Last evening I went to a funeral of an acquaintances who happens to be an activist/militant/intellectual/environmentalist and above all a seasoned womanizer. A tamil man in his 50s who broke many young women’s heart died few days ago succumbing to cancer. Few spoke at the funeral about his political activism, militancy and his days as a young adult….
His three children all in early 20s…What struck all of us was the way the children remembered him which made even the pretensions ones weep genuinely… Both parents are/were activists… probably didn’t have a lot of time to spend with the kids but they remembered there appa as being there when they really needed him especially the 2nd daughter…when she was in Bangalore two months ago, she called her dad saying she was very depressed. He got into the next flight to see her even though he was very sick. Walked with her all over the town to cheer her up…and the other daughter spoke about the school bag when she was only six… There was a flash of silence not loneliness… it was only for a moment. Then into the trap of attachment. Sorrow…….beginning of it..
Coming back from the funeral in the late evening my head is/was spinning around not knowing “what is worse… the fear of death or the death itself”. Love and sorrow seem to go hand in hand. Each taking turn to dominate our lives at a given time. Always in a battle. In between, something called passion.. that ruthless intensity for things, for idea or for a person.. Is this a triangle? - this love, sorrow and passion… I don’t know but there seems to be a connection. I haven’t gone that far to make sense of this then again, should I even want to go there… I guess when passion has a cause it becomes lust.. a fulfillment.. and comes this contradiction. You strive to achieve or maintain a status quo or recapture something that is gone. Can there be a simple urge to understand and can we call that urge passion. The true essence of passion.. will this have a cause… I don’t know..
It seems like we are longing for something, lustful and wanting to escape from something/someone/some idea. In my case, even though at some level I could relate to the urge to understand-most of the time I want to escape.. At the moment, I want to escape from the memories of a relationship. Soon after ending- a physical ending of this relationship- it was easy, since I concentrated only on the negatives of the union but when time passes the pendulum is going towards the good times. I thought it was a phase as well, but the pendulum doesn’t seem to come to a stand still… This takes me to a state of sorrow.. but this sorrow seems to stem from a cause… I want to lessen this intensity.. I am trying to rationalize the fact that we escape the fact that we suffer, like I go to church to worship the symbol of sorrow in trying to rationalize the sorrow away… The psychological pain that prevents me from enjoying everything around me…I could do this only when there is an absolute absence of thought- the thought of the past, memory- and move into self-abandonment…. Not being in a cause state of mind… I must be going mad and that is what who ever reads will think…. Could I ever transcend all of this..
I think for one to understand love one must feel the enormity of sorrow and this means we ought to face the loneliness.. one’s attachment.. ones demand for fame.. the hunger to be loved.. Can I ever reject all explanations and understand the total abandonment of oneself….
