Lovesong

 

There is something heartrending about the word ‘melancholy’. Heartrending and musical and pure and beautiful. Just like rain. I don’t connect rain with melancholy as most people do. I never find anything sad about rain. But heartrending, musical, pure and beautiful? Of course it’s all of that!

Yet somehow, these two words ring with almost the same frequency, within me. I cannot think of one without thinking of the other. Both are as innate to me as the colour of my eyes or the texture of my hair. I don’t even have to think – they simply occur to me. As natural as it could be.

Where I live – a small peninsula at the southern end of Asia – it’s been raining day and night… for weeks at a stretch. It might be insensitive of me to say this – considering the havoc this has wreaked elsewhere, but these days have been the happiest of the year, to me. All night, I could hear the rhythmic sounds of rain – falling, falling, falling, on my gorgeous city, my vagrant city, my lost city and my tearful city. Yes, the howls of buses and the scattered rants of the nocturnal hawkers and workers – they were always there but melting with the whims of the rain, dissolving in its rueful madness. Thoughts came and went, some waited, some spiraled on and on in the messy chambers of my head, some squatted diligently all night. But the trip-trop, drip-drop went on and on, calming my angst and fury, my grief and anguish, my restlessness and my madness.

Yeah, I know. I haven’t been able to write for months and it’s quite natural for us. We collapse, we lay on the cold floor for months, get up, resume a breathless marathon to stick to our schedules and before long we again break, lay all broken and the cycle goes on. So it falls on us to do our very best for the months we remain alive and awake. After a time, you know what, it’s no more a question of a cure, but rather, one of perseverance.

After a certain time, you don’t think of getting out of this, but rather try to find out how best to co-exist with it. After a time, you accept the fact that things will be like this, broken, all in sixes, messy, some days you will lose, some days you will win. You know that there’s only one option left, that is, to reconcile with the truth, accept yourself as you are and improvise yourself within those barriers, as best as you can. You find a way to live with your limitations, your shortcomings, your broken pieces and to live as best as you can. That’s the only way left. A lifelong struggle.

That is the point when you delve into yourself deeper than ever before and that’s when you begin to know the real ‘you’, without biases, without grievances. That’s what gives you the courage to hang on, to fight, to delve deeper and deeper till you have discovered your "giant broken-hearted lovesong" – your very own. Like the rains have disovered theirs. Like every moment of sadness has one of their own. Like the chirping of crickets or the humming of doves.

Yeah, some get well, the broken pieces all mended properly, some get out of this vicious cycle and my heartiest good wishes go to them. For the others, there is a way and sooner or later, we are bound to figure that out. I am sure of that. Or atleast let’s say, I hope I am, because, trust me, the other end is … well, the less we contemplate, the better.