The River Of Sorrow

Let me begin with a story from my childhood. This was years ago, back when I was in class 4 or 5. I had been a quiet, shy and reserved child from my early years. I made few friends. It was the time when my parents finally decided to admit me into a pool car for travelling to and from school. The children tried to make me talk for the first few days but when that failed they started to laugh at me. “Don’t stare, idiot! Look out of the window!” or sometimes “Look at your feet. Yes. Stay like that.” They would command. Being meek and scared, I used to do as they told me, with teary eyes. One day, one of the elder children passed by me in the playground and as she did, she clapped me on my back and commented, “Abnormal child!” I stared at her as she disappeared in the distance. Years have passed, I have come to see and perceive life differently, I have taken hold of my life, I have made bunch of friends and that memory has reduced to nothing but a residue of ash. Yet, the sting of those words – they have stayed with me. The burning water in my eyes, the mute pain, that rage even at that tender age, they are still there strong as ever.

 

They say memories fade with time. It’s plain and simple trash. Every memory doesn’t fade. Just as I believe, memories are our creative space, we create them as we want to remember them, in the same way, I have also come to realize that memories create us. Incidents and their impacts and how we remember them – that makes us all that we are, all that we have been. There are some things no matter how much we try to forget them, it just doesn’t wane.

For me, I do not exactly remember the exact incident, the specific details, the ins and outs of the painful memories but what I do carry in my bosom forever, is the way they made me feel. I like to believe that there’s a river of sorrow in my heart, quiet, eerie and solitary. Whatever pains me, drives me insane, I drop into that river and let its current carry it away farther and farther. But what it cannot carry away from me is the emotions they instigate – the tears, the anguish, the rage, the helplessness, the despair, the frantic agony.

Likewise, I don’t remember the names or faces numberless people I meet or even get acquainted with everyday, while travelling by bus, train, or auto, at university or elsewhere but I do remember how they make me feel. And I recognize the feeling even years later. Maybe that is what scholars call ‘the sixth sense’.

A couple of years ago, a young lady coping with depression told me, “You don’t understand. I cannot forget him. What’s worse I do not even want to forget him. He’s always there all around and even after all the terrible things he had done to me, I cannot bring myself to accept life without him and move on.” At that time I smirked in my mind and thought she was merely aggravating the emotional crisis and exaggerating it purposely. I thought she was craving for depression and letting herself rot, all on purpose. But now I have come to understand things a tad better. We never move on from grief, we move with grief. We can never leave it behind us. The best we can do is to accept the co-existence of life and loss, of journeying through joy and grief and incorporate ourselves into this dichotomy, however bizarre that might seem to be. Yes. There is death. There is betrayal. There is vice. Yeah, we never asked for all of that but then who ever asked us if we wanted to be born? Huh? But it is what it is. There has been never a choice and we need to make the best of what we have. Now, get over it and go out for an ice-cream!

That was where she had been stumbling. She refused to accept the harsh reality of life, as it is. Not her fault though. It’s pretty hard when it comes to that final confrontation.

Now, now, am I sounding too preachy or philosophical? Oh no, that’s the last thing I ever want to be. I hate sermons myself!

Life, as it is, is hardly worth living, at least to us, with its banes and misgivings but then something must be worth it. It has to be, because the other end is dismal. I will talk about that end some other time, but for now I can tell you, in spite of everything, we need to find something in life that is worth struggling for, that is worth all this suffering, gloom and scuffle. It might be some work, it might be a cause, a purpose or a person though I don’t think the last one is a good choice. Find something that makes you feel a tad better, if not too much. It will keep you going.

For me, writing does the magic.