42

42 – Pieces of a diary.


Much has been said about life, the universe and everything. But not enough. The answer may be something as simple as 42, and we haven’t for sure figured out the question as yet. Well ‘we’ is a complex concept, so we will stick to the realms of ‘I’. I don’t know what we think about it (42), or whether we think at all. I cannot claim intellectual superiority over ‘we’, and say that we don’t care or think. That would be sheer arrogance and wistfulness.

Thoughts have taken precedence in my life, over every other thing. Every single strand of it, form a collage in a fabric that surrounds my world. A place that wipes out all the inconsequential and trivial pains in life. It’s like a shelter, a home and a warm blanket on a cold frosty night.

‘Its simple’ was the motto of my childhood and through the years of my adolescence I clung to it, as if it was my anchor to sanity. I don’t like the complex, or may be I don’t want to, or maybe I am just unable to comprehend it. Does that make mere survival a bit more difficult? I really don’t want an answer to that question. Call it denial if you will.

The basic definition of the occasional diary is to maintain a record of the events in one’s life. The fact that I have chosen to ignore these events, reiterates something that has always amused me to no end. For a person who gives the impression of being passionate, I am surprisingly indifferent to most things in life. Yes the occasional snapping does occur, but otherwise it’s pretty much a plateau. Of course this does have its positive effects.

The ironies of life never fail to amuse me in retrospect. The wisdom to acknowledge them on the spot in ground Zero has not been bestowed upon me. There was a time when these instances of divine sense of humor evoked emotions of agony and ecstasy in me. Now it’s become a mere shrug or a smirk. I guess I am tired of knowing at times, tired of feeling at times. Off late I have been so exhausted that the proverbial kaleidoscope in my mind has become a blank screen. I hate blank screens.

It all started a long time back. I guess we all want a Jesus, so that we can make a martyr out of him, and crucify him, and then weep about it. The very fabric of time is constructed of ironies such as this. You walk up to him, and you want to tell him about all that you know, and all that you feel and all that you love. He disappears in a whiff of smoke, and you realize that it was never real, and you wonder at the blasted sense of irony in the whole thing, because he never existed in the real world. He was a part of the fabric of collage. The collage that was my ode to 42, the collage that was my home of content. The collage that did not protect me but shattered me to pieces. Pieces of a puzzle with which I shall continue this masterpiece. Was it even necessary? Yes, as much as it pained, in spite of the moments of unbearable and stifled screams, during which the world upon my shoulders bruised and battered me to the ground, I wanted to pick myself up from the mundane. The theme of this collage is not anguish. The theme is that of joy which beats down the rest and carves out paths of its own. I believe in God as the creator of all around, and the triumph of joy over all else in his creations.

So what am I doing now? Am I looking for a light to show the way to some divine knowledge. The question is deceptively difficult to answer. I don’t want answers that are not in the absolute, so may be I am not looking for any answers. I don’t like the non absolute, because it’s beyond my understanding. His disappearance shattered me not only because it was a moment of unavoidable comprehension, but because I had sought to believe in the non absolute. I had disappointed myself more than circumstances had.

10/08/2008