A man died in Darchula last night. Of starvation. He had two children, parents and a pregnant wife to feed. No money to take her down to the hospital in the plains and no food for his family. The rest of the village is beginning to starve too. So no one responded to his begging.
A man starved to death last night. He must have tossed and turned and gasped for breath and finally abandoned it, while I lay in bed wondering why it was so wrong to try to define love and fail in living-up to it. I lay in bed wondering how I could possibly love you and still want another. Why should these thoughts kill me when life is actually about anatomy and nothing about heart's desire?
What have I become?
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on what life meant to make out of faith
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Mamu touched my hair the other day and said: This is not the hair of the girl I birthed. What did you do to your hair? I touched my hair, im... -
i cannot imagine how you put up with a man who drags you by your nape and tells you to go to your room and puts you out in the night. it...
but didi, life is all about the heart's desire. i'm not a romantic and i'm even less of an idealist. but without desire, without love, what else do we have? in a world like this, so random, so pointless, what else do we have to hold on except for desire? desire as in love, as in lust, as in affection and attraction. but i understand you. when it comes down to it, life is about anatomy and biology. philosophy doesn't matter when you're dying of hunger. and yet, i can't help but feel that if we were all biology, we would simply be animals. maybe that would be a good thing, but that would also mean that we give up our intellect, our morals, our capacity for love, desire, hope. but what you say saddens me. we have the luxury of thought, of reflection and of contemplation. what we think about is not our next meal, a starving family or own impending death, but metaphysics and abstractions. we are able. must we use what we have or deny it?
ReplyDeletei was only trying to think of the irony, pranaya. the fact that we're actually about anatomy, but it's emotions that are a bigger killer. that's what i meant. without desire- be it love, lust, the need to give, to receive and compassion, life is nothing.
ReplyDeleteThere is no hierarchy of biology/anatomy over emotions or vice verse when both can kill. And both are evolutionary needs/properties of us homo sapiens, eh.
ReplyDeleteHowever, hunger killing people is very real and will always be a mightier cause to sympathize with than emotional theatrics, I feel. In that context, metaphysics and abstraction becomes a luxury for those who can feed themselves and don't have to worry about it. [Sometimes, I wish- life for us was that simple- when all that mattered was biology induced pain, then maybe some of us would not die of a bleeding heart.]
Great piece, enchanted!
thank you for putting it so nicely for me. i fall short of words to say as much. that's what i also mean, muna. i wish life just boiled down to hunger of the stomach. but we hunger for so much more. i too wish "life for us was that simple- when all that mattered was biology induced pain, then maybe some of us would not die of a bleeding heart"
ReplyDeletethank you so much for helping me make sense out of this chaos :)
You are welcome. And one more thing, errr I'm Not Muna. :p
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