Skip to main content

ABANDONMENT

Image Courtesy: https://www.hippopx.com/

 Abandonment, true to its nature, stays.

There is a sense of depression. Compulsive thinking is killing. Less of activity and more of thinking. Scenarios and scenarios. Visualizations of the impossible. Killer demand of the present and reality stay unaffected. He manifests unwarranted comparisons and constant delusions. Health worries which never was a worry before. Lack of a social life for want of a socially compatible environment furthers incompatibility.

Resistance and resistance to take the right call and make the right move. The worst; being let down, neglected, unwanted, unloved and unacknowledged.

The past only makes it bitter. A bitter past which was no better than its past, led to a worse present which definitely looked promising for the worst future. This paradox should have made the present standing a worthy position by default. But it never feels so!

Mistakes and unhealthy attachments grew. Momentary bonds grew, providing little relief in the longer run even if they managed for few hours. Questioning and questioning and questioning. Comparing and comparing and comparing. Hopelessness and hopelessness and hopelessness. Lethargy and lethargy and lethargy. Unwillingness to negotiate with the predicament forced negotiations heavily tipped against him.

The end was in sight. It didn’t matter. But even that seemed elusive. Elusiveness defined him. Everything evaded him. Weather, health, company, success, events, life, wealth; even death, failure, solitude, ill-health, bad weather, poverty; everything.

Pleasure, principle and practice of the day was all he had to look for, each morning. One would assume at least monotony had his back. No, it didn’t. Something always came up and something always let him down.

Why would discipline not come to him, if he was super aware of everything that went on and everything that bothered him? He couldn’t answer. He slept and he slept some more. The night grew into day and he awoke only to get ready to sleep again. He’s been dressing up and going about, only to go back to sleep.

It was easy. It avoided all questions, therefore looking for answers never came up. 

But what about the times when, just like everything else, sleep too eluded him? Well, he won’t bother if he can doze off now. For the next time might be the elusive sleep.

Sometimes, he would like to pretend nothing is wrong. This is how everyone is or supposed to be, isn’t it? Then the moment of realization. Perhaps not. Doesn’t seem so, when he looks around.

Purpose, that elusive beast or fairy or whichever one its thought to be, seems to be gracing everyone’s day, unlike his.

Why couldn’t he die, then? Seems an easy thought but a very difficult thing. It evades most desirably as the will to live doesn’t. Perhaps, that is the only non-elusive part. The willingness to live.

But, how is it willingness if he is not exactly willing it?

No, the correct word is ‘drags’ he decides. Life drags him. He doesn’t will it to, but it does, so he survives. He drags. Pathetically maybe, but the celebrations and the motions and the ablutions are all a drag. Maybe they will too evade. 

Not this day, though.

He survives long enough to explain it to me. He might live long enough after that or maybe not. He will be remembered or maybe not. Even possibility and predictability evade him. What sticks then, to stick this further to describe him?

Abandonment.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Kindergarten Eye View of an Ideal World!

One fine day a child was put forth to the mercy of mortals on the 1st of Jan 1986! This is his take on a new world around him.  "Here I was treading into a different world and you have no idea of the magnitude of 'different'; A place they called school, about which I was made to feel excited as if being taken to Disneyland. How another was it... oh… no adult could ever imagine! Nervous, anxious, choked whatever you call the feeling, I would simply describe it as being ‘on the verge of tears’. The build-up leading to the D-day (first day at school) was cleverly planned. I was beaming with a false sense of pride developed from reciting stupid somethings, in an alien but sweet language, to every single visitor at home. But all these rituals had an ulterior motive! I was going to find out for the first time that, apart from my cousins and other kids in my building, there are innumerable 3 or 4 year olds' in the world. Apparently, they too were tricked into comin...

MAYA - PART 1

Nothing in that moment of tranquil sun suggested anything wrong. I was standing in a dreamy room overlooking the Parvati Valley in the laps of Himalayas. She liked nature so much that she painted her own little outdoors on the walls. A rising, glistening sun froze-rising forever on the golden sky that was her wall. It complemented the real one for most part of the year, like brothers posing one in front of the other. She had told me that her mornings began comparing the real and her wall sun. Real and surreal. Both were both to her depending on mood. On the opposite wall was a dark and dense valley, again, just like the one outside. It played heavily on the minds of first-time visitors to her shack. But it comforted her, she said. Sometimes, over and against the real view. I first saw Maya in the clouds - somewhere over the Caspian Sea. She was standing in front of the restroom from where I was taking forever to come out. Flights make it harder for me to go! ...

IDENTITY

I opened my eyes. The left one felt skin obstructing its opening. The right one opened up to a sight of nostrils; beautiful, pale, white nostrils. But it took me both 5 minutes and a year to make sense of this sight. The flooded banks of the mighty Brahmaputra had brought me, or us, asunder onto a remote bank. My head was resting on a woman's belly. She was motionless, just like I was 5 minutes ago. I sat up. On my other side I could see and hear the river in full spate. Hut material, animal carcass and endless stream of branches and twigs drifted past as a stream within a stream. I tried hard to make sense of the sight around. The moment I realised I had leaned on a woman, I jerked myself on my feet and away from her. I looked around. Not a soul. Only nature made sound. I pushed myself for answers towards the woman. She was dead...  Three months ago an Indian journalist had landed at the Guwahati International Airport. Next to him on the same flight was an anxiou...

This Night

Laila is playing Holi with her relatives in their ancestral home. In a remote Uttar Pradesh village, this has been the yearly tradition of the Chaudhari family. One that Laila always looks forward to. But this year her anticipation was adulterated with dread. The elders say they will wait for her graduation. But preceding Chaudhari marriages indicate otherwise. Elsewhere in a village of Haryana state, three men died after consuming spurious liquor. Their wives are crying their hearts out. These tears are mixed with pain; not only from the loss. As they wail, one of the ladies' sore throat hurts. Another woman's badly bruised lips and chest hurt as the salty liquid flows down her face. The third is pregnant for the fourth time and has travelled back from her parent's home for the funeral. As is the practice and widely believed, no, she was not at her parents for pregnancy period but to collect the latest instalment of promised dowry. The wound marks on her privates ...

In-Person Stories (Part - Whichever I Recollect)

I wanted to publish a detailed account of a dear friend's wedding. So I copiously took some notes while going through the revelries, being very much a part of them. Or so my concerned friend thought! But those painstakingly gathered observations got lost with time, people and life. Majorly disappointed, I thought of giving up on writing this self-anticipated account of a much awaited event in our little lives. I never thought my straight friend would be considerate enough to take a partner.  Not that he was a misogynist or a misogamist. On the contrary he has gone out of his way to make women feel at ease, whenever he came across one. In casual parlance, he sucked up to people (read girls), especially if he ever got to know one. Even to the discomfort of his friends like me. He had attended the most number of family marriage functions as the rest of us put together and does so still, dutifully. Although he was, as they say, never 'matrimonially inclined.' But some trickery,...