Eyes Speak Lies ...

posted by Swetank Gupta @ 3:46 pm 4 Comments

How I Loved

Love was when the wait was a misery, when waiting was the biggest pleasure. Love was when company was all you desired, when company was all that mattered. Love was when things smiled at you and you smiled back at them. Love was when dreams had no place in life, when it was a dream that you were living. Love was when the heartbeat quickened at the mention of a name, when the heart skipped a beat at the sight of a face. Love was when a voice was music, when a voice could soothe you, when it could break all barriers and remove all shackles. Love was when a touch touched your heart, when a touch was as good as the meeting of your souls. Love was the holding of hands and furtive glances to see if anyone was watching. Love was a wink in public. Love was an unexpected gift. Love was when you stopped yourself from saying those words, when you said something you didn’t intend to, when both of you blushed. Love was when you stooped low, when ego mattered not, when self-respect was not a consideration. Love was what you carried with you. Love was when you were with your love. Love was the gifting of a rose. Love was your happiness.

Love was the tinge of green in the white expanse of snow. Love was the aroma of the rain-wetted ground. Love was the chirping of a bird. Love was the setting of the sun, the splashes of color on the canvas they call the sky. Love was the game of hide and seek that moon played at night. Love was the birth of a sapling, the blooming of a flower. Love was screaming of the wind. Love was the distant elusive view. Love was the twinkling of the stars. Love was the peak of the tallest mountain. Love was the tear in your eye. Love was the breaking of your voice. Love was the shaking of your arms. Love was when you went weak in the knees. Love was when you could think of no one else. Love was when you wanted to think of no one else. Love was when no one else mattered. Love was when you mattered, when love mattered.

I thought this was love.

Then I fell in love.

I had a responsibility towards her. I came to know that was love. I so wanted to tell her but could not hurt her. That, I knew was love. I spent all my time with her, but it was never enough. Every moment of mine was smeared in love. The more I thought of her, the more she dominated my thoughts. That became of love. I forgot my aims and her aims were mine. That became of love. I felt she wanted me around. That became of love. I thought she needed me. Thus changed the definition of love. I thought I was being selfless and she could not even comprehend my depths. Thus warped my thoughts, love. I thought I showed strength when I made her cry. It gave me satisfaction. Thus I loved. I wanted her to do as I wished. Love guided me to it. I let her speak and never let my thoughts out, afraid I might lose her. Thus love had me bound. I spewed poison behind her back as love would not let me reprimand her. Thus love it was, that turned me into a monster.

Love was but my perception of her. Love was what I wanted of her. Love was my happiness under a façade of her happiness. Love was my desires fulfilled but at her cost. Love was mine, but it was her responsibility to bear the pains of it. Love is blind, but she was supposed to stumble in my stead. Love inspires you. I tried my best to inspire her from my love. Love is supposed to be beautiful. I wanted her to acknowledge that I was beautiful and so were my feelings. Love knows no limits. My limits always stretched a little farther than the space she allowed. Love is the happiness of the one you love. I rejoiced when I gave her that happiness. If that happiness came from someplace else, I squirmed at my failure to be the cause of it every single time. Her happiness did not give me pleasure. I wanted her to be happy at my success. I wanted her success to depend on me.

I succeeded in all of the above.

I realized, I had started with love.

I remained.

Love ended.

So much for the king of all virtues, being selfless in love. So much for the paragon of emotions, LOVE.

posted by Swetank Gupta @ 5:10 pm 16 Comments

The Masters Of Their Craft

The following extract is the end of the story, 'The Dead' by James Joyce. Considered to be one of the most beautiful and poetic prose of all times, the three paragraphs leave a lasting effect on your senses, specially in retrospect. Just LOVE it for what it is.

After this, is a poem by Emily Dickinson. It is one of my personal favourites, as again, it plays on the senses. The setting is ethereal, other worldly and there is a softness to the whole scene, that is essentially indescribable. Feel it for yourself.

My respects to the two of them.


JAMES JOYCE

"The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover's eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. "


EMILY DICKINSON

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove's door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!

posted by Swetank Gupta @ 3:39 pm 3 Comments

A Lingering Thought

"He picked himself up, staggered to his feet and trudged forward into the wounded
sunset. The dull crimson, fading into blackness, seemed to be a reflection of his
innermost self. He had always prided himself at being impervious to pain, of all
sorts. He felt pain but brushed it off easily. He did not need to evade it, to dodge
facts, to look away, in order to shield himself from pain. He faced them as they
came. Brutally. And he won. This time, the fight with himself had gone on longer
than he had anticipated. He knew that he would come out on top but he had conceded
far too much ground to his adversary. Pain had never seeped so deep into his
existence before this day. He was numb from shock. Even the realization of shock was
absent. He had known shock to be violent, screaming, jolting. This shock worked its
way slowly into his whole being, overpowering him from within. He still felt a dull
throbbing in his temples. When the wound was fresh, it seemed that his head would
explode, as if there were drums beating inside his skull, as if someone was tearing
him apart from within. It had since subsided into a dull throbbing.

At the moment of revelation, he had had to shut out the reality, to be his normal
self. It took his utmost efforts to keep his body from shaking. The amount of
control he exercised was admirable. Later, he sat in his bed fighting convulsions.
Some six hours passed before he realized that he had to get up and go through the
daily motions of life, or they would know. That was a slip he could not afford. He
dragged himself out of his bed and went about his actions in a mechanical way,
feeling nothing, seeing nothing, acting through reflexes developed during the course
of his life. He felt a void within himself, a big empty space, dark, as if a chunk
of his existence had been cut out of him and all he could allow himself to do was
help it along. He could let it take no other course. He felt a chasm all around him
but no will to get out of it. It was as if all his energy had been drained out to
the last drop. He loathed himself for this weakness that had not existed before. The
more he loathed himself, the weaker he wanted to become.

He could not share his pain with anyone. He could not let any other soul know of it
even being present, let alone acknowledge it in its complete, devastating agony. He
had to bear it alone because if he didn’t, then she would have to. It could not go
unnoticed. It was past that stage. She, who could probably bear this as well, but it would leave her shattered. To pick up those broken pieces and make them wholesome would be nearly impossible. No, he could not let that happen even in his thoughts, let alone reality. So what if she was the cause of it. She did it for self preservation and for his benefit. He could not let her fail at this point of time. He would be the sole bearer of this flag of their relationship. It was a beautiful relationship,even if this was what gave it beauty.

All things beautiful, do not have to be rosy and all things painful, do not have to be tragic. Beauty lies in pain as well. The beauty of endurance, the beauty of perseverance, the beauty of tolerance, the beauty of silence, at times, the beauty of insolence and the heightened beauty of solitude. That beauty, that love is apparent only to the one who suffers, suffers every moment, every day, a day on the pyre but when he walks out of the ordeal, his is the true victory. A victory over pain, over desires, a paragon of purity, with every shred of immodesty burnt to ashes in the fire that burnt him. He thought of all this and he knew it to be true but it did not appease him or lessen his suffering. The only way he could keep his sanity intact was to concentrate on the task immediately at hand and that was to put one step after another to keep walking steadily. He did not know where he was going or why but he had to keep walking till he knew how to deal with his new found pain. He had to go back to her, for her sake, for his own. He embraced the cause and he hugged the pain, and retraced his steps. "

posted by Swetank Gupta @ 3:18 pm 2 Comments