Resurrection
Something is revealed when something is destroyed.
Seated at the river bank ,staring at her own reflection in water ,she wanted to believe it was real ,that it existed. Exactly two years before, this was the place that changed her, that destroyed and revealed something in her. It was her resurrection!
People are so capable of everything and their tendency to hate out shrines. Anyone can easily hate ,hate what doesn't please them, hate what doesn't belong them, hate what refuses to be one of them.
They had always hated him.
"He touches things and all become rotten!", said Mrs. Fernando, his neighbour.
"His pride at nothing is the most annoying!", added his landlord.
She returned to her single room residence. The walls were white as dead, no decor, no pictures on wall. It all carried a monotony.
Shoaba was an entrepreneur.
She had a knife’s blade pointed at the blue inside her flesh, in her hand ,her own body. She had been here with the intention of piercing her skin and feeling the cold of metal on her burning veins. But she couldn’t. Holding this symbol of her freedom in her hand she felt as if she wanted to pierce something more deeper, something intangible that was beyond these dead blue veins carrying with blood all the poison of her mind to her heart and her body.
She was seated there staring at her reflection and wanted to believe it wasn’t real, it didn’t exist!!
It was the first time when she met him.
He looked at her hands, the knife, at her, his eyes resting on her. A stare.
She looked at him. His tall figure, frayed sleeves. It seemed as if none of him belonged here. But his presence made everything else incongruous!! She herself felt dissolving under his gaze. His eyes seemed to see everything beyond her skin, beyond her flesh. She had an urge to hide, to escape.
"What is it that you despise so much?" ,he asked.
"Presence."
"Of?"
"Pretense."
"Kill it."
"What?"
"That ego of being able to despise."
"Its self respect!" ,she almost shouted.
He smiled.
"Kill it",his voice so poise ,unattached ,his own words seemed alien to the voice of his, "kill the pretense of it ,the pretense of the self respect."
"How?" ,she asked.
"Confess."
She stood up ,turned away ,to leave.
He said, "I’ll see you here tomorrow."
She left.
"So I don’t have a right to despise?" She thought.
His presence ,his stare, the indifference of his voice to his own words made everyone feel the urge to hide,to escape insecure of their own selves ,that self assured stare of him, that smirk without a sign of mockery or amusement killed people with doubts. His presence made people feel naked, none of their dark secrets seemed hidden from his dark eyes! People hated him for making them see them as they are, none ever wants to!!
She saw him at the river bank next evening ,reading something. His whole existence seemed concentrated to let him be absorbed in the surrounding, but what seemed to happen was vice versa. She looked at him for long before walking to him.
"Hey", she said.
He smiled.
He could see her efforts to seem happy in front of him. He smiled.
'She had to make him feel that she is not some depressed young woman ,who pretends her own self respect yet claims to despise the presence of pretense everywhere around’,she thought.
She sat down besides him.
"So?", he asked.
"I thought about what you said, maybe you were right, I’m always so focused on pointing out wrong in people that I find it difficult to appreciate the good in them, the good that I would’ve loved instead of despising other."
He was looking at her,indifferent,as he would’ve looked there if she weren’t present.
"So today I tried to see good in everyone around ,appreciated it, and I feel happy about it, I should really do it often, and hey,by the way, nice hair.",she said with a smile.
He looked away for a moment and then said,"Confessions?"
"I don’t think its necessary now.",she said.
He nodded and said nothing.
"What? You don’t think I’m faking it ,do you?",she asked.
"I never said you were,you know you are!"
"What? No!!"
"Yes",he said.
"How do you know?"
"Because still you depend on people to make you feel things; I said kill it what makes you despise them, you couldn’t ,its the same that makes you happy pretending."
"How to kill it?"
"No one should affect you in no way"
"Yes ,but how?"
"Confess" ,he said ,"confess what makes you feel guilty, what makes you depend on other through medium of hating or loving or being amused!" ,he said.
"I want to feel good, I want to feel complete, I want to feel superior to those around, and I want them to make me feel it! I want to play victim at every fault of mine ,I want sympathy for all I’ve been through ,I want to know that I did well fighting those wars on dark nights ,and I want people around me to make me feel that!! I want them to look up to me as someone pure ,without pretense and yet all I want to do is pretend that I’m better and more complete than them in every way because I’m not dependent on them for giving me assurances when all I need is just that!! Do you get it?"
"Yes."
"I’m evil ",she said.
"The evil who accepts the evil and want to leave it ,even if they have to kill their whole in the process,are rare" ,he said.
She looked at him.
"Get rid of it,not you."
"But how to know what is right and what is not?",she asked,desperate.
"Nothing is, go for what your conscious tells you,be real, be you, you’ll know "
He continued,"No one else matters in any way that it should affect you positive or negative, be you, let you guide you, let you assure you, let you bless you, you that are His part, the almighty ,let him speak to you."
They sat there ,silent. None of them spoke a word yet lot was conversed that night between the two souls.It was already dawn when she looked at him and said,"I had hated you when we first met!"
"It was yesterday.",he said.
She smiled.
After some time he stood up and started walking away. She kept looking at him, his contour being formed and dissolved into the rising sun. Her rising sun.
After that day she visited this place daily, and looking at the rising sun ,smiled,a real smile, remembering him. But she never searched him for him, neither did he return. He left a part of him to her that she would never let go.
She practiced being real ,like she used to pray ,she believed her real, like she believed her being alive everyday.
