To escape from pains
Maswood Alam Khan | Monday, 4 August 2008
AT times, after taking a long hard look at options available when I surmise that what I am longing for is not going to see the light of day, or when I myself don't know why my heart sinks in depression I try to perk my mood up relaxing on an easy chair in the balcony of my apartment.
While seeping a tea or puffing away on a cigarette I throw a vision touching the canopy of hundreds of trees by the side of a lake onto the distant horizon as far as my eyes can elongate my view and try to run away to a dreamland over the open sky a million miles away far from my balcony. At this point every one of us envies a bird; we wish we had a pair of wings to fly away for an escape -- far from the boredom of everyday life.
A friend of mine, a widower, cannot control his emotion when I broach up the subject of Tagore songs; he immediately starts mimicking Debabrata Biswas or Ashok Taru Bandupadhaya to sing: "Tomar kachhe khate na mor kobir gorbo kora. Mohakobi, tomar paee dite chai je dhora. Jibon loe joton kori jodi shorol bashi gori, Apon shure dibe bhori sokol chhidro tar." (My poetic vanity is humbled in shame before you. O grand poet, allow me a seat at your feet. Only let me make my life easy and straight -- like a flute of reed for you to fill with music.).
After a while, tears well up in my friend's eyes when his mellow mind flicks through the memory of his departed wife who had committed suicide a few years back; he still does not know for sure what impelled his beautiful wife to snatch her own life away from his home. Another tragedy, a double whammy, struck him the other day as his beautiful daughter, a brilliant student having first class in Masters final in History from Dhaka University, eloped with an uncouth boy from a lowly family who could not pass even his HSC exam.
You and I, everybody has his/her tragedies and pains. Some are blessed with a capacity to accept tragedies and endure pains stoically and some are carried away by the first visit of a tragedy or by a slight wave of pains. A man or a woman usually does not achieve what s/he dreams about and is not satisfied with what s/he has ultimately achieved. Humans, in a cacophonic music of life, fail to balance this cat-and-mouse game between dream and reality.
"Courage to change things we can modify and serenity to accept things we cannot alter" should be our prayer to God to grant us.
Human mind is an enigma not possible on the part of humans to dissect its hidden compartments. An apparently cruel man cries like a baby inside a cinema hall as he views Suchitra Sen, merely as an actress in a movie, being tormented by a misunderstanding; and the same cruel man, in the real life, tortures his own wife for no fault of her own.
To assuage pain, guilt and fear from failing to translate wishes into reality we often become desperate to be fugitives from humdrums of life, to take a respite from excruciating embarrassments, and to hide ourselves from the glare of publicity for introspection and self-analysis---a crucial point when a human takes a pivotal decision, a decision to take things easy if s/he is matured and wise or a decision to take things fatally if s/he is jittery and edgy.
At such a jittery point a poet composes a poignant piece of poetry with no compunction, a young girl jumps from an open balcony of a high-rise building to kiss her death and forget her fianc
While seeping a tea or puffing away on a cigarette I throw a vision touching the canopy of hundreds of trees by the side of a lake onto the distant horizon as far as my eyes can elongate my view and try to run away to a dreamland over the open sky a million miles away far from my balcony. At this point every one of us envies a bird; we wish we had a pair of wings to fly away for an escape -- far from the boredom of everyday life.
A friend of mine, a widower, cannot control his emotion when I broach up the subject of Tagore songs; he immediately starts mimicking Debabrata Biswas or Ashok Taru Bandupadhaya to sing: "Tomar kachhe khate na mor kobir gorbo kora. Mohakobi, tomar paee dite chai je dhora. Jibon loe joton kori jodi shorol bashi gori, Apon shure dibe bhori sokol chhidro tar." (My poetic vanity is humbled in shame before you. O grand poet, allow me a seat at your feet. Only let me make my life easy and straight -- like a flute of reed for you to fill with music.).
After a while, tears well up in my friend's eyes when his mellow mind flicks through the memory of his departed wife who had committed suicide a few years back; he still does not know for sure what impelled his beautiful wife to snatch her own life away from his home. Another tragedy, a double whammy, struck him the other day as his beautiful daughter, a brilliant student having first class in Masters final in History from Dhaka University, eloped with an uncouth boy from a lowly family who could not pass even his HSC exam.
You and I, everybody has his/her tragedies and pains. Some are blessed with a capacity to accept tragedies and endure pains stoically and some are carried away by the first visit of a tragedy or by a slight wave of pains. A man or a woman usually does not achieve what s/he dreams about and is not satisfied with what s/he has ultimately achieved. Humans, in a cacophonic music of life, fail to balance this cat-and-mouse game between dream and reality.
"Courage to change things we can modify and serenity to accept things we cannot alter" should be our prayer to God to grant us.
Human mind is an enigma not possible on the part of humans to dissect its hidden compartments. An apparently cruel man cries like a baby inside a cinema hall as he views Suchitra Sen, merely as an actress in a movie, being tormented by a misunderstanding; and the same cruel man, in the real life, tortures his own wife for no fault of her own.
To assuage pain, guilt and fear from failing to translate wishes into reality we often become desperate to be fugitives from humdrums of life, to take a respite from excruciating embarrassments, and to hide ourselves from the glare of publicity for introspection and self-analysis---a crucial point when a human takes a pivotal decision, a decision to take things easy if s/he is matured and wise or a decision to take things fatally if s/he is jittery and edgy.
At such a jittery point a poet composes a poignant piece of poetry with no compunction, a young girl jumps from an open balcony of a high-rise building to kiss her death and forget her fianc