Why am I here?

The eternal question. Now, louder. Now, more frequent. Let me see if I can ever, somehow find the answer. Who other than Gibran, can ask this question in a more profound manner?

The Perfect World from The Madman, by Khalil Gibran.
God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods, hear me:
Gentle Destiny that watchest over us, mad, wandering spirits, hear me:

I dwell in the midst of a perfect race, I the most imperfect.

I, a human chaos, a nebula of confused elements, I move amongst finished worlds -- peoples of complete laws and pure order, whose thoughts are assorted, whose dreams are arranged, and whose visions are enrolled and registered.

Their virtues, O God, are measured, their sins are weighed, and even the countless things that pass in the dim twilight of neither sin nor virtue are recorded and catalogued.

Here days and nights are divided into seasons of conduct and governed by rules of blameless accuracy.

To eat, to drink, to sleep, to cover one's nudity, and then to be weary in due time.

To work, to play, to sing, to dance, and then to lie still when the clock strikes the hour.

To think thus, to feel thus much, and then to cease thinking and feeling when a certain star rises above yonder horizon.

To rob a neighbour with a smile, to bestow gifts with a graceful wave of the hand, to praise prudently, to blame cautiously, to destroy a soul with a word, to burn a body with a breath, and then to wash the hands when the day's work is done.

To love according to an established order, to entertain one's best self in a pre-conceived manner, to worship the gods becomingly, to intrigue the devils artfully -- and then to forget all as though memory were dead.

To fancy with a motive, to contemplate with consideration, to be happy sweetly, to suffer nobly -- and then to empty the cup so that tomorrow may fill it again.

All these things, O God, are conceived with forethought, born with determination, nursed with exactness, governed by rules, directed by reason, and then slain and buried after a prescribed method. And even their silent graves that lie within the human soul are marked and numbered.

It is a perfect world, a world of consummate excellence, a world of supreme wonders, the ripest fruit in God's garden, the master-thought of the universe.

But why should I be here, O God, I a green seed of unfulfilled passion, a mad tempest that seeketh neither east nor west, a bewildered fragment from a burnt planet?

Why am I here, O God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods?






..

Half of what I say...

The flight lands ahead of its schedule, only to be leaving in less than six hours. So be it. Though am late to reach the airport, I am just as gleeful as a child because it's me picking you up and not some of your uniforms.

There is the cheerful welcome, with my mind already sensing the farewell which lingers so closer by in time. And then there are the white lies about how we look just the same having not changed a bit since we saw each other. I cannot find another person with whom I would exchange such lies and be so happy and unguilty about it.

Neither is there a person to whom I can say "No, I dont like the tee you are wearing". Then, strange as it may sound, we talk about all the tshirts & kurtas each other wore whenever we met, during the past. The closet sentimentalists we both are, it is no surprise that we remember the details. The surprise lies in realising that I miss you more than I knew. Suddenly, the few thousand miles between us seem longer than they usually are.

We take a ride home, the route rickety and still unfamiliar to me. I miss a turn or two, but I really dont mind - I just get to ride a little longer with you. I'm sure my bike would not complain, you being the only person who remembers to ask about it every now and then.

The visit is unplanned and so I have no time to prepare for cooking lunch at home. Am upset about being not able to stuff you with home-food, but at the same time, unabashedly glad that just the two of us can have an elaborate lunch elsewhere. I am mighty pleased that you like the restaurant I chose.

We eat and eat, updating each other about life, all its nitty-gritties, and about our worries. Laughing over so many things even as we brood over the times we had missed to spend together. Ah... those movies I wanted to watch with you but never got to; I still hope that we will catch them on DVD someday.

There are moments I fall silent thinking of numerous tiny things we've shared and enjoyed, all those shayaris over the innumerable cups of tea and all the times I was teased about my dryfruit diet and my being a sleepyhead. Too bad that we never get to exchange a shayari today. I think of all the moments when I had to send you off at many airports and many railway stations. My mind is clouded with thoughts of Kashmir, of rains, of long conversations, of babies, of Psalms, of summers, of sonnets, of swims, of prayers, of flamingoes. But when you ask, I answer vaguely, that am out of my mind.

Three hours pass off, across the table for two, and its time for getting back to the airport, but not before we drown ourselves in black coffee. I get to laugh out loud about this and that, all through the ride to the airport, at the parking lot and at the cloak room and upto the departure terminal.

Then you disappear quickly after the briefest of goodbye-hugs, leaving me to start waiting again, not knowing when I would meet you again. I start waiting again, just as I waited for you to board the train, years ago, even before we had met.

Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you...

Nothing funny about Sonnet 44...

Funny is how the human brain works, if that is what I have inside my head. My brain cannot remember what I ate this morning and it cannot recall when I changed my bike's oil-filter. No, it cannot even blurt my sister's mobile number. And when I have to make a total of 3 different two-digit numbers, my brain forces me to click Start->Run and type "calc" for the simple reason that it cannot add more than two numbers. But, how does it untiringly manage to relate daily life and day-to-day activities to a Tagore's poem or to a complicated philosophical expression from Gibran or to a Shakespeare's sonnet....read, enjoyed and believed to be forgotten, long time ago??

Was winnowing few storable shots from thousands, so that I could create some precious space in my overloaded hard-disk. This is probably the best-framed, out of 15 odd photographs of take-offs shot by me & Sankar, near St Thomas Mount, on a rainy day in August 2010.



For me, airplanes never mean speed, but always, denote the long distances, the excruciating pain of separation...and my brain relates this picture to these verses picked out from its mossy folds...

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way.
For then, despite of space, I would be brought
From limits far remote where thou dost stay.
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee.
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But, ah, thought kills me, that I am not thought,
To leap large length of miles when thou art gone,
But that, so much of earth and water wrought,
I must attend times leisure with my moan,
Receiving naught by elements so slow
But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.

[Sonnet 44 of William Shakespeare.]