I stand half-poised between despair and hope-
Both equally fearful, equally cruel.
Despair, my mate for these years
Has propped me against all dreams,
All deceptions, all facades, false promises.
It’s part of me, and I am quite used.
While hope leads me to a doorway,
Extant though closed.
I know there’s a world beyond,
Chatter and gay, sun and mirth,
Unseen by eyes, but evident to the mind.
Tempting me from this placid cove
With soft promptings of love.
I know not what to choose-
Live satisfied or risk it for just a dream?
Oh! Tell me, what a dream means?
-25/6/2000, Calcutta-63

COMMENTS :

In this world good things come at a price. This price is sometimes called sacrifice. Without sacrifice sacred things are not available. Such as love. Now this single word of four letters is perhaps the most complicated word in the world. It could mean from nothing to everything with everything or anything in between. While for some love is a sweet and satisfactory experience, for most it is not always so. Even for the former category it could be said that they are satisfied just because they are ignorant. There is no ‘and they lived happily ever after’ in the real world. There cannot be. We cherish the heartfelt laugh only because it came after a lot of tears. The price of happiness is sadness. And yet there is a golden mean. While one doesn’t know if the word ‘golden’ is quite apt in this context, one can live away from this upheaval. Sages since time immemorial have been in search of this mean, dejected persons have found satisfaction from living far from any emotional contact with any people even though living within the society. And they are of the opinion that this existence (one cannot quite call this survival ‘life’- it is only existence) is rather satisfactory.

Thus the real problem is ‘to be or not to be’. To be a partaker of the joys and tears of life, or to be a partaker of the perfect placidity of ignorance.