Sequel to Ghalib
I cast away what was called religion,
I cast away the shrubbery
of what was called language.
I went past the scriptures
and threw away all the maps save the one that pointed to a destination that seemed far away and yet so near.
I listened to a voice that spoke ever so near and nearer still like the inevitable, a mystery that can be a torment more than a mystery when you know and do not know.
Neither a question nor an answer,
not even a desire to know.
Neither numbness nor a tremor,;
what do I do with this stillness at heart? There is no God to answer my call.
When the one human voice falls silent within, God too would not speak.
God, like you my love, would not speak unless made to speak.
Awareness comes when everything I know is called into doubt, and the language I spoke, no longer holds ME at its heart.
What did I use language for but to represent, not me but the convention of belief that was seen as me.
What did I ask for? There were questions
and battles being fought over issues that seemed far more relevant and valid than the question, not the question, but torment, of the arid loneliness of the heart.
Ridden with the guilt of not having done enough to lighten the burden that was not mine own-- commitment all along, a responsibility to begin with and a guilt-ridden conscience towards the end,
and robbed of what i longed for----
the myth and the archetype of my life here. That is the answer I landed with as I searched within for that one single answer which is ME.
The distant voice that beckoned Ghalib in the deserts of his India was, he faintly believed to be love; the source of it did not matter; be it God or be it a woman.
At the end of the day, we have to satisfy ourselves saying that it came from within. Solipsism--- the answer to everything that we search outside of ourselves.
But we know, that was not where we really wished to look for.
Solipsism is the soul's frustration
speaking to us as a wizened knowledge of what we call life
when I know it is the voice of my frustration speaking to me at the innermost depth of aloneness, the Inevitable--like the God we create,
when I cannot link in spirit to anything outside the lonely Self.
I don't know if a god can choose to dwell inside this lonely, empty space.
Sushama Karnik
I cast away what was called religion,
I cast away the shrubbery
of what was called language.
I went past the scriptures
and threw away all the maps save the one that pointed to a destination that seemed far away and yet so near.
I listened to a voice that spoke ever so near and nearer still like the inevitable, a mystery that can be a torment more than a mystery when you know and do not know.
Neither a question nor an answer,
not even a desire to know.
Neither numbness nor a tremor,;
what do I do with this stillness at heart? There is no God to answer my call.
When the one human voice falls silent within, God too would not speak.
God, like you my love, would not speak unless made to speak.
Awareness comes when everything I know is called into doubt, and the language I spoke, no longer holds ME at its heart.
What did I use language for but to represent, not me but the convention of belief that was seen as me.
What did I ask for? There were questions
and battles being fought over issues that seemed far more relevant and valid than the question, not the question, but torment, of the arid loneliness of the heart.
Ridden with the guilt of not having done enough to lighten the burden that was not mine own-- commitment all along, a responsibility to begin with and a guilt-ridden conscience towards the end,
and robbed of what i longed for----
the myth and the archetype of my life here. That is the answer I landed with as I searched within for that one single answer which is ME.
The distant voice that beckoned Ghalib in the deserts of his India was, he faintly believed to be love; the source of it did not matter; be it God or be it a woman.
At the end of the day, we have to satisfy ourselves saying that it came from within. Solipsism--- the answer to everything that we search outside of ourselves.
But we know, that was not where we really wished to look for.
Solipsism is the soul's frustration
speaking to us as a wizened knowledge of what we call life
when I know it is the voice of my frustration speaking to me at the innermost depth of aloneness, the Inevitable--like the God we create,
when I cannot link in spirit to anything outside the lonely Self.
I don't know if a god can choose to dwell inside this lonely, empty space.
Sushama Karnik
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