A Poet's Abode

It must be wrong to write about something tragic in an impersonal tone. As an outside observer. But I have been doing it for so long that an alternate perspective seems quite impossible. But it is, to a certain degree, imperative. I am not to dive into the differences and nuances of perspectives here, but to leave a commentary, and that, shamefully, of an outsider.

What is to say that could encapsulate the whole thing? Is it the certainty with which those old men surmised the girl’s death? Or the dismaying denial in the faces of the mourners? The thing, the précis of this narrative, however cruel and impersonal, is that a girl died. And I wasn’t there to see her. I did a few years back. We are strangers. But as anyone would, I hoped that this narrative would somehow, by some of the notorious "miracle", food for so many satires, be altered. But hopes aren’t preemptive. They simply give us a vision of a better path. This event is hardly significant. What draws me is the underlying paradox, of death and mourning, and inevitably, of the ludicrous hope.

Let us not be lured by the supernovae and nebulae of the universe. They outshine the human lives perhaps a googolplex to one, this being truer when taken literally. Even the volcanoes and trenches have their potential no less. So let’s condense the world into the little ball made for and by the mighty sapiens, the wise. For with even a peek outside we are overwhelmed with the mountains that change hues with time and weather but still remain unmoved and the perpetual grasslands threatened by none when left alone and ultimately, the pestered, the seemingly everlasting sunsets and rises. They all do change, ever so slightly, but stand stubborn, giving not a damn for the misery of humans. And here, inside our little snow ball, this demise remains a local deluge. Many watch, some mourn and a few take it to their hearts. And then, here arrives our paradox, they forget. No, they do remember, but lock this memory of loss in a tiny corner, of some place that alludes all of modern knowledge. I have hardly a taste of this enigmatic feeling. That is why I present myself as this observer, the wanderer who stays aloof. My feelings on this matter plods on the periphery.

This forgetfulness, this wishful amnesia, as many say, remains the greatest boon for our kind. But what brings it about fascinates every mind that attempts deconstruction of death: digging the grave of not one, but all of the dead. It is curious, and I employ this curiosity, not without neglecting its morbidity, for our purpose here. The process commences with the Burial of the Dead. As the shovel dugs in it uncovers the dead mud, and with it the layers of past. For the mother and father, the growing red lump is stacked from the moment of her birth. It grows larger and taller, until it's let down. Buried. To them the process does not begin there. It does when her brother rushes down the stairs. There is no precise point where the past ends and future begins, but it is at that hypothetical point where the miraculous forgetfulness begin to arrive. This is introduced by not one but two forces, perhaps among the most powerful. The first is the virtue the last to emerge out of Pandora's box, the vicious and virtuous, hope. They give it all sorts of forms, all sorts of meaning, but fundamentally, it embodies the cruellest allure presented by a malefic universe. In its innocence, hope is watching the trees that line the clouds with a belief that elsewhere in the world too there are trees like these, in some place where the darkness hasn't descended, some place where there is a life comparable to that dream. And this hope could the murderer of memories, pernicious to the mind, and thereby the eraser of a past, withholding something dear. This hope, this thing with feathers, could it be the assassin of the girl? It is what they see in the face of the young boy, and what they see in the step they take away from her grave. It is what it takes to take that step. Hope, the balm, the soother, the killer. Not wholly. Here we have the other henchman of this amnesia. And that is Time. These clocks do not lie. All they do it tick away. It does not pause for breath, it does not pant. And no screams for mercy stops its course. I have no definitions for time. It signifies nothing .But rushes forward, hastelessly. Now as to what it does, I have nothing either. For all I know, it is the other half of the cosmic eraser. Like frothing waves, it caresses minds and vanquishes all traces of what existed. There are no sands of time. Time is what effaces those grains of sands. There is but its waves. An ocean that flows eternally, and perchance born at some moment, or never born at all. The most ancient of all gods. And time, with its crafty hands, seizes her memories, to lock them in its depths. All of mankind grapples with that thalassophobia of being cast in there, and all of their fears materialise. For death is eased and erased by the forces of time and hope, cleansing the mind, inducing that cold blooded forgetfulness.

This mind of our conversation here is a rather mundane thing. It has been the product of adolescent idiosyncrasies for so long. Taking buzzfeed quizzes to finally find a mould that can fit itself into. Unsurprisingly, I haven't. Or hadn't for that matter. Then, in the more recent times of my unlikely seventeen years of existence, this attempt simply multiplied itself and grown into an elaborate civilisation like that of a bacteria, clamydomonas in stagnant water. I think the root cause of the existence of clamydomonas and my rapidly growing population of selves is quiet sibling-like. The stagnation, of water there, of mind here. I've been stagnant. The elaborate study plans and leisure time of listless staring have rendered my mind in a state of quiescence. And in these unchanging waters the questions thrive. Who and why.

For a while I chose the garments of a writer, a madwoman of words. I slowly chewed the idea, trying to squeeze the pulp out of it. I entertained my fantasies of typewriters and papers, pens scratching over pages. And it felt good. It felt like I had the world. And I mustn't lie, I had it. For I had by then mastered the art of bending the continuum of reality into my little box of choice. But soon, the box started crumbling under the enormous pressure of the vast ocean it was built to contain. The reality oozed from the chipped corners, it flowed and overflowed. It covered the box and drowned it, dissolved the thickness of its material. I was no longer the artful writer. And I was lost with it, reduced to atoms.

Then, I became the lover. Watching the world through pink, heart shaped glasses, glasses that morph every speck of light into spectacles of beauty. I thought of love and loving, and I loved myself for this experiment. All the complex philosophy regarding the imperceptible structure of the world collapsed infront of its simplicity. We had no purpose here, but to love oneself and others, and spend time in soft grass, rainy streets, corners of apartment windows and verandas of ancient houses. Do not think too hard, let yourself float in the gentle flow. But soon I started floating like Ophelia. I was, once again, dead.

My next reincarnation was as a mathematician. I woke up each day, swearing to solve all the differential equations and integrals of the world. Failure couldn't stop me, not even perceive me. I was fast, and obsessed. Food and sleep had faded from the list of concerns. The list consisted only of my doing. Mathematics had become the only part of my existence. As I got lost in its tides, merging my idea of self into that of a genius, the flood overtook again. Then came the great silence, and I got lost in the tangles pile of my many selves.

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