our stance. I long searched for such ideas in Osho before I recognized his other side, and my tryst with Osho ended and I switched to others. I had perplexing time understanding Nietzsche’s Nihilism, Camus’ existentialism, Ayn Rands’ Objectivism, Vivekananda’s Vedantic Hinduism. Claims like Nietzsche’s ‘the death of God’ generated waves of goose bumps to the seeker in me. It was all like a constant struggle with my psychological and intellectual inheritance, searching some short of self realization for creating a new self. Amongst all such search once I came across these lines of Rushdie repudiating the idea of God “I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.” Rushdie maintains that the ‘The satanic Verses” was an exploration of the "God-shaped hole" left in him after he had abandoned the "unarguable absolutes of religion"
Unlike Rushdie without understanding it much I mugged these lines to quote to my mother who when worried of an agnostic me (she just couldn’t stand atheism in me) at times futilely tried to pour some pious sagacity in my alternative moral universe. In order to pacify her subtle worries I used to edit and carve up Gabriel Garcia’s line “Mom, I don’t believe in your God but don’t worry I am surely afraid of him”. Anyway after many fruitless attempts she understood that sometimes you just can’t save some fanatical people from themselves and in some way or other she primed herself emotionally for my surreal reality. Her disappointment was in a way a triumph for me as I used to take pride on all the GDs in which I exhausted her reasons with my fervent iconoclastic apathy towards the idea of God.
I wished someday, like Rushdie, this hole would become prominent in me too, but when have my wishes ever been answered…… never. Spirituality for the true seeker is the means to release his spirit from the confines of his materialistic existence. Now the hole in Rushdie never bothered him as he has his magical realism as a transcendental force within to fill in the vacancy. Through his aesthetic ideological imaginations he got his self conviction. He believes his ideology is superior to that of the fundamentalist and unlike them he never tries to compel it on others, but only persuades. You have to firmly believe in something at least so that you can believe yourself. Now that’s where I went astray.
I was never bothered about the hole in my soul and thus never could successfully fill it with anything… neither with passionate ambitions, neither with fragmented dreams and neither with friendship and love. Somewhere deep within this hole has rendered me hollow, devoid of any faith. It was only during these few hard days in recent past, when my pseudo self belief was badly wounded and left my ego heavily humiliated, that I fully comprehended this growing emptiness within. The emptiness which, crooked my sense of pleasant solitude into agonizing lonesomeness. The emptiness due to which, I nearly had let down my self to abysmal depths before reverting back well in time. They say it is in adversity that character is tested and true faith blossoms. May be these difficult times were a providential event to help me make out the hazard of the hole, and thus what all the provoking theories of the great philosophers failed to recognize, was flashed before by the reality, which till now only sucks. Quoting Rushdie once again “One great fact about life is sometime even the unthinkable becomes the thinkable” In what once I took pride, now for the first time in my life am worried about; that there is a hole in my soul. What I’m not sure of is “IS IT GOD SHAPED”??
About friends wise men say our best friends are the books we really had great time with. Holden Caulfield, The Catcher In The Rye Guy, rephrases them in his trademark rebellious way as “What really knocks me out is a book, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it”. I must be a fortunate being, as unlike Holden I have some really great people to hang around even outside the world of books. But there is one such friend from the world of literature whom I spared some space in my self contemplation, one living legend, Sir Salman Rushdie. Now why so? … you will know.
Despite W. H. Auden's assertion that "Literature makes nothing happen," Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, is one of the relatively few works of fiction to have made a significant and permanent impact outside the enclosed world of literature. It has led to the loss of over twenty lives apart from making its author go into hiding from the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa. Above all, coinciding with the ending of the Cold War, it has played a significant role in redefining the West's image of itself, which now is no longer the threat of Communism, but that of Islamic fundamentalism. Islamic clerics used this work of fiction to reinforce their image of the United States as the Great Satan. Anyway enough of throwing light on well known facts, when right now I don’t give a damn to world affairs. This piece of plausible contemplation is solely about me and a hole inside me, where Rushdie has a role.
The formation of this hole started almost a decade ago during my early teen days. Teenage, as it is, a rebellious stage of life when you question all norms. So even I at its very inception, impressed by my thirteen year old imagination, questioned the religious hypocrisy prevalent around and begun to flirt with the idea of atheism. It’s like when we discover rationality religion doesn’t seem to impress us much, and we look forward to sundry atheist idea to support our stance. I long searched for such ideas in Osho before I recognized his other side, and my tryst with Osho ended and I switched to others. I had perplexing time understanding Nietzsche’s Nihilism, Camus’ existentialism, Ayn Rands’ Objectivism, Vivekananda’s Vedantic Hinduism. Claims like Nietzsche’s ‘the death of God’ generated waves of goose bumps to the seeker in me. It was all like a constant struggle with my psychological and intellectual inheritance, searching some short of self realization for creating a new self. Amongst all such search once I came across these lines of Rushdie repudiating the idea of God “I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.” Rushdie maintains that the ‘The satanic Verses” was an exploration of the "God-shaped hole" left in him after he had abandoned the "unarguable absolutes of religion"
Unlike Rushdie without understanding it much I mugged these lines to quote to my mother who when worried of an agnostic me (she just couldn’t stand atheism in me) at times futilely tried to pour some pious sagacity in my alternative moral universe. In order to pacify her subtle worries I used to edit and carve up Gabriel Garcia’s line “Mom, I don’t believe in your God but don’t worry I am surely afraid of him”. Anyway after many fruitless attempts she understood that sometimes you just can’t save some fanatical people from themselves and in some way or other she primed herself emotionally for my surreal reality. Her disappointment was in a way a triumph for me as I used to take pride on all the GDs in which I exhausted her reasons with my fervent iconoclastic apathy towards the idea of God.
I wished someday, like Rushdie, this hole would become prominent in me too, but when have my wishes ever been answered…… never. Spirituality for the true seeker is the means to release his spirit from the confines of his materialistic existence. Now the hole in Rushdie never bothered him as he has his magical realism as a transcendental force within to fill in the vacancy. Through his aesthetic ideological imaginations he got his self conviction. He believes his ideology is superior to that of the fundamentalist and unlike them he never tries to compel it on others, but only persuades. You have to firmly believe in something at least so that you can believe yourself. Now that’s where I went astray.
I was never bothered about the hole in my soul and thus never could successfully fill it with anything… neither with passionate ambitions, neither with fragmented dreams and neither with friendship and love. Somewhere deep within this hole has rendered me hollow, devoid of any faith. It was only during these few hard days in recent past, when my pseudo self belief was badly wounded and left my ego heavily humiliated, that I fully comprehended this growing emptiness within. The emptiness which, crooked my sense of pleasant solitude into agonizing lonesomeness. The emptiness due to which, I nearly had let down my self to abysmal depths before reverting back well in time. They say it is in adversity that character is tested and true faith blossoms. May be these difficult times were a providential event to help me make out the hazard of the hole, and thus what all the provoking theories of the great philosophers failed to recognize, was flashed before by the reality, which till now only sucks. Quoting Rushdie once again “One great fact about life is sometime even the unthinkable becomes the thinkable” In what once I took pride, now for the first time in my life am worried about; that there is a hole in my soul. What I’m not sure of is “IS IT GOD SHAPED”??
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Don’t tell anyone anything
“Religion is the opium of the masses” believed Karl Marx. I agree with him on this more than anything. People need stuffs like such to derive sense out of their meaningless life. I see no plausible explanation for why else man created God, if not out of this selfishness. But then as if it was not enough he started celebrating God, in order to fill his empty life with occasion to cheer about. And the more deprived a society was the more it turned towards this establishment called God.
Except for the Greeks I see no society who held theology on rational terms. Greeks idea of religion was a way of seeking elucidation for the inexplicable phenomenon around, with having men as the centre of creation. Be it Hercules, Aphrodite, Apollo, Atlas, Poseidon, Venus in each of their Godly figure you will see a human being. All the other civilizations have done the reverse. In them mysticism have overtaken rationality. Egyptian shaped their supernatural being in lofty monuments and natural phenomenon, Muslims worshiped the shapeless God, and Hindus outsmarted everyone by outstretching their imagination far too than simply excess.
We people just love crowd, be it of humans or of deities we just love them. When I look back to my old city Varanasi I find there was an incessant struggle between God and Man. In fact it was a city where the population of God challenged that of Humans. The more the numbers of Gods we created the more were our moments of celebration. You will hardly find a Godless week in our calendar.
Today too is one such day. In fact it is one of the tallest among such days, called deepawali. Most people all around with their fake smiles are at their phoniest best, cheerfully wishing each other success. I too received many such phony greetings full of promising prosperity and reciprocated them back too in same gesture. But such days of celebration are the saddest in the life of an atheist like me. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of being a nonbeliever. You just don’t feel the joy in all this; neither can you even pretend to be joyful properly. So at the end you feel too isolated and out of place as if you just don’t belong there.
I was never this down throughout this year as today. Tried calling few close friends, some too old some new and promising, yet just couldn’t speak my mind to any. Instead of what I intended to share, I just repeated those phony wishing and ended. All this is just taking over me. I wish if i could hide somewhere out of this. But man is a social animal anyway. No matter how bad I am at it, I too have to play my part. The guy Holden Caulfield, from catcher in the rye, was awfully right when he said “Don’t ever tell anyone anything. If you do you start missing everyone.” Holden, if only I had met you earlier to committing this mistake.
Except for the Greeks I see no society who held theology on rational terms. Greeks idea of religion was a way of seeking elucidation for the inexplicable phenomenon around, with having men as the centre of creation. Be it Hercules, Aphrodite, Apollo, Atlas, Poseidon, Venus in each of their Godly figure you will see a human being. All the other civilizations have done the reverse. In them mysticism have overtaken rationality. Egyptian shaped their supernatural being in lofty monuments and natural phenomenon, Muslims worshiped the shapeless God, and Hindus outsmarted everyone by outstretching their imagination far too than simply excess.
We people just love crowd, be it of humans or of deities we just love them. When I look back to my old city Varanasi I find there was an incessant struggle between God and Man. In fact it was a city where the population of God challenged that of Humans. The more the numbers of Gods we created the more were our moments of celebration. You will hardly find a Godless week in our calendar.
Today too is one such day. In fact it is one of the tallest among such days, called deepawali. Most people all around with their fake smiles are at their phoniest best, cheerfully wishing each other success. I too received many such phony greetings full of promising prosperity and reciprocated them back too in same gesture. But such days of celebration are the saddest in the life of an atheist like me. This is one of the biggest drawbacks of being a nonbeliever. You just don’t feel the joy in all this; neither can you even pretend to be joyful properly. So at the end you feel too isolated and out of place as if you just don’t belong there.
I was never this down throughout this year as today. Tried calling few close friends, some too old some new and promising, yet just couldn’t speak my mind to any. Instead of what I intended to share, I just repeated those phony wishing and ended. All this is just taking over me. I wish if i could hide somewhere out of this. But man is a social animal anyway. No matter how bad I am at it, I too have to play my part. The guy Holden Caulfield, from catcher in the rye, was awfully right when he said “Don’t ever tell anyone anything. If you do you start missing everyone.” Holden, if only I had met you earlier to committing this mistake.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Sailor of a Lost Ship
The serene silence prevailing around has taken me far from the instantaneous. The tranquility has given the inner voices a rare opportunity to knock at my consciousness. And with no face around to think of or to please to, the thoughts have taken a reversion, back to my inner world. As a child baffled by the intricacies of this sophisticated world of adults, this inner world happened to be the place where laid all the answers. When people irritated by my persistent ‘why’s’ fobbed it off, letting down my ravenous curiosity, it was the place to keep my optimism alive in discerning the world and shaping an individuality to fit into it. But childhood was altogether a different time. Then even with limited knowledge of the world around, I knew who I was and who I wanted to be.
Somewhere in the subversive progression of growing up that pristine childhood was murdered. Now even equipped with a considerably far erudite intellect I have no answer to such a plain question as now that consciousness seems to be drained of its sparkle, yes it is not the same. I am not certain of the person I have become. Even after an obstinate commitment to the pursuit of my identity I don’t know for sure who I am, what am I running from and to, and why. With nowhere to go in particular, I am ready to go anywhere. What is the reason I am travelling around? Why am I focusing nowhere while exploring miles? I have no answers.
I have poignantly contemplated through several sleepless nights as if looking for some kind of morning light to shine in through this confused darkness. Waking up at different times at different places as different person I have discovered that the surreal identity which I thought I was does not exists. I have been incessantly parting from one individuality to become the part of another, relinquishing one thing to espouse other again and then again. My amorphous individuality is now just a puppet in the hands of emotional symptoms which have imparted some confused beliefs to it but I don’t know when and why.
I have no fix set of words to classify myself. Nowadays I am an amenable me. Guided by the immediate my speech ranges from laconic to loquacious to even garrulous, my nature varies from reticent to extrovert, my stand fluctuates from pragmatic to naïve to gullible. I am now a masked man with my real face lost among the various masks with which I cover the nakedness of my empty soul. My self is a mere assimilation of the various patterns drawn on my empty soul. I was never a follower; I have drawn my own conclusion of situations. I have taken what I have gathered from coincidence. May be life itself is a series of coincidence one following the other. Or may be it is not all that meaningless. May be it is a sequence of systematic events which at the closing stages integrates into an exquisite drawing. One never knows.
May be I was destined to get what I am after only if I knew. May be I will end up reaching nowhere at all. I can never identify it for sure. May be this life like ourselves, is not something to be identified but something to be created. Anyhow, I the sailor of the lost ship have to keep faith in something at least, to find the tantalizing harbor of my aimless voyage and the direction leading to it. But where should an agnostic like me look for faith?
Now I can sympathize with the feelings of “The Grateful dead” of truck’in when they lamented the everlasting lines
“Sometimes the light's all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been”
Somewhere in the subversive progression of growing up that pristine childhood was murdered. Now even equipped with a considerably far erudite intellect I have no answer to such a plain question as now that consciousness seems to be drained of its sparkle, yes it is not the same. I am not certain of the person I have become. Even after an obstinate commitment to the pursuit of my identity I don’t know for sure who I am, what am I running from and to, and why. With nowhere to go in particular, I am ready to go anywhere. What is the reason I am travelling around? Why am I focusing nowhere while exploring miles? I have no answers.
I have poignantly contemplated through several sleepless nights as if looking for some kind of morning light to shine in through this confused darkness. Waking up at different times at different places as different person I have discovered that the surreal identity which I thought I was does not exists. I have been incessantly parting from one individuality to become the part of another, relinquishing one thing to espouse other again and then again. My amorphous individuality is now just a puppet in the hands of emotional symptoms which have imparted some confused beliefs to it but I don’t know when and why.
I have no fix set of words to classify myself. Nowadays I am an amenable me. Guided by the immediate my speech ranges from laconic to loquacious to even garrulous, my nature varies from reticent to extrovert, my stand fluctuates from pragmatic to naïve to gullible. I am now a masked man with my real face lost among the various masks with which I cover the nakedness of my empty soul. My self is a mere assimilation of the various patterns drawn on my empty soul. I was never a follower; I have drawn my own conclusion of situations. I have taken what I have gathered from coincidence. May be life itself is a series of coincidence one following the other. Or may be it is not all that meaningless. May be it is a sequence of systematic events which at the closing stages integrates into an exquisite drawing. One never knows.
May be I was destined to get what I am after only if I knew. May be I will end up reaching nowhere at all. I can never identify it for sure. May be this life like ourselves, is not something to be identified but something to be created. Anyhow, I the sailor of the lost ship have to keep faith in something at least, to find the tantalizing harbor of my aimless voyage and the direction leading to it. But where should an agnostic like me look for faith?
Now I can sympathize with the feelings of “The Grateful dead” of truck’in when they lamented the everlasting lines
“Sometimes the light's all shining on me
Other times I can barely see
Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it's been”
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Inspired Folly
Last ten week long summer vacation, which I spent away from home and thus which lasted as long as decades; and yet ended so soon, I re-read Salman Rushdie's Midnight children and was once again caught by his "Magical Realism". The genius in him manipulated the fool in me to think of writing something of my own. Yes, after spending a considerable time of over an year with “Plausible Contemplation” I have begun fooling myself into thinking myself as a “to be author” of some accord (howsoever miniscule).
Thus I thought of starting with a short story, deciding not to stretch it over more than five pages, but the creative juice in me kept on overflowing and thus the “to be a short story” transformed into a “novella”, which fueled by the enthusiasm of having written something creditable was further elongating itself into a novel just before the long vacation regrettably ended. The dreary routine which invaded my life after it dried all the juicy emotions and thus the work ended in between.
Now the only valuable purpose which the curtailed work of a once an enthusiast fool could possibly serve is to augment the number of post on his blog and thus I have decided to pursue the intelligent decision. So below are few extract from different incomplete chapters, which now I could just imprudently dream to complete one day.
Thus I thought of starting with a short story, deciding not to stretch it over more than five pages, but the creative juice in me kept on overflowing and thus the “to be a short story” transformed into a “novella”, which fueled by the enthusiasm of having written something creditable was further elongating itself into a novel just before the long vacation regrettably ended. The dreary routine which invaded my life after it dried all the juicy emotions and thus the work ended in between.
Now the only valuable purpose which the curtailed work of a once an enthusiast fool could possibly serve is to augment the number of post on his blog and thus I have decided to pursue the intelligent decision. So below are few extract from different incomplete chapters, which now I could just imprudently dream to complete one day.
Chapter 1
Tick tock tick…....as the clock’s hand budged alongside its elliptical fringe my heart throbbed at an accelerated pace, fuelled by anxiety. With departure of each fleeting second the hour of embarrassment was arriving nearer and closer. Silently, like a ghost, its shadow looming over me, from the depths of uncertainty, larger and clearer. In fact I already felt embarrassed like a shy lamb, but only in private. In a little while a recently earned dignity would be thrashed publicly by ignominy, and shame will infiltrate inside through the bruises. And worse….entire school will witness that.
The disgrace will not be an ephemeral one ……..Poorer.……. it will be tagged on and echoed in my ears for quite some time to trail, voiced by the co-victims of my sloppy attitude towards this particular failed responsibility. The same soft ears that occasionally my mother uses to pinch and seek my instant shriek to confirm the righteous virtue of her son’s soul …….irritating me at times, she entertains just one of her many superstitious fantasies. I doubt her reaction if someday I don’t shriek. Returning back to the ears, the ears those, at the moment, were tense, tepid and taut like a pink question mark, bulging out on either side of a head. A head that was intimately clasping a mind…… or rather say minds….. shattered into anxious pieces by jagged unnerved thoughts…. How will I face it?... Oh! that geek, she will enjoy all of it…. And that bloody wing legged traitor I will…..If I could avoid it anyhow… Could I? The answer was an inevitable NO.
----------------------
Reaching home with an appetite pulverized with fury and shame, I did not cared to bother mother for lunch and went straight into my room, without her even knowing that I was home. And by the time she realized my arrival I was deep asleep, almost dead to her any request to eat, and so she didn’t. She knew me well and guessed the probable reasons.
She almost always was right in reading me, as if I was an open book to her and she could anytime look in my thoughts through the pages. Whenever I marveled upon her magical power of so implicitly reading me she had a set reply......“Being a mother I can”. Was this power special to her or is it so with all mothers? And if it is so why aren’t fathers too that understanding? And if they are, why I was not blessed with a father like that? Though there are no plausible answers to such questions yet my contemplation consoles me by believing that I am no unfortunate and only mothers have exclusive natural rights over this miraculous power. As if though immediately after birth the umbilical cord joining child with mother is physically detached but still - an umbilicus less- wireless connection exists between them, unlimited lifetime power, but sadly only one way.
The disgrace will not be an ephemeral one ……..Poorer.……. it will be tagged on and echoed in my ears for quite some time to trail, voiced by the co-victims of my sloppy attitude towards this particular failed responsibility. The same soft ears that occasionally my mother uses to pinch and seek my instant shriek to confirm the righteous virtue of her son’s soul …….irritating me at times, she entertains just one of her many superstitious fantasies. I doubt her reaction if someday I don’t shriek. Returning back to the ears, the ears those, at the moment, were tense, tepid and taut like a pink question mark, bulging out on either side of a head. A head that was intimately clasping a mind…… or rather say minds….. shattered into anxious pieces by jagged unnerved thoughts…. How will I face it?... Oh! that geek, she will enjoy all of it…. And that bloody wing legged traitor I will…..If I could avoid it anyhow… Could I? The answer was an inevitable NO.
----------------------
Reaching home with an appetite pulverized with fury and shame, I did not cared to bother mother for lunch and went straight into my room, without her even knowing that I was home. And by the time she realized my arrival I was deep asleep, almost dead to her any request to eat, and so she didn’t. She knew me well and guessed the probable reasons.
She almost always was right in reading me, as if I was an open book to her and she could anytime look in my thoughts through the pages. Whenever I marveled upon her magical power of so implicitly reading me she had a set reply......“Being a mother I can”. Was this power special to her or is it so with all mothers? And if it is so why aren’t fathers too that understanding? And if they are, why I was not blessed with a father like that? Though there are no plausible answers to such questions yet my contemplation consoles me by believing that I am no unfortunate and only mothers have exclusive natural rights over this miraculous power. As if though immediately after birth the umbilical cord joining child with mother is physically detached but still - an umbilicus less- wireless connection exists between them, unlimited lifetime power, but sadly only one way.
Chapter 2
Once father told us that as a youngster he wished to be a businessman, however, due to lack of support from his father, which I distrust, and, more importantly as I consider, lack of proper tenacity he took law as a safe route of life and enrolled in one of the best Law school, to learn the very basics of twisting and breaching law and to gain consummate skills in finding loopholes in the lengthiest constitution ever written. The astuteness of a once aspiring businessman and the skilled interpretation of a bright law grad formed a deadly combo, and within a short span of years my father surpassed the entire sexagenarian veterans of his field, in terms of both riches and the respect it brings. After every win photographs of him, flanked by his senile counterparts long parched of success; quenching their thirst of fame by sharing trivial side positions, emerged in newspapers, which hailed him as a champion lawyer. But the profession which showered him both fame and fortune, and the way in which it brought them, prohibited my conscience from giving him the reverence a father ought to have.
----------------------
At that time I couldn’t help but feel vortex of new anger whirling with the already pending ones inside me. However hard I tried to suppress it, it kept bubbling up. I tried to compromise the unfettered emotions but they refused to bow, and strained against my heart. This entire furious wave on a single day pulled me back, curtailed my spirit and made me even more peevish. Suddenly, the insulting shame imposed on a recently earned dignity, the concealed guilt of being a looser, the whirling anger waiting to be spilled, the hurtful professionalism of a heartless father and the sudden absence of a steadfast admirer; all came together. Unable to contain all of them in a vicious concert in the likelihood of facing the lawyers another possible lecture on the value of commitment ……. I left in the middle of the conversation. With nothing to do, I went to the place where I go with nothing to do, and the place where everything worth doing and saying is done and said, without having to do or say.
----------------------
At that time I couldn’t help but feel vortex of new anger whirling with the already pending ones inside me. However hard I tried to suppress it, it kept bubbling up. I tried to compromise the unfettered emotions but they refused to bow, and strained against my heart. This entire furious wave on a single day pulled me back, curtailed my spirit and made me even more peevish. Suddenly, the insulting shame imposed on a recently earned dignity, the concealed guilt of being a looser, the whirling anger waiting to be spilled, the hurtful professionalism of a heartless father and the sudden absence of a steadfast admirer; all came together. Unable to contain all of them in a vicious concert in the likelihood of facing the lawyers another possible lecture on the value of commitment ……. I left in the middle of the conversation. With nothing to do, I went to the place where I go with nothing to do, and the place where everything worth doing and saying is done and said, without having to do or say.
Chapter 3
In the privacy of the faceless crowds at its shore there lies solitude, so profound that you can truly listen to your inner voice. An exalted I, preferred to converse with an amiable Ganga only to witness my excitement leveling; and when poignant, I yearned to embrace a caring Ganga, only to perceive my melancholy getting dissolved in its flow. It once had the divine motherly offerings of eternal wisdom and edifying solace. Truly living to its claim, it was a confluence of death and life; It offered those looking for salvation every opportunity. I had always got what I had pined for. I have died and reborn various times at its bank. I have witnessed the cremation of my ego at Manikarnika, and resurrection of my internal sagacity at Dasaswamedh. At that time I wished never to grow up….. a childish wish, a wish that was soon denied.
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Assi, an integral part of the name Varanasi. Varanasi is derived from Varuna and Assi, one a small tributary to Ganga in the north and the other a rivulet cum drain in the south, both running parallel to other, fostering the older city in-between. The ghats, the stony flight of steps, extending from the crowded narrow winding lanes flanked by roadside shops and scores of Hindu temples, and descending into the composed shores and thus acting as a buffer between bedlam and equanimity, continuously abuts the river bank. Without leaving an inch gap inbetween, from the double-deck truss bridge at Rajghat, and stretching over three Km till the mouth of Assi, the ghats counts eighty-assi- in number, and thus the name Assi. The thing which distinguishes seraphic Assi, the south cornered eightieth ghat, from rest Seventy Nine is its majority populace of professional painters amateur photographers cerebral scholars effervescent students seeking foreigners and young and old lovers over that of priests, making Assi more youthfully spiritual than untidily religious, a fact which makes it a core of foreign tourists in Varanasi.
Like every other evening, that day too Assi was covered black and white with equal populace of Indian inhabitant and foreign vacationer. It was always amusing to come across the white people, burned to red skin by the scorching heat, wandering about the city in their sorts hauling heavy rucksacks, in hunt of its culture; only to be bamboozled into shredding cash by the ‘pundit’ posed touts, and to be tricked by the middlemen into buying cheap stuffs at soaring rates at the handicraft shops, and to be confused amid the narrow alleys by the prolonged rickshaw drives, and to be misguided by the hin-glish words of the uninformed guides into believing their own self emanated history of the very aged Kashi. I wondered…. ‘What draws them to India?’
------------------
Assi, an integral part of the name Varanasi. Varanasi is derived from Varuna and Assi, one a small tributary to Ganga in the north and the other a rivulet cum drain in the south, both running parallel to other, fostering the older city in-between. The ghats, the stony flight of steps, extending from the crowded narrow winding lanes flanked by roadside shops and scores of Hindu temples, and descending into the composed shores and thus acting as a buffer between bedlam and equanimity, continuously abuts the river bank. Without leaving an inch gap inbetween, from the double-deck truss bridge at Rajghat, and stretching over three Km till the mouth of Assi, the ghats counts eighty-assi- in number, and thus the name Assi. The thing which distinguishes seraphic Assi, the south cornered eightieth ghat, from rest Seventy Nine is its majority populace of professional painters amateur photographers cerebral scholars effervescent students seeking foreigners and young and old lovers over that of priests, making Assi more youthfully spiritual than untidily religious, a fact which makes it a core of foreign tourists in Varanasi.
Like every other evening, that day too Assi was covered black and white with equal populace of Indian inhabitant and foreign vacationer. It was always amusing to come across the white people, burned to red skin by the scorching heat, wandering about the city in their sorts hauling heavy rucksacks, in hunt of its culture; only to be bamboozled into shredding cash by the ‘pundit’ posed touts, and to be tricked by the middlemen into buying cheap stuffs at soaring rates at the handicraft shops, and to be confused amid the narrow alleys by the prolonged rickshaw drives, and to be misguided by the hin-glish words of the uninformed guides into believing their own self emanated history of the very aged Kashi. I wondered…. ‘What draws them to India?’
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