landscapes of life

My dear friends - you want to address them - don’t reduce the landscapes to pretty backgrounds for your pictures. Where is your sense of wonder? Look around. The solitary boat in the middle of the sea. That’s what life can be like. Or perhaps is. Maybe Donne was wrong. Maybe man is an island.

Maybe we are these crows. Hovering around. Scrounging around for food. We, with our voracious appetites. Our hunger is not merely physical – our minds, our souls - seek nutrition. Can the senses satisfy this/ us? As eyes devour breathtaking scenes; ears listen to sounds – laughter, waves, love, sparrows, friendship; as olfactory senses are rewarded (and occasionally punished) – fresh grass, sea, tea, cigarettes; the tongue relishes sugar cubes, bitter coffee; and the skin feels the warmth of the morning sun, the vitalizing touch of sea breeze, the melting glow of borrowed passion.

Even as the constant chatter of shattered dreams plays out in your head; ‘time for new dreams’ – you tell yourself in the odd moment of quiet. That doesn’t last. And you go back to gazing at the sea. (feeling at sea). The lone boatman out to catch dreams with an old tattered net. The sheen of optimism on the surface of the sea dances and entices him. But he knows dreams inhabit the dark and the deep waters. Treacherous. He knows. The glamour is for that crowd sitting by the shore marveling at the waves, living out their lives in sugar cubes and sachets of tomato ketchup. He is part of the glamour for them, his rickety vessel skipping about as an epitome of an ideal life. Perhaps they have their own struggles. Perhaps the idealism of life is possible only from a distance.

Meanwhile crows peck at litter boxes. More cups of tea and coffee are ordered. Conversations and silences fight it out. The sun becomes oppressive. People seek shadows. The boatman finds company. Or competition. Waves crash into rocks in fierce passion or hateful contempt. Lovers sitting by them get drenched in the moods of the sea, their own stories indelibly coloured. Crickets and flies make home of sticky afternoons which you saunter across in a state of blissful homelessness.

Where is home? Apparently, home is where the heart is, or the other way around. Perhaps there are times when heartlessness is the desired state of being. Not cruelty, not blinding self obsession, not a lack of empathy (though these may be empowering in themselves). A certain sense of freedom, of opening oneself to unimagined vistas of the mind as well as the body, to go beyond the comforts one sets for oneself, to feel at ease with the scorching sun, and the rain, the walking in and out of unknown terrains, exploration, getting stranded, oneself – in all the choices one makes, to constantly question and be unquestioning in final acceptance, to acknowledge shallowness and depth with equality. Perhaps equanimity may be too much to ask for, perhaps we like prejudice – isn’t there a warmth reserved for loved ones – family, friends, etc? Trust and love as their well earned legacy. And then there is the alternate narrative that embraces all. You sit on that fence between the two beliefs. (where else could one have found you?) it doesn’t amuse you that you have chosen the fence once again. There is plenty to play with but you find a strange comfort in the discomfort that is the fence. Maybe that is what homelessness is about. Or contentment in the state.  There is no place called home. No yearning to return. No Eden. No paradise. The nostalgia of the brick building is gone. The people who first made up that sense, and its need are still here. They mean much but are free from a bondage where success is measured against the ability to create such a need.

You have not quite got to the stage where the world is your home or ‘vasudhaiva kutumbakam’ (the world is a family) – for doesn’t that subvert the purpose by privileging the very idea of home and family that you are endeavouring to normalize? And so, to be sure, you venture out. You meet strangers. Have conversations made up of half hearted lies where you step outside of your own self but stop short of the many interesting people you could be, the lives you had imagined to lead, the possibilities that might have touched reality in you. But an unknown fear holds you back. An old fear. That has pushed you to inaction. Made you wary of life. Weary of/ in life. And there you go seeking comfort zones. Brick walls. Coffee house. A book. And you look out at the lady who stares out of the painting on the wall. It might have been an audacious gaze. Cherry lips, the red hibiscus tucked in her chignon, the fierce eyes. But strangely, the eyes are lowered. Why? What made her do that? What could have forced her to tone down her fiery passions? Or was it her choice? Who could say? You finish your coffee and head out. Into the sun. A random thought crosses your mind at that moment – what if you were looking into a mirror? You hand reaches out to your hair knotted up messily. No flower. You heave a sigh of relief. You dare not look back across the street you just crossed. If you had, a wilting hibiscus might have caught your attention. Or not – getting trampled under oblivious feet preoccupied with rushing to someplace or the other. If the pace of life could be measured in trampled flowers, we might finally begin to understand ourselves.