What is the meaning of life?

Isn't this the eternal question? Whose answer many have sought. Many thought they found out. And a lot more died searching for it. Yet, everyone knows it. You know it. I know it. But that doesn't mean your answer has to match mine. How? Why? We will get back to that later.

But first, let me give you my answer.

Humour me this. Are you alive? If yes, you are a living thing. If no, umm......???
A living thing huh. So you are a living thing. The word "living" is crucial to you, a "thing" , to be "alive" . So, isn't the primary purpose of a living thing, that is, you, is to live. And hence to be alive by any means necessary. Isn't that what life is?

How crude? Ya. I know. It's primitive to think like that.

But, what in our society can't be broken down into their respective primitives. Nothing. Almost nothing.

We have come this far. How did we do that? How did we survive? We survived because of our indomitable will to live. Or in other words. Our fear of death.

I know. Death, the word makes us feel weak. It's one of those things we haven't overcome yet. But the very existence of death gives more meaning to life than almost anything else.

If we weren't afraid of dying, would we have ever learned to make fire. The very fear of being torn apart by the deadly creatures of the night led us to use fire for protection. And isn't that discovery enough to kickstart the era of human evolution. Didn't we build homes for the same reason.

But just because we became smarter, we had more knowledge, doesn't mean that our fear of death faded away. We always faced a greater force. Always something that was beyond our control. That could harm us. End us. So, when we couldn't use our brain to defend us, we looked up and prayed. We prayed. We begged. For mercy. For protection. For life.

We created God to give us hope. And we created His Wrath, to fear death.

Have I strayed from my topic. I believe not. So, to sum up.

I believe. The meaning of life is to live, at any cost. And to keep living. Because, what is a life if you are not alive.

Now. I will answer you why my answer to the question could differ from your's. And if you are nothing like me. Then maybe it should differ from you. Because, there is a fault in the question itself. Or maybe the fault is in our perception of the question.

Isn't that the reason why many failed to find the answer to this question? Because they failed to find the hidden word "your" (them) before the word "life" . It's almost funny how the answer to the hardest questions always lies the closest to the seeker. It's "almost" funny.

I guess that makes me a fool too. Are you?

The Mountain Men

Where lies the mountain men?
Their mountain thoughts
In mountain brain.
High and mighty.
Sound and sane.
Where lies the mounitain men?

Where lies their lofty heads?
Shifting truths
And juggling threads.
Pieces to pieces.
Souls to slaves.
Where lies their lofty heads?

Where lies their soaring souls?
Taking measures
And meeting goals.
Offing, Damning
And boring holes.
Where lies their soaring souls?

Made up morals.
False heaven.
They preach words,
"Have faith" and then
They betray us
In our own haven.
Near lies the mountain men.

And where you ask
Is their crooked den?
Utter fools
We, now and then.
We never knew.
We never guessed.
Among us dwells
The mountain men.

When the Mask wears off

It all starts with a cry. The first pure cry. And then everything changes. You keep growing up. Little by little. And so does something else. At first, it's an itch, one you can't scratch away. You grow a little. So does this itch. You keep scratching harder. Trying the best to keep it at bay. But you soon realise the reason it isn't going away. You realise that it's coming from inside. You learn to live with it. There's a smile in your face but your insides are hurting. But you learn to deal with it. Unchecked and unfettered, it grows. It gnaws at your insides and before you know there's a pit in your stomach. Now you can feel it's presence all the time. Soon it's not just you who feels its presence. Everyone around you can feel it too.

You arch your lips harder and harder but it somehow keeps falling flat. You try to gentle your eyes but your eye brows don't listen to their whims anymore. Now, you clench your fists more than you stretch your cheeks.

Sometimes in the loneliness of the night, you wonder: Why is the pit? What is the pit? You know the answer. But yet it's somehow intangible. You deny it's hold and in that denial you fuel its growth.

And maybe the next morning, you look at the mirror, you clench your fists and before you can think, it flies off. But in that chaos. In that broken reflection, you see the truest image. You see the mask undone.

So. Do you give in? Or, Do you fix it and move on?

Homecoming

Scraping off the thick layer of dust that has settled on the lock, I started shuffling through the bag to look for the keys. There was a bit of rust on the keys too. It took me a minute and a bit of force to finally get the door to open. And I was greeted with dust and a smell. What kind of smell? I don't know. The kind of smell you would get from old places. Rotting wood, old furnitures, the way they smell. That's how it was.

I flipped the switch. No electricity. Should have been obvious. The building is basically desolate. No one lives here anymore. The last family that lived here, moved out 5 years ago. It was 12 noon. I opened the window. Yeah, it goes without saying that it was covered with spider webs and dirt. And yes, I used a piece of cloth to open them. I am still afraid of spiders. I still am.

I closed the door and moved to the bedroom. The bed was still there. An almirah too. The bedroom door was open. As if it has been waiting for me to come back for all these years. The rays of the sun mixed with the suddenly stirred atmosphere of the apartment was creating a mystical show of lights. Or maybe I am just imagining things. I looked at the bed again.

Do you know what the saddest part is? I'll never sleep in the middle again.

Suddenly the sadness was way too much. I moved to my room. The computer table was still there. Not the computer though. My bed. We never took the beds. There was dust on the bed. But I sat on it anyway. Looked at the empty table for a moment. That gave me a smile. Well. That computer was my entire world. I sat there for quite a few moments. Looked around. There was nothing to my left. Not anymore. Although there was a circular mark on the floor where the stand-fan used to stand. Marks. Yeah. Looking closely, there were a lot of them. Some vague. Some more prominent.

There were marks and there were memories. A lot and a lot of them.

Looking at the window to my right, I thought of opening it. Just to peek through the window one last time, to see what the next door (more like next window) neighbors are doing. Probably watering those lovely flowers or cooking relentlessly all through the day. Believe me, that's all I ever saw through those windows. I promise. But I never opened. It's better to remember those blossoming flowers than too see some empty pots.

One could easily ask that, "Why now? Why after 30 long years? " To that I'd say. It's home. It doesn't matter how long I've been away. It's my home. And it'll always be my home. No matter how far I go. It'll always call me back. Yes, it might not look the same. Hell, it might even look dead from the outside. But it'll still be alive from the inside. It'll still be as if it was just yesterday that baba bought me my first computer. It'll still be as if I was just nagging maa to make me some khichuri. It'll still feel like I just had one of those playful arguments I used to have with baba. As if it was yesterday I fell asleep on my maa's lap. They will always be here. They will always bring me back.

HA 16, Janapath, Aswininagar, Baguiati is not just my address. It's a part of me.

Flickering Lights

As the sun sets behind the mountain
Of glass, brick and cement.
As the last patches of yellow recede
Down the long winding road.
She comes, the embodiment of irony,
Limping her way out
Of the tribulations of yesterday.
As she stands under the flickering lights.
It's uncertainty is aptly reflected in her eyes.
Irony, as she stands and waits
Patiently, for her predator.
And the clock ticks away at its pace
Gnawing at her face
As she fills her lungs with smoke
And her mind with numbing impatience.
She stares at the street
The wide empty street.
Once filled with unfamiliar faces
Staring, grinning at her.
As she lay ridden with blood and guts.
As she begged for pity.
She stares at that spot.
Still reeking with hints of red.
And as the smoke slowly lifts from her face.
As the light dims down
She slowly fades away into heaven.
The same heaven she came from.
The same heaven we thought she deserved.
A heaven full of nothingness.

Last night under his shadow

It was my last night
Under his shadow.
But I never was,
And the night never came.
The days burned out
The rough edges of our soul.
Like worn out jigsaw pieces,
Drifting apart.
The flowers bloomed at the fields
Of my yonder dawn,
Wilting now, choking, lifeless
At the cruel hands of time.
Unattended, uncared.
Forgotten, forsaken.
And I'll never get the chance,
And you'll never forgive.
But I'll never forget,
The moments we cherished.

A Corpse Delight

In broad daylight,
In the middle of the night,
He wondered and wondered
What's wrong? What's right?

Sleeping and eating
Unaware of his plight.
Riddled with inactions
Never giving a fight.

Then once a cold morning
Still, he lied.
Nothingness, its spirit scremed
To its corpse delight.

Thou art Apocalypse

In the nights we prayed for the moon. 
In the days we begged for the sun. 
Yellow waves lashed onto the ragged shore, 
Littered with the remains of a prosperous past. 
The rain that washed away all the inhibitions of the heart, 
Now leaches into the same, melting it away.

Days of fragrant roses gave way
To the putrid stench of decadence.
While exuberant nights of making snowmen
Melted away to heaps of grey ashes. 

As hearts gather at the edge of anticipation
Writhing in pain, anguish
Suffering at the tormenting memory of a beautiful past, 
We pray to the gates of Valhalla
May tomorrow's dawn be dusk forever.