Rings of Smoke

These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.

understanding

Posted on | May 5, 2008 | 1 Comment

Scene-I
he stood by the open door and felt the wind rushing into his face,and getting into his eyes behind his narrow glasses,making them slightly teary.the wind ruffled his hair,and he felt his body sway with the gentle swaying of the local train,and watched the tracks move by and the trestles supporting the electric lines coast gently into view and recede,one by one.he watched with a detached disinterest the suburban shops float into view and go away,his mind barely registering them.he was tired,but felt a sudden lightness of being that was so strong as to be almost sad.he was thinking,about his life,and he felt that all of a sudden he understood more about himself,than he had ever did,he knew that he did not know all about himself still,that there were many pieces,important ones,that still eluded him,and he understood that what he thought right now might be wrong,but it was plausible enough,and till he found a better explanation,he would have to try to hold on to it.this realisation flooded his senses with a sense of unknown comfort..he was not happy,a long way from it..but he knew that it did not matter.he knew that he still did not have the answer to the question that had been plaguing him all those years,but he knew that at least it was not what he thought it had been,all those years,and wasnt THAT worth something?
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and so,with my face sprayed by the wind,as i travelled in a local train one weekend in bombay,with my eyes full of wind-induced tears,and my body suffused with a lightness that soared above all the sweat and grime and dust and heat of bombay,i knew finally that i was wrong,that i had been wrong all those years.it had not been love after all,that had been tormenting me all those years.i still do not know what it is,but at least it is a start.freud would have been proud of me,and kant would have smiled at this piece of detached,objective thinking,as i finally accepted that it was not love.it never had been.i know that i have been in love twice,once rebuffed,once accepted,but never reached fruition,and have been tormented by both affairs always,the malaise affecting itself in sleepless nights and misanthropy,and that my last breakup had hit me hard.but i knew finally that these were just the symptoms,not the disease.true,as neruda so aptly put it…”i loved her,and sometimes she loved me too”,and “love is brief,forgetting lasts so long”,but that was not the root cause of my troubles.i realise that now.because even when i have not been in love i have been troubled,and even when i have been in love and happy,i have been troubled.it is something deeper,something that goes right to the grain of my soul,and has to do with my deeply etched cynicism,which makes me not believe in everything.i wrote in my last post that it seems like i am one of the guys destined to take a fall,only i dont foresee it happening for a cause.and that is the cause of my troubles.i dont believe in causes,or anything for that matter.cynic to the last red blood corpuscle in my veins,to the last firing synapse in my brain,i believe only that the world is probably destined to take a fall too,probably…
i remember once jokingly telling my roommate that i did not have a cause worth living for and in his unrestrained innocence,he replied that i could very well pick one if i saw around me:there were so many causes worth living for..and then he enquired..did one really need a cause to live for?because it came naturally enough to him…he could not understand the need for reasons because to him reasons came so naturally.and he half thought i was joking-of course i had everything to live for.
only,i was only half joking..i realise now,that all that semi-philosophical crap i fed him the one year we were roomies,i was joking less than half the time…and the joke was on me,of course…
and so,that is the cause…that i cannot find any reason suitable enough to live..npthing to fire my veins with passion,nothing which would make me bet the farm for it…nothing as significant as life even,even though life itself is probably not very significant either…
plain and simple..i suffer from a crisis of faith.even though i dont believe in god either,but it is something more than a simple crisis of faith in religion..because god has nothing to do with it.and probably this process is irreversible..i would not care much if it were,but what troubles me is that…this also is merely a symptom.i want to know why there is thius crisis in my life..and that is the search which has been tormenting me all these years..i only never understood it so clearly before now…but then..as they say…it is a start.

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Comments

One Response to “understanding”

  1. anonymous
    May 7th, 2008 @ 12:33 pm

    understanding … is unbearable … not understanding … is unbearable … all is

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