Gone with the wind

The curtains are finally comming down. The odyssey is comming to a close. It was but a matter of few years, but me and my little heart appeared to have traveled a whole eternity and acquired an experience of a life time. The whole gamut of human emotion, so it seemed, was in our grasp. We stood in harmony with all the vicissitudes of life, the heights of elation, the depths of despair, the autumn of defeat and the winter of our discontent… it seems nothing was spared us. Where we affected to be insensible and ignorant, life with ‘silver-sandleled feet’ crept in and awakened us to the various shades of emotion. It was an odd mixture of agony and ecstacy, of disbelief and delight, and of all those curious lights and shadows wherein tolstoy believes the charm of life ultimately resides. Long ago, when we were young and naive, such being the greeness of youth or call it the romance of the age, we both were positively assured that life would be more charitable and less cruel in its dealings. After all, hope is the safest asylum of youth. Unbeknown of what life had in store for us, and insensible to the caprice of fortune, we marched on and kept loading the dice, hoping against hope that it will always roll in our favor. But while youth prides itself on ambition, life revels in its capacity for mischief. With the fullness of time, the fibers of hope began to shrivel, the stoutest ambitions received a fatal blow, and all the romantic illusions suffered a premature erosion. Life deceived us. The strong autumn gales, like a tidal wave, carried the cuckoo’s nest away and shredded it into countless splinters. me and my little heart felt cheated. Perhaps we were slow, and unduly sluggish by the standards of the modern times. In the world of breakneck speed, tardiness is an unforgivable sin… Perhaps I am not making any sense. Perhaps i am bit perplexed myself. Because, often, so often, standing alone on the pedestrian of an elegant road in this city, I have shuddered at the blistering speed of the cars passing my way. That crushing roar, that blistering speed, that relentless mobility, its all so opppresive for an oldschool dreamer like me. Thus, to be condemned for our innocent follies was an affirmation that we failed to live upto the spirit of our times. Had we summoned the arts of deception, cast ourselves in the mould of this brave new world, our sorrows would decidedly have been of different kind. We had neither the speed, nor the masterful arts of chicanery up our sleeves. To be so artless, so grievously, hopelessly ingenuous, in this modern world, as I told to you so, is a fateful sin.

There is a price for every breach of the set rules of the game. And our lapses were far too many. So, when the storms began to gather around my life, when the frail thread of acquaintance with the gods started to snap, I collapsed at first. The darkness began to cave in and my little heart, toto (for I must now assign my heart some appellation, grant it some identity and infuse with a life of its own) cried in indignation. My whole life appeared to assume a purple of gloom. There were nights so heavy with grief that we clamored in helpless despair that the world should come to an abrupt halt, that life itself should cease. We wanted to impeach this divine comedy being played on us. We wanted to scream and let out a barbaric yelp. Me and toto were consumed by disbelief. But we were clueless as to where shall we go, to whom shall we appeal, to what strange alchemy of calm should we consult. We felt beleaguered. Everyday we felt as if we were at war…at war with the indifferent world and a hostile, retributive life with no bayonets, no muskets, no substainal ammunition at our disposal but only our resolve to wage out the battle of defence. As the initial thunder and lightning of grief, inconceivable as it was, gradually subsided a more discomfiting awe began to set in. Henceforth, we looked upon life and its devious ways with curious amazmenet and an incredulous surprise. Such, therefore, was the unbearable lightness of the being.

Then came the trail of tears. There were times when the past rankled so much in the heart, that I walked in the midst of defeaning crescendo of traffic, and calamitious roar of the city with a blind indifference like a clueless spectator scampering through heat of the battle. There were moments so impossibly tragic that amidst a multitude of people though not a muscle moved on my face, though the eyes retained an element of calm, there was a stream of tears, a rain of despair, beating down, drenching my inner world. To be sure, a tear that glides down the inner world has more meoldy than a tear that dances down the face… the former erupts into an orchestra of indignation, the clashing, countervailing sounds of harps, trumpets and trombones, much like the roar of Beethoven’s symphony 9 while the latter evinces an emotion of redemption, closely resembling the calm of Braham’s symphony 1. So alternated my life between defeatism and defiance, between roaring panic and becalmed anxiety.

It might be aptly assumed that the train of thought is heading towards the final judgment, that the story is about to be sealed. Far from it. While life may have cause to rejoice in its capacity for mischief, no amount of trick can be retentive to the strength of spirit. With what ounce of courage we were left, with what little grit that remained in us, me and toto decided to roar back. Though the cards were stalked against us, though the odds were mathematically, prodigoulsy arrayed against us, something inside us revolted. We were bruised, yet we lived. We were battered , yet we fought. Through the battle, through defeat, we proceeded on. And then something dawned on us, a revelation so striking that not only did it swell us with courage and beauty but brought us closer to the special providence behind all this tale which was treated to our ears by an idiot. We realized that we were not alone, not the first and most surely not the last. The scales started to fall from the eyes. The thrashing made us conversant with the pangs of penury, with the affliction of hardship, hunger and lonliness. Such was the school of adversity.

And now, in the sunset of dissolution, with the curtains ringing down, me and toto have decided to forgive everyone, above all, ourselves for trusting and loving a bit too madly, hopelessly & fervently.