On life

Sometimes life is like a game of dice. Every time u expect a figure and something else is rolled out. Upside down, downside up, topsy turvy seems to be the rule of life. The moment I feel that I have understood, I understand that I really have not understood. The moment I know that I know her(life), I really know that I still don’t know her (life). As mysterious as Sherlock Holmes’s investigation, as unpredictable as Earthquakes…the mystery continues, supposed to be true predictions continues…

The game of dice at times, when drawn on graph over multiple players and time would resemble spaghetti. Not knowing the start, neither the end. Each intertwined with the other. As Fitzgerald, translation of Omar Khayyam’s Rubiayyat

Into this Universe, and why not knowing,

 Nor whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:

 And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,

 I know not whither, willy-nilly blowing.

At least he  was a man of wisdom. He had the courage to accept and proclaim to the world, we are nothing special, but just being moved around like dust which moves in wind or like water flowing aimlessly, being pushed and stopped by forces of nature. But mere mortals like you and me, believe that we are after some esoteric aims, like that of Alexanders and Napoleans of the yesteryears, albeit in milder ways. We push ahead, day dreaming that we are doing something great, but in actuality we are all just being slaves to the biological and societal forces. We learn, go to school, make friends, aspire to ‘be someone’, we marry, we mate, raise kids, educate them, help them with their studies, make arrangements for their wedding, and finally take care of their kids and help them to school, and in few years, life’s Grammarian puts a period/fullstop to our life. And there it ends…People around would mourn for some time, yet soon to be forgotten. And there the dice stops rolling. Neither winning nor losing would matter. King and the pawn both would be treated the same.

“

They say the Lion and the Lizard keep

The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:

And Bahram, that great Hunter--the Wild Ass

Stamps o'er his Head, and he lies fast asleep.

 “

*mighty Jamshyd, a mythological Persian king,

Bahram, a king (AD 420-438) in the Sassanian dynasty of ancient Iran renowned for his skill at hunting:

नहीं हूँ मैं

दाइम पड़ा हुआ तिरे दर पर नहीं हूँ मैं 

ख़ाक ऐसी ज़िंदगी पे कि पत्थर नहीं हूँ मैं 

Lying perpetually at your doorsteps, I am not?

Shame on a life like this for I am not a stone. 

If first line is not read with a question mark it can also be interpreted as poets desire to be just a stone at believers door. 

क्यूँ गर्दिश-ए-मुदाम से घबरा न जाए दिल 

इंसान हूँ पियाला ओ साग़र नहीं हूँ मैं 

Why should I be afraid of perpetual circulation (or pushing and shoving around?)

After all I am a human being not a goblet/decanter. 

(Goblet used to be passed around in mehfils)

या-रब ज़माना मुझ को मिटाता है किस लिए 

लौह-ए-जहाँ पे हर्फ़-ए-मुकर्रर नहीं हूँ मैं

O! Lord why does the world keep erasing me?

I am not a letter written by mistake twice on the slate of the world.  

** I am not a redundant being regardless of how world treats me.

On Religion

Despite all its criticism religion serves one important purpose. 

There is inequality, injustice, misery, disease, death etc. With such instability and unpredictability religion and belief in God gives some sanity and purpose to the life of masses. 

For person from Abrahmic faith it helps him when he starts thinking that this world is an examination— a testing ground. You do your good work refrain from sin and you will get justice in after life. 

Fro person from Indic faiths it helps him when he starts thinking that he will meted a good life in the nextlife. Whatever he is suffering is from the bad accumulated karmas of the past. 

It might look lazy and not being productive but it gives a relief to the believer from all these worldly troubles. 

Life in itself is meaningless.  It gives a meaning to the believers life. 

Love and Conservatives

“What if I tell you there is no life after death?” quipped Imran. 

Rehana looked upset. Clouds of doubt started descending on her that she made a wrong choice. After all wasn’t his father a Haji. And didn’t he talk about Islam and exhibited his piety. 

“Ah! I was just joking, honey. Just wanted to see how you react? Of course there is life after death and a long and permanent life. How can our fathers and forefathers be so wrong with their age old held belief?” Imran tried calling to cover up the obvious faux pass he just committed. 

Rehana breathed a sigh of relief. “After all he isn’t an infidel” she thought. 

It’s been a month that Imran and Rehana started seeing each other. Their parents were “progressive” and they “allowed” them to meet each other. 

What is my crime?

I’m in state of delirium. In a state of hallucination. May be it’s the fever. But something from the soul is gnawing at my wretched heart. A deep sense of frustration mixed with guilt. I feel like Raskalnikov. Having committed a worst crime which has no redemption on this earth. 

What is it that raises its ugly head. Nearly knocking off my soul from its temporary prison. 

Am hallucinating. Of fighting with a monster ready to grab me and push me to perdition forever. Of a tunnel with no light at the end. Groping in dark, in eternity. 

What is my crime? 

Great expectations

Am left numb speechless moist eyed, as I finished second part of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens . 

Human emotions and thinking can at times be way too parochial and ungrateful. We weave our own meaning to life. We ascribe ideas to situations and people— the notions which may not exist in reality. Pip sought meaning to his life by clinging onto the Havishams. He thought his benefactress was she. Out of that he also imagined Estella to be destined for him. In the process he left away all those lovely people who cared for him. 

And all this while he abhorred and feared the actual benefactor, of course he never knew it was him!

Such a brilliant portrayal. And such ironies of life. And so in-depth study of human mind. 

Excerpts from Das Profundis

In response to ur post on suffering 

“Suffering is one very long moment.  We cannot divide it by seasons.  We can only record its moods, and chronicle their return.  With us time itself does not progress.  It revolves.  It seems to circle round one centre of pain.”

....

“sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things.  There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation.”

“Where there is sorrow there in holy ground.  Some day people will realise what that means.  They will know nothing of life till they do,—and natures like his can realise it”

“Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark

And has the nature of infinity.”

“I have hills far steeper to climb, valleys much darker to pass through.  And I have to get it all out of myself.  Neither religion, morality, nor reason can help me at all.”

“To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development.  To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life.  It is no less than a denial of the soul.”

“Society takes upon itself the right to inflict appalling punishment on the individual, but it also has the supreme vice of shallowness, and fails to realise what it has done.”

“sorrow remarries us to God,”

“Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery.  It is really a revelation.  One discerns things one never discerned before.  One approaches the whole of history from a different standpoint.  What one had felt dimly, through instinct, about art, is intellectually and emotionally realised with perfect clearness of vision and absolute intensity of apprehension.”

Excerpt From

De Profundis

Oscar Wilde

https://itunes.apple.com/in/book/de-profundis/id498734605?mt=11

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सवाल

पहाड़ों के साये में 

अपनी ऊँचाई का एहसास होता हैं

योद्धाओं के द्वन्द के बीच

अपने छोटे छोटे अनबन के क्या माने?

एक बूँद की क्या वजूद सागर के आगे ?

आख़िर छः अंधे कब हाथी को टटोल के समझ पाए ?

STRANGERS

Let us exist now, like strangers, With smile on face, let us conveniently hear out each other's lies. Amidst those gaps of silence filled with sighs Let us flow back to the past. Now what? With that question, let our eyes bid adeiu to each other. Let us part our ways from now on. Promising selves, not to turn back again to catch a glimpse, Let us turn back for last one time.

Dried flowers..

That sublime moment when you chance upon an old, long forgotten, moth-eaten, dusty book in your attic. You carefully open it. You see You recognize your writing. Probably the notebooks you maintained in your adolescence. You turn its pages. And somewhere in the middle of the notebook you discover a dried fossilized rose. The flower which you plucked from your garden. That which you wanted to gift Her. You remember your palpitations then. How you spent a sleepless night before planning each move. How that night was endless. You reach school. But find that she is not in today. You wonder why? Her father left with family to a distant place, was the reply you get from her friend. That flower -- which blossomed but still did not reach its finality. You observe that page and notice few wrinkled spots which were tears once. Strange. Both tears and petals coexisted safely in that book.