Musings Of The Übermensch In The Age Of Decadence

Monotony of catastrophe. Who said so? Someone. I feel like meeting Antoine Roquentin. On the Boulevard Noir perhaps..?. But I am not sure whether he would have gone to that garden. How he would look at me? With his wonted indifference? Still not sure. The monotony of doubts! Doubts mark our ways. We are such stuff. I wish I were in India. India of diversity. People united by pangs of unfulfilled dreams. I would have gone to some library. A big library with innumerable racks studded with books. I don’t want to read. I just like to sit there. Among books; sit and stare at the racks..Look at books. Leaning over one another. Why do books lean against each other? The humility of wisdom. Why don’t they stand on their own legs? Do they have legs? Even when they are alone, they like to take a lying posture. They lie down. I just want to sit there. In the library. Stare. I would feel a curious kind of insouciance there. Just sitting there. There at least lies the answer to all the questions jostling in my perturbed brain. I would like to remove my brain. Why not medical science develop a technique to remove brain? Oh! Let them do their lot. Books are staring at me. Point blank. Hey. Do you have all answers in truth? I give a start. I take a book. I love to go through the short note at the back of the book from the publisher. Young, naïve and impressionable, Hans Castorp arrives at a sanatorium high in the Alps. I stop. A book read is a hope obliterated. Better the hope. I take back my seat. After sometime I would perhaps go down and have a cup of coffee. Coffea Arabica; brewed extract. It contains caffeine. Then I would light a cigarette- Wills, ITC Ltd. Coffee and cigarette. Made for each other blend. Stephen Dedalus, where are you? Oh..again the footsteps of uneasiness in the heart. Man sans heart. Great proposition. Oh..Library. I must get back to library. Get back to library of my dreams. Hey mind..why are you trying to assume the air of a man of letters which you are not? Mind goes before body. No matter, never mind. Joke! Joke in the ivory tower philosophy. The meaning of life is love, not German metaphysics. The meta-truth..not metaphysics in any case! What is this season? Monsoon! But the rain! Rain, rain go away, come again another day….Aawara Hain Galiyon Mein Main Aur Meri Tanhai. I would avoid light. Freed from the company of my own shadow. Insouciance. The insouciance of stone, of saints. Saints. Why should saints be alive? Absurdity of absolute reality. Jab Nahi Aaye The Tum, Tab Bhi To Tum Aaye The,Aakh Mein Nur Ki Aur Dil Mein Lahu Ki Surat,Yaad Ki Tarha Dhadakte Hue Dil Ki Surat. Love! Un-culminating human associations. Subho Ke Haath Me Khursheed Ke Sagar Ki Tarha. Yet another. Where is the packet of Wills? Wills from the house of ITC India Ltd. Appropriation of the world. Love. The single cause of the cancer of heart. A cyst formation. In the heart. A gargantuan increase in feeling and passion. Raahen Bhee Tamashyee Raahen Bhee Tamashaee . Get back to library I must. Autodidact. Ki Mere Paas Siva Mehron Wafa Kucch Bhi Naheen. Ek Dil Ek Thamanna Ke Siva. Love! Hug your pillows and lean on to walls. They won’t change. A heart without change ceases to be a heart. Heart of the matter. Love is the single cause of the cancer of heart. Larry Darrel. In pursuit of Absolute. Poor guy. The will-o-wisp. Absolute. Kshurasya dhara nishidha duratyaya. Joke. One should have enough jokes lifelong. The relief of a laugh is moksha. Saints must be given a class on that. The moksha of laugh. Gayatri…where are you? The cancer of heart. Ek Dil Ek Thamannah Ke Siva- come to me. Cling on to me. Where do women learn this gracious clinging? Tadpole need not be taught swimming. Then…cling. Let the veneers be shattered. Your soul need not be undressed. Cling to Caesar and dream of Antony, Antony of round arms. Or else cling to Bhima and dream of the destructive power of Ghandeevah. Let it be. Ephemeral. Sex. Fleeting but elating. Cling. Oh..! I have got to get back to library. Library of hopes. Un-culminating human associations. Tum Nahi Aaye Abhi, Phi Bhi To Tum Aaye Ho. Darkness of your hair; the depth of your eyes. I would light a Wills. Yet another intoxication. One intoxication to another. Not bad. But what we badly need is bed; bed to make each other objects. Objectification of partner, devouring of body. Electrification. Pieces of flesh playing over each other. No. don’t undress your soul. One cannot stare at the nudity of soul. Lift me my beloved. Like a flower. Tab Bhi To Tum Aaye The.. Yaad Ki Tarha Dhadakte Hue Dil Ki Surat. Gayathri of my consummate dreams. Cling on to me. Objectify me. Obliterate me. But I have to get back to library. Why don’t Govt. introduce a law that women should wear a tag? Health warning: love is the single cause of heart cancer. My wills has got it. Women must have it. Forewarned forearmed. Gayatri. Cling on to me. Put your gorgeous arms around my neck. Kiss. Kiss stays at a border; border between spirit and flesh. The books: I must get back to library. But Gayatri. Mere Hathon Mein Lakheeron Ke Siva Kuch Bhee Naheen. Even then. Cling. Aim the soul and reach the flesh. Monologue of conditions. Not dialogue between man and conditions. A strange combination of elements. Quintessence of dust. Death. Ultimate cheating. Reincarnation. Dream of dreams. Insouciance. Put off not for tomorrow but for next janma. The Mephistophilean smile of books. Joke. What about public distribution system for jokes? Gayatri..where has thou been? Mulaqaat. Incomplete meetings. Cling. Unrequited in any case? Oh..love must be unrequited. The nirveda of achieving. Cling. Look not into my eyes lest you might find yourself. Man: the rope between man and superman? A monkey perhaps, trying to jump to infinity. In vein.

Read more

Prufrockian conundrum and Graphomania: The Great Reversal

The pain of impossibility to express, when the whole being is overflowing with what has to be conveyed, is a deep one. The way in which Prufrock says “That is not what I meant at all./That is not it, at all.”, has absolutely no note of calmness we find in the classic Upanishadic negation of "nethi,nethi". The pain is unbearably acute and the constantly alive feeling of passing time renders it an urgency which the protagonist finds hard to overcome. The expression of this pain is, interestingly intermingled with the realization and challenging of, his capacity to express itself. Eliot published Prufrock in 1915. The world has changed infinitely hence. Perhaps, if one can shed off the common way of approaching the Waste Land and read it as a piece of poetry rather than German metaphysics, it is not hard to hear the flapping of the wings of being against the walls of the mode and medium of expression. His life was a struggle against what is meaning there are times in history when the medium of expression finds itself stretched to the limit and yet fails miserably in the avalanche of experiences. As exepmlified in,

'Words strain,Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish...'

One cannot convince oneself of the idea that by breaking off decisively from the tradition of romanticism, Eliot could give vent to his being in its fullest form.

It is in this context that the expounding of the concept "Graphomania" by Kundera becomes extremely revealing. Kundera is a writer who introduces interesting concepts in the midst of story telling. We still vividly remember his concepts like 'Kitsch' and 'Litost'. Actually he is not really inventing the terms but he is giving them meanings which becomes handy in exploring the dynamics of life as we know it in our times. His attempt is essentially one of stretching the meaning. He goes on with a detailed explanation of what 'Graphomania' means in the novel The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting. Graphomania has at it's roots the tendency to make oneself heard, to present oneself before an audience to the extend of being forceful. He goes on to state that Graphomania takes on the proportions of a mass epidemic when a society engenders an environment giving ample free time to devote to useless activities, an atmosphere of isolation caused by increasing atomisation and a radical absence of significant social changes. Are we not witnessing all these in our society? And what of the results from this mania of 'writing'? Am I ,or for that matter anyone, being heard? We just go on speaking...speaking and speaking...Endlessly but the person sitting next to me as well is doing..what? There are as many universes as there are men in this world. The journey from Prufrock to Graphomaniac is one of catastrophic proportions..'And we drown..'

Read more

Musings:Without Punctuation.

How ravishing it would be to be lead on by a rapturous idea..the whole being following like one possessed.You just have to remain idle,absolutely indifferent,like a log caught in the current.But it is a situation which happens very rarely. Beauty lies in things and
situations that are rare and uncommon.Sometimes when you sit idle and alone,hours on end into late night you have the feeling that a truly genuine insight is hovering around you.A clue to the infinity of life,a code to the mystery that is universe.But it circles around you and just won't yield.That exactly is the beauty of universe.Plays like a naughty young girl.Always enticing,beckoning.So i am sitting here..truly idle,fingers crossed.

Read more