“I am all alone in this wide world and there is none who can share my pain,”’ she wrote and then deleted it. “Oh God! I want to die’ it was an anguished cry that almost choked her throat; it appeared to me as if it had come from some remote wilderness and it darted through my heart and left a sanguine scar dripping, that would keep on dripping till the last drop oozes out of me, till I become a pallid, cold corpse. How can I convince her, reassure her? All I wish is that she should share with me her sufferings. ‘‘Let us be comrades in sorrow if we can’t be so in happiness.” But she no longer values my opinions, she has grown deaf to all the earthly logic perhaps she has closed the chapter. After all how long can anybody suffer the pangs of a diseased portion? one has to get it operated to live. But she has no desire to live. “What hope is there to sustain my life?’ She often complains. Life seemed to have played a cruel joke with her or perhaps with both of us. I heard a faint but distinct echo of her anguished cry again, in fact the cry keeps on reverberating in my ears, it haunts me even in my dreams and there seems to be no escape. Maybe I don’t want to escape. Despite the pain ingitye L love her voice. I want to dissolve in her unearthly voice beyond recognition, beyond identity; it comforts me, soothes me more than the balmy breeze of the mountains. But there is despair in her voice; a deep piercing pain is there. I wish I could dynamite this pain, and blast it to total extinction. Else, I must transform pain into a blissful symphony that provokes an intense desire; an insane longing to live life to its last dregs, to conquer death and be deathless. After all why should one stray incident completely cloud the perception, drain all interest in life? Life is too precious, too varied, and too beautiful to be wasted simply because a single stray wish has failed to bloom. But how should I convince her of all this and much more? She has got to discard the badge of suffering. She must fly in utter abandon in the vast expanse of azure skies like a hypnotized swallow in flight, like the immortal Nightingale singing of happy far off events. She must embrace a new religion the religion of living from moment to moment. “How can I do it? The question assumes the form of a monstrous phantom and threatens to blast my optimism into intangible thin air. I try to comprehend it and a long train of thoughts flashes through my mind. It is a shattering question and I must seek an answer. I grapple with it trying to split the darkness, looking for a streak of light across the dark canvas. Perhaps love can alleviate the distress. “Yes, love alone can retrieve the lost ones.” I said aloud, ‘‘for love is above suffering, above the artificial walls created by the mad world.” “But I have been undone by love,”’ she sobbed and continued, ‘‘there is a terrible consuming fire in me fire of love that detests bestial animosity and fears contamination of the spirit through the body. I seek a relationship that is purely spiritual, almost negation of the body. But how can I have peace when eyes ‘seeking understanding and sympathy receive only “humiliating lust soaked response? All pretend purity but all invariably aim at defilement. There is wickedness in men, there is devil hidden in them. How can I have peace? Tell me, how I can have loved, and pure untainted love?’’ She sobbed again and tears rolled out of her wild, blue eyes.
“Yes, I realize,’’ I said consolingly, ‘‘I understand your dilemma, an unusual predicament, because you seek an unusual, a nonexistent relationship. Permit me to dispel your fears. Remember, mind and body are inseparably interlinked; each contributes to the fulfillment of the other. Pure body leads only to dissipation, and pure mind is an abstraction, an illusion of not hypocrisy. There has got to be a healthy blending of the two to create an ideal harmony. Spirit cannot thrive independent of the form; insubstantial spirit dissolves into ethereal nothingness. It must assume form having senses «senses seeking fulfillment in such a way as can exalt the sensual to the realms of the spirit. Spirit must stoop to uplift ‘in any the form, the body; so that a satisfying union, in fact, the ideal and the ‘fasting stage may be attained. Purity of spirit and that of the body depends upon the sincerity relationship. You must grasp all this before you can take a leap, before you can hope for a complete and immortal love love that would not be swept away by hostile chance waves, that would have the inherent strength to scorn at social censure and slanderous denunciation, for love generates confidence and courage. The Unhappiness results from the mistaken and narrow conception of love. The fault, my unhappy child,lies basically with you because you do not want to come out of your cozy “ancestral” walls, because you are frantically sticking to one hollow illusion. Take courage, my love, and shatter the illusion. Let the heavenly light in and let it invest your being with the halo of love and transcendental. Tranquility.’ I concluded. She listened to me with a stunned, horrified expression and stared contemptuously at me as if I had committed a sacrilege.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 1, 1985
