Questions for the New Year

Why is it that when we sleep, when we are siezed by slumber, our senses abducted by Morpheus, defended by Varuna, and when the alarm clock mercilessly reverberates in our ears, we cling onto every slipping second with a desire hitherto unknown in our waking hours? Why is it that why hunger impales us, when our gastrointestinal juices cascade like a waterfall upon the abyss of our stomaches, we hold the palest grain of rice with a renewed esteem, a revolutionary change from the usual culinary disdain when the dam of our vile bellies are clogged with rice? Why is it that when kisses rain upon our cheek, our arms securely linked with the torch bearer of our amorous flame, our minds welded, souls blended, that the utterances of our mouths and meditations of our hearts exhibit the most saddening transience, vanishing in the flutter of an eyelid once the tempest of conflict extinguishes our love? Why, in these circumstances, do we escape from every mirror, every reflector and prophet of truth, every harbinger that mocks our inconsistency? Perchance the lemongrass fragrance at the other end be infinitely more tantalising to my nostrils? Or my reflection upon the placid lake be not as unforgiving? If a soul were to have two dispositions, as a coin two sides, as the day barely tinctures the night, may my arcane Other overwhelm my troubled locution and bathe me in a therapeutic light.

The Torn Letter

Witness "The Torn Letter", by Thomas Hardy.

I tore your letter into strips

No bigger than the airy feathers

That ducks preen out in changing weathers

Upon the shifting ripple-tips.

In darkness on my bed alone

I seemed to see you in a vision,

And hear you say: 'Why this derision,

Of one drawn to you, though unknown?'

Yes, eve's quick mood had run its course,

The night had cooled my hasty madness;

I suffered a regretful sadness

Which deepened into real remorse.

I thought what pensive patient days

A soul must know of grain so tender,

How much of good must grace the sender

Of such sweet words in such bright phrase.

Uprising then, as things unpriced

I sought each fragment, patched and mended;

The midnight whitened ere I had ended

And gathered words I had sacrificed.

But some, alas, of those I threw

Were past my search, destroyed for ever:

They were your name and place;

And never did I regain those clues to you.

I learnt I had missed, by rash unheed,

My track; that, so the Will decided,

In life, death, we should be divided,

And at the sense I ached indeed.

That ache for you, born long ago, Throbs on;

I never could outgrow it.

What a revenge, did you but know it!

But that, thank God, you do not know.

This poem tells of a person who, upon receiving a mysterious epistle, initally offers tremendous resistance to unravel its contents lets he falls prey to an unmistakable power (a dangerously indeterminate perlocution in the Austinian sense) that the letter would wield over him. However, in an ironic twist, his physical destruction of the letter only serves to accentuate his anguish. For when he eventually succumbs to temptation and ravenously devours the remnants of the message, he realises that the return address; that vital umbilical cord through which the awe-inspired, fragile infant draws nourishment from a surreal nobility, is lost forever. Thus the ultimate tragedy- while seeking out initially to avoid being manipulated by a force so powerful yet so subtle and tender, he finds himself completely crushed by his longing instead. And he still musters enough vanity for self deception, thinking that his plight remains unknown to the perpetuator! How could this be, when by the very act of confession, he has already declared it unabashedly!

Notice the singular, intense power that our unnamed letter writer holds over the reader, monstrously twisting his ego and personality within a matter of lines. Is it the case that letter-writing has unwittingly manufactured phantoms of both writer and reader, the former who appeared in the latter's dream, and the latter whose existence is painfully obvious? Kafka was right about the "dislocation of souls" whenever letters are crafted. So was Derrida, typically astute in his observation of a letter's formidable performative ambivalence. Two ill-defined loci of consciousness negotiating with intentions cast in ink and stone. What insanity! All this should make one shudder and meditate upon the power of the written word- a blessing, curse, promise, threat or a silent kiss, all uttered in the physical absence of the recipient- the infinite gap of feedback, its latent abusive power to shape and mold, to trap an innocuous recipient into the creation of a duplicated, diminished self, simply for the invidious purpose of aligning with concocted intents and representations.

So next time we write letters, please think twice, think thrice, lest we manufacture phantoms that return to haunt us for eternity.

Night of Silence

Night of silence, sweet remembrance
Floods through the years to where hearts are broken
Skies are golden, salvation's omen
A divine Pandora I dare not open

Candles burning, children singing
Rich and poor alike are longing
Spirits and tides unite in rising
Joy and grief must collide - not the least bit surprising

Christmas. Birth.

Musty festive air fills our nostrils and quirky jingles serenade our ears. The latest edition of Christmas is here. For millions around the world, Christmas is of monumental significance. It is the literal realisation of a promise; a promise of hope and salvation, of freedom from bondage and captivity. It is, retrospectively, an inspiring reminder that abject humility can transform into greatness, a heartbreaking new trickle of life that would someday coalesce into the ultimate sacrifice. It is about the celebration of the birth of a messiah. It is about the celebration of birth. It is about birth.

Surely there is little doubt in the tremendous joy at the birth of a saviour. A birth that is transcendentally altruistic. But what about the rest of us? Aren't a saddening number of births in the world today, a vain projection of lofty wishes and dreams from the parents unto the crying infant? Don't we name our children in the bizarre hope that they will be shaped by its significance, like clay in a mould? Whether the child would someday turn into a messiah or not, I have a troubling conviction that giving birth is a profoundly tragic violation of individual freedom - it may not be possible, but the soon-to-be-existent soul did not, and could never grant the sacred permission of wanting to be brought into a world of suffering and grief. Of wanting even to exist. To laugh at the pleasures of life, to fall in and out of love, to spin the wheel, to wound and heal, to shed tears of pain, only to relive it all again. It is little wonder that a new life, evicted from the illusory comfort of its amniotic sag, first and foremost erupts into unstoppable crying. "I sometimes wish I was never borne". Mere words of spite from a downfallen spirit? Or sublime echoes from the loss of an ultimate freedom?

Nonetheless, few words have ever changed the world, unless it be your very own. Christmas is still here, the mistletoes blossom, the bright lights still taint the sky, the charade of life rolls on, the flames of love and joy still burn brilliantly. I rummage my soul for the almost forgotten tune of joy, may yours resonate as loudly as ever! Merry Christmas.

The Fatigue of Humanity

The fatigue of humanity comes to thus...onerous labours over the betterment of our environment inviting ridicule and backlash from Mother Earth, whom we once beheld in sacred union. Hell hath no fury, no fury like a woman scorned. Why then do we cease looking outwards and begin a feverish introspection of our moralities and philosophies, only to find a vacuous black hole absorbing every fibre of sanity, non-existence mocking existence? Gloomy eyes cast upwards yield no better fulfilment, for a harsh judgemental pair of eyes stare us right back down. Peer beneath the depths, into the ravine perhaps? How self-defeating! That is the precise result we try to avoid right from the start. A tussle between bee and hive, bear and cave, dog and kennel, alligator and swamp, the latter crushing the former into pulp - our tragic destiny, peppered with sprinkles of delight for those who have long dreamt of annihilation! Lo and behold, we have come full circle, back to the Vedas, the Avesta, back to the code of Hammaburi, back to pre-genesis nothingness, the primordial soup of Brahma. Sweet delectable gravy! Merrily I purloin a scoop with the ladle of naked unknowing, and ingest to the last drop my portion of ancestral inheritance. Hear the final scream from my last fragments of esteem, respect the sanctity of my bardo's dream. Hush, be sweet, as we passively concede, our felicity will eventually be complete.

Nietzsche's aphorisms

I am not fully in agreement with Nietzschean philosophy (sometimes I do not even begin to understand him) but there is something charming about the man himself. The forcefulness and conviction of his writing truly lives up to the calling of his own creed, that interminable surge towards a Will to Power, the discarding of pettifogging, ineffectual notions of morality and the emergence of the triumphant Superman. An intimidating and questionable ideal by anyone's standards, but he has left behind gems of good writing, and good writing heals my soul in such a profound way! Here I would like to share some of his aphorisms - compressed bits of wisdom - may it also bring a smile to your face, a muse for your intellect, a whiff of fine ointment to your soul.

The charm of knowledge would be slight, if there were not so much embarassment to overcome on the route to knowledge.

Love of one man is a babarity; for it is practised at the expense of all the rest.

It is dreadful to die of thirst in the sea. Must you then salt your truth so much that it can no longer quench your thirst?

What? A great man? I always see only the actor of his own ideal.

Anyone who fights with monsters should make sure that he does not in the process become a monster himself. And when you look for a long time into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

What is done out of love always happens beyond good and evil.

Ultimately one loves one's desires and not the objects one desires.

"He dislikes me." -- "Why?" -- "I'm no match for him." -- Has a man ever answered this way?

And my personal favourite: Truth is a woman, we should not treat her with force.

Kindred Spirit

While sitting at the desk it struck me all over again. I have become poor. I have eliminated all leisure and luxury from life, no movie, no fanciful outing along the crowded streets, nothing new for myself. I laughably tighten the strings around a vacuum. I avoid taking transport, I walk whenever possible. I don't purchase anything. I don't eat much, I plop in the maggi as often as possible, thankfully lunch is provided at work so I eat as much as possible, appearing like a pig in the process. I weave a small haven around myself but the warmth and security boils over into a heartwrenching heat as the layers increase, tears bubbling in the cauldron.

But does it bubble and boil to the last drop? No, for a sudden kindred spirit is fervently ignited as my student rolls in on his chair. Hot beads of perspiration trickle from his forehead, a tongue swiftly emerges to lick them away. He had just eaten, no delicacy for sure, but nothing short of a piping bowl of hot soup to heartily wash the inadequacies away. I am transfixed by a pair of determined eyes, as somewhere out there we are trudging down the road, patched-up trenchcoats against merciless storms, motivated by essence and not by wantonness, edified by the immediate moment and not by wistful visions of invisible mountains and valleys. We are blinded and cannot see far, but all the more intense and lucid everything appears before our tired eyes. For short, sweetened moments of pleasure our hearts may yearn, as our karmic debts bid us slowly unlearn.

Above all else, if the noose is to be tightened at dawn, let the final night shimmer with love and philosophy.

The delicacy of grief

In some way, shape or form, grief makes its grand entrance into our lives, with half an intent to greatly overstay its welcome. And hence the formidable variety of ways to explicate its arrival...we say the old gentleman has befallen, like raindrops from the sky; has streamed down the landscape of our being, like an endlessly meandering river; has invaded and pervaded our core like a draconian physician, a barbaric warrior. When thus impelled, when thus passivized into the role of an unwilling recipient, we become subordinate to the most fragile of human weaknesses, the intangibly powerful instinct of sorrow. What naked and laughable irony, amidst rhetoric of mastery over our destiny! Even a child can press clay better, though its expression may be just as forlorn. Either we recant every noble salutation unto ourselves, reverse the wheels of progress and evolution, or we reinvoke that most fundamental drive of humanity, that spark of ravenous hunger that first lunged a spear into some hapless beast. We revisit every cauldron, every melting pot, every jar of clay, every receptacle of nutrition....and concoct the delicacy of grief, the feast of reprieve.

The Cow

It's about time for another koan, to beef up my collection.

A cow passed through a window. Its head, its body and legs all passed through. Why did the tail not pass through?

I cannot resist asking, in the first place, what exactly constitutes a cow. Is a tail-less cow still a cow? Must it possess a head, four legs, a tail in perfect entirety, to satisfy the criteria of cowhood? And this is only at the level of its anatomy. Consider other constituents that could philosophically compose the cow - its soul, its linguistic label, the arbitrary string of phonemes that is linked to the concept of "cow", and the mental representation of our venerable beast in your mind. All of these components are likely to be sufficient, with none being necessary to sanction the cow's existence. When I introduce a cow, via language, into your conceptual frame by the fearsome utterance "there is a cow....", which of these is triggered foremost?

In the circumstances of such an existential flux, our marooned mooing machine cannot hope to saunter past the window unscathed. As the question so innocuously yet elegantly asserted, fragments of cowhood, exemplified by the missing tail, have been silently and dangerously filtered away by our restrictive, componentially-driven conceptual schemata. Lest we erupt into contrived mourning for the demised appendage, I am inclined to interpret the cow and window as a metaphor for our thoughts and our mind, respectively. Open up the window and do not scrutinize the cow from the inner vantage point, bolted shut from new perspectives. Reach your head out and embrace the cow, embrace the world, revel in the perfect imperfection of its complete cowhood. Partake in the coherent incoherence of our unfathomable mother nature. And I guarantee this is all she asks of you.

For the heck of it

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Moon

Moon! You solitary ebullient disc, you shimmering storehouse of withered dreams. You flirtatious nymphette behind a veil of clouds. You sentinel of an eternal night, intoxicating soma, bittersweet nectar of the gods, wine of the heavenly guests. You beacon of souls, you lover of wistful stardust. You rekindle then you falter, you reflection upon still water. Seduction is your habit, tranquility your guise. Beneath your warm light, we waltzed past sorrowful eyes. Moon, will you outshine the sun any further? Is it destiny that darkness shall engulf light, the ravens echo the melody of the night? Longingly she smiles, blessed night mother, weaving her web of love across continents and skies. Moon shine moon, dawn signals your departure too soon. I hurl a stream of sentiments towards the heavens, in it a fragment of my soul, a sacrifice to be truly whole. That thou art, that thou art, death of ancient wisdom tears me apart. Rest, rest, the young sun shelters your fatigue. Three watches later will I continue to seek.

Of Princes and Kings

Princes and kings wear their crowns upon their heads, gems and jewels they can scarcely see; their power invisible to self, till it slowly slithers down with the passage of time, and occludes their vision. What then remains of their majesty? For loneliness and fear turns them inwards, they lose the upward glance, bitterness is the just recompense for a lifetime of romance. Along a protracted destiny their own shadows incessantly ambush them, spilling acute moments of fear like fermented beetlejuice. Unspeakable torture, these tightrope walkers of fate. There is nowhere to run, great king, lest you choose to abdicate. An occasional repreive may await the kings, when they chance upon an uninhabited cave and seek a kindly repose, scattering wild nuts upon forsaken bear hide, a portrait of scattered pride. But then fear persecutes them again, from brazen skies to sea. Vamoose, pidgeon! Harbinger! 'Tis the same fear that persecutes me.

Attack and Prophylaxis

While I openly confess that football is indeed "The Beautiful Game", I feel that chess, or more affectionately known to some of us as "attack and prophylaxis", is just as beautiful.

I love the game and have played it since I was young, being active on the national competition scene for quite a number of years. Unlike what many think, chess is far from being a mere caricature of some obscure ancient Indian battlefield, although its historical origins point that way. It is about quiet passion, inner intensity, overcoming your opponent with a superior display of tactics, endurance and determination. Above all, chess is like a dance; a tango between two lovers of the game, each taking her step, both silently gearing up towards an explosive, beautiful climax over 64 innocuous looking sqares.

Possibly nothing else sharpens the mind and resurrects an ancentral lust for battle quite like the game. Former world champion Emmanuel Lasker paid it the highest salutation and tribute by these golden words, "Chess, like life, like love, is a struggle".

An Ode to Eternity

If I be fond of the sea, and all that is of the sea, and fondest of it when it angrily contradicts me;

If the exploring delight be in me, which impels sails to the undiscovered, if the seafarer's delight be in my delight;

If ever my rejoicing has called out: "The shore has vanished, now has fallen from me the last chain";

"The boundless roars around me, far away sparkle for me space and time, well cheer up! Old heart!"

Oh how could I not be ardent for eternity, and for the marriage ring of rings - The Ring of the Return?

Never yet have I found the woman by whom I should like to have children, unless it be this woman whom I love: For I love you Oh Eternity!

For I love you, Oh Eternity!

(Adopted from Thus Spake Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzche)

In the face of such sublime artistry, I have no words left to speak.