Time for Retrospection

Withered away, the burning heat of the day

Evening silently soaked the heat within

Wearing the diamonds came the night

O’ Soul why are you silent, smile!!

Three things have affected me lately. Hope, fear and death. Silently they walked past me in the night and left me awake. Gasping for breath, a parched throat and burning eyes. These days have been gloomy because days are heavy with tension. Work and nothing else. I need to relax and let the natural “me” take over. But it does not happen. Rather I cannot let that happen.

Reading a lot these days has been a need. A need because I need to exist in an unreal world where I can be what I want to be. It would be difficult to be that in the real world. I even pretend to dream these days. Pretense has become my entire life. Every moment of my life is “pretending” to be me. I am doing it for the fact that people might not recognize the “real” me if I were to show them who I am. Living a life where everything is driven by the sole desire of being accepted in the society I live in, a form of meek surrender.

There are times in lives of people when they have to stand up and take notice of what they have done to themselves. The realization of what they had set out for and what it turned out to be, can be heartbreaking. Even when they are close to what they set out for, self doubt can be disastrous and many break at that crucial juncture.

I am yet to realize what I set out for and though I always thought I could never go wrong, I have, in a way, that I have been deceiving myself. Those times when I made those promises to myself long back, I think I ought to cry for those wasted years. I am like a fool who ran after the rainbow. Trying to bear the shock of being separated from the people I loved, but then I think what’s the point in being sad, because I am nothing to you, although you may be the world to me. My whole existence is shattered beyond recognition and all I do is wander around like a ‘kafir’ searching for one thing I want. Why did it have to be me?

I do not fear anything if anyone among you still remembers me and even if you do I do not know about it. There was this time when people knew “me” and now I do not know who I am myself. Now I think I have learnt from these experiences and would not make the same mistakes again. If a person can build his own destiny, I would prefer to erase everything and die in the wilderness.

Now the only thing I want from my life is that since I have to live with myself for whatever time I have to serve here, I want to know myself better. I don't want to stand with the setting sun and think of things I haven’t done. Whenever and wherever I go, I must be able to hold my head high. I want to deserve all men's respect; I want to be able to like myself. I don’t want to look at myself and know that I am bluster, a bluff & an empty show. I want to look people in the eye and even they might not know what I am and have been. I can never hide myself from me; I see what others may never see. I know what others may never know. I can never fool myself and do whatever happens, I want to be self respecting and conscience free.

All I want to say is that I will always love the false image I had of myself.

I am good at what I do

I am the god, god, god of doom

Wonder where all the fun has gone. Nothing amazes me more than the absolute ennui present in my life. I am trying real hard to have some fun, simulating others around me, but so far success has eluded me. Perhaps I am asking the wrong questions, but why am I here. Something must have been predestined for me, something for which I was born, something special. Is it not so, God? Or is it that my questions are not, but too profound for a simpleton like me. Give me a sign, God, give me a sign.

Reading Ender’s Game and coming across a line which is unbounded in its wisdom

“It’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.” It makes me ashamed for I do not think I have ever been able to extend this emotion to myself. All life has been spent in self-denial and anguish over what is and what has not been. Somehow everything including “a” biological phenomenon called “love” has eluded me for I always believed in existing in the realm of normalcy. Again Maugham makes me tremble with these lines “The greatest tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love”.

Why do people “love” and what does it do for them. Ideally, nothing other than an instinct for survival and betterment must drive them forward, but why is it that sometimes, the best feelings are those that I have no words to describe them. Why am I afraid of people and of the fact that they might leave me, causing a pain unbearable? I hold onto my past and change, in a manner worse than a dying man yearning to live. Is this not death?

Consider my every lament a prayer and hopefully you would provide me an opportunity to redeem myself. Or is it that you would understand my needs through prayers as in traditional sense. I prefer to think that every thought I think, every word I speak and everything I do is a prayer, for you and I are communicating at every instant. All I must say is that I need you, need you for I might, just might break and wither away.

I am afraid, afraid for I might not be able to achieve what you sent me out here for. I am proud, for you gave me everything and yet, I tremble, for life is so amazingly complex and all reason escapes me.

Give me enough strength that I can write my own destiny and be honest and truthful. Give me wisdom and clarity of thought, and if nothing then be with me, in me for all times and all lives. I pray.

“Shoonya”