Eyes Speak Lies ...

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