(Dedicated to a friend at the distant, V. Sarada, with the high and assertive hope for a better, alternate world.)
“I ate my food between battles
I lay down to sleep among murderers
I pursued love carelessly
And I looked upon nature impatiently
So passed
The time given to me on earth. “ – An die Nachgeborenen, Bertolt Brecht.
Our times are equally lacerated, and no less ‘dark’ than his. It feels bleaker when we realise that the ‘battles’ are not so much in the open. Surely, the bodies that lie victim to ideologies that are pushing mankind towards fascist hegemony, would argue otherwise. But in case of us, who are still at least physically unaware of it’s touches, the scars and bullet-marks are not yet that prominent. We, who have much of our time to donate to merry-making, hardly can conceptualise the war. The recent trending lines on Facebook (that speak on our business and your business) are certainly a manifestation of a consciousness that can subtly argue that the existing conditions of one can be independent of that of the other. The war is that of consciousness and the war-fields are our own brains. Every news, every detail that we see shall remind us that they make no proper sense in a world of fleeting images. But they do. Every day, as we tip towards slumber, we shall hear wails, another doha of Kabir or Vakh of Lal Ded would die a thuggish death. It is love that can see us through. I have mostly found that nebulous. But that too is an implication that we are on the losing end of this war. Only love can see us through, only.
(The photo is taken from an article on medicalxpress by Susan Kelly, Cornell University)