Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The Melancholy-cure

[ Introducing Severino Covell, a handsome, witty, appallingly frank, wise and veridical, languidly unconventional, smart young man. ]  


Like the laughing clubs which have sprouted in some pockets of the urban lifestyle, there was a melancholy-cure club in the busy streets of Bangalore, where people could discuss their  doldrums and despondency. It was one of the unexpected things that happen in urban human tradition, and it happened with great thoroughness. 

The event had been such a hit that adults from all walks of life would throng the three hours meet scheduled every week twice at the old memorial hall quite at the heart of the city, beating all odds of the traffic fix or absolving from the intricacies of work life and for the more privileged, from the boredom of aristocracy. It seemed to be an expedient to counter desolation which it was strange no one had thought of before. Discussions seldom remained just exchange of tenebrific anecdotes and would often be accompanied by a concluding exhibition by relays of women, few tens at a time, who wept continuously. Even those young and riotous, mad with the joy of life would be imperiled by the presence of drearily weeping women in stalls and galleries of the areas adjoining the memorial.  The week before, one of the brightest divorce cases that had been tried for many years, and had made national headlines, was robbed of much of its sparkle by the lachrymose behaviour of a section of the audience who had been so miserably offended by a valuable prospect of marriages which had for some time now helped dissever estranged connubialities. The trauma of divorcees had more often than not been a source of constant ventilation at the formidable colloquium. 



It was not wonderful that the melancholy-cure club became a formidable attraction in the city and divorce a prime theme. People, mostly society women seemed unwilling to leave anything to the imagination of a casual observer, and their talks grew gallingly personal and introspective, sometimes the rendering becoming an incubus.

"...  And so, due to lack of compatibility I had to ask him to leave. It was difficult but then I had to move on..." sobbed a lady twice divorced summarizing her most recent past, a note of fecklessness unknowingly crept into her voice. There was a hustle as some at the back benches unable to sense the shrill in her tone got restless to hear the details of the bereavement.  

" I know he loves me still but it was impossible to adjust to a life of such inordinate expectations.  I -- I don't believe in love anymore..." she continued, trying to throw a chilling inflection into a voice that was already doing a good deal of sobbing and talking at high pressure. There was an abominable lull as silence filled the house for a few anticipatory moments even as Severino Covell privately calculated the left over possibilities to the story now that love was out of the equation. He had earlier walked himself in to disport at the concept of the melancholy club which from its onset had kindled his imagination on the novel fatuousness.

"When love is over, how little of love even the lover understands ," quoted Severino to himself.

" I don't trust guys  " she said frigidly, with the conscious air of defiance that a waiter adopts in announcing that the cheapest-priced whiskey in the liqueur -list is no more.

After a cloudy hiatus she exclaimed, "But why me?!"

On this rather provocative question the proverb "Weep and you weep alone," broke down as badly on application as most of its kind. There was a lugubrious sweep of rows near to the lady and some farther away could still sense of the deprivation that a woman of such gentility had to undergo. 

Severino alone maintained an unruffled cheerfulness.

"Why did fate have to be so cruel to me? " she whimpered.

"Even Fate today can be enslaved with dexterous subtlety to explain the debacles brought about by one's own volition!" thought Severino.

"It was not until two months later that I could actually find solace in my co-worker , with whom I today share a healthy relationship," continued the lady tearfully, who seemingly was equipped with that merciless faculty which finds as much joy in the eighteenth time of telling a story as in the first.

" Was it my fault that he turned out to be a wrong choice ?"  The expression on her face wasn't entirely discernible but quite a few felt it was distinctly morose; "Don't I have the freedom to chose what is best for me ?" she declaimed with a painstaking effort to talk intelligently. It was the one matter in which she attempted to override the decrees of Providence, which had obviously never intended that she should talk otherwise than inanely.

Severino languidly thought to himself of the wistful compunction on display, after the contrived execution of having freed oneself from a noteworthy predicament, as particularly tactless.

" Perhaps it appeals more to try ones choices before using them for a lifetime. Spouse or partner shouldn't be an exception to the proposition " was Severino's rejoinder. The lady wasn't sure if the statement was ancillary to her question but quite began to feel that she was not getting the astonishment and sympathy from this man to which her catastrophe entitled her. She was quick to consummate her palaver should further suggestions come her way as response to her question.

Without wasting further time Severino spoke " I would like to share my pathetic story." After an incipient silence he continued," I was a world renowned monkey trainer a couple of years back."  It was at this point in the monologue that those gloomy and surly with the earlier rendering became galvanized into alert attention.

" I had it all : Fame, money, beautiful wife and a successful career as a naturalist. It was then that I found that monkeys as our closest primate link could prove the best subject for my study on a problem I had long worked." said Severino; " I had spend six years on the means for instructing animals in the art of human speech and the monkeys had proved to be my first successful pupils! " exclaimed Severino with the authority of one who has tried. The hall was now largely a bewildered mess.

"With this discovery the monkeys quickly learned to pick up human subjects of intelligence. "  continued Severino with a patronizing air of achievement beside which the invention of nuclear bombs, of the space shuttle, and of mobile communication were inconsiderable trifles. Technology had made bewildering strides in many directions during recent decades, but this feat seemed to belong to the domain of miracle rather than to scientific achievement.

" On a particularly dizzy morning during my unannounced visits to the monkeys, I happened to eavesdrop on a fantastic ramification: a ceremony to recognize their leader was under way. Said the newly appointed leader in a tone of even indifference,' We must now target to learn the human ways. ' I nearly jumped out of my skin." remarked Severino. There are obscure and preposterous theories that people would believe in all their amazement given they sounded well constructed, cynically manipulated or even fleetingly conspicuous ; but if you were to tell a truth with glaring simplicity, they would stare in pained wonder at the frivolity of your motive.  And Severino had grasped the fact precociously enough.

"Then as a bolt to my work I discovered that the monkeys were plotting against me!" said Severino with a painful strain. The listeners were by now numb with discomfiture.

"They embezzled all my money and kidnapped my wife!"  continued Severino trying to inject a wistful inflection into his voice.
 
 "As if these jolts were not enough, my wife fell in love with their leader, Bing-bong, who had all my money. I lost everything. "   

At this point the ladies in the house smirk and lose control. The lady with the earlier palaver rendition snorts hurriedly, " Just imagine , what a loser he would be that his wife could chose a monkey over him! She would have had little choice!" The house bursts out with laughter.

After the cackle subsides Severino serenely replies with the air of a prophesier, who expected an outburst of this nature from the lady who a little while ago was devastated, " Its a little surprising that the muliebrity in the house didn't find anything amusingly wrong in their promiscuous kind  choosing to make love to any monkey they find!" 

An awkward silence prevailed which seemed to stretch to eternity. The lady swore never to return to this place of such horrific disregard for her loses. No one spoke hence of a broken relationship or how they managed to move on in spite of a devastating breakup.

" I don't suppose," mused Severino, as he drove his car townwards, " that they will be in the least grateful for the melancholy-cure."

 Obviously the club lost the most prominent theme when cotqueans and beaus restrained from yearning for condolence after successful breakups, and soon after, faded from public interest. 

-Jesh
26 May 2010


Inspired from Dilbert and Saki

Painting courtesy of Edgar Degas

Sunday, February 14, 2010

That Day When It Rained…

[Written: 25 May 2002, Picked from the diary entries: Excuse the lack of poetry skill exhibited, Part of the early stint at writing! ]


Suddenly the black nimbus showed its agony in a flash of lightning.
The day otherwise shunned by all,
The passionate wind now blew...




I knew what this meant, for she was with me
I reclined pensive, wondering if God was willing to satiate me.

A look into her perspicuous eyes told me
That heaven had descended.
The trees overjoyed shed flowers on the wet ground beneath.

A moment of pre-eminence,
But counted on fortuitous circumstances.
Respite had at last reached me for sometime now…
In the form of a Goddess who had exterminated all my sorrows.

Though Alas! Can I be sure it’s the end of my pathetic days?
As I have for long known God’s ruthless ways…

In spite of the beautiful affinity
Why exists such dubious extremity?

So near… yet so far,
We walked along…
On that rainy evening,
When the paramount sun had gone…


-Jesh 
25 May 2002 





The Splendid Creation

[Written: 1999-2000, Picked from the diary entries: The first poem penned by me on my pristine feeling of love. Excuse the lack of poetry skill exhibited! ]




Is she an angel or a princess?

Who pierced right through my senses!


I wish she were describable.

But frankly enough she is unexplainable!

Now, has the lord been partial?

While putting in her all the essentials.

That would ultimately crown her the undisputed princess.

It may be sooner or later, that men would start singing her praises!


Is she an angel or a princess?!

When her hair blew with the breeze,

It was like the parakeet that danced in ease.Brighter than anything her eyes shone.

Precisely, where had the paramount sun gone?

Pensive I have always been, pondering what made her so pre-eminent.

Perspiring I have always concluded, she is the most reactive element!

Oh! Is she an angel or a princess?

Who pierced right through my senses!




Her eyebrows like the majestic coastal trees,

More splendid than anything I had ever seen.

Though her semblance is extremely fascinating,

It’s the traditional looks that make her so ravishing.

Am I not lucky to be able to witness such an incredible scenario?!

That infatuated many and turned me into her Romeo!

Someday the Splendid creation will be mine…

And then I will have the crown and also the dime!!!




-Jesh

1999-2000

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Return with gladness Good for Evil done.



Following is a Gujarati stanza, which the Mahatma made an ideal. It is too highly moral and needs the greatest of ethics and conscience to actually practice. But isn't that what should be inspiring for us to actually take up the challenge, to be those few mortals who can indeed go on to return Good for Evil done to us.

Today love has been superseded by hatred and beauty has been supplanted by hideousness.

We don't hesitate to kill, cheat, usurp that which is not ours, hurt, be callous to those around us who need help; we are haughty and admonish a person for a mistake of theirs, a mistake we very well know we could also commit, or were fortunate enough to not be part of.

We cant forgive. We cant stand a glaring eye that may hurt our self-indulgent ego. We are tenacious even when we know we are wrong; We don't want to change or give up, for it was someone else who pointed out our mistake and it would belittle our ego if we relinquish our claim of having never done anything wrong! We cant apologize.


Though we don't know ourselves well enough to get life going on smoothly, we are armed with enough cliche and tedious detail of the philosophy of right and wrong, of logistics and prudence, to take up the role of an uncalled Sophist; another fallout of our all powerful ego.


We don't learn from history or from our mistakes, well one has got to first admit that he ever went wrong to ever be capable of learning from it!

We cant understand love. We often weigh the benefits or the losses that come with a relationship. We call that which is least cumbersome and most convenient as a successful relationship. Love once was, when we could stand by some one whom we loved, for the person they were and when we could believe that our love would eventually make them the person of our dreams, when we knew their strength and weakness and worked to build them on their strengths. 

There was a time when people lived by their words! When one would not mind forfeiting even his life for the sake of his word. It was easier to erase oneself than to forget one's promise. But now we can vacillate from our words, can betray another and live like nothing even slightly aberrant happened. Conscience to us means conceit.

We can never help another, for all we need is to satiate ourselves with the sordid pleasures that please us. We can, if we need to have something that is important to us, even destroy our most loved one for it. Ever wondered how parents go without food for their children if in a given day food was not sufficient at home; hunger being the most intolerable and quintessential need of man? We are too busy to take time to think or know who we are or what we really want from life. We are so much in a hurry, to keep up with the pace of the futile standards of today's lifestyle, that we measure our happiness and success on our materialistic possessions and the ignoble desire to be visible or admired in the hopeless crowd. If the desire to possess endlessly was not bad enough, we are manipulative enough to portray an ostensible misery and conceal when our possessions need to be shared and obtrusively flaunt them if in excess.


We do not believe that life ends. When others die, we call it fate. We go on accumulating, trying to have only the best even if it means to get rid of people who were reasons for us reaching the pedestal we scaled. 

We consider humans the most significant of all life and can be haughty enough to kill every other life form indiscriminately, which to our 'superior' intellect mean only commodities. We don't feel kindness towards other animals and their lives, and can be derisive and conceited when taking their lives or treating them with disgust. 

We are in a rush to be the 'best'. Best in the eyes of everyone else. We can go any extent to be the best, to have our name amongst achievers of high order, it does not matter if we are best by our own efforts or through manipulation and deceit or even fortuity. We can easily own that which we did not work for and even be proud of it. We no longer believe in earning our bread, we just need bread to live, even if it means to snatch it from the mouths of another or have someone else make it for us. 

Nevertheless there is hope. We can change. For the better. If in our struggle to better ourselves however, if we lose humility, we cannot stand another person who seemingly has a few characteristics we even supposedly 'corrected' in ourselves a while ago! Let that not be the case. True enlightenment is only when we can be an example from what we have been shown and not just being a novice philosopher with no real constraints on our emotions or senses. Equanimity is the highest moral ground a man can have post enlightenment, but let it not be confused with stodginess or cowardice!

Lets start everyday like it gave us a new opportunity to be a better human being than that we were a day ago! Until then, when we can make the desire to be good and do good dangerously contagious!


And the day when we all feel that we can return with gladness Good for Evil done, there wont be any evil left to be done!

So the stanza finally...

For a bowl of water give a goodly meal;
For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal;
For a simple penny pay thou back with gold;
If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold.
Thus the words and actions of the wise regard;
Every little service tenfold they reward.
But the truly noble know all men as one,
And return with gladness good for evil done.


-Jesh
10 Sep 2009

Friday, September 4, 2009

From the diary entries of 2006-07 - Failure, death and then life

[ Written : Sept 2006 & 2007 , From the diary entries ]

I have lived the lesser life to the extent that i need to figure out if I am visible to the cosmos. Having known but never realized... having seen but never comprehended... I  have but failed...


I failed...in pursuit of the divine I saw the hideous... I always assumed to be strong. Until I could see myself failing... Everything was too big...too frivolous... esoteric at some instant... I stood just as a loser would... they laughed at me... they said I had hardly seen anything... I stood there searching for the eyes that could succinctly express a word of empathy.


I could find none...

The world I walked was docile with congenial interests but was nevertheless ready to bring down an antithesis. They could overtly display their conceit but were cynical to others. But their frivolity somehow managed to make them obsequious... they all could follow the path of factitious expression..In fact only an inane motive brought them together.



But my failure lay not in my inability to understand but in having an obnoxious lack of confidence to counter that which I knew. I was fretful...often sulky… And never accountable... I thought time could help me build but their satire often limited time's influence. What had happened to my strength? I wondered.
               






                                 I had acquiesced...had submitted my self to a fervent desire... to be loved. Until I realized love was hard to find as a desire...but abundant if one could lent... And this I think is the right way out...!
It might not yet provide the acumen to overpower but at least it gives the confidence to move ahead...


I need to find myself...having lost in the pursuit....to define what divine now stood for....strength is now easy to find...For the Quest has begun... Time is racing away but at least it matters now to be not lost in time !
                                                                                                                             -2006


Life later transformed. I saw death… knew not what it meant… Then traversed…blindly… Didn’t know what lay ahead… didn’t know what lay beside… It was multifarious, the journey. The pursuit had turned ugly. There was no me… I had been completely lost… consumed by life… I saw that which one ought not, I did what one ought not.


But then could I be alone ... There was respite to come.
Yes I did love this journey... I did love this place... yes I did love this Life...
                                                                                         -2007                                                       
-Jesh
2006-07

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

From the diary entries of 2002 - Glimpse

[Written : 2002 , From the diary entries ]




Life I guess needs nothing more than an occasional glimpse of the person you love more than you love yourself.

Truly I had felt years having passed by before I could get that ultimate vision, for I had indeed gone through the penance for it. I know not what lies ahead. I don’t understand why and how; all I know is my devotion is true for the goddess who made my life worth living, of course not without tenebrous isolations.



I am alive.
Living with the power that each glimpse gave me. I believe two hearts that beat together are not severable…

Tagore once wrote, “When with night the child of want lies down, dirty and hungry, in his squalid home, and hears of prince and princess and fabled gold, his mind springs free from her bonds of poverty and misery, and walks in fresh beauty and glowing raiment, strong beyond all fear of hinderance, through the fairy realm where all is possible.’’

I live in such a world, transformed, as I move in spirit amid my songs, fearless, ever so feeling the presence of the goddess whom I love so much.


Because all I ever wanted is to discover the real meaning of life by looking into those eyes…
-Jesh

2002

Sunday, August 23, 2009

The Real fights



[The following writing is from the diaries of a philosopher-friend-guide. Written during times of excruciating experiences, the writing is a testimonial to the man who grew to become a bearer of truth himself. As a tribute to our everlasting friendship, find below the article christened "The Real fights" ]



"We start always with fear... Fear of losing may be!!! But Start we must.. And in the life that we endure (Some have the luxury of living!) we have the luxury of making choices. Today I write as I summon my deepest self, my conscience, in the wake of a triumphant past and an uncertain future. Still holding firm to the things I hold dear, to the ones I love, while the inertia of my life plunging me ahead.

These are the "Real" fights... When you have to choose between love and giving up. When you have to choose between losing and giving up. Nobody is great. We only meet great challenges and live up to them. I've had my share...

I have loved till my brain reeled. Consumed by the dread of losing I ve cried... And an overwhelming sense of loss prevails today in me. God, perhaps has a reason. I probably could surrender to that thought. But I guess God does'nt owe me an explanation. What when a child is raped? What when a dying parent is met with utter contempt from their children and relegated to the confines of an old age home? What when a child is abandoned by his mother?

But I never failed to love...Never. We can love in that we are infinite. The more we love the greater we are! Its when you see a dog running as fast as he could just so that he didnt lose you that you come to understand... Its all I know or understand of life. Its what brings tears. A most beautiful expression of love!!!

These are the greatest lessons you would learn. When you learn to love,when you learn to forgive. This the highest plane.... Your intention of being good.
Well thats been my life,and this is going to be.....

The most fascinating animal in the world is- A brave man with no plan....
This is what I intend to be... I wish I could be in the wild and understand God's chimerical plans. Why should I have a purpose? I don't think God had one in making us... May be he had choice. Purpose I dont think... I would like to understand the way he made us and probably come to appreciate it. But come to think of it God is everyone's favorite pet!!! Me? I guess I have'nt made up my mind yet... I wish I had that field of infinite intelligence to comprehend. May be then I would'nt be as interested...

But this is what can be made most of life. Spending quality time with friends, finding someone whom you want to live with the rest of your life and holding on to her forever... 

Making a life and then giving it your all. "

-Rosh
[Roshan Dash]
22 Dec 2008