Aham Brahmasmi

“ Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand. ” W. B. Yeats What is it that makes them them & makes us us ? 1999. A winter afternoon. A family sitting around the television, anxious, ignoring the fetching expanse of sunlight frolicking on the terrace garden. Among them, an eleven-year-old, huddled in the corner of the sofa, wondering to herself the meaning of a word she hadn’t heard before. Deshdrohi . Prayers were being whispered. A muttered swearword too. The grainy feed of Doordarshan adding to the theatricality of the Hindi commentators as the drama unfolded in spectacular fashion. India were playing Pakistan on a square-turner in Chennai and Tendulkar, the country’s most beloved son, almost crippled by back-spasms, was doing the unthinkable. Shahid Afridi’s whirlwind century the day before had stolen her heart,...

I see darkness. I smell the staleness of it. It indulges my wings, as they slice through it forever and ever. I mock the darkness, pretending to lose myself, tempting the spider’s web, only to emerge unscathed. I live off the darkness. I despise the darkness. I see light. A dancing flame. It bewitches me. I smell the seduction of its smoke. The flame envies my wings, tied as it forever is to the wick. I want to go closer. I must go closer. I swoop by closer, and there – inside the flame – I see myself, more dazzling than ever before. You and I , says the flame, have always been meant to be . I want to go closer. I must go closer. My wings catch fire first. Every nerve screams in agony. I welcome the pain. For a moment, I am the flame. For a moment, the flame reaches beyond the wick. For a moment, eternity is ours. And then… A longing. An annihilation. Darkness. ...

When my time will come, & come it shall, I shall reach out to you, the one person who has come closest to understanding my own deceptive, black-and-white version of reality. With the last droplets of life evaporating under the harsh light-bulb of dissolution, I shall talk to you about everything & about nothing & about all the things between & beyond.  I shall not expect a reply, for your silence will be enough. Your silence will be enough.