CATHARSIS

Is there an end to it?

I often ask myself. And the answer leaves me astounded and silent as ever. Never… But why? A long silence. And then a sarcastic smile… It says it all. There’s nothing more to interpret. But is this what we come for? A never ending uncertainty? May be…It cannot be true. It cannot be so rude. But this is the truth. But there can be some solution or we can devise one. Try it…It says and laughs aloud. And then it goes back.

I do torture myself endless number of times. And search for the answer desperately. The last few days have been full of such queries but with no answers. It has to happen this way. It’s written. Who am I to change the destiny? But I am not even trying. I am just trying to resolve - is there an end to it? A long chain entangled at every inch complicated further by various other entangled chains intertwined at endless levels with the first one. Try unfolding one. It gets convoluted further.

I search for a happy face. I even find one but the moment I try to approach I see nails punched deep inside stretching it from both the ends. You try removing one and you get loads of skin and flesh along. I search for love. I even find one. But the moment I try to connect I find a flat glass which can shatter anytime with a slight touch. You try healing it with a patch and it gets wounded further. I search for truth. The next moment I find one but mounted proudly on a heap of lies. You cannot get inside without forging yourself. I search for tenderness. And I find it buried inside the filth and muck of several centuries. You cannot unearth it without losing your own.

As far as I can remember I only visualize myself and all the people I have known surrounded by layers and layers of sorrows all around. My mother used to tell me that I was a product of complicated and life threatening delivery. The doctors had already declared before that nobody would survive but fortunately we both did. My entire childhood passed in my mother’s illness. I received a lot of love from her but she was always sick and unhealthy. As I grew up, the troubles increased manifold. I had just stepped into puberty when I realized that we had become bankrupt. We had come under heavy debt and had to face a lot of humiliation as well. We had to leave our home and city. I had to leave my school, my friends and my childhood back in the old city. It was middle of night when we had to run away like cowards to a strange place. The problems had not even resolved when they got further complicated by my mother’s failed hysterectomy and septicemia. Finally she died. I started preparing for my medical entrance. Getting into a med school seemed an impossible dream at that time. Finally I got through. I got admitted in the best medical college of the country. The first two years went smoothly. As I stepped into third, new set of problems emerged. The system started hurting me a lot. I felt suffocated. I became too vulnerable. Even thought of running away and committing suicide. Finally I met an angel. I survived and got to the shore. Finally passed the finals and got commissioned in Indian army with a handsome salary. Suddenly I became rich. I thought the long struggle had eventually come to an end. But there was something else stored for me. The moment I realized that I was rich the next moment I was burdened with loads of responsibilities. I became poor once again. Furthermore my spiritual journey had just begun when immediately the carnal desires started hindering it altogether. It dragged me to the filthy streets where I realized that it’s a big mad world. I am not alone. I have friends as well whom I had not met till now. I look towards the future and see no variation. It’s a big cloudy, polluted and damaged world ahead. Ten years down the line I would have nothing but only remorse to gift to my kids. It would be a beginning of another struggle. My kids would someday become my enemies. And it would continue on and on.

I am not trying to prove anything by being autobiographical. Neither am I trying to gain any sympathy. There are million other victims on this planet more perturbed and damaged than me. But is there an end to all this? Is there an end to this hopelessness? Is there an end to this solitude? Is there an end to all this pain? Is there an end to this rigmarole of conflicts and disagreements? Is there an end to this poverty? Is there an ‘end’ beyond this ‘end’? Sometimes I feel that I have become bipolar in recent times. I undergo serious mood swings sometimes. For a flash of second I am very hopeful and happy but the next moment I get sucked inside my own paucity. The questions which had not even touched me in any way before have suddenly started disturbing and disconcerting me in a strange way nowadays. And believe me most of these questions have nothing to do with my personal and spiritual struggle. Most of these inquiries are pretty materialistic and worldly and this predicament increases the tension further. Am I getting older? Or am I getting ‘sane’ in a societal sense? Or Am I becoming worldly? Or am I just being illogical and crazy at the moment? I am not saying that I belong to some other planet but I am petrified that I might be getting consumed by this. There is so much to do and there is so much which I want to do but I am not able to because of some mysterious interference. And most of the time I end up doing things which I don’t want to do. Whom should I blame? Is there anybody responsible for this or is it the ‘me’ inside me responsible? There should be somebody whom I may be able to use as a punching bag for distorting my life. But I know that sadly there is nobody. People say that this is something which everybody has to go through someday. ‘You are becoming man, man’. I hate it when they throw this bullshit on my face. Why should my fate be similar to everybody’s fate? Why should I suffer for things which they had to suffer? Why should I clean their shit? Why should every generation inherit the pain and poverty of the previous generation? Why are we not able to design our lives and the world around the way we want to? Do I really have anything which I could leave to my kids? Besides a multitude of incurable syndromes and some billion dollar debts as a generation do we have anything which we could pass onto our next generations? If happiness is the ultimate aim then why does everybody end up searching and fighting for it only? I know that the world is changing and is changing fast but I have serious doubts regarding its sustainability. We must be sure that whatever we are trying to build or whatever we are building should have a self-sustainable power. It should be an ever evolving and ever progressing future. But are we actually doing this bit? Aren’t we burdening our kids with loads and loads of morality and other stuff so that they should grow dwarfs and die dwarfs? Aren’t we just creating a set of structures and counter structures and replacing it with another similar set every generation? Aren’t we making sure that like any other species on this land, it’s time for our own species to become extinct too?

Ghalib believed that life is one continuous painful struggle which can end only when life itself ends. But is death the solution? Isn’t it a form of escape? If death is the solution than rather embracing it physically all at once can’t we do it in every flash of life? Wouldn’t it open doors and doors of solutions and possibilities in every moment we live and thrive? Do we need to build another civilization? I don’t think so. But we do need to unearth the existing one. We do need to dig deeper and cling to our roots once again. Instead of building multi-storied malls stuffed with artificial air and asbestos we should build bazaars with real people filling the streets with music and magic. Rather than labeling and judging everybody with pre-defined yardsticks we must try being non-judgmental and see what difference it would make to our lives.  Rather than shouting and howling for morality all through our lives we must try to be free from this very need. Instead of hammering with contexts endeavour must be directed towards breaking those contexts and substituting all of them with a context of human understanding.

I do not see any big possibility coming my way but I do feel that something is being whispered from somewhere. ‘Search for love and meditate death in every moment’. This is what my heart says at this moment. It says this is the solution and may be this could be the one.