The best way to know the self is feeling oneself at the moments of reckoning. The feeling of being alone, just with your senses, may lead you to think more consciously. More and more of such moments may sensitize ‘you towards you’, towards others. We become regular with introspection and retrospection. We get ‘the’ gradual connect to the higher self we may name Spirituality or God or just a Humane Conscious. We tend to get a rhythm again in life. We need to learn the art of being lonely in crowd while being part of the crowd. A multitude of loneliness in mosaic of relations! One needs to feel it severally, with conscience, before making it a way of life. One needs to live several such lonely moments. One needs to live severallyalone.

Tuesday 6 December 2016

JAYALALITHAA'S FINAL JOURNEY: SHADES OF MOURNING

Jayalalithaa's life and final journey - when everything comes to connote some symbolism - for them who really mourn - for them who try to mourn - and for them who do no not even try to mourn!

Mourning – this is one human emotion that is free of any cultural context.

When your inner self asks you to cry, you cry. You don’t have to put efforts there.

Yes, it may be loud or you may simply travel so deep inside that you get disconnected from the world.

Your face speaks. Your eyes have tales. Your body responds.

And that is a symbol of true love, committed feelings, genuine care - something that is rare to come by in these times – be it J. Jayalalithaa, the massively popular but lonley Tamil Nadu’s chief minister who died yesterday and was laid to rest today..

Or a commoner like you and me.

What goes in favour of us that we have a family to speak for us when we are no more there but people like Jayalalithaa, though they matter for millions because they care for them and try to reach out to them materially, have no one to really care about after they have departed..

Love/care/commitment – such emotions suck at times like this.

It was on display, at a massive level during Jayalalithaa’s funeral today. Without taking the risk of sounding cynical, we can say that most who present in there during her final rites and burial had this or that social/political equation in mind.

Yes, there were aggrieved masses but who cares for them after her. They were crying and it was real because she tried to reach out to them in a country where the poverty line still hovers around Rs. 1000 a month and where the world’s maximum count of poor people reside.

Otherwise she lived a materialistically comfortable life with ruthless political finesse and didn’t bother to go her own way away from even her political mentor (remember the 1984 episode of her widening rift with MGR). But love is a strange thing - and sometimes, rift in relations is a part of it. She was buried besides her that mentor only as per her last wish.

It is said in death we are all alone. It is metaphorical but with Jayalalithaa’s last rites today, it was evident why this statement gets practical at times – the shades of mourning during her 75 day in the hospital and the last 24 hours are more than enough to tell us that.

©SantoshChaubey