Thursday, April 26, 2012

The Closure


Revelations are daily affairs. They come down to us in a moment of epiphanic bluntness, like a thunderbolt in a tumultuous night - it illumines the darkness for a split second, makes the order of things visible in a strange light, catches one unawares and then disappears; an impression so sombre yet enlightening that leaves one dumbstruck at his/her own lack of insight. The things have always made perfect sense, if only we had the eye for it. Revelations are not long, sordid lessons, sermons that can be read out or passed onto from fathers to sons, they are not genes that cannot be helped with. Revelations are those little secrets we all look for in our own peculiar ways, those personal enigmas that we all try to fathom, and which, after years of persevering, happen to just animate themselves towards a coherent meaning we overlooked in our vain pedantry.
Revelation that was, when it came upon me after four excruciating months of denying, eliding and wishing away a past I thought is non-negotiable. Revelation it truly was, when it occurred to me that the answers lay in front of me, and I only need acknowledge, only need flip the coin otherwise, and see for myself the world resurrect itself from the chaotic debris, I had watched it fall into. I don't know who owes the credit for saying that things have a time, and a course to run, and the end is the only plausible direction any beginning would steer itself to. The whole notion of eternity and timeless don't apply to all the things, eternity is emptiness, eternity is the toil of Sisyphus, eternity is when after a shattering experience one tries to put the pieces back into a whole and make some meaning of it. Eternity is loneliness, eternity is time come to a halt, because life ceased to be meaningful.
Passions are terrible! they are all-consuming. They demand total surrender, an absolute annihilation. They ask you leap tall bounds, plunge into the deepest depths, try deeds unheard of, push yourself to the extreme, and leave you battered and at a loss. Love is one such. For some reason, I cannot stop myself from grappling with this, and though I have persevered with all my might, I know resolution lies nowhere in sight. Although, resolutions elude me, revelations grace me nonetheless. And here, is the latest - a closure that granted me a deep respite, a relief from a haranguing passion that plagued me for two years and took another four months to wane away. A revelation that caught me, one night, tumultuous among those crying fits and bouts of loneliness, like a thunderbolt, that left me dumbstruck. I was cursing my heart, holding it up to ridicule, when a voice in me interjected- Do you feel unlucky for having eyes when you come across a blind man? Or wretched at having legs when you see a maimed person? Why then must you feel such revulsion at possessing a heart for having come across a person who is heartless? Why do you consider yourself doomed for having the faculty to experience passions that wrench you, for someone who could not imagine the scope of his deficiency? Why curse your plenitude for the penury of the other?
Passions are all consuming, but what would life be bereft of them? Straitjacketed? Bland? All safe and secured, but utterly unbearable. It is what makes our stay on earth, human. I have a heart, and I feel the stings and whiplashes, but I also feel the warmth of a glow, the flutter of the cool winds, I feel the tingle of the first showers, I feel it all. Wishing away it all for a life placid devoid of passion, is paying too high a price.
For how pitiful would it be, while rushing for a routine day, I don't happen to smile at a bright purple flower growing wantonly beside concrete tartar roads! How devastatingly would I shame myself before God, disappointing his endeavour to catch an attentive soul, not blind to heart's bidding, not maimed by the daily mechanical toil, not gone cold to the warmth that still abounds.
Revelation, it was! A closure it brought me.



Thursday, April 19, 2012

Long, Distant Relationships

One thing technology and whatever that kept happening on the world political stage that plausibly would have set in the age of globalization, have done is make the world a small place. It definitely keeps hopes high, the Promised Land is certainly somewhere close, "at hand"! There has got to be a person that would make life meaningful, and thanks to Edison and whoever that was who invented the Internet, chances of "chancing upon" such a person have increased exponentially. Although, no consolation that is! I only know as many people, who in the course of our interaction, I only wished I hadn't. And the only interactions I have had with these chanced encounters I have no qualms in wishing away, were through wireless connections that float around me, that I breathe, take in and that surround me! Very romantic to live life vicariously through signals, electromagnetic waves, fibre optics, et al.
Oh the darned Internet! And the despicable mobile phone! Thanks to these, I live, not in the here and the now, but in a metaphysical sphere, that often overpowers my present, because it entirely draws its victuals from the enticements of a future perfected! Enticements nonetheless. For how long could someone relinquish their present day, talking, chatting, dreaming, desiring and then immediately deferring it to a future which is incessantly promised, and sadly never realized. The sheer waiting, the palpitating corporeality of so much at stake, the unwavering supernatural faith in the good of all things, how innocently they all get murdered in cold blood. The chimera, like all others, breaks, and then the existentialist crisis cracks down like a thundering of an angry Jove up there, and I, poor thing, caught in the midst of it, simply crash and burn!
Yes, the sad truth about long distance relationship is that they are doomed from the word "go". Its a slow poison, that drips down like an acid, drop by drop, on your hope- that is strung taut at both the ends of the world which the two lovers inhabit, and though it is the only thing which connects them, it breaks inch by inch, atom by atom... moment by moment. Its like, being left at the crossroads of life by a "phantom" of a person, a person you don't even know exists in the voice you hear from the other end. Life seems like a dream turned nightmare. And you wake up suddenly because the nightmare got too unbearable to endure, wondering if the dream was real and vehemently wishing the nightmare wasn't, knowing fully well, its the unreality of both that pierces like a blinding light into the darkness which suddenly has come upon you. There's no point in asking "why", because there is no answer to it.
To the say the very least, it is devastating! Nothing hurts more than a hope gone in vain, nothing leaves someone more caustic than earnestness gone waste. It kills something inside, as the final nail in the coffin! It aches, and it goes sore, and it has to be left unattended because that moment when the relationship has decayed to its very core, you realize it was meant to. Not a healthy state of being! Not something you bargained for in the first phases of high hopes!
Its the times! We have become impossibly connected, and yet ever so alienated. We come close, only to see the ugly side of things, and then run back in repulsion and horror, like scared little children. Its the times, that this alienation from one another has caused a corresponding alienation within ourselves - the incommensurability of actions and words. When in a world, words don't account for actions, its utter imbecility to bank on promises! Life teaches you things, and you learn the hard way!
Well, you (wo)-man-up! You gather yourself, get a grip and walk steadfastly down the road you had chosen. Its an indelible scar, and you bear it well, like a medallion - a  reminder of the times you probably thought you were knocked out for good, but then you survived nonetheless! It didn't kill you. It just chastised the idiot in you! You emerge out saner, less of a frantic in your head, a little of cynic and a good amount of skepticism ingrained to check any reckless associations.
You start valuing the present, because it is all you have. yes, present is all that is there- to life, to relationships, to career - the very here and the now. The today, which is the only thing offering itself up to you, in full faith and absolute surrender- at your service. Its rude to let it go for an elusive future, which elides the present for all practical purposes, and gets converted into a past you wish you never had.
So say thanks to the thundering Jove, and trod on! The world remains a small place, and that special someone is just at hand, mobile phones or no! The Internet or no!

Keep your hopes high! It takes efforts but they are all worth it!