Rain Messenger's Diary 2...No Apague La Luz

“When the music’s over, turn out the lights.” –Hitler’s last words. Arguably, one of the best quotes of human history coming from the depth of human insecurity and the refusal to believe that the lights burn on forever, we are the ones who get extinguished in our journey towards the light. The most controversial, infamous character of maybe, all of time has something for us in his parting words.

Really, is there anything after we are gone…why can’t we believe that that I am…therefore the world is…and when I’m gone…so are the lights. The eternal music of life slowly fades out from inside us and in spite of our desperate screams of don’t turn off the lights, we will be left alone in the dark.

Terrifying though the thought is, not unlike the ingenious torture method of making one realize how puny, he is in the universe and how insignificant and unimportant his life is, we are forced to acknowledge one fact that we are the centre of our universe. All of us by nature are self-centered and we like to believe that we are important in the larger scheme of things. Take a short bus ride and you will find more than half the people trying to explain how indispensable he/she is in his/her field of work. We do not like to believe that we are replaceable and we find bliss in this life of denial.

Thus, we are content sucking on the candies of after-life and rebirth, refusing to believe that one day the game’s over. At this point however, I am forced to stop by a disturbing notion. Man really needs something to hold on to and the fact that one day ‘I’ (somehow using this word after one is dead seems meaningless to me) will have to go into an infinite abyss of darkness of which nothing is known and I will have to leave everything I worked so hard for…my entire life behind (am not sure whether ‘behind’ is the correct word to use as we do not or I believe we do not really go forward anywhere…termination may be a better word in the context) lets face it, is not the most pleasant idea I would like to wake up to in the morning.

Maybe, this is where the concept of ‘I’ comes back to us as very important, what if we can believe that everything is happening because of me and after ‘crossing-over’(once again am not sure of the phrase, because I really do not believe we cross something, we are physically spread all over the atmosphere as molecules is more like it…) all lights will be turned off and will be dark here, rather than where I am going…if at all we go anywhere. Somehow, I find what I understood in class 6 physics way more comforting than any of these…the law of conservation of mass completely assures us that we cannot be destroyed, we will always be there in some form or the other. Isn’t that what we want? Yes, I know your answer The Soul…but again its presence is quite controversial ain’t it, kind of like a 2kg cat eating 2kg of meat and still weighing 2kg…if that’s the cat where’s the meat…if that’s the meat where is the cat?? Even though it might be striking a hornet’s nest but I feel its brave of a man who can call for the lights to be turned off…because as I see it we are all afraid of the dark.

Taking a leaf out of Robert Frost’s book, where he puts forward an idea that death can be an inspiration for life…we can take life to be the limited day-time period after which there is darkness. This reminds me of a particular description in a book called The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh where he talks of a village hospital, in the Sunderbans, which has been gifted a generator. This generator is run for only two hours every night and then there is absolute darkness. Everybody has attuned themselves to this to this routine such that there is a brief flurry of activity during this time and then there’s quiet. Life is somewhat like this two-hour generator time…a sojourn of sorts and we go back to our tryst with eternity.

I come back to the point where I started this unimportant, distracted and disheveled rambling…the fact that Adolf Hitler was a notorious man, notwithstanding, I find an acceptance of the truth in his last words but how many of us really dare to know, understand let alone accept the truth?

Rain Messenger's Diary 1....Wine of the Night

The urge to write…a sudden, overpowering desire, like the feeling of being forced to go through the merciless examinations against our deepest wishes, has suddenly taken hold of me. Thus, after having promised myself I will stop putting my thoughts into words here I am back again. Surprisingly, however, the desire to write though a peerless thing, has one fatal flaw, it simply refuses to come with the idea of what to write on. One of the biggest misconceptions or misinterpretations or “mis-potrayals” of human history is the statement that you never forget to swim or ride a bicycle. True, though the statement maybe it fails to crystallize the most important point that even though you do not forget it, it gets awfully rusted and every movement is strained. So, in spite of writing being my sole vent of my very insecure soul, I find every word strained, halted like the first steps of a baby into the new world. The difference is that the baby is very hopeful (or so we think it is…) about the world, I am still laughing at my audacity of thinking that words would come back to me again…

As I write, I reflect on the futility of our existence. We are all very busy running after an elusive purpose in our lives and in that desperate chase, unknowingly it becomes the purpose of our lives and we keep running. Unfortunately, in spite of being an asthma patient, physically unfit to run for long as my heart gets over excited at the prospect of running and starts running a 100m dash of its own, leaving me short of breath and gasping, life has refused to excuse me from jogging on this cartwheel that we call life .

There are times in a man’s life when he comes at a junction where he has to choose, or as somebody once told me, we never choose, because we never have a choice only an illusion of it, whichever you like but we start understanding that or maybe start getting used to the fact that “Zendagi Migzara”----life goes on. And, we dance along drunk in the wine of the night, exuberant in the omnipresence of our neon God and humbled by the power of our high priest Money. We adjust…make room for…give space to…sacrifice for the team…and give many more names for doing the same thing…LOSE.

The wine of the night has become our very existence, the very meaning , our only excuse for the insanity of this sane world…it has surrounded us…to the extent that whenever you see, people are falling in love with darkness…blackness defines them…we are happy with our grief…we are at home with the night yet the irony is once again we have somehow “managed”. Hats off, to this infinite human capability of adjusting… Even I love getting drunk in the El vino de la noche but what are we going to do about the hangover?

Nights like These

Ecstasy of a mindless haze
The joy of numbed sensations
Yet, a night spent in rowing down the tear-lane
Why did he cry…he knew not…
But he took comfort in the warmth on his cheeks

Forgetting is easy in the crunch of his existence
His fight for survival gives him no space
Yet the blood flows from his unhealed wounds
He feels it not…and nobody sees it…
But on nights like these he takes solace
In the almost forgotten sensation
Of the unending black flow down his soul

He spends sleepless nights
Yet he waits not for sunshine
An irony that has become a part of his life
He wants, desires, craves and waits for…
The person who hates him the most
Through nights like these…he feels her again
And assures himself that he hasn’t yet forgotten

He is foolish…
Misunderstanding himself…his needs…
He goes on taking punishment…
Yet he doesn’t find redemption
In pain…he finds an ally
In love…he finds a mirage

City Life

The morsel of blue sky
Snatched away by the windshield of my speeding car
Only for me…its beauty
To marvel and experience
Only for me…its caress
To feel and reflect

The whiff of fragrance of the spring blossoms
Amidst the acrid smoke of everyday running
A sudden reminder of a happy interlude
Amidst the usual gloom
Only for me…its message
To hear and keep
Only for me its glow
To bask in and rejuvenate

The calming presence of the imposing cathedral
Among the petty jungle of the concrete monster
The assurance of humanity
Among the maddening race of “belief”
Only for me…its embrace
To rest and cry
Only for me…its existence
To praise and glorify

In the meaningless bustle
Of the innumerable ants
I find you my love
Ever beautiful and forever young
My city life…