I looked at the man. His eyes were deep red. We made eye-contact. Now eye-contact with total strangers makes me uneasy. Here was this stranger. He probably felt uneasy at the thought of a boy half his age watching a grown up cry. I looked down and kept sipping the tea. I looked again. and again. There was this strange attraction towards the man. I wanted to watch him cry. I kept glancing at him. His tears just didn't stop. Who could it have been? Father? Brother? His wife and child ( I assume) were standing beside him.
To be honest I have never seen strangers cry but today I felt that his pain was not his. It was universal. The pain of fearing the loss of a loved one. It's an amazing feeling this. When I was in my mother's womb devoid of all contact with the outer world I didn't feel lonely at all. The day I came 'out' I didn't feel lonely Things change but. A thought of losing a loved one makes one shudder doesn't it? Where did the self reliance go? We are a separate entity aren't we. Yet we rely so much on people around us. Think about living a life where you just go to work and return home and have your food. Pass it out the next morning. Go to work again. No friends. Only bodies around. Your mother. Your father. Your boss. Only bodies. No attachment. No love. No sexual desires. Isn't that how it was meant to be when we were born? We come alone. We are meant to die along. No one was supposed to share your pain when died of cancer. No one shared your pain when your the nail pricked you. Why is this man crying then? He is physically fit. Nothing happened to him. Why are mirthless things like attachment forcing him to shed his blood? Unfortunately things didn't quite work that way. The greatest need was to be needed. As someone had said -
Maybe love(beyond any borders - fatherly/ love for partner/love for animals) is just about making life a little less lonelier.
The hoplessness of that man's face still lingers. He knew he was going to lose the person he loved. What went through his mind at that moment? Now I'm one of those lunatic kinds who think 'in a different way' about everything under the sun. I just kept looking at the man crying. People look so beautiful when they cry. They look devoid of any guilt. Minds so pure. Regretful. Innocent. Do terrorists cry when they lose a loved one? Do they succumb to the forces of nature? Do they think about the countless tears they have ensured? Do they even cry?
Always wanted to know what separates good tears from bad ones. What's the difference between the guy who was crying because he feared losing that someone and that terrorist in Srinagar who lost his wife in an attack? Are his tears less genuine than the man's tears. They both regretted. Wife. Father/Brother. They both asked the "Why him/her?" question. The terrorist looked innocent for once. His hapless tears at the loss of his wife made him look so so mortal. Where was that fright he commanded? The man looked mortal too. He was a good man. The terrorist was not. But that little thread attached them at that moment. That liquid thread. That tear which rolled down at Calcutta and Kashmir. The river of hopelessness and mortality. The river which rolled down his eyes. That tear which made both men mortal. That tear which made both men good. After all good men are harmless people. They are mortals. Immortals don't cry.
Tears. They come out of our eyes. They don't know no boundaries. They don't know no colour. They only make men good. It made that terrorist look humble for once. Even he loved someone. He was not a selfless son of a bitch bought to bring an end to humanity. Tears. The unison of pain around the world. The force which gushes the hidden good out of you. The force that gushes the bad out of your soul.
..Tears.
P.S. I'm past the period when I used to write things which were rational. Coherency is not my order anymore I'm afraid. Thanks for bearing :)
