Soulful cities

Soulful cities

There are cities that are ‘beautiful’ and then there are ‘soulful’ cities in the world. The ‘beautiful’ cities are like scotch or single-malt whiskey. Once you gulp it down, you strongly feel the presence of a bevy of fairies invading your mind-space. We sense the importance of life and its different colours. Such cities fill our lives with goals, purpose, and happiness. For instance, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore are some such ‘beautiful’ cities in India.

Yet we cannot dismiss the importance of 'meaning' in our daily lives. Cities that are ‘soulful’ are unbounded by time, wealth, money, sex. These places have their own rhythm and the world revolves around them. Such cities are pulsating with life, movement, music; brimming with an inward energy that cannot be compared with anything. Kolkata is one such city which is like a gurgling spring. The city of joy breathes and exudes 'meaning' and 'ecstasy'. It cannot be shaped or defined by any external circumstances. The city just lives by its own whims and fancies.

We slowly realize Kolkata is basically a blend of real complex emotions which are everlasting. The chaotic life here takes shapes and forms, becomes lighter and flows through the mind like whirring mild breeze. Life in Kolkata helps us get to our deeper selves and get intimate with our emotional core. We sort of understand who we essentially are, what are needs are and what we must do, without evasion. It helps us become more enlightened by a thorough acceptance of pains and losses in our lives.

We learn the virtues of forgiveness, love and compassion; pity people who backstab us and develop a greater self than our own. The stories of many evolved minds are rooted in the place they come from. It’s quite amazing. Soulful cities teach us the importance of staying afloat in an ideal reality far removed from the ‘quotidian’ world and not necessarily quit the sensuous world in pursuit of a higher realm. It’s indeed wonderful to live in such ‘soulful’ cities of the world. 

Meghna Maiti

ENDS

Melancholia

Melancholia

Meghna Maiti

Have you listened to faint sound of muezzin at the hour of dusk when cicadas quietly buzz around the street lamps in dark alleys? What do you feel when you see afternoon sun glinting off the sea along the harbour line? Or, it could be the feeling when you are trying to look at the world through rain-splashed window. The outside world seems strangely unfamiliar, black, empty and inadequate and what we essentially feel is ‘melancholia’. 

Melancholia is a state of mind, a deep sense of spiritual loss, a musical problem, a dissonance, a feeling that we live to suffer and only through suffering we realise the most intense of pleasures and joys.

 Orhan Pamuk in his book ‘Istanbul', has described this particular feeling of pain as huzun. He said we suffer because we know we have not suffered enough. Pamuk said Islamic culture hold ‘huzun’ in high esteem. It is central to their culture, poetry, music and everyday life. It is also a sort of spiritual affliction, a sense of groundless fear, a feeling that something is tearing inside you all the time.

I have been experiencing this sense of ‘melancholia’ from my childhood and I know it for a fact it is as life affirming as negating. It is positive in the sense; melancholy paves the way to happy solitude, to my own rich inner world, fantasies, imaginations that give me immense amount of joy. It is an aching feeling that keeps the soul alive.

Yet the darker side is killing too; it renders a black mood, it means living in a constant state of terror, a sense of insupportable loneliness, torturing memories and a dread of some strange impending doom. And when I am consumed by such dark passions I just like to lose all sense of probity, reason, logic.

There is no cure for melancholia. While it is something some of us are born with, it has sort of shaped our worldviews, our perspectives, our likes and dislikes. It also often gives us the strength to embrace failures, defeats, indecision, heartbreaks.

ENDS

Mentor

Mentor

How nice and refreshing it is to have a mentor in an otherwise lonely and desultory life! She sort of becomes a champion of your long-stifled quirkiness, an agent to find those connections that you have been terribly missing, a tad different from the usual set you have been interacting with. She could definitely be a friend and yet much more than that- a mother, a sister, a teacher and in fact all of that combined together in a fabulous package. 

I have had several mentors at different stages of my life- back in junior school, high-school and then at a more mature stage of life. And in fact all of them have brought in a lot of joy into my life, embraced my odd sides, avoided their close and intimate people to hang out with me and brought in pleasant surprises. They have also been terribly kind; showered me with love and affection and expected nothing in return. They have been interesting people- with clever, shrewd, unusual minds- I could see things freshly with them and everything was not deadness and repetition. What I could connect with them was the most human core of their beings. At a time when time seemed to blur into a black, empty zone, they always stood by me and gave me the necessary moral strength. They would point out the multiple people in me and help me get down to my real self. Such relationships ride along its own wild course.

My mentors have all come and gone from my life. And I started looking at each of them as an agent of some sort of change, a messenger with a deliberate attempt to change the old order of things and usher in new possibilities. Each meeting gave way to a larger journey. I was prepared to meet and let go, welcome a temporary imagined future and greet a new identity each time. And in that transition, in between two mentors, I learnt to get liberated from the uncomfortable truth that the time would soon come to end the trip.

Meghna Maiti

Spring

Spring

I cannot thank god enough for the beautiful season called 'spring' bestowed on the humankind, in especially our part of the world. We may love the cold waves and fluffy snows of the winter; spatter of gentle rain in monsoon and even the searing heat of the summer with its passion and intensities. Yet one can’t feel better when there is spring in the air, a sort of light-footedness, clear blue sky, new flowers and the sweet call of cuckoo in even oddest of the hours.

I just love to lie quietly on the grassland, stare at the vast expanse of sky and even beyond that until the boundaries between the land and sky blur and blend swiftly and beautifully. A flight of birds hop and play and then disappears in the wilderness. The cool air is filled with mild floral fragrance. The big trees spread out their branches; their spirits dance to the tune of nature. It is a season of beginnings and creation when the daytime lengthens and spreads out before us and we are filled with strange hopes and desires.

The spring ushers in new light and leaves behind darkness. All of a sudden, the spring day seems to close doors of all uncertainties and clings close to us, caressing, whispering tales of happiness that set our souls trembling with awe. Till summer comes in, spring is an ideal time for dreamers to spin their yarns. Their dreams are woven by the silky threads of nature as the green creepers trail their wreaths. We all can feel a link with all creatures of nature and understand the essence of “stream of consciousness” running through each of us.

All sorts of happy thoughts seem to bring in melancholic thoughts. Or to quote Wordsworth:

“I heard a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sat reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts

Bring sad thoughts to the mind.”

It is indeed a holy season that sets us reeling.

Meghna Maiti

ENDS