Periods of silence, that’s what I said earlier. This silence was not contemplated, it just happened. I guess it always just happens. There is no listlessness, no tremors: only an all pervading ISness. No sensations, no words, only me and myself.

A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE

“How can I a living earn ?”
I hear the leper cry.
But I wait for him to pass me by.
The truth is he is right,
And I am aware of his plight:
But I stay still,
Unmoved ,
Silent and straight as that hill.

OMINOUS PATTERNS


Ominous patterns,
A dreary grey smoke,
Weaves across a vacant sky,
While a stifled city groans
And struggles to stay alive.

Over crowded places,
On the road fast omnibuses,
People in flashy dresses
And dead faces,
A continuous hum of machinery
From a nearby factory,
Sets the rhythm of daily life.

On the pavement
Sits a weary old man
With a hungry look, a hungry stomach,
Tattered clothes, a shrivelled frame,
A raving mouth and outstretched hands,
Begging.
A few feet away,
Dogs and dirty naked children,
In keen competition stray,
For a morsel of forgotten food
From the foodstall nearby,
Where stand the affluent few,
Licking an ice cream cone,
Eating a cheese sandwich
And sipping a cup of hot brown coffee.

As the sky grows darker,
A rumble of thunder
Sends those homely people,
Scurrying back to their abodes,
To a warm food,
And a warm bed,
To lie back and enjoy
The rhythm of the raindrop patter
On the window panes.

The old man sits,
Hands no longer outstretched,
But held over his head,
In a vain attempt
To shelter himself from the rain.
There are no trees in this city,
No roof for this old man:
He waits for the rain to stop,
On the pave ment.

The rain stops,
The night grows cold,
Man and woman,
Lost in the warm depths,
Of a warm bed, a warm room:
Faces lit up by a smile of contentment.

The old man sleeps and shivers,
To the croaking of frogs,
And the howling of dogs:
Water in small rivulets,
Flows around his cold feet,
Weaving patterne on the earth below.

May be he will wake up,
To the heat of the coming day,
To the bustle of feet,
To the sound of omnibuses
Around him,
His hands outstretched,
Once more to wait.
May be he shall lie ,
Stiff and cold as a stone
On the roadside.

METAPHYSICAL MONOLOGUES – continued - Nausea

Albert Camus while reviewing Sartre’s book ‘ Nausea’ states, “To live knowing that life is pointless is what gives rise to anguish. And if you live against the stream, the whole of your being is seized with disgust and revolt and this revolt of the body is what is called Nausea.

In Nausea, the diary of Antoine Roquentin starts with the following paragraph –
“ Something has happened to me : I can’t doubt that anymore. It came as an illness does, not like anything obvious. It installed itself cunningly, little by little; I felt a little strange, a little awkward, and that was all. Once it was established, it didn’t move anymore, it lay low and I was able to persuade myself that there was nothing wrong with me, that it was a false alarm. And now it has started blossoming.”

Nausea filled me with disgust. A man judges his life and by doing so judges himself – and what he finds at the bottom of the most elementary act is it fundamental absurdity. The very morbidity of the narration set me thinking. I cannot accept that life is absurd bu that this is not the end but only the beginning of a new realization. A man finds himself in a blind alley and cannot proceed further, what he does is to retrace and pick up a new path. Even Sartre is unable to accept this absurdity which he himself has painted so vividly. Deliverance is possible through creativity. That’s what Roquentin does at the end of the book, he decides to complete the book he had started and free himself from the shackles of absurdity and justify his existence.

Creation results as to fulfil the need for self expression. When a man creates, may be a book, a piece of art or music, he puts into it what is essentially himself. He tries to reach the depths of his being through the medium of his work.

This nothingness has been the most dreadful thing that I have come face to face with. What is life if one has to ultimately fade into insignificance. “This encounter with non- existence, this fear of nothingness is an inner condition which provokes the sense of dread and starts the religious quest”, this is what my guide said “ deliverance from the illusions of this world is to be achieved only by facing nothingness and overcoming it”.

***********

I – REMAIN

I feel a weight,
My footsteps drag,
Slow down in their rhythm,
They stop.
My legs are tied,
I cannot move,
My eyes hurt,
I cannot see,
I feel tired, I sit
Crouched with my headdown;
My limbs feel heavy,
I stay still,
Now a static state,
Nothing but a stone,
But I live.

The fire inside, now
Grown smaller in size
Soon will go.

I hear footsteps in the distance,
They come towards me;
For a minute they stop:
Then move on.
Now all is still,
No more foot steps.

All is dark,
The fire has gone out,
And I feel cold.

Though cold,
In Nothingness I remain,
Waiting for a spark
To light the fire again.

BEING AND NOTHINGNESS

Mumbai is a city I hate as also love. This where I awakened 35 years ago. I have explored the city – it’s structures, it’s pulse, its depravity, its grandeur, it’s discipline,
it’s indifference and above all it’s soul. As Hermann Hesse says in the “The Glass Bead Game” – “ My awakening has a similar kind of intensified reality for me. That is why I have given it this name; at such times I really feel as if I had lain asleep or half asleep for a long time, but am now awake and clear headed and receptive in a way I never am ordinarily.”

It was sometime in the middle of February 1974 that a strange thing happened to me. Strange, because I never did understand at that moment what it was. It would be more accurate to say that something happened within me. It was perhaps the first glimpse of what I will term as my awakening, a partial awakening perhaps.

More than Sartre it was Mumbai that taught me my first lessons on ‘Being and Nothingness’. This was back in 1974 -
“There is a street lamp at the end of this road. Its neon light casts a ghostly glow around. There existed below it, once, an old woman. Now she is no more. She could have been a stone, it would have made no difference. Her disappearance from the spot has in no way affected the working of this world. But it had a curious effect on me. I have passed that way so many times before, without the slightest awareness as to what was it that existed below the neon lamp. Then one day she disappeared. There is nothing there now, only space.

That night I dreamt of the old woman:

Old woman what ails you?
I can’t see your face,
I can’t feel your pain.
You stay crouched,
Bent with age, your face down;
Your limbs don’t seem move:
But I know you too live.
I see yoy in the distance,
I move, but you stay;
I pass, but you still stay.
For a minute I feel you live,
Then I pass.
You remain, a stone.

Though she did not lift her head, I knew it was she who spoke,

“ I do wonder,
What ails him, that passes me so?
I can’t see his face
Nor can I feel his pain,
But I know he is there,
I hear him.
He comes from somewhere,
To somewhere does he go;
For a minute I know he feels ,
For his footsteps falter.
He lives.
Then he is gone, no more.”

Then she disappeared. An empty space stood there staring back at me. An eerie feeling crept into me as I reflected:

Old woman,
You have gone away.
Though a stone you were there yesterday.
I saw from distance,
There was only space.
My footsteps did’nt falter,
As I passed the place,
Where you had lived, lain,
Now Nothingness.

I still remember how as I stood looking at that emptiness below the lamp the full force of nothingness gripped me.

METAPHYSICAL MONOLOGUES

Tonight,
I discovered God,
In the coolness of the winter’s night,
In the brightness of the full moonlight,
In the gentle rustle of ghostly shadows.
And I found God,
In this silence that encircled me.

***********

Milestones,
When you pass,
They melt away, in the distance;
In succession,
Pinnacles of thought,
Recede,
Into obscure corners
Of a putrefying heart.
Sustenance is our problem,
Be it of a moment or a thought.
Prolongation
Is what we strive for,
And failure has been our lot.

*************

I shiver,
As I stand but a speck
In this wide open space,
For darkness in the distant horizon,
Is creeping in,
Slowly, stealthily and surely,
Threatening to digest me
In its folds.

No! I cannot allow this.
What would I be,
If in darkness I dissolve?
But where is the light,
That illumines and warms
And sets the darkness to flight?

***************

ENCOUNTERS – WITH NIETSCHE

This song of my fervour would have gone on and on – it has happened to Andre’. But no after I had soared to a feverish height, I looked down and the next instant I had fallen once again on the sands of the desert. There was my Guide looking down at me, with a smile on his lips and a tender look in his eyes.

“ You are not hurt I know, only a trifle shaken I guess. But I am glad you are back so soon. Now you must have realised how unstable is that height. The higher you soar, greater is the fall and more painful. Now what was it that made you look down? When one looks down from these fervourish heights, he is bound to fall.

It was a voice and it came from below, that’s why I looked down. It said,” hear me oh wanderer in this desert. You have lost your way. You have been blinded by fervour. The path you seek is here down below and across this desert and not above.”

“Who are you?” I cried.

“I am Zarathustra, a wanderer in this desert for years and in search of genuine men. Genuine is what I call him who goes into godforsaken deserts and has broken his venerating heart.

In the yellow sand and burned by the sun perhaps he blinks thirstily at the islands filled with springs where living creatures rest beneath shady trees.

But his thirst does not persuade him to become like these comfortable creatures; for where there are oases there are also idols.

Hungered, violent, solitary, godless: that is how the lion will wants to be.
Free from the happiness of serfs, redeemed from Gods and worship, fearless and fearful, great and solitary: that is how the will of the genuine man is.

The genuine man, the free spirits, have always dwelt in the desert, as the lords of the desert; but in the towns dwell the well fed famous philosophers, the draught animals. For they always as asses pull the peoples cart”.