I have come back to you
to see the scorn in your face
and the derision in your wry smile.
I have come back to you
to see your eyes, like that of a tart’s
upon finding her client impotent.
I have come back to you
to shrink myself at your silence
and try to regain my virility lost in the street.
Now I know
that only a woman can give birth to a man
that only a woman can make a man
that only a woman can put him to death.
It was a book by Hamsun and on its back cover it was written that in the book he is telling about the love affair between Johannes, a miller’s son and Victoria, a nobleman’s daughter.
I stood there in the cluttered library leaning on the huge wooden shelf with the book in my hand unopened. As if forbidden to read the story I went on reading the description on the back cover repeatedly. There were a few quotes about the book and about Hamsun's other works by some authors or critics. I read them without understanding what they meant or whose opinions were they.
The small book with about a hundred pages or so fitted in my hand as though the binding was done according to the measurements of my palm. But that did not make the book any suitable for me. In fact it added to the uneasiness I began to feel about the book.
With no apparent reason I started to feel that the book has something about it that is making me hesitant to read the story. And it was not long before the indisposition transformed itself into a kind of fear, a fear of some unknown enchantment hidden in the book. And as moments passed by my fear of that life taking spell in the book started mounting to alarming levels.
As I held the book with both my hands, my heart started to pound faster and faster as though I was holding in my hand a venomous viper and a vial of heavenly nectar at the same time. Never before had I felt suchlike anxiety and unreasonable fear. But fully masked by the anxiety and the fear, somewhere within me throbbed a vague sense of lost joy and forgotten jubilation – a sense of heavy loss, perhaps the sense of loss the dead feel about life.
Deep within my intellect I knew that there is a reason for this state of mind which had already started to make its effect felt on my body (by this time, in addition to the heavy heart beats, I had already started to pant and my temples to sweat). Still holding the book in my hand, like holding a smooth skinned squirrel which may at any coming moment bite hard into my hand with its ever growing incisors, my mind began to play a precarious game of finding out that past of mine which is making me so upset now.
Considering my vulnerability to such dangers my mind was taking a huge risk by pressing on instead of retreating. My thought groped through the summer days of childhood to my vacant youth and then to the despair of middle ages. While it searched frantically in the book shelf of my memory, the risk of its own deracination was continuing to grow incessantly. The squirrel was still in my hand waiting to plunge its teeth deep into my hands.
And then dawned suddenly a very ominous silence upon my mind preoccupied with ransacking the past. That silence was there for a barely perceptible thought-moment. The kind of silence felt by men under a roof about to collapse or the silence felt by trackers upon knowing that they are being stalked by man eater leopards.
What ensued after the agonizing silence was the sudden revelation, the explosive understanding of the reason for such excitement of mind - the cognizance that the roof has begun to crumble, the knowledge that the man eater has made itself all ready to swoop.
I got hardly enough time, before the cataclysm, to fling the book with dread and hurry through the library’s labyrinthine bookshelves to the heavy front door, the door which reminds one of the huge wooden doors of colonial forts. With the desperation of a panic stricken tracker, like a man escaping from a collapsing roof I leapt out of the library through the library’s door and into the street.
As I walked faster and faster on the street, searching for crowds to get myself lost in, I heard the man eater pounce into the void where I was present just a couple of moments ago, I heard many, many roofs collapsing behind me.
What pounced was the memory of a girl, the memory of a girl from the late eighties who used to wear a white salwar and a faded blue kameez with prints of white flowers on it. What fell and crashed down included a solemn smile, a sestet written on a piece of paper torn out from a notebook, a slight touch with the back of a beautiful palm and most importantly a half burnt photograph.
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.
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.’
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
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.
