Subtle, insiduous, and maddeningly insistent

Image: Bruce Dale 

Don't look for structure in this one. Or plot. Or beginnings and conclusions. Or articulation of already-formed thoughts and storylines and concepts.

I have none of those things to offer at this point in time. I'm too busy trying to make my way through a maze of thoughts that have gotten too numerous and inarticulate to make for a decent blog, forget a decent night-time conversation with the self. So this one is for that old cliche: resolution through words.

There's enough that comes to mind.

There is suffering and illness. There is misery and hospital beds. There is the ICU - a word that struck terror in all of our hearts at first, till we became resigned to it in the weeks that followed, and then said "ICU" in the same tired voice we had first heard the receptionist say it.

There is hope and then the loss of hope, and then hope again and then the loss of hope again, and then- then, there is death. My first conscious encounter with death, a loss that matters in a way that none before it have. The pain of it is sudden and overwhelming. But it can be dealt with. Because of the reassurances we have, said constantly by everyone to everyone till they become the mantra in the weeks afterward: "a long and fruitful life", "released from his suffering", "better to go like this than have stayed on without independence"... It is made easier by the fulfilment of his last request. A family mends itself slowly and surely, as it comes together to honour its greatest and most enterprising member; but it is too late for the architect of this process to enjoy what he has brought about.

There is an already half-disappearing image of an old man sitting in front of his dead brother's photograph and crying for forty lost years. His regret is so powerful that you recoil from him, and you shudder and hope you will never taste regret like that, so intense that it is almost acidic. And there is a renewed commitment to apologising- sometimes even when it's not your fault. Because the price of being righteous (or even right) is just too terribly high sometimes.

Then, Agra. We are here because this death needs to be accorded its proper place, its proper meaning by the framework that sheltered this giant of a man when he was alive. It is a misty, cold morning. Winding deserted streets at the crack of dawn. A hall full of men and women meditating in unison. The head of this religious sect believes in the power of collective energies. Afterwards, there is a field of crops that are ready to be harvested. And there are plenty of scythes. It is almost surreal. I am in a field in Agra at 7:00 AM on my 24th birthday. (That has to be one of the unlikeliest autobiographical sentences I've ever written.) The harvesting is a community project run by the sect- we all sit down and proceed to cut the crops with scythes- it turns into a bit of a competition, a game, and we laugh and talk while quickly mastering the art of harvesting, as more seasoned members generously pass on bits of wisdom to us ("Make the cut right at the bottom of the stalk- no point wasting the last few inches!"). We are shushed at regular intervals by senior overseers, and our group (which ranges from a 19-year-old to a 62-year-old) subsides into chastened silence at periodic intervals- just until someone cracks the next joke in a muttered overtone.

The head of the sect arrives. A number of people in the field have come because there are problems they want his advice about. Some have come to share good news. A stern senior member makes us all gather round as he explains the process to us. There are rules and guidelines - "Don't talk", "Don't shuffle", "Don't interrupt" and so on. I feel like we're in school; no-one has spoken like this to me in many years. But it seems to fit- in this place, in this context, perhaps it could only be this way. We line up, waiting for the head to reach us. Progress is slow, even though none of the devotees speak. Why does no-one speak? Because they have already given short summaries of their problems to the religious committee earlier- and anyway, the head of the sect is omniscient so there is no need for conversation.

Finally, he reaches us. Fragments that will stay with me (and certainly with everyone else who was there) all my life.
"He was a good, good man."
"He went too early."
"All of you stay together."
"He did such good work. All these years that he managed Delhi...we've never had a problem from there."
"All of you stay together."

And that...was that.

Lost and Found

Image: Henry Weddiasmara

“Everyone belongs somewhere.”
“Maybe not everyone…. Maybe some people just get lost.”

There is a certain amount of charm in being that lost person. It’s undeniable. The whirlwind of cynical freewheeling, the moments of crisis on windy terraces, the bitterness of vodka as a Friday night savior, the complete disdain for long-term consequences, the vaguely haunting gestures of trying to get your bearings, the gloss of dismissive statements, the satisfaction of cutting sarcasm, and the haggard, yet real, smiles exchanged across a room, across a lifetime, across a dimension that is typically impassable…

There is also a sense of vacuous loss when you transition from being lost to being found, being fine, being happy…. Not nostalgia exactly. That would be to romanticize a time that cannot – should not – be romanticized. But even once the rose-tinted glasses have been relegated to the heap of dusty memories … there remains a slippery sense of having lost something in the present joy.

Lost…what? Is it the general madness? Or is it the rollercoaster extremes that lost people seem to thrive on…? And even there, to clarify, it’s hard to miss the highs, because those exist even when one is happy – almost exactly the same ones. So, impossible as it may sound, maybe it is the rock-bottom despair that is missed…? Of course, it makes no sense. Except in the most roundabout of ways…where it becomes clear that what binds us all together as a race is a complex whole of pain and happiness. And all of a sudden, it feels like only half the connection is being made. Isolated from the pain, and privy only to the content pleasures…

Humanity kicks in at this point, and it becomes easier to identify with the young boy at the signal, the tired-looking receptionist, the gas-tragedy agitators, the aging patriarch, the anguished colleague, and the numb friend. It is almost as if the capacity for pain needs to be reinvented...through improvised methods…in case one becomes totally alone in that solitary bubble of joy.

So the tears well up, almost inexplicably… at advertisements that you know are manipulating all the right strings… at songs that you would have classified as sentimental nonsense in another lifetime… at distant situations – the kind where it was easier to be a harsh realist when you had your own situations to deal with… at the third drink when you know perfectly well that you’ll stay stark sober for another two at least – but the mind plays tricks on you, bewilders you, leads you down that maze of sorrow you have inhabited once upon a time… Fighting your enemy is easier when he or she exists outside of you, isn’t it?

Have I got it right? Or is it just easier to complicate something and turn it into a shimmering smoky fable than to accept that, maybe, we’re just a dissatisfied race without the capacity to be truly happy…? Maybe the grass always is greener on the other side…? But, no… I cannot believe that… Reveling in joy, but having melancholy tug at you once in a while confirms the best of anyone’s humanity, does it not? In an essentially solitary existence, imagination is our only source of compassion… And how can we (and why should we) deny the best part of ourselves?

Phoenixes and Futility

Surely you remember the betrayal.
From….was it yesterday?
Last week?
A few months ago?
Or has it been years now?

Have you cried? Paced up and down? Woken up with a sudden fearful start?
And was it because of the bitter hurt of being betrayed, or was it because of the cold metallic guilt of betraying someone else?

Got a secret, can you keep it?
Swear this one you’ll save…

An inevitable temptation to re-examine and rethink earlier, black-and-white statements about “I’d rather be honest” and “I’d rather know than be deceived”…

I see her standing on high moral ground… Lonely… Alone… With wreckage and debris all around her, and no possibility of magical phoenixes.

Truth yields fleeting satisfaction.
And then…
All that’s left is regret.

Surely you remember the regret.
The incessant “why-didn’t-I-just”…
The ruthless reconstructions….the defining moment just before the-point-of-no-return.
Wondering why you did it.
And wondering why you told.

Surely….life would have been simpler, happier if some things had been concealed….secreted….locked up in a neat, shiny treasure chest and taken to the grave…

But…

…no-one keeps a secret
Why when we do our darkest deeds, do we tell?
’Cos everybody tells…

Remember the look on your friend’s face?
Or was it your lover?
Or did you look into the face of your brother?
Or perhaps, your sister?

Were you speaking?
Or were you being spoken to?

Snapshots veer into the haze.
Years of midnight snacks, and gossip sessions.
Endless phone-calls.
Being held.
Falling over with laughter on the staircase.
Car-rides with comfortable silences.
Being supported.
Cold beer and togetherness.
Road trips to the mountains.
Being cherished.
Barbecues on the terrace in winter.
Finding a special song.
Being loved.

All that is remembered in those moments is already tinged with nostalgia.

And did you wish, later, that you hadn’t been able to work up the courage to do it?
Because….it wouldn’t really have changed anything….would it?

I’ll keep you my dirty little secret
Dirty little secret…
Don’t tell anyone or you’ll be just another regret
Who has to know…?

He told me his universe altered when it happened. When the betrayal happened that is, not the telling of it. She was an old childhood friend….it was a weak moment….it meant nothing….and it was certainly a one-time-thing. There really wasn’t any point in telling the love of his life what had happened. Things were going well, and they were going to get married in a year or so.

Who has to know, when we live such fragile lives
It’s the best way we survive

Regardless of all that, his world tilted.
Sleepwalking through the next few weeks. Zoning out of conversations.
Not thinking.
Not breathing.
So very still…
River turned stone...

Are you hypnotized by secrets that you’re keeping?

“Things came back into focus only when I told her.”

She left him. He’s currently working himself to death and, when he’s not doing that, he’s drinking enough to send himself to an even earlier grave.

“The price of living an honest life,” he cracks a sardonic grin.

Ah.

“At least I have that.”

At least you have that….

And so, after all the beating around the bush, and all the insensitive allusions, and all the questions that must have made you cry….at last now, let me answer your question to the best of my abilities.

I don’t know whether you should tell, or not.

Either way, there will be repercussions that we cannot even imagine at this point in time. Either way, life will change. Whether explicitly, or in subtler, hidden ways.
Consider him. Consider your life together.
And then… Turn inward, and investigate your own heart.
What would you want? From him?
Absolute, razor-sharp honesty? Or a tenacious weighing of factors, determined by circumstance, implication, and so on?
Therein, I suspect, lies your answer, or at least a shadow of it.
What you want is a marker of what your want your equation to adhere to.
Let that help you decide.

That’s the best I can do.
And when we look back, many years later, hopefully we will discover humour even in this situation. For now, let the pain hone you.

We all do the best we can.
And, if it’s any comfort….
Everybody hurts.

Image source

Mirror, mirror on the wall.

Distance is an unknown variable.
There are many unknown variables but distance is certainly one of the most uncertain.

If I were to be a cynic tonight… what would I see? What would I choose?

There are vignettes of feeling, of sensation… like memories from a previous life.

flaming flowers that brightly blaze
swirling clouds in violet haze


I love that line by Salman Rushdie: “The past is like a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

How do they do things? How does one locate, retrieve, and archive the old ways?

I look.
I delve into the depths of the sea and grasp blindly at something hidden between seaweeds and fragments of shells.
What have I brought to the surface? What have I retrieved?

I remember K. and R.
Vivacious, steady, bright-eyed K.
Who went away to a faraway land and refused to stay the same person. She grew and changed and she became an older, different K. It would be silly to say “better” or “worse” than before. She was just different…
And tenacious, steady R. became the past- he became part of the foreign country and she no longer knew him, or loved him with an everlasting passion like they had promised one another.
Is such a promise viable? Realistic?
People change after all- how can we blame someone for evolving?

You said you were going to conquer new frontiers


Then there are D. and B.
She went. He stayed.
She tried. He tried.
They both tried- really really hard.
But they fell apart anyway, and she smiled her way into the glimmering life of money, and he stayed back and began to look for love again.

We promised the world we'd tame it, what were we hoping for?


W. and P. would have tamed the world.
They would have fulfilled the fairytale fantasy of love-across-the-seven-seas.
Except that W. didn’t make it.
If ever someone has searched in a possessed, frenzied fashion for some sort of saving grace in an unexpected, inexplicable death, it is P.
She’s still trying to find it.
She’s found other things along the way- but there are no more castles in the air.
Perhaps it’s easier to think of them making it because circumstances allow for that romantic possibility..?
But no… I think not.
I really think they would have managed…

We laid her next to him beneath the willow
While the angels sang a whiskey lullaby


But while distance is an unknown variable… and the past is painful and incoherent… it seems there may be a mantra of sorts…

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
…
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)


Nothing is known. To attempt certainty is to defy the very laws of life, isn’t it?
Yet we strive and strain and search and seek…
Surely even the most “rational” among us cannot resist the occasional glance at a horoscope prediction..? Surely there is an inevitable thrill of expectation as we crunch open a fortune-cookie after a Cantonese dinner? I know I am susceptible. The temptation to know is ridiculously powerful.

However…it is impossible to really, truly know… So where do I go from here?

It’s easier when you go with the flow, and believe what makes the most sense to your heart.
It’s easier to find a mantra, and let it cartwheel and echo through the void of distance.

So then…that is what I choose, I suppose.
I choose to enjoy the dynamic of love.
I choose to believe in it.
I choose to have faith in the concept of bridging distance, of transforming unknown variables into manageable realities.
I choose to be talk about it, to write about it, to revel in it, to learn not to hold-back-and-keep-some-part-of-yourself-as-insurance-just-in-case…
I choose to believe that I have a choice…surely the greatest illusion of all?

I choose not to be a cynic tonight.

So here we are reinventing the wheel
I'm shaking hands with a hurricane
It's a colour that I can't describe
It's a language I can't understand

Chaos meets sunshine meets destiny.

Serpentine Fiction

And all the lives we ever lived
And all the lives to be
Are full of trees and changing leaves...

Addictions are old friends. And sometimes you just don't want to let go.
Say, one is addicted to being a million different people...

In one day, say the 1st of May 2008, you can...
wander through london in the great frost
fall in love
traipse around on a jamaican beach
lose yourself
eat the best fried chicken in the world
be granted eternal life
commit heinous sins of darkness
go to turkey as an ambassador
find yourself
get jilted
win literary awards
fall in love again (the repetition here is inevitable- people seem to do this a lot)
sail into magical oceans
commit suicide
be resurrected
win a war
lose your mind

Pure.
Phantsmagoria.

And then you can go out and get a drink, and live yet another life.
Icing on cake.
Fantastic.

But (and there is a but).
If you're used to living many lives, you start to explore the possibilities in your own, right till their logical conclusions.

Say there is an ongoing something in your life.
Well. I have already lived this something out to its various possible ends in my mind.

I have seen the worst that may happen
I have said what I might say.
I have foreseen heartbreak.
I have already cried.

This is substantially different from being "prepared for the worst".
It means you have already lived through the worst.

The ideal blissful conclusion is also lived out of course.
This again, is different from "hoping for the best".
It means you have already lived the best that can be.

But the cynic in an addict persists in dwelling on the former... Illusions can only sustain you so far, right?

If you have already walked down the paths that lie before you... do you convert it from the possible to the probable? Even if it is just in your head?
Does thinking about things make them happen?
Can a private performance lead to a real change?

A superstitious cynic...?!!

No wonder the madness of literature beckons.
Some temptations are impossible to resist.

And the addiction spins out of control.
Mortality, time, and space collapse.
Lives must be lived.