.. برباد کریں الفاظ میرے

There are long moments, on some days in a darkened room, when I'm putting Noori to sleep and as she drifts off and becomes slack, her little fist tightly curled around a toy, the clicking sound I hear as she sucks on her pacifier, her eyes almost shut but still a little open, the warmth of her body permeating into my arms, her heart thud-thudding against my chest, and as I draw her in closer, I feel there is nowhere else in the universe I'd rather be. It is a rare feeling that I can only remember having on some afternoons with అమ్మమ్మ.

Where can we live but days?

How radiant the above passage sounded in my head as it came to me while I was rocking her just a few minutes ago. And now it feels trite, cliched, a demeaning translation, even untrue. Because while the feeling was real, words seem to do scant justice- they feel like exaggerations, embellishments, performances. The feeling was transient but the words will remain forever giving the impression that this is the what it was all about, this is somehow the most essential aspect of parenting. But I know it isn't. This is true, but so is tiredness, the frustrations and fears, the days when she refused to sleep and I yelled in anger at a baby. It is embarassing to admit for it communicates selfishness, callousness, an inability to stretch oneself beyond one's comfort zone even in the presence of one's own little child. And yet those days are true as much as this. Do I have space in my narrative, my memories, in the mythology of my self to hold both, and more?

Yesterday, in the middle of a separate conversation, Sravani told me that she didn't trust me because what I tell and promise today doesn't hold for tomorrow. I know it is true. And I know I use that logic to sometimes get away from accountability. The deeper I think about it the more it feels like I'm unable to separate between thick feelings and thin ones and all that is fair criticism.

But so is the unexpected intensity of a certain thought-emotion that lands on me, or does it grow from within when I give it the time|space, that seems to resonate when my wavelength aligns with the universe's in that moment. It sounds mortifyingly mystical for a self-proclaimed materialist and yet I know those passages of time. It's the equivalent of moving from a prosaic realm of philosophy and narrative to poetry and music. It is being transported into the space which gives us melancholy, nostalgia, grace, longing, benevolence.

Because everyday is all there is.

All this sounds very pop-psychology-ish, supermarket spirituality talk and perhaps it is- a shollow thought process in my mind masquerading as something deeper. Didn't Arun Shourie write a book about Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharshi suggesting they could be just delusional? Yet experientally I know that there can be that feeling of ananda, something beyond mere contentment, not happiness but something more profound- an amalgamation of the self with the world.

But this combination of a quest for hyper self-consciousness, a presumptive trust in the order of being, and that's the trust that then becomes a source of sustenance and joy in some ways, right? There's a kind of joyous orientation to the world, and a dissolution of ego. To me, that's the religious sensibility.

I do feel, on quite a few days, that I am the universe in ecstatic motion. It is a learned sensibility, undoubtedly, and while a few years ago I would have chafed against anything learnt over anything స్వయంభు, now I don't. Living is a kind of education, education a kind of living. Words are a wonderful medium, just like music or travel, to educate us. But eventually learning goes beyond that and transforms you in ways you can't notice anymore because its changed you. The seer and the seen as this strange loop.

The writer says in words what cannot be said in words.