Wednesday, July 29, 2020

THE DIARY OF MRITYUNJAY - A JOURNEY'S END



THE DIARY OF MRITYUNJAY

“We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way,
begin no day where we have ended another day;
 and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.
 Even while the earth sleeps, we travel.
 We are the seeds of the tenacious plant,
 and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart
 that we are given to the wind and are scattered.
- Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
                                         --------
                                From, The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost

DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to all those known and unknown faces who never returned home after the Kedarnath disaster which occurred on the 16thJune 2013. To their families who live with the scars left behind by those traumatic days.
PREFACE
 ‘It is very difficult to accept one’s mortality. But that is the truth; one day we shall cease to be. I have never believed in divine interventions or an afterlife, for these only tend to distract you from the present reality – that we live, and should at every moment be aware that life is what you make of it.’ This is a passage from the story ‘Enigma’ in my last book ‘Autumn Leaves – Seasons of Life’. In ‘The Diary of Mrityunjay’ I have continued to explore further, this train of thought. All the three books before this have been an exploration, whether it be an inward journey to understand oneself or an outward reach into the lives of people hoping for a beyond of the darkness that threatens to engulf them and overcoming the looming reality of aging and loneliness. But I have never ended in despair. It has always been my belief that the angst which creeps into our lives at some point or the other can be overcome through an acceptance of the temporality of life. This of course is easier said than done, for no one wants to be erased into nothingness. It is when faced with the futility of living a life that has an end, which sets us on a search for a meaning to our existence. Is it therefore preferable to spend our lives in contemplation of a certain end or soak ourselves in the wonders of creation and understand the world we live in, to the utmost?
I reproduce a passage from Hermann Hesse’s book ‘Narcissus and Goldmund’ which aptly describes the dilemma we face in trying to immortalize ourselves- ‘He thought the fear of death was perhaps the root of all art, perhaps also of all things of the mind. We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts, we know that we too are transitory, and will soon disappear. When artists create pictures and thinkers search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do.’
It has taken me a longer time to complete this book than the other three books, for I had to read and reread it several times while writing, to make sure there was clarity and continuance in my thought process. But I am happy that I have been able to arrive at answers to some of the questions that have plagued me over the years, and I believe that these are also reflections of the thoughts that occupy the minds of everyone.
That is why Mrityunjay, which means ‘Conqueror of death’, is symbolic with our bid to immortality.
For more than a year, after my third book ‘Autumn Leaves – Seasons of Life’ was published, I did not write much. Even the postings in my blog were few and far between. A certain listlessness had taken hold of me and I found it difficult to break out. It was as if I had exhausted myself and was bereft of any new thought that I could transcribe into the written word. I did nothing and waited. It was then that I happened to see a documentary on the Kedarnath disaster that took place in June 2013. That rekindled the angst I had felt while reading about it at that time, especially so, because a colleague and his wife never returned. I was aware that friends and relations still hoped for a miracle that would bring them back, even months after their disappearance. Six years have gone by and though the wounds would have healed by now, the scars will remain, and the memory of those traumatic days will continue to haunt.
This was the trigger that made me write this book. It has nothing to do with any individual or event and is a fictionalized account of one man’s journey through the midst of this disaster, in search of a meaning in life, and the redemption of a woman traumatized by past relationships.

INTRODUCTION

Mrityunjay literally means ‘Conqueror of death’. This is also a name by which the God Shiva is referred to. The name of the protagonist in the book was a natural outcome of the fact that the genesis of the book is the Kedarnath tragedy and the ruling deity in the temple is Shiva.
 Ahalya was the first name that came to my mind when developing the character of a woman who had been a victim of circumstances and her own frailty, undergoes the trauma of guilt and betrayal, the consequences of which make her distance herself from further relationships, and in her own words she had become ‘numb and cold as a stone’. In the Ramayana the story of Ahalya is narrated. Ahalya is punished for her perceived infidelity by her husband the Sage Gautama to become a stone and remain so till her redemption by Rama. There have been various interpretations of Ahalya’s story by different authors, but the principal question that remains is as to how far Ahalya alone was responsible for her predicament. Weren’t the men in her life more to be blamed for her sufferance? The Ahalya in this book meets her redeemer in Mrityunjay. There is no resemblance to the story in the epic Ramayana, except the concept of a wronged woman.
On the 16th June 2013, the temple town of Kedarnath was devastated by the floodwaters of the Mandakini and the Saraswathi due to heavy rains in the area and the overflow from the Chorabari lake. Hundreds of people lost their lives, and more were reported missing; not to talk about the near-total decimation of what was once a thriving temple town. It’s in the backdrop of this disaster that the story of Mrityunjay is set. Mrityunjay who is on a search for a purpose in life, comes face to face with his own mortality and ends up realizing that ‘the purpose of life is a philosophical question. We spend our lives trying to find an answer, but this eludes us time and again. When you think you have found an answer, a new dimension opens. So, there is really no end’.
 It’s also the story of Ahalya who suffers from the trauma of betrayal in her earlier relationships and finds in Mrityunjay, the redeemer who pulls her out of the morass she had fallen into and gives a new direction to her life.
Apart from the slew of characters who form part of Mrityunjay’s journey, the river plays an important role in the book. The creative force of its serenity and the destructive nature of its turbulence on its journey to merge with the ocean are but allegorical representations of our journey through life.
In his book ‘The Hindu View of Life’ Dr. S. Radhakrishnan writes-
Life is like a game of bridge. We did not frame the rules and we cannot control the dealing. The cards are dealt out to us, whether they be good or bad, but we can play the game well or play it badly. A skillful player may have a poor hand and yet win the game. A bad player may have a good hand and yet make a mess of it. Our life is a mixture of necessity and freedom, chance and choice. We may not change events, but we can change our approach to events.
There is scope for the exercise of free will within the boundaries of the cards dealt to us and the rules of the game over which we have no control. This would explain the circumstances of our birth and the constraints which we seek to overcome. The dealer of the cards is always a mystery. Is it God?
The four lines in the poem, ‘Little Gidding’ from T.S. Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’, aptly sums up what I have tried to portray in this book ‘The Diary of Mrityunjay’.
‘We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.’

Thursday, July 2, 2020

DRIFTER



Drifter

Drifter,
You peacefully make your way,
Across ephemeral heights,
Look down,
This mortal tries to reach you,
Shed a tear or two,
Cleanse him,
His frivolous fantasies,
Have stained and stirred his whim.


Drifter,
You drift away endlessly,
Showering on distant views,
Like a lover, your nectar;
Whilst he a balloon bloats,
Rises high,
In newfound power;
Punctured,
Falls down dead and dry,
An autumn leaf from the sky.


Drifter,
Sometimes ominous, in grayish form,
You burst into tears and seek,
To reform,
Our brownish parched pastures,
To dress in verdant cloaks,
While he in rapture,
Squeezes out little saltish drops,
To revive in vain those visions lost


Drifter,
I gaze above,
Your whiskers white,
With silent wisdom,
Makes me shiver.
As my ignorance heightens,
Assumes appalling attitudes,
Dumbfounded, I bow my head,
On the guillotine,

Awaiting my execution.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF NOTHING

  THE PHILOSOPHY OF NOTHING It all started last night when I was watching the Tv. I do not pay much attention to the ads, but this one caugh...