Sunday, May 10, 2009

Who inherits the earth?

Untrampled footsteps
Borderline dreams
Occasions for sinners
Alive if it seems
Given to wander
Alone at the shore
Wanton to whisper
I am no more
No, I am not committing suicide but according to some, I am going through a slow death. Moot question is, aren’t all of us dying every moment? Some say why see the negative side of the things,” We are alive and it is beautiful, accept it and enjoy the life in all it’s beauty. Do what you want, take what you want, snatch it.”
This brings me to the fundamental question and I see it unresolved for centuries because the polarity it creates in philosophical thought and in some ways gender thoughts re also driven by it. Eastern Philosophy of ‘Tyag’, ‘Bairag’ and the western philosophy( rather modern ) Power centric. However the fundamental question still remains, Who inherits the earth? I have trying to answer this question through the perspective of three hypothetical characters. Let me start

ME
This is something that has been pricking my mind like a thorn for some days and I am going about my daily chores as always but there is no respite from the pain. Somehow the pain works even while I am asleep. I see the same daylight but it has lost the sheen, radiance. What has happened? What has come to cast a shadow over the moon of my life. I have become so sensistive that the hypocricy of the sorrow that has been masquerading as joy in my heart for all these years, now is tearing me apart and the deepening sense of shame and anguish is no longer hidden, although it tries desparately to take cover. My heart can fathom and see things unperceived so far.
Till the last day of my life, reality will extract with interest every paise that I have invested in the illusions these one and half years of my life. Coming back to the question we started with, What can I achieve by force or pride? Perhaps time has come to accept and bow my head and say that I lack certain qualities, perhaps I do not have that quality of expressing my love in normally accepted ways, appearing to be dominating them all the time, of the world and what women look for most in men. But does this firmness and ruthlessness to achive your desires mean one can unhesitatingly stamp other’s under his/her feet? What is this firmness? Whim or boast of a sick mind , What? Unworthy, undeserving, contemptible, I may be but isn’t love all about loving you for unworthiness. What’s the big deal loving somebody for qualities, Love is all about loving somebody for the inadequacies as my friend Jay puts it.

I wanted to open her mind to possibilities of thoughts and knowledge of the profession she had chosen. I pushed hard sometimes rudely so to jolt her and learn, not fall, grow as a person more balanced emotionally as well as professionally. She is a creature bound by the trappings of imaginary limits she has put on herself and starts admiring and falling into wrong hands any average mind who can glib talk. I wanted her to understand her own strength and love me for the reason I wanted to be loved for.I have always seen men(not in gender terms)as proud,clean, wise and the one's who can rise above their own prejudices to create their own future. I always wonder did the Love I was getting spring from the depths of her heart or it was some fixed ration everyday like the municipal tap water.

B
Am rather was I greedy? Was I aspiring for more than what I got? No, I was just a lover, I wanted a ‘B’ loving me from the strngth of her understanding of me and the world. I had really thought of one thing then – If I wanted to see somebody as free as herself then I would have to lay aside all my claims on her. This disturbed her a lot and she took as alienation. Till today ‘B’ has never understood one aspect of me, I have always considered use of force and deceit as a kind of weakness. The person who is weak does not have the courage to judge fairly, he tries to achieve quick results by unfair means. B does not have the faith in patience. She wanted to run away and stay. My honour never permitted me. Till the time I was wild and arrogant she cried for respect and yearned for my company. When I domesticated, she is gone.
I guess she wanted the fierce, even unjust, wild streak in men. She yearned as much to be terrorized by man as to respect him. I always thought that by enetering a bigger space she would learn to look at the world from a larger perspective and become free of her obsession of domination. However now I realize it is part of her nature. She loves the perverse from within. She wants to spice her all simple and ordinary pleasures so that it burns everything from the tip of her toungue to the base of her entails. Everything else she holds in contempt.
There was no joy in winning an arguement as it never showed difference n our intelligence but the difference in our temperament. She always accused me of being an unromantic person, devoid of imagination. Does it mean that in the lamp of my hear there is Oil ,perhaps a wick too but no flame. I say on the contrary such tempersment belongs to the so called romantics like B. They are without brilliance like flint stones, so much of striking , so much of noise is needed to make you guys spark a little. Those momentary sparks can make you more arrogant but cannot broaden your vision.
B’s pride was her devotion. She took great pride in it and I am sure she excels in it. She would take care of every smzll thing, Clothes,Food, medicine, sleeping time, basically everything. It was her oride and I had to accept defeat as far as devotion was concerned. However whenever I would try to talk to me the same things again and again I would refrain as I felt my reasoning and her emotional impatient nature would not match. She still tried and felt humiliated at the end. I too felt bad.
In the beginning, when she just joined D’s company, she would complain about the nature of ‘D’ . She would talk his womenising and his hitting on her.
D
When I first met D, I too noticed the grossness of avarice in his nature. This fleshly desire is what makes him construct a rhetoric of infatuation about his creed. This eggs him to hit on any woman who joins his organization.
It was the job interview. Yes you are right, I liked the prospect of working with B.
Despite his gaffes, it is his sharp intellect that he valorizes own predilections, just as he needs the gratification of his sensual pleasures. B would tell me of his sojourn with his secretary cum assistant, would even book a room for him to saty with her. I don’t want image of 'D' to get influenced by my pain but wht else to say of guy who has built his business by pimping to the govt officers.
As B is getting married to D, I want to say no more, best of luck and happy life.
Moot question is who inherits the earth? For me, I am at the odds with the order of this colossal life.As she explores her destiny, I will also know that whatever I was preoccupied till now was only a delusion. There, I feel, will not be need for such a deceit. If I live to see that day, I will not fight it, I will simply make myself scarce. Will I use Power, coercion to have my way ( change myself)? Can power compete with the truth? However, what is ‘The truth’? Is my truth ‘the one’? Does the truth of a D absolute wherein you get things somehow. Or the truth of a B will survive?

When facing society,Why is that the men who can contribute the most, are to contribute the most has least say in it. Why all the reason, logic they give is already taken as prejudicesd. What are the scales society(B as an embodiment of society) use to measure them? How do they arrive at them? Do they have any power of reason? This is what separates men from animals, the reasoning mind. Standing at this crossroad of life, I keep wondering, looking for a frnd to whom I bare my mind and soul and when the poet in me looks at myself, he looks at a comrade in arms, hurt in battle. My mind is a battlezone. He desperately wants to carry me to a vantage point from this war to safety. Do love and safety have any destination ?
I guess women are the inhabitant of the real world. My friend and mentor Sharmila once told me,"in the end it all boils down to practical things, I am a woman and I am teaching you this". Nature created men and women in pairs in a way that their union is more genuine than that of any religious mantra they could be imbued with. Women have a full bodied desire that does not dries in self mortification or retreats by the force of counter-arguements. Men by nature are rational and too moral concious as a whole. Neway

Who moves this Earth?

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