A cold breezy Friday morning. I was visiting North Korea, with the words of Pico Iyer as my guide. I occasionally glanced at life passing me by, while my bus raced along, almost in a mad fury. It was then that I saw it. A murder. A fleeting image. The details – I don’t remember. I can recall seeing blood here and there. It must have happened the night before. It looked like he was asleep and just needed to be woken up. Tufts of grass around him. Policemen were barking orders and questioning two befuddled men alongside. Just another day at work for them. Well, I whispered a silent prayer for the man and was back in North Korea, within five minutes, reading about Kim Il-Sung’s conceit.
I could not help thinking about it later on during the day though. Death – a promise- made to all of us. Life –the very essence of our being. To take a life – one can only imagine the amount of pure hatred, blind fury, lapse of reason and irrational jealousy, which goes into inspiring such an atrocious act. People kill –in the name of peace, in the name of country, in the name of religion, in the name of love, in the name of wealth, in the name of power, in the name of God.
Death need not be necessarily limited to the body, it can be associated with the soul as well. At the risk of sounding morbid and pessimistic, I am sure I talk for a majority of people when I say that I get to meet dead conscience, dead souls, dead opinions, dead voices, dead thoughts, dead dreams, dead ambitions and dead words at one point or another during the day – day after day. Death lives incognito in our society, changing disguises, every now and then. We either don’t recognise it or ignore it with exceptional finesse.
That murder might not stop haunting me for quite sometime. I could not stop myself from wondering – while the murdered dies, does the soul of the murderer die a quiet, unnoticed death alongside? Cold-blooded murder – is it followed by a feeling of regret, guilt, self-hatred and shame or with a sense of relief, satisfaction and tranquil? One can only but ponder. All said and done, the eerie presence of death that Friday morning, seemed out of place and unnecessary amidst the slow, rhythmic pace of life. To paraphrase what Buddha said – " What one can’t give, one has no right to take". But then, I doubt if those words find even a remote relevance in today’s world, given the current political and social scenario.
Well, as for me, after North Korea, it’s Cuba. Bring it on, Iyer.
6 comments:
Reality bites! Far from the fantasy world that we always love to be in, things are just never too sweet to be true.
This is a thought that I've pondered on for a while...quit thinking about it when answers failed to convince me of it's justification. There are a thousand and one who consider murder for the cause or religion or revenge as justified. I've seen quite a few Pushto taxi drivers rejoicing on hearing of American deaths. And now, we can look into our very own borders at the cry for murder...capital punishment or whatever fancy name you give it, murder is murder...
Guess we are pretty much obsessed with disorder and I guess nothing's gonna change....
yeah dolls sorry...i've talked nonsense here...but well...sigh...
"At the risk of sounding morbid and pessimistic,...."
Why are you being defensive here?
You have a point, then just say it. It doesn't matter what others think.
Nice thought anyways, esp the dead soul thing. Keep it going. :-)
well...err...wht to say..... its good...but i dont know... i dont feel tht special thing that i saw in the earlier ones .... maybe becoz ur a versatile writer ... u can write on different things... but i ll suggest try concentrating on one style of writing..... maybe who knows you might become famous in that
@Shaan: If u call it nonsense, then nonsense it is! :)
@Anonymous: who art thou? Ur name can't be all that bad :)
Well, negative emotions need to be accompanied with a little amount of justification, wot say? :)
Well,to make a point, it matters how people rceive it. How can you make a point when the audience fails to see it?
@Chandy: A wise man once said that God pours life into death and death into life and dos not let a drop spill. I guess the fault is entirely mine that I could not pour life into my thoughts about death. Will try n better myself the next time. BTW, ur my best critic! :)
no one can pour thoughts abt death into one's mind...its something everyone fears the most...becoz its sure tht it will come but doesnt know the time.... not like the other things... and wht the wise man told is also true.. its god who decides when to put the life and when to put the death... well death i tried to write a lot of things.. maybe u know wht i meant.. becoz most of my writings were on death... to tell u frankly its scary to write on it....no one in this world has described wht is death... becoz no of them has felt wht death is....
but thr is one more thing...whtever u have written in this is true u r nt supposed to take away something thts u cant give... and whtever happenin in this world is also true...writing about the death and murderer is just a fiction noone i mean no one has gone into matters of death and into the minds of the murderer.....
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