I had read somewhere that the Brain saves and interprets things in terms of symbols. For eg,if I say “Apple” the image of a red oblate spheroid hits a particular part of the Brain. Ever since I understood and begun to think, I've always had a feeling of thinking in terms of symbols,as if all speech,all words had their origin in some obscure,yet significant,symbol. For eg, when I think of 'being there beside you' ,I think of a rock,and when I think of that huge rock,I feel I have actually thought about my father. The symbol f gloom is a dark,wet monsoon evening when there will be no cricket,the symbol of a threatening loneliness is a deserted corridor in my school with the classes in progress and I coming late,stranded afraid in the peculiar suffused light of fear.The symbol of spirituality is Poulomi,she comes to mind when I think of a White Dove,the symbol of insecure love is Dwip-Tito,now that we've grown apart(not grown apart really,growing away from each other with our love feeling threatened by the physical and psychological distance in between),the symbol of safety is Maa's oval red bindi,worn right after her ablutions,and of course,the symbol of all things beautiful is the Girl that I love. The symbol of trust.........
A symbol seems to have died. A swift,sudden death,but painful all the same in its searing swiftness and sudden absence. But as it died,it also made me live a few lives,perhaps to make me aware of the intransigence of all things human,and the futility of emotional attachments.
The words came slowly. Leaden,innocuous words,words that do not even map a symbol to my brain,but inside they were laden with Trojan horses,each carrying countless infidels with shovels and boring drills. Once inside,they unleashed the borers, scraped away every trickle of resistance,every remnant of my fading sanity. I have always wondered(not sure exactly at what) when a boring machine drills onto the ground and spits out splinters of concrete. I led the life of Earth being bored at.
I had once seen a freshly severed foetus at a drain in Kalighat. Vermins and flies had a field day on it,as they swarmed over an almost sticky,fetid odour and I had wondered if this was disgust that I felt. I was never sure,but now I became disgust. Disgust to me was an unkempt,old insane in my childhood,with saliva all over his beard and a bare torso full of stench of infection. And now I could see him.coming to me,coming closer,being me.I remember my first hash trip when I had actually peeped out of my mind and body and seen my cage,and the heart within. And I remember taking pity,and mildly condoning my glaring dirtiness,my prejudices interlinked with some inherent goodness. They both shone in a natural,virgin glory.Raw,human emotions,and failings and that had never invoked disgust. Presently,I became the old ghost of my childhood,I became disgust for some time.
I had always wondered,in basic Science classes about what a vacuum was. The complete absence of anything was something I never could fathom. I understood it then,when suddenly I became a complete absence of everything. My mind,always throbbing with emotions,always talking to me,became silent as a corpse and the warmth of all my contradictions was replaced by a definitive,freezing emptiness. As if things end here,never to be again. I lived the life of vacuum.
Ever since 9/11 happened,I have wondered about all those who came to work the next day,how they must have failed in the absence of the colossal towers. Even the ones who did not lose an immediate family,must they not have felt a sense of loss,an emptiness within? The twin towers must have grown so deeply into their existence that they might not have granted special privilege of attention to them. Trust is somewhat of the erstwhile twin towers for me. It has been there ever since i've been,and to have seen it not there in a long fell swoop,I lived the life of a 9/11 victim.
Now that the oozing has stopped,I am left stunned at the lack of reaction to this death. I have only died once before,a complete death, but I was born again with my core intact. But the death of a symbol is the end of an integral part of my thought and as thoughts make up my existence,it is a partial death.The emotional type that I am,I had thought I will let out a long sombre wail and tears will once again inundate the barren lands of battle,all in the comfort of my solitude. That would have meant that like all damaged cells in the body,this too shall be replenished. But to my shock,and remorse,my mind seems to have settled in a comforting numbness,making the verdict deafeningly clear.It's not a symbolic death after all,its a death indeed of a symbol. And now I'm left hoping that all this was nonsense,that the human mind does not think in terms of symbols at all,and the emotion stays as it is,with or without the symbol.
Fishes are said to feed their offspring through their eyes. And, I just do'nt seem to grow up, silly everytime.....
