The way out to doom

All the past generations not only have left behind a few nimble memories on the path. They have left behind the path itself for us. We follow the path without ever thinking in the direction that the path taken by them, and left behind for us, may not be the best possible one out of the infinite possibilities they could have taken at each moment of history. We, the current holders of the baton, are in no way superior to them in matters of making choices. And whenever we stumble upon a new thought, or a new perspective, or a new way of expression, or a new way of being silent, or a new possibility, we are as much dubious as they were regarding a best choice.

But before we concern ourselves about that trodden path which we have inherited from the dead generations we need to have some clarity, at the very least a vague idea, about our destination, about the promised land. Sadly the only clarity we have about our own dear dream is that the humanity, as a whole, have many destinations, many resting places and many promised lands.

Out of which the most prominent, as we know, are represented by those two men with about two thousand years between them. Nietzsche commands us to overcome the men we are. Buddha helps us to bear the men we are. The hopeful Yes and the soothing No.

We cannot use the two thousand years that separated them to assert that the path lead from the No to the Yes. Those two thousand years do not separate anything. Nietzsche had flourished in Buddha’s times. Buddha still lived in Nietzsche’s times. And both continue to live and flourish.

Both of them helped in paving the path, the one which we are taking now. And they were just two out of the few who were involved. Only a few because most men do not build roads because they are too busy walking on them.

A digression to the Present’s contribution. Our contribution can be compared as the playfulness of the calves when an elephant family goes in search of a water body. The little ones will move around here and there, not always under the belly of their mothers, they move away from the group playfully and then comes back to the group. By doing that they drag the grown ups too a little bit to the untrodden paths. The children influence, but at the same time they do not influence. Their contribution is minimal. But then the parents goes in search of the water body for the sake of the children at the first place. In his time Nietzsche was a calf like that. So was Buddha. Humanity would have struggled a lot, and taken a lot of time, to bear suchlike absolutism, to bear such caricature figures of opposite ideas.

And now back to the ambiguity of our ambition reflected in the ambivalent nature of our road. In aesthetics it can be stated as this - Beauty or Lack-Of-Ugliness? A layman would go for the former carried away by its euphony without ever being able to understand that both the concepts are identical and antithetical at the same time.

This confusion about the destination resulted in a new road - a new road that takes us neither to the Yes, nor to the No. We cannot reach those opposite ideas because neither of them are our goals. What we have is a common goal which is nothing but a confusion of antithetical goals. And the only justification the past can give us for the ambivalence of the path inherited to us would be this one - it is a compromise path. A compromise between a Nietzsche and a Buddha. A kind of Middle Path.

The tragic conclusion is most certainly this - we have so many antagonistic destinations (including those represented by Buddha and Nietzsche) and the path we have in front of us lead us to none of those destinations. And it is very sad that now, when we are totally lost, we have already started to feel that we can never reach the water source.

Staying together we are forever doomed, caught between the extremes of our own thought. Or else Buddha and Nietzsche shall part ways and usher in a new kind of doom.

Mangoes

Where did the mangoes vanish;
the sweet ripe mangoes?

Aren’t there any left for my little sister?
It cannot be so, though it is so.

‘Don’t cry little one!
It is sad that you never get them,
year after year; you never get to eat them.
Let us search for an orchard
where nothing ripens and nothing falls down
as sweet as mangoes.’

Patience

The irritating mornings that comes daily
at eight o’clock straight into the face.
The transparent bucket and mug in the bathroom.
The bathroom itself scrubbed long back.
The same frameless spectacles.
The umbrella cloth that goes on fading.
The sandals that will never see many places.
The door that gets locked behind.
The road laden with dead tar.
The lifeless buses that move over it.
Men who look at blankly.
Men who do not look at all.
The prosaic office building.
The lift that never malfunctions.
The empty sofa in the lobby.
The newspaper on the table.
News about the stocks.
The people who had never heard of even Dostoevsky.
The computers made of plastic.
Many other things made of plastic.
The grey telephone that rarely rings.
The email inbox with no new mails.
People who are online.
People who are offline.
The obvious mistrust
in the Manager’s nods while walking past.
Unknown fears that lurks in the dark.
Salary’s abortive attempts to quell those fears.
Queues in front of ATM counters.
The failed attempt to like a movie.
That detestable sentimentality called music.
The electricity bill.
Its poor quality paper.
The house owner’s face.
The room rent.
Vodka.
More of it.
The same sleeping pills.
Uncomfortable sleep interrupted by morning’s eight o’clocks.

Given a chance

Given a chance
to be born again,
anywhere
in the paddy field of time,
I would think
for a moment
and most probably
decide to take birth
as a word,
as a Japanese word
that appear somewhere
in a Yakamochi waka.

And thus
I will elude death.

Back from our walk

Back from our walk
on the seashore,
where I watched fishermen
and their canoes fade into the far sky
while you tried to track
the footmarks of sauntering lovers,
holding back your tears
you asked me to hide
beneath the dark of this night.

Ashamed of my longing for canoes
I couldn’t do anything
but drape myself with the moonless sky
and search for stars with worried eyes
frightened of the specters of time.

Except for these words
which do not say anything
anything at all
I have gone silent;
as silent as those sad footmarks
those leftovers scattered on the seashore
those alien memories you tried to track.

Inquisition

Terrified of the flares
that has burnt your lips,
scared of the wildfire
of tinkling bangles,
you have gone hiding
to the white silence of the arctic
without knowing that the ice there
will char your heart whole.

Don’t you know that
we are fated to be burnt alive,
our lips and our hearts
still aching for more and still more?

The America we miss

When we walk through
the silenced corridors of the office,
when we attend meetings
with unknown and unseen faces
with their American smiles
at our Indian ways,
when we bicker over a technical snag
in their communication system
and which we have to fix nevertheless,
when we report to our managers
about our weekly tasks
based on what the Americans want,
and later when we have our coffee
with unlettered men jubilant about the economy,
in all these moments,
in these moments that time steals from us,
Walt Whitman remains unread,
Thoreau remains unread
and Hawthorne remains unread
in some remote academic library.

Without ever been to America
we have become so much American
in our words, ways and nods
except for Walt Whitman,
Thoreau, Hawthorne and many others.