“Har taraf har jagah beshumaar aadmi
phir bhi tanhaaiyon ka shikaar aadmi”
Nida Fazli penned the lyrics of this soul searching gazal, so lovingly rendered by Lata and the immortal maestro Jagjeet Singh.
My soul gets searched for each waking moment. It used to get distraught at the mere thought of loneliness. That was some years ago. Now, as the shaayars say, I have befriended it. Loneliness itself is a friend that I turn to rescue my soul from clumsy and soulless living beings clustered around me.
But there is more to it, guys. I too evolve as a writer.
Someone had said that God felt lonely, so he created the Universe and populated it with his look-alike – human beings and the rest of the animal kingdom. It is debatable whether only human beings are look-alike of the all-pervading God.
Why? Even the concept of God itself is debatable, isn’t it?
Blasphemy!! The diehard believes can impale me.
I will leave this debatable issue for future write-ups.
‘Phil haal’(for the moment) – let me share a secret with you. That is if your churned up emotions for that blasphemous comment are now set to rest.
Writing stories is akin to creating the Universe- of MY choice. I can create whatever I want. I may not create anything for months. Or I can conjure up stories – dozens of them in a month. The stories can be without any soul milling around the canvas of my story. Or it may just have friendly pets like dogs, cats or the ferocious tigers, lions. Or create some hostile characters trying to mimic the chaos that we see around every day.
Then, I name these characters, painstakingly.
All up to me, don’t you see?
It is all up to me. To create or not to create, create soulless beings, just one or two or more – meri marzee. See I am like God!
Oh God! One more blasphemy! Hang me for that.
When the story takes shape I smile, like the omnipresent God must be doing, and derive a sense of humor, all for my pleasure. (‘Bhagvaan kee Leela’, as some would swear) by letting them fight among themselves. Of course, outwardly, like God, I may advise them to love each other but deep within me? You know what I mean!
Now comes the masterstroke. The God created animal kingdom because he felt lonely (my profuse apologies for repeating this idea but it is important, you know.)
Oh yes; now you must have guessed what I am driving at!
The writer never feels or permitted to feel lonely. Just as the queen of honeybees does, he keeps delivering, characters after characters. Who can stop him or her? The immortal characters are at his beck and call. Of course, someday they will die too, much ahead of the death of the writer, or eons after that. Never mind.
The writer in me feels betrayed. He never feels the dreaded loneliness! So how can the writer ever write about the emotions that a lonely, worldly soul goes through unless he himself has had the luxury of feeling lonely?
Convoluted argument?
But isn’t God himself convoluted?
Bravo!
Reading your article is indeed an exercise of mind!
Now…
Would that we can truly “befriend” the loneliness, and yet, not (pretend to) ignore the “clumsy and soulless living beings clustered around” us?
Ashvin, the dilemma manifests itself in all hue. Just thought of the dilemma faced by the protagonist girl in the movie, “Rudali” where she was professionally required to ‘weep’ for the dead who bore no relationship with her. The dilemma gets more intense when her own husband dies for real and she cannot weep, however hard she tries. Viewed from another angle, to justify her weird profession, don’t we get professional singers and dancers at the time of wedding of our children? The joy of watching daughter or son should be really be expressed by singing or dancing ourselves. Getting professional team of singers apparently adds to our standing in the society. In the good old days even the decorations were done by the family womenfolk. The food was prepared by them. So getting back to the topic, befriending loneliness in the midst of characters created by the writer in itself is a dilemma.
Indeed, an excercise of mind 🙂