Identity

Our selves are made of fragments of our past, chunks of present and dreams of future. We cannot be defined by a certain period of our lives or history or a decade because a life lived without the memories of its past is half-baked. There has to be that sense of infinite past and future defining us which lends a deeper character to a human being. The great author Milan Kundera said in his book ‘Identity’ that remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, might be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. “To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it,” Kundera said.

Yet there is this constant struggle to get to our real selves, our distinct identities, which sets us apart from others, gives us a position in the world, makes us more comfortable with our inner selves, clears all confusion and calms our minds.  We often think of identity as a mirage, an inaccessible star, a far-out truth, a sort of journey across the vast salt desert to finally achieve a sense of deep fulfillment. I see this blurred sense of self in the people I meet everyday- the women travelling with me in Mumbai local trains, my friends falling in love for the wrong reasons, the bright young man getting into a silly job. Its the way people operate when they haven’t found their real selves. They tend to build permeable boundaries, limitations set by compromises and circumstances to give themselves a false sense of self. And therein lies all beginning of bitterness, resentment, hostility and ending of beauty, brightness, consciousness. To live with a right sense of identity is perhaps one of the most liberating feelings of life.

Meghna Maiti

Darkness

Darkness descends on the city,

A morbid, killing sense of blacking-out,

There is a feeling of murkiness

In the waning moon, the fading sea;

It comes and comes and consumes me.

How do you feel when darkness and silence reign? Over the awful urban land, through the vast expanses of sea, with the bellowing smoke of drugs and ecstasy, the sudden north-westerly winds, off the cliffs of your lane, into your house and then slowly into the deep recesses of your mind. So imagine the hours of loneliness and loss, boxed in and boxed out and always willing to break all barriers and yet unable to do so. Darkness is like a ragged, unendurable, tyrannical, fanatical, cruel force that entraps you with all its might. It clings to you like a leech and sucks all your blood. Imagine being alone in a desolate street, lit only by lampposts. Some of the lampposts are blurred by smoky haze. And when you look up, you only see the waning moon through the barren branches of a tree. You yearn for company, warmth, love but there’s no one. You will feel a sense of darkness. And this is not just confined to such deserted spaces. Even in urban jungle, when you let your greed control you, and chase illusions, you will feel dark, empty. In such instances, the darkness seems like devilish creatures coming alive of their own free will, scheming and plotting to end your life. Yet the other side of darkness is light. We cannot perhaps avoid darkness because we need to win it over to be able to see the sunshine. The further we travel into darkness, the slower our life-force becomes. And finally we become slave of darker emotions. So we like to travel from one land to the other, from one relationship to the next, from one goal to another, to keep from getting lost in the dark.

Meghna Maiti

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

Great Expectations

 Great Expectations

ON a recent trip to my hometown Kolkata, I hit upon my favourite childhood book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, in our attic library. As I flipped through its dusty, yellow pages, years flashed past fast; its eternal characters, old London appeared to me as the road to human endurance and truth. The story filled with dark, unacceptable thoughts seemed so enchanting.

The novel is full of a sense of threat that makes it so intriguing. It is replete with imageries of poverty, prison ships, the hulks, barriers and chains, and fights to the death that are boundless and deep. And then there are those reflections of Pip, the protagonist, and Abel Magwitch, the escaped convict and the strange relationship between them.

The mists of infatuations always invite half-baked, unfulfilled yet passionate relationships. When Pip met married Estella in the ruins of Satis House, he could see “the shadow of no parting from her“ to “the shadow of another parting from her.“ As I would read that part over and over again, I could sense dangerous love. Even a child reader would get a sense of ambiguous and original love, and a feeling that “life is unfair but it's still good“.

The story speaks of unconventional forms of love and how beauty, grace and prospects could spice up a humble existence. Yet even then, this could lead to unrequited love, hatred and a failed relationship. The fact that most intense of relationships could lurk in most unlikely of situations comes across in the book. 

These days I read a lot of contemporary literature, and I'm not particularly convinced by their rosy and clean version of love. They lack obsession, passion and the dark, beautiful world, the necessary negativities to open up a magnetic life. Yes we need to shun negative impulses and people, but it is not wise to be shut in a mundane, happy existence. I want to look at the boundless world and its infinite possibilities and marvel like an eight-year old, forever.

Meghna Maiti