A LIFE OF DEATH

So full of death was life my friend

We often wondered what and why

On the question of death we would pretend

We could love it and look it straight in the eye.

So full of love for death  were we

We’d sit by fires with wagging tongues

Talk of death into the night and smile

With doomed elation and smoked up lungs

So much in awe of death were we

Forgetting all of life in the midst

All that engulfed us was what and why

If only we knew the people who die

Where do they go? What do they do?

Do they Resent death? Regret death or even Curse death?

Does not their soul shiver around our alive souls?

Ah! if only we knew how they lived in death…..

 

Tis today I tell you my dearest friend

I have lived in death and seen death and felt death

And I did not have to travel far and yonder

So this day I live to tell, tales that amaze and wonder

Death is but that man who lets

His life slip away whilst alive

Death is but that man who gets

No joy nor pain in any strife

Death is me and death is you

From the moment we make that bargain with life

From that very moment we fear our end

From that very moment when we pretend--

To love and live and personify

False hopes, borrowed dreams and regretful joy

Death my friend I found in me

And took him by his arm

Death my friend , I did set free

For Gone is the awe, Gone is the Charm.

 

GROWTH

My Dearest friend

Perhaps we are finally moving toward what Gautam Buddha saw.

You talk of the Quantum of Solace. But really isn’t that as ambitious as talking of destiny? All those things you said about growth, aren’t they also to be said about Solace? Even as you said “Quantum of Solace”, you attached with it the words “quest & destiny”.

Existentialism does not talk of “why are we here and what next in life”. It just talks of this very stationary universe that an individual tries to build around him. I believe that what Buddha saw was that one cannot constantly keep “wanting something”. And that if you are free from desires you finally see what life really is.

 Don’t ridicule me. Listen for a bit. Just because we have moved from “material desires” to “philosophical desires” doesn’t mean we have matured or seen life differently. It just means we have lived long enough for material desires to become meaningless. It simply shows AGE and not GRACE. So right now you have started wanting to discard certain ideas about “growth” and adapt certain other ideas about “solace” and stagnation. But that in no way implies your detachment. In simple words, you now want alchemy to be at the forefront of your desires, instead of … say food or academia.

So this ambition of yours is just yet another way of trying to grow. Grow out of something or grow into something. That is immaterial. But any sort of change is threaded to growth. Negative or positive. Call it by many new names. Call it destiny if you want. Call it solace if you may. But motion itself is growth. Time grows, ideas grow, speed grows, you grow, your mind grows, your desires grow, life grows. So until you have achieved the stagnation that Buddha did, you might never discover what it means to be outside of the circle of growth. I call it a circle because you do tend to feel like you’re back where you started. And also because going about it makes your head spin ;)

WHY I WRITE

There is a principle that goes by the name of Occam’s Razor. The most straightforward corollary of it, states that “simpler explanations are, other things being equal, generally better than more complex ones”.

I am not a natural born writer. But I am of the opinion that everyone is an artist in their twisted little ways. I also feel that explaining the need to write would be quite painful for a prodigal writer. Whereas I, actually find the idea quite delightful. Coming back to Occam and his razor, the simple explanation can be given in just a jiffy. At ten, like every child my age I happened to read “Alif laila” better known as “The Arabian Nights”. One of the Sinbad the Sailor tales, had the mention of a dilapidated old man who mounts Sinbad’s back and rides all around the Island (the Island that Sinbad is incidentally marooned on). He eats, sleeps and in fact even attends to nature’s calls, from that position. Ultimately, wanting to get out of his clutches, Sinbad is forced to starve himself consequently starving the old man and causing his demise. This was a fantastic story but equally incomprehensible for a ten year old.

Years later I was in high school and had the whole “career” story going on in my life. I was not particularly passionate about anything, least of all careers and textbooks. I felt choked and clobbered. I happened to read the same Sinbad tale again. I realized its deeper implication. All my peers, all those textbooks, everything including my folks were the old man- hunched on Sinbad.  I ruddy well saw myself as Sinbad.

I knew then that I had to be purged. And the purgatory would have to be stationed away from my family. I wanted to be impossible. I wanted to know what time had for me. To know if there is such a thing as a career. Or are we all just floating heads- some with full stomachs. The Razor ends here. Nothing was simple hereafter.

After five years I felt purged and starved. And I had rid myself of the old man. My purgatory had introduced me to my paradise. College had me read like crazy. I saw others slog and try to make careers. But I had with me, the belief that things would come to me when I was ready for them. And so they did. Along came Dante. And he was followed by Dostoevsky, Marquez, Lawrence, Jung - oh what a time that was! All of them writing about each other. As if sitting on a table, across each other and talking about things that mattered to me. Things I know have shaped the world. That shaped me. Things I could see and feel. That was when I felt true, clear passion.

For the first time in my pampered, pressured and material existence, I felt an enormous amount of liberty. And that liberty was exhausting.

 It was the liberty to write about ALL of them. The men and women who meant so much to the world. The freedom to express openly what I thought of them. Without any retorts! I wrote of life that I could perceive and life that I could never imagine. I threw all shades of every color in each of my write ups.

Time went by like a flash. And then I began connecting words with phenomenon. I wanted to find meaning in my own existence. All this I could only write about as I felt no need of verbally addressing it to anyone. Words did not require worldly contact. I began feeling strung around an instrument that uttered words instead of sounds. I could hear them and feel them all day long. I was a nervous wreck- aware of my inability to perform in my own little world. I blamed myself for not coming up with a tiny speck worthy of being read. I associated writing with being recognized.

In this state of sickness when I chanced upon Notes from Underground by F. Dostoevsky I knew that I must write without fear. The first line of that book is “I am a sick man”. And that made me think- a writer can say those things. I need not have a firm ground or a revolutionary thought. A writer can be anybody he wants to be.

 The feeling of liberty returned and has not left me ever since. I know now that what I write needs to be written. I do not write for myself or for other people. I write for the words. But most of all, I write to feel like a part of that league. The league of my favorite men and women. Those who shaped the world. I write so that when I reach their paradise, they let me in and ask me about what I wrote.   

Anukriti

A purged one