Solace in Solitude: Pitfalls without Pity or Piety - 2005

Quotes: "Events will take their our course, and it is no good being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account." - Euripides

Love is a dependency trap
we say we Love
because gOD created LOVE (oh my gawd!)
dishonest as we are, we never say -- we love
cause we want to be loved.

LOVE is a 'I scratch your back and you scratch mine' necessity –
yet hard as it is, there are areas in the body
that none can reach.......heck – and that 'scratch in the back'?
you can half do it yourself –- but if anybody else does it
…ahhh……HEAVENLY...
and of course, there are so many other things HEAVENLY
those that in love can do – adult/children are we –
or is it adult with child pretensions?

We all LOVE to say we 'fall' in love,
but hate to say that we have probably fallen
into a ditch, a quicksand, or a garbage pit?
but strange isn't it –
we have found no replacement
to 'FALLING in Love'?

Let us not blame LOVE for that
....no fault of LOVE at all
neither is it the fault of those that
have had a hard fall
or a soft fall,
or a cushioned fall,
the fact is
-- while falling in LOVE –-
we also fall and fail...
like fall from GRACE
fall from DIGNITY
fall from whatever we hold dear and honorable
an unending TUMBLE, down, down and OUT

When we fall we actually LOVE
the climb back
which is harder
for we know that in falling
there is NONE around
then your own being
having to do the 'hard job'
of collecting and reshaping
all those broken pieces…
fragile -- as in shattered?

LOVE is more then chemistry
it is the senses
that those insensible enough in love,
indulge in with blatant insensitivity
a merger of the 'sOUL'
when the sOUL in question
is something that our eyes don't see
much like the formless, sexless, etc, etc,
being .....gOD
that we worship,
and despite his apparent NOTHINGNESS
-- its amazing that he has brains
and intervenes in 'affairs of Man'
with his 'hands' and we go on to say
'LOVE is made in hEAVEN!'
-- now beat that?

Yet- - we never stop loving
cause FALL as hard and heavy as we do
the swim back UP from the dark pits
from the whirlpool that has sucked us
into an Oceanic Grief,
long and horrific as it may be
is one we must do –
for tired as we may become
we long, much too much for that one
LONG BREATH – up in the open
ALIVE --- whoa!!

At the end equation
we will decide to 'fall' again
but for one like me,
'Comfortable in my sorrows'
which none, but I am to blame
I seek solace in solitude
MY WAY
for religious I never was,
yet the 'spirit' in me tells me

"Hey dude how more lonely can you be?
Think of your ONE gOD ......
could you be LONELIER then hIM? "

Niketon, Dhaka, 1st August 2005

An Obituary

(A tribute to the iconoclastic bohemian painter S.M.Sultan aka Lal Miah. R.I.P)

A Great Spirit passed last night,
a mere mortal with no claims to immortality,
no stakes attached to survive till eternity,
nor any calculations, worked out till infinity !

A mere mortal, so that when he passed
to his Heavenly abode
so that, when we all said
this is how he was destined to go
so that, when we said
MAY PEACE BE UPON HIM
...... we did not really mean a DAMN thing !

We sobbed and wept, partook of all that welled
within our eyes and hearts
of a loss to the world...... of yet
one more, NOT of OUR kind.

So we flocked and talked only good things,
all that was fine, inane and divine
for those that die are always so cute !

Let the incense and joss sticks burn,
smelling of sweet nothing...
seething in fragrance of a new beginning
for the human heart is only selfish ?

The human kind does not cry for the one that dies
nor does it weep, for one that has gone to sleep,
it does so in despair, for a future that heals and repairs
for a TOMORROW that hold out, only as a mystery
of how predictably unpredictable, only a moment can be
in ones life... that is tied together in incessant moments
of ones profanity for the mundane !

Lest you be termed a godless being
play along dear humankind,
for our society
has a penchant for rituals,
pray along for the dead,
thanks and thrive on your living death
for condolence in empty words,
and come on the TV
write out an OBITUARY
and bore people to death
with oft repeated monologues
harp upon the lingering nostalgia
of get-togethers of friends, relatives,
enemies and progenies,
in silly ceremonies of remembrance's,
which all of you will soon forget !

Some amongst you, will ofcourse
bend twice over in tears
in an apology to the dead !!

It is easy to plead forgiveness of the dead,
one that has been humbled and unable to defend oneself.
He will respond no more,
much as you scum's of the earth
were unable to speak out,
and for a mere pittance,
you harmed, hurt and humiliated.......
reduced to a semblance
of a defeated being,
marginalised him to a recluse,
to repair,

You tried so hard to play GOD as he lived,
tried to bludgeon him to unwilling submission,
an apology to him
is a luxury, that you do not deserve ...
Forgiveness .... perhaps ?

So go, chant
your unholy prayers to your
supreme being .....
no salvation
chant your benediction of a well rehearsed sham
`EVERYBODY HAS TO GO
for you will never know
in an apology of a hypocrisy,
doubtful, you will EVER be heard ?

The Great Spirit passed,
he had no need
to shine you a LIGHT
much as he tried
on YOUR darkness……..
as he came
as he lived
as he left.

Alas a Great Spirit passed ..... last night.



Dhaka 10th October '94