Aham Brahmasmi

শূন্যতার কি কোনও মাপকাঠি আছে ? How do we define emptiness? Is it the empty terrace being burnt to a crisp by the midsummer sun? Is it the smell of staleness in a rickety, late night bus bouncing along on a potholed road? Is it the hollowness in the eyes staring back from the mirror? Is it the ballpoint pen that breathes its last in the middle of a word that wasn’t meant to be written? Is it the boiling anger just at the base of the throat, an ancient emotion that’s actually grief? Or is it the sound of the screams that prick my consciousness and scar my dreams? একমুঠো বালির মতো ; হাতের মুঠো খুললেই সব শূন্য। বুকের ভেতর একটা মনখারাপি অসুখ , ঠোঁটের কোনায় এক নিমেষের জীবন। Is all emptiness always the same, or am I more empty than you? Which is more empty – a beautiful envelope with venom inside, or a resounding laugh without a soul?

  “ ভেবে   দেখেছো   কী ? তারারাও   যত   আলোকবর্ষ   দূরে, তারো   দূরে – তুমি   আর   আমি   যাই   ক্রমে   সরে   সরে ... ”   Sometimes I wonder what should be the true yardstick of measuring distances. I could be a kilometre away from home, an epiphany away from finding my calling, ten pages away from tears, a phone call away from a broken heart, nine feet away from the ceiling fan, a breath away from a maddening perfume, fifteen minutes away from fame, a memory away from a smile, a song away from the universe, moments away from annihilation, a billion light-years away from myself. Do philosophers understand distance better, or Math teachers? Do we measure it with tape, or memories? Does it sleep between us, or stalk our shadows? Is it our doom, or our deliverance?

Everything is temporary. Love, hate, longing, sorrow, honesty, pride, envy, generosity, lust, kindness, empathy, arrogance, and everything in between. You and I are temporary. Everyone is. It’s only the moments we sometimes find in between that feel like forever.

 

Every morning, when my eyes open for the first time, when my brain wakes up to the inescapable reality of the today, when my lungs tell me that they’ve kept up the tiring work of keeping me alive, when the tips of my fingers are still tingling with the evanescence of dreams I had subconsciously reached out for, my heart goes thump-thump-thump, screaming into my ears that without you, every waking up is an exercise in predestined futility. And every night, just before my eyes close for the last time, when the gap between my toes has accumulated the imperceptible dust of the shattered day, when the waves of deliverance have touched the roots of my hair for the briefest of seconds, when the riotous desires from the omnipresent halls of collective humanity have lived and died in my sweat and blood, my heart goes thump-thump-thump, whispering into my disintegrating cognizance that without you, every going to sleep is a scream into the nothingness of oblivion.

I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do. I understand that you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. And if our paths cross, let’s hope I can bring a smile and you can bring a tear. After all, what’s life without a dose of nostalgia?

I'm celebrating Yoga Day too. Been lying on my bed, playing dead since morning. Shob-aashon , shavasana , the corpse pose – whatever you wish to call it – it rocks!

“ Mujhse hi aaj mujhko mila de, dekhoon aadaton mein tu hai ki nahi… Harr saans se poonchh k batah de – inke faaslon mein tu hai ki nahi. ” Are you still there, I ask myself sometimes. In the dark cobwebbed corners of my mind, knee-deep in half-remembered memories, I sometimes ask myself if you’re still there. During dusty auto-rickshaw rides along potholed by-lanes, when a sudden whiff of a flowery perfume takes me years back and I raise my hand to see if a few loose strands of hair are once more softly blowing in my face, I ask myself if you’re still there. Just before taking off the maroon kurta , checking the breast pocket for a pair of minus-powered glasses that were never mine, I ask myself if you’re still there. Beneath snatches of poetry littered across the sky of an ever defiant chimera, at the corner where yesterday’s neverland meets tomorrow’s never-to-be-land, bathed in the dying light on today, perhaps I will always ask myself – tu hai ki nahi .

Loneliness is like a quilt, you know. Sometime or the other, for one reason or another, the world turns cold, and seeking to escape from the frigidity you shelter under the reassuring warmth of the quilt. You tell yourself that this is solitude, not loneliness, and that the most telling difference between the two, indeed the only difference that matters, is that while the former is inarguably self-imposed the latter is decidedly a forced exile. You convince yourself that it is good to spend time with oneself, away from the madding crowd as it were, and that you’ll emerge from this brief interlude a stronger & more accepting person. That’s where you’re mistaken. This soothing benefactor who you think has given you warmth, this solitude is none other than loneliness in disguise, the diabolic wolf sharpening its claws while you marvel at the softness of the merino in its innocuous clothing. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was to convince the world that he didn’t exist. Be...

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.

You . Yes, you, the girl on the platform at Dadar station. In the white button-down shirt & Prussian blue pair of trousers, with your untied, windblown hair framing that lovely face. And the eyes, still laced with the last fragments of sleep, looking out at the multitude of people pushing & clawing their way in & out of the train. You made my morning.