Thin line?

Tears and Laughters (PC: Myself)

  "This is my last message to you: in sorrow seek happiness."

                                                        - Fyodor Dostoevsky 

                                                            ("Brother's Karamazov")

The devil and the angel were in moods at extreme ends of the spectrum. One was overwhelmed with joy, while the other seemed deep in sorrow.
"You look sad, What happened?"
"I am not very sure. But maybe it is because I got all that I wished for."
"Oh, but that is precisely the reason I am so happy. I too got all that I wished for."
"Happy for you!"
"But how does it make you sad?"
"The way it makes you happy."
"Is it a very thin line?"
"Maybe. I don't know."

Remains of the other

Pic Credit: favim.com

 
ये इल्म का सौदा, ये रिसाले, ये किताबें

इक शख्स की यादों को भुलाने के लिए हैं। 

                                               - Jaan Nisar Akhtar

(This frenzy for knowledge, these magazines, these books,

All are to help me get rid of the memory of one person)

I loved the moon, I loved the night.

I loved silence, I loved darkness.

I loved mountains, I loved oceans.

I loved the woods, I loved solitude.

I was not sure you loved any of these, And

I was afraid we disagree on a lot of things.

Our tastes seemed more than a world apart.

While you were willing to take a leap of faith, 

I chose not to walk along, but to walk out.

Now that I had shared all that I love with you,
I am not able to love them the way I did then.
The moon and the night remind me of the light,
The silence and the darkness of your breeziness,
The mountains and oceans of my lack of patience,
The woods and the solitude of life's thin rectitude.
Neither am I what I was, nor do I think you are.

Perhaps after crossing paths once, the old streams

Are never the same; In one are remains of the other.

ಸ್ವರ್ಗದ ಸುಪ್ಪತ್ತಿಗೆ!

ಕನಸಲಿ ನಾ ಕಂಡಿರುವೆ ಚೆಲುವೆ
ನಿನ್ನ ಸಂಗಡವಿರುವುದದೇ
ಸ್ವರ್ಗದ ಸುಖ ಸುಪ್ಪತ್ತಿಗೆ!

ಆದರೆ ಇಲ್ಲಿ ತೊಡಕೊಂದಿದೆ,
ನಾ ಬಾಳ್ವೆಗೆ ಮನಸೋತಿರುವೆ.
ಸಾವಿನಾಚೆಗಿನ ಸ್ವರ್ಗದಿ ಹೇಗೆ ಬಾಳುವೆ?

(I have visualized in dreams, my love,
That to be in your company itself
Is the joy of being in heaven!

But here in also lies a problem
I have lost myself to the beauty of life
How can I make it in heaven, the after-life?)

A tap's predicament

     

Is there a tap that doesn't ever leak?

     I am a tap which believes it is leak proof in a system where I perceive it is pertinent to plug the leaks. I look at other taps and I understand there are two kinds of taps. One - the closed taps and the second - the open taps.

     As time passes by, I notice it is not all as black and white as I supposed it to be. There are these taps too which are neither closed nor open! They leak!! And a good number of us leak. Some are made to leak I am told. Some are applied with leak proof solutions and yet they refuse to mend their leaking habits. 

     Years on, I understand not all taps leak in the same way. The leakage pattern varies on their position in the pipeline. And I gradually realize no observation is a rule but has many shades and exceptions to it. I also get to see that if a tap is stubbornly leak proof, it is either broken or removed. If that is not feasible, the flow is so strong that the pipeline itself develops cracks through which it leaks.

      The leakage seems to be inevitable. I wonder why no tap can last its life without ever leaking. Years, decades and centuries go by and one day I suddenly realize if the goal of the system was to plug leaks, why on earth were we made taps!?

      As my existential crisis haunts me further, I wonder if we are all something else in the garb of taps or are we simply a design engineer's blunder? Or is it that the goal of the system is not to plug leaks but something else and we have wrongly assumed for ourselves a role of absurd importance? As I entangle myself more into the complexity, I am suddenly dismantled and the new generation electronic water plugs are put in place to prevent the leakage of what they think is water!