Before these first letters and words made into this space, I have written and keyed the back space key on my keyboard more than once. The indecisiveness was again between writing prose or verse and I know where this is coming from. I am in midst of a waging battle between the head and heart. This is not a new feeling but this time the sentiments are overpowering and it is exhausting me. The feeling is similar to the that of an athlete, running the last mile, the finishing line in site. But, I know that I am no athlete this time. I am just the road on which the race is being run.
The body, I realise, is strangely only a shell to the two imperialists-the head and the heart. It responds to commands that they order. When there is a truce between them the body is the happiest of all. Lest the imperialists decide to conquer each other, may hem break loose and so is my state right now.
So what is the bone of contention this time? If you ask me, I will not be able to define it just now, because as much the heart wants to disclose, the head wants to hide. Thus, my expressions are incoherent and yet in midst of it there may be a meaning, an elixir to calm the furnace that burns inside me, taking away pieces of me in each blow that one strikes to another. I write tonight, not because, I want to express, but because I wish to find myself in these words, lest all is wiped out in this war. Tonight, I write for myself.
There are photographs hung up on the wall that stare back at me and then there are photographs in my head (or is it the heart?) that stare into me. Each one has its own space and each one have stories with it. The stories are sometime simple tales and sometime part of an epic that I feel I live in. Our lives indeed are no less than an epic. Each story has another associated with it. Each moment is fraught with heroism and malice, love and hatred, betrayal and loyalty. The list would be endless. What happens when all these stories demand an ending. It is then that battle becomes inevitable. My stories today demand an ending and the head and the heart have different scripts in mind.
If the bard said "To be or not to be" is an eternal question, his postulation was not far from the truth that mortal beings have to go through. Yes, I generalise my state with everyone because at this moment I would feel a bit more secure if I were to feel that the state that I am in, is not something that I am waging alone. I have realised that we do not fear driving a moment to its truth, we fear the consequence of it. Hence we hold back and let out exasperated sighs speaking of it all someday (if ever) over intoxicated states and the more enterprising yet cowardly lot like me, would express it subtly with words that other would find hard to understand.
I have feared driving many decisions to their moments of truth and tonight they all come out of the closet and stare at me. It is not they want me to act on it but my heart renders in pain seeing their state and revolts against the head who push them back inside the closet. Of all these, one such decision is what my heart would not allow to be shoved back into the closet. So the battle.
Fools, I say. In the battle that you both ensue, the moments and memories around the decision is getting ravaged and raped. Stop it, I say. Let me survive with those moments and memories because if they die, I die with them. Understand that it is the memories in the head that lead to the moments that reside in the heart. One cannot survive without the other. And the decision... Know this, as I did a moment ago when I heard it:
Zarre Zarre Mein Usi Ka Noor Hai
Jhak Khud Mein Woh Na Tujhse Door Hai
Ishq Hai Usse To Sab Se Ishq Kar
Ishq Hai Usse, To Sab Se Ishq Kar
Is Ibadat Ka Yehi Dastoor Hai
Amen.
