The Raging Sea

Betwixt the shores of our existence lies a raging sea; my ego
Long after I came back watching 'Ore Kadal',the film still continue to haunt me. It's not because all my life I've lived in a very conservative society and the film uprooted the set social dogmas.On the contrary I don't think the film in any way dealt with dogmas.It just portrayed the human mind.Raw and complex.

There's a very enchanting part in the famous novel 'one hundred years of solitude' in which a dead man comes back to the person many years later, who killed him many years before, to escape from the solitude of life after death.Solitude is devastating,murderous and near-death.Many years of solitude can bring back the dead according to Marquez and hence, maybe or most definitely a lifetime of solitude can wreak havoc in the lives of mortals.After all we all are mortals.

The question that haunted me for many days after I saw the film was the way the female protagonist succumbed to the physical desire of the the womanizer social scientist.Was it because of love?? or the many years of solitude she had behind her which made her yearn for care which she thought would be transcended through physical intimacy.Or was it lust ?Or adventure?? or in more orthodox terms infidelity ??

Both the protagonists in the film lived in abject solitude,but in different contexts.The mundane family life,without even the scant presence of love since her childhood, with a not very well off middle class economics contributed to the solitude of the heroine though she had a husband and a kid, while the fear of being loved and to love made the hero to live in solitude though he had a social status and was widely accepted.

But still why did she not repel when she was touched by a half-stranger?love?awe for the hero's status or in a more cynical way,paying back her debt hoping for more help.I rule out the third possibility not only because it is cynical but also because she had the choice.She wasn't forced into promiscuity.But can i call that promiscuity ??

There's a man who tried to kill his love through alcohol,his self proclaimed ego and sex.In a way he was trying to kill his fear.His fear of being loved and his fear to fall in love.He killed his want and his need.But the seed continued to live somewhere in the darkness.Then there's the woman who wanted to discover love;to discover a life without solitude,without the excruciatingly painful loneliness penetrating deep into her heart day in and day out.Love changes men and women.Love changes relationships.Love is a want.A want of being loved and to love.

Thus when Deepthi tries to discover love in the most undefinable way,love unfolds before Dr.Nathan in the most strange path.He falls in love with the soul of the body he slept with, long after the act.Love penetrates into his solitude and he starts yearning for the freedom from solitude,a solitude that has been with him since his tenth year of life.While Deepthi deliberately shrinks into her own world of solitude through religious faith,mundane life and at the end trying to murder her love,she also attempts to live through the societal way of life.But love beckons,it storms into their lives like the wild hurricane in the sea,as a new revelation,a new life and an inexplicable freedom.

But still why did she not object when he compared her neck with a conch and touched her...??The love and unity of a man and woman is beyond all definitions,all relations and all conditioning,morals,values and dogmas.It is nature.It is the sea.Undefined and unchartered.Thy name love.

This doesn't answer everything or maybe anything at all.But sometimes its wonderful to live through the questions than trying to answer them......

again it rained.......

Last night again it rained...Not the heavy rain that floods the flower-bed in my balcony.But the relentless long water droplets falling as straight lines.Dark sky. And I couldn't but keep watching it for quite some time until slumber took me over.I've always wondered about the rain like a million people who've written so poetically about the rain.But still there's a certain charm about it.The rain is always enchanting.

This was after a long time that I was noticing rain so closely.I had become quite mechanical over the last few months during my Hyderabad days.Not that it did not rain in the city of Nizam.It did and many times it did rain.Actually after my first week in the city it rained heavily and the local cigarette shop-wala acknowledged that it was after nine long years he's witnessing such a heavy rain.

I always see the rain through the window in my bed room.The sight is almost like statistical graph.The vertical long train of rain drops virtually intersecting the horizontal window grills.Too much of imagination.But i haven't seen the rain gently embracing the lush green paddy fields or making infinite ripples in the river the way i've read about it.I haven't seen the rain with all the beauty and charm the poets have attributed to it.But still rain is enchanting.

Sometimes it was difficult to see the sky in hyderabad.The tall concrete edifices shrouds the vision. Then the rain is like a curtain.I used to sit in the balcony of my apartment watching the balcony of the opposite apartment through the rain curtain hoping that the girl living over there would come out to see the rain.No!!..She wasn't beautiful.But the way i hoped she'd come out to see the rain I also hoped she'd look beautiful through the rain curtain.But neither happened.

I've seen the rain in many parts of the country.The quick heavy ones in bangalore and the 48 hour non stop rain in delhi.The rain that pours down sweet and yellow in the desert of jaisalmer and the rain that appears less dense than the population of mumbai when you're traveling in a mumbai local.The rain as a welcome change in the sweltering heat of chennai and the rain that's incredibly beautiful as the backdrop of puppet shows in gwalior.I've been lucky.

I've been lucky.So many people have written about the rain and it rains quite often.But still, when the rain came down from heaven yesterday night it was something which i had never seen.Enchanting and enigmatic as never before......

The Lost Rain

It rained today, heavy rain

And i just could take some old logs

From the backyard

Where they lie waiting for my grandfather

Who would build ships with them.

And I just could take a small flame

From the matchbox

Which my dad always used

To make a bonfire from old newspapers.

And I just could hold her close to me

From all the places I never searched for her

Where she’d always go.

And I just could tell her stories

Of old princes and demons and lost springs

and pirates and treasures and mango showers.

The heavy rain…

And the old logs still lie there...

without memories n stories,drenched in the heavy rain.....