Remnants of Remembrance

“…when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.”
(Jane Austen)

Scars are but evidence of life. Evidence of choices to be learned from, evidence of wounds, wounds inflicted by memories. Memories are like bullets. Some whiz by and only spook you. Others tear you open and leave you in pieces. Sometimes the scars remind you that you survived; sometimes they tell you that you have healed. Scars fade with time. And the ones that never go away, well, they build character, maturity, and caution.

Memories leave a light in the eyes, just as plain as scars. Versification of one such estranged and dyspnoeic moment, when painful memories and a torturous migraine decided to waltz in unison, presented in the form of a set of Haikus and two poignant melodies:

In Search of a Requiem

“What we seek is some kind of compensation for what we put up with.”
(Haruki Murakami)

Tune into this calm instrumental and hope you enjoy the narrative that follows:

“So, Mr… tell me what’s wrong?”

“What do you mean? There’s nothing wrong. I…”

“Then why are you here?”

“Well… because I have nowhere else to go.”

“Umm, that comes under my definition of something being wrong.”

“I guess you’re right then.”

“So we are at the beginning again. You are here at… 6 o’clock in the morning, at a mental hospital, correct?”

“Wow! It’s six already? Jeez!”

Lost in Rhythm

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment.
There is no why.”
(Kurt Vonnegut)

Time and Life, whether you want it or not, have a way of going in circles. Ideally, you’d want it to be a linear path—you’d always know where you were going, you’d always be able to move on and leave everything else behind. Instead, you always find yourself where you had begun. You forget things you try to remember. You remember things you’d rather forget. The most frightening thing about memory is that it leaves no choice. It has mastered an incomprehensible art of forgetting. It erases, it smudges, and it fills in the blank spaces with details that don’t exist.

But however you remember it—or choose to remember it—the past is the foundation that holds your life in place. Without its support, you’d have nothing for guidance. What defines you isn’t “where you’re going”, but “where you’ve been”. There are things that will never change, things you will carry along always.

Time is an equal opportunity employer. Rich people can’t buy more hours. Scientists can’t invent new minutes. And you can’t save time to spend it on another day. What you perceive as precious is not ‘time’, but the one point that is ‘out of time’: the Now. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.

Unfortunately, the clock is ticking, the hours are going by. The past increases, the future recedes. Possibilities decrease, regrets mount. Time is such a waste of time to think about, because the longer you reflect on it, the more of it you lose. Yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream. So, flow with the rhythm and start counting how many Now’s you’ve collected and preserved yet!

Owing to some liminal displacement, my thoughts got a bit carried away. Hence, this poetic outcome:

The Samaritan’s Gift

“A single act of kindness throws out roots in all directions,
and the roots spring up and make new trees.
The greatest work that kindness does to others is that
it makes them kind themselves.”
(Amelia Earhart)

What goes around comes around – and with kindness, it really does. Research shows that being kind to others increases our own levels of happiness as well as theirs. What’s more, it has a knock-on effect: kindness is contagious, so it makes our communities nicer places to be.

Kindness can be as simple as a smile, a thank-you, or a word of encouragement. It’s a way of connecting, even if only for a brief moment, with those we pass in our daily lives. It doesn’t have to cost anything or take much time – what’s important is that, it’s an act of genuine care and thoughtfulness for another person.

To be kind, it’s important for us to be aware of the people around us, and to notice their needs and feelings. We all have an innate compassion but sometimes it takes bit of time for us to tune into it. As the great Dalai Lama says: “Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”

A visual insight presented as a poem, observed while I had gone out for one of my evening strolls and accidentally thought of enjoying some finger-licking KFC pieces:

The Doppelgänger

“At what exact moment
did the real turn into the unreal, reality into reverie?
Where was the border? Where is the border?”
(Milan Kundera, ‘Identity’)

~ 1 ~

A book of sordid tales lay open on the desk, my gaze fixed on a photograph. The eyes stare from the page: holding my attention, groping my mind, fiddling with my senses.

He seems familiar.

I had seen this man before, and yet, I was not sure whether I recognized him; only that the feeling of déjà-vu wouldn’t go away. It seemed he had a hold on me. I was mesmerized by his stare, hypnotized by the thin smile, engrossed by his rugged features. He was wizened and aged, and I sensed a deep evil in his eyes.

I think this man has a dark heart!

Slightly flustered, I walked away from the book, out through the door of the curiosity shop in which I’d been browsing, and across the few yards to where my car was parked. I got into the car, started her up, and drove the couple of miles to my house. Pulling into the drive, I noticed that my front door was ajar.

Someone is in my house.

Flashback

“Flashback
To the days when the nights were young
Flashback
When we could do no wrong
Flashback
We used to dance to the light of dawn
Flashback
When our hearts were so strong”
(British band ‘Imagination’)

The idol of Goddess Durga standing tall, mesmerizingly beautiful, epitomizing the divine; the sweet scent of flowers, pure and heavenly; smoky atmosphere of burning incense; the familiar beats of dhaak; gleeful children and full-blown adults alike, dancing with burning coconut coirs in a clay pot; crowd dressed in the most glittering finery; mouth-watering dishes, wonderfully decorated lights, and soulful rabindra sangeet.

YES. It is that time of the year again, when the brain gets into a fierce fight with the heart. While on the one hand, work and prospects for a ‘better, brighter future’ keep clouding the mind, on the other, nostalgia attempts to tear the heart apart. Silent sighs and sweet memories are all that one is left with.

Discord

“So what is discord at one level of your being
is harmony at another level.”
(Alan Watts)

A short poem on the changing times and the duplicitous society.