afterlife

valiappappa.

he died too. today, early morning. 

we were all praying for the end, anything to stop the pain. to see a man decay as cancerous cells were eating him from within will teach one her insignificance when it comes to life's larger scheme like no other.

incidently, valiappappa was the second of the two who had blessed me and him. i had sought blessings for both of us only from these two men, both larger than life in their own way with a powerful aura around them. the first, u's father was almost a monk himself. strangely, cancer ate him up too. he moved on to a better after life, i hope. now, valiappappa has made his peace too. 

valiappappa and u's father, will they meet him up there? will they recognise each other? do all souls look alike? will the three laugh out aloud together, each one's laughter ringing differently? will he get a yellow bike to ride around? is there an alternate reality? do i wish it to be?

the change

what has changed since he is gone? 

very little, in the sense that i still tell him everything, long conversations that i carry on inside my head. i still dont see him, yet that does not matter. my phone hardly rings, it doesn't matter either.

a lot has changed, in the sense that my heart is heavy, burdened by the finality of his not ever coming back. this realisation is slow poisoning me. a lot, in the sense that all that i think of, now, is him. 

earlier, i did have a life which i carried on largely uninhibited though he always monopolised my thoughts. he ran through my head everytime, yet there was other waking moments, some times even hours at a stretch when i never thought of him. 

now, with him, died my life too. all i do now is to saute our times together in low flame, turn it over and over again, question myself a million times over why i did not do this or that, why i never attempted to change the tide, why he never said a word about me, why he left his family no clue on my existence, why he did not keep his word, why he did not make me vanish with him, why, why, why...there is no time when i am not doing any of these. the change. 

a thank you

he gave me happiness. immense happiness, which filled me up, enough to last me through all the dry days since. while he tussled with demons, i fed on this not so secret bottle of elixir. and, in those parched days, came her. let's call her m. a delight, through and through, she made me laugh. with kindest of hearts, she lets me be.

now, he, finally, maneuvered his vanishing act perfect to the last detail. and left me staring at my empty hands. yet m still makes me smile. may she find peace.

mercy of mercy killing

there should be no debate on mercy killing. it is ridiculous to debate on something as transparent as the concept of mercy killing.

there is no ground whatsoever for a debate, when mercy, the concept by itself, is so fundamental to what makes one a human. killing one who is already on his/her death bed is a but a small mercy. how is it fair that hapless beings are forced to bear merciless blows that life doles out on the basis of some arbid morality grounds?

in fact, suicides are also in a way mercy killing. an adult who decides to go through the painful procedure of self inflicted death would already have been dead in spirit. at least when it comes to sensible adults, who are intelligent enough to weigh the odds and others, it should not be seen as anything but mercy killing. it is incomprehensible to me that an attempt to suicide can have a police case slapped on you. what has the State got to do with this entirely individual decision to end one's life? probably, if the doer owes large amounts of money to the State or others, and by suicide just tried to shut the doors to the creditors, perhaps there is a ground for a legal tussle. but otherwise, never. redundant laws and weirder morality issues, they squeeze freedom by its neck.

the she-wolf

They trap the she-wolf with steel jaws
Stretched from horizon to horizon

They take the golden mask from her muzzle
And tear the secret grass
From between her haunches

They bind her and set
Tracker and pointer dogs
To defile her

They hack her to pieces
And leave her
To the vultures

With the stump of her tongue the she-wolf catches
Living waters from the jaws of clouds
And puts herself together again 

(This is by Vasko Popa)

but i, alas, am no she-wolf

no room for argument

suicide is a very public act, nuances of which are played out elaborately in the utmost privacy inside the doer's head. it is an entirely private act in the sense that the precise reason that urged her to end life is missing to all but the doer. she might leave clues as to why she killed herself, might even leave a note or two, or may be the others around would have sensed her bereft. yet, even the most cogent of suicide notes are perplexing.

meanwhile, suicide is also a public act because the doer just exposed her discontent to the world, which will then proceed to cut, prod and study the act and scrutinise it under different lenses. the privacies of the doer just got into public domain. that is simply unfair, more to the doer's family than herself. the doer's family is left to face the harsh lights out of no fault of their's. in a sense, it is unfair to the doer too as she is merely a weary soul succumbing to a small mercy. and also, she would, if conscientious, have had to battle the burden of the pain she was to inflict on her family because of the finality of her decision. the realisation that she leaves no room for argument also would have been the last cross she had to bear. hopefully, that is if there is no afterlife.

this is the most persuasive of arguments against the wisdom of a suicide.

you shall not fare well

By now, I hope my ramblings at least told you enough that there are two he-s, like any story a hero and a villain. Obviously. The he who made me dream, my beloved and the he who threatened to destroy me. 

But the tragedy of my story is that the villain, mighty as he is, was never mighty enough to destroy me. And the hero, the gentlest of souls, struck me down in a whiff.

I screamed at the villain to get out, and the hero did, without no farewell, defying gravity like he always wanted to.

he and me

There are two kinds of people in this world: the fighters and the others. Neither of them is homogeneous. There are the brave ones; there are cowards; there are those who are simply weary. I will not call any of them fortunate or otherwise, to each, his fortune, happiness being just a perception.

Coming back to the broad binary classification, fighters are the majority and very well so. They are those who pull on even when life does a splendid somersault and breaks its neck. I chose the very tame term ‘pull on’ because there are very different variants to this. For, some would take a perverse, or otherwise, pleasure in adversities and in tackling them. Some would savour the depression that tough times bring. Some would just hate it, yet not lose hope. (Hope, let’s not get into it; not yet.) Some might just stare down the adversity. Some might just platonically deal with it. Some might just weep and mourn, yet trudge along – they are the cowards. But here, I refuse to attach any tag of shame to this ‘coward’ title. They are all fighters in a sense that life might defeat them, but they don’t cease to walk, if not run.

The others are the ‘others’. They are a few. Their minority status does them no honour. On the contrary, there is a tag of ‘selfishness’ that the society bestows on them, some times, along with oodles of pity. They are those who give up. Some of them might have been fighters who switched sides at some point of time. Some could be ‘the others’ all through out. They are those who chose not to walk. There is a binary grouping to the ‘others’: the brave and the cowards. The brave ones just refuse to accept what life has dished out to them and simply cease to exist. They are those determined not to let life make a fighter of them. The cowards are those who die painfully, struggling inwardly with many a reason, yet are too weary and drop out tired. Neither the fighters nor the others have any glamour quotient attached. Yet the brave ones, irrespective of the clan, are ones who deserve the salute or heavens forbid, a guard of honour.

He was a fighter, and a brave one to boot. And I am not.

Get out of my walled infinity

Get out of my walled infinity

Out of the star-ring round my head

Out of my mouthful of sun

Get out of the laughable sea of my blood

Out of my flow, of my ebb

Get out of my beached silence

Get out I said

Get out

Out of the chasm of my life

Of the stark father-tree inside me

Get out How long must I cry get out

Get out of my bursting head

Get out

Just get out

(This is by Vasko Popa)

the beginning of the end

finally, the anger has arrived. it came too late, yet the force of it is alarming. i have been waiting for it for a year now. yet when it came, i was least prepared. and it simply consumed me. completely.

he shovelled crap onto me for a year. i took it all. lost my self respect in the bargain. it was futile, i knew it even then. in retrospect, i think it was my vanity and foolishness that tied me. the self righteous of doing things based on sympathy for someone who is utterly in love with me. and a year of horror later, when i realise that this "utterly in love" never was, what does that leave me with? disgust for self, i had it for a year. this is something new. the anger, no the fury, a sort of fanatical fury that burns me from within. even sleep is not spared. dreams are red in colour too. 

another wait has begun