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Monologue 3: Into The Heart Of Darkness

By
Bharadwaj Mishra

The more I try to understand you the more I will try to distance from you. I like you much as long as I don’t know you much. It’s a plain fact. That’s how parents are distanced. That’s how a much-loved marriage falls apart. That’s how our childhood friendships are estranged. That’s how our guides and role models of one time are rejected.

That’s how our dreams are shattered. That’s how our loves are lost. That’s how our hearts go cold. I have my set of expectations and I guard them real tight and hidden from the world. Now as I grow older I begin to peep into your secret world, into your well-guarded world. When I come to see that you too harbour the same set of dreams and expectations a sense of anger, envy and competition arises in my heart.

And it grows even darker and frustrating when I realise that the secret dreams that I nurtured so passionately and which propelled me to think that I was unique and superior to my surroundings by dint of my dream and my pursuit, is completely diffused and nullified when I see that you too have the same secret, the same dream, the same pursuit. With age and maturity I see everyone else has the same set of bubbles. So forget wisdom; instead of becoming at the least worldly-wise I become infuriated.

Initially I think I have been fooled. Subsequently I think I have fooled myself. Then the instruments of hatred and vengeance convert into the claws of self-loathing. The matter of darkness turns into the mask of hiding. Aggression gives way to escapades. Vanity vanishes and the void is replaced by a black-hole into which all good things fall and get lost.

Do you feel low with this? Don’t feel so dear. We are facing the fact. If you get frightened it might get the idea of threatening you further with some chilling tale of horror. Reality is capable of many interpretations, of many incarnations.

Have you ever felt this? You would have surely. See, let me explain it easily. If you have decided to live, it must be because you saw something good and necessary in your life and living; thereby you would plunge into the race of the society, of the civilisation, of the struggle for survival. And, if you have not made any choice and you think your life is what it is by default then you have no reason to strive, no reason to aim for growth, for competition and you might end up waiting for surprises like a pain or a fall or a loss or an unexpected death at the corner.

So, ultimately if you have not summoned for life you have seen neither the limits nor the extent of the possible.

(This is the third part of a series titled Monologued)

Also Read: Monologue 2: Of Human Bondage 

Also Read: Monologue 1: Things Fall Apart

Bharadwaj Mishra

Banker by profession. He writes poems and short stories in English.

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