In search of destiny

Seems, madam! nay it is; I know not 'seems.'
The gap is still unbridgeabale. The gap between what seems and what is, is yet to be bridged. The shadow still falls between the idea and reality. But it is the shadow I am interested in, not the idea and definitely not in the reality.
When Sam pleaded to Him to go for as long drive and get drunk, He refused. He remained seated to his cross, smoking and drinking, and feeling the pain. There were options and ways for him to move on, to relieve himself of the wrenching inside, but He stayed put. For more pain.
Pain has a nice but dangerous quality. It makes one addicted to it. One misses it, when one doesn't feel it. What is it that makes pain so attractive, so alluring?
Isn't it for the pain that Hamlet returned to Denmark? To savour it more and more and even more till everything gets over?
Else, how could he be so resigned. "A little more than kin, and less than kind," were his first words, pithy, simmering with caustic sarcasm. Life held nothing interesting for him anymore. Nothing to look forward to. Just going through the motions, till a sword made a hole in his heart.
Was Hamlet really alive when he reached Denmark? Or was it his shadow, his apparition. Wasn't he already dead? Isn't the death of all hopes and desires, the actual death. The body was living but the soul was long dead. "But I have that within which passeth show."
What is within that passeth show? Even in Biday Abhishap (Tagore), Kach said, "aar jaha bohe bokkhomajhe roktomoy, bahire ta kemone prokashibo." (something in these lines).
Isnt it exactly the same erosion of life that these guys are talking about? It is. still they carried on till destiny snuffed the movement out of their limbs. Knowing that death ends all, they still went forward to it, to embrace it as if, death is their best friend.
Well, Rick was an exception. He didn't really had to embrace death. He walked away to anonymity.
To Brazzaville or some god-forsaken place. In search of what else but death.

Memories, nothing but memories

Why did Rick forsake the world after Paris? He is the kind of person who ran guns in Ethiopia and fought on the loyalist side, and came to Casablanca because he thought it had water. In fact, Captain Renault read him the best—as a rank sentimentalist. Don’t the dilemma in his character and actions make him more adorable? Don't we all have such contrasts in our characters and actions? When the heart starts playing a role in one's life, emotions swing from one extreme to another. It is either heaven or absolute hell, nothing in between. And, there is little point in living in between either. Passion must give one a feel of heaven and the lack of it must throw one in the dungeons of hell. Let’s pity those who don't live a life of passion, for they live life without tasting either heaven or hell. For that matter, they have tasted nothing. It is a life lived on the periphery and died long before others have actually performed the last rites. It is in the heart of a woman that a man lives, and the other way round. It is just the two who realise how life changes once a nest is built. The word nest has been so appropriately and aptly used by Tennessee Williams in the Night of the Iguana. Remember Deborah Kerr's parting shot after Richard Burton proposed her. And Ava Gardner, irresistible as Maxine, stormed away: "You don't even know that you have built a nest." We all build nests mostly unknowingly, and at times, waste our lives in the hope that we will stay there. Though Lawrence Shannon built it unknowingly, Rick had nurtured it in his full senses. It was a twist of fate, another very common occurrence, which left him waiting in the platform, with rain pouring down. He kept waiting in Casablanca till she arrived...as he says, "she walks into mine."
Rick's guts spilled out for the world to see a second time. But Rick had had the taste of heaven by then. He was blessed, which gave him the strength to wait and face the world he hated every minute. His strength came from the memories… La Belle Aurore...the Germans wore grey, you wore blue...As time goes by....

Laughter and forgetting

A colleague of mine, last night, or you may call it evening, showed us a mail written by a columnist blasting sub-editors for deleting an article, an unstressed one, from his copy.Going through his vitriolic diatribe was fun.Maybe, a few of us together was and that togetherness was fun. Was it the thing that we were reading or that we were together that made me laugh a bit?Even after twenty-four hours have, I haven't been able to figure out. What is laughing all about? Is it a group activity or one can laugh while alone?Well people usually laugh in togetherness.
When alone, they usually brood.
When alone, they usually are 'not in the mood.
'When alone, they usually are sad.
When alone, they usually are morose.
It is one state that at times is very alluring. The state of lonely morbidity has its own charm Well, charm may not be the right word for it. Charm has too much of femininity about it. But there is something, for which one likes to be lonely.It doesn't mean one has to banish all human company. It is like being in a crowd and not seeing them or listening to any of the talk or noise around you.Just the body is there. The rest of it, maybe, is flying with Jonathan Livingston Seagull or sharing a drink with Mirza Asadullah in a dingy by-lane as the ignorant armies clashed at the North Ridge or having a passionate discussion with a blessed soul about so many nothings, or walking down the beach with the sun behind you letting the colour of the sea make you feel blue.Isn't it lovely to be lonely
...Like that song...
But where do you go to my lovely
When you're alone in your bed
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I want to look inside your head, yes i do.
Victor Lazlow knew how it was to be lonely

welcome to my world

Hello my friends,
Well thats the only way I can qualify any relationship. Thats the only way I have learnt and thats the only way one should learn. Sorry thats one radical streak that constantly keeps peeping out of my usually calm exterior. Have always been a sucker for Hollywood heroes. Remember Humphrey Bogart?? Richard Blain??
Who claims to stick his neck out for nobody does it at the every possible opportunity.
It has always been like this with me. It has always happened like this. One book, one movie, one poem has so much shaped my mind's landscape and perhaps I consciouly tried to contour it on the lines of them.
This movie, I had first seen on television, on the channel that everybody hates today, good old Doordarshan.
Rick hit me so badly, that I still am reeling from that punch. Every bit of the movie keeps me haunting the moment I let my mind slip off the rails.
It is a nice refuge actually. To find an objective correlative or simply put just a cushion. To fall back on when the back refuses to keep the head high. It happens sometime to everybody, I suppose. And everybody has his or her corner to hide, to rest or to relax.
Let this be my corner. That's why I have named it Casablanca.
Meet me here, my friends