Tag Archives: sorrow

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A World Of My Own

Everyday of this life is the sum total of two worlds – one that is shaped to our desires and the other of how life really is. If you are lucky, in a day, most things that come to pass will be parts of both these worlds.

But there will always be some days, when you would do all the right things and yet the only thing that you really wanted then in your life will elude you. It is difficult still, if you actually had that something for sometime. The heart, you see, has a way of holding on to moments, people or simply objects it comes to cherish. And it is then, more than ever, that the two worlds never felt more further apart. There is a terrible void instead that all the activities and objects of the second world are unable to fill in, as the mind continues to dwell in the only place it knows that dear thing still exists – the world of our desires.

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Pain

The world sleeps through… doped, drugged as lives are torn apart all around. Life goes around more or less normally even as Kashmir burns. A fate shared by the north-east and practically every region where India shares its boundaries with another country. Heck! even down south, where the “sharing” of boundaries is as frivolous as the Ram Setu (which itself is submerged under a layer of controversy thicker even than the surrounding waters), folks have had trouble of their own kind. Meanwhile, people elsewhere carry out their chores, blissfully unaware or rather consciously, steadfastly refusing to open their eyes to the doom of a dream that looms above.

A gross insensitivity you say? I believe that’s just a part of their survival instinct. Everyone finds a way; some choose to go out in style, guns blazing while some others duck for cover. One acts a hero, the other a statesman. And neither one is better off, for they have common fates.
Resilience is the key to our survival through ages. It is the ability of the human body and more importantly the spirit to emerge stronger and wiser through every misfortune, be it force of nature or a devilry wrought by human minds. Over time wounds are healed and hurts forgotten. And as an added safety measure an immunity is developed – a layer of indifference that thickens with every such recurrence. Consequently, no soul is stirred with reports of an act of depravity. The news is served in a matter-of-fact tone and is swallowed down the throat with a draught of morning tea, unchewed, untasted. Staple.

But what of those who choose to remember their pain. A pain borne out of unjust punishment and humiliation. Their wounds healed long ago, but they still bear these scars as a mark of their shame. This pain that feeds them gives them the strength to bear a perversion so severe that they descend intentionally into the same wretchedness they have come to detest. And like a pathogen, these men of violence grow. They breed and flourish on the very wreck they wrought, giving birth to newer grievances and consequently more tortured souls. Locked forever in this vicious chain – the makers of destroyers with their own creations.

Yet everything has a reason for its being: Pain helps us understand each other. And just as it enables a person to condescend to the depths of degeneracy, it helps one transcend the barriers of space and time to feel the suffering of another. To share someone’s grief one must have felt the very sting; only the memory of the pain instills in us a semblance of sensitivity. It is true after all that these thoughts have occurred to me only in my current state of wretched existence. Nothing like grief to bond people together. Is that why the Alcoholics Inc. form the closest, most trusting circles, I wonder…
Everyday, as we play our parts, live and interact with others, we tread this fine line between resilience and indifference, often unsure to which side we belong. A strong heart after all, is not necessarily a hard one.

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The Bereft

How often does man hope for a reason to point a finger at, when things go wrong – a person, the circumstances and maybe, if all else fails, fate. And how debilitating is the stark truth, screaming into one’s face that the reason lies within; rubbing salt into wounds.
Here I was thinking that it won’t be such a big deal this time around. That my failure, if ever that comes to pass, will be masked under the pretense of necessity. Well, there’s news: It still hurts! The same old wave of failure overwhelming my senses and drowning me in its sense of familiarity. It’s the first year all over again. And yet it’s different. I am not that first year kid anymore, then why the same offence? Have these three years taught me nothing?
There’s a sense of deprivation that makes me feel as I have lost out on everything that mattered. The air smacks of the relish my thoughts take in pushing me into those pits of misery, the fires of which would soon consume my spirit.
I lost when it mattered the most. I lost the very beacon that seemed to steer my ship through the disorienting mist – It once gave me purpose. I drift aimlessly now like those Fall leaves, bereaved of a hold, that are blown about by the slightest gust of wind. For the little I have, I struggle to protect.
I am hoping to point fingers at, but it’s a ‘House of Mirrors’ I stand in. Alone and haunted….