What’s the point?

Why is it…
That there has to be a reason for everything?
That there has to be a meaning in everything we do?
That there should be a purpose for everything?
That there should be a point of every conversation, every dialogue, every monologue, every fucking word?
Who do we fool when we create reasons when there aren’t any?
What do we achieve when we have reached a result? When there was no need for a result?
Who do we prove to that we are right? When there is no reason to be right?

For whom is this done? What’s the pain point? What’s the pleasure zone? There must be something wrong going on right here that I am perhaps trying to fix. But again, what’s the need for that? Nothing will change if our world keeps on going the way it is.

So what’s the point of writing all this?
Other than letting out the confusion inside?
What else?
Why is it…?

Shalimar the Clown

Rushdie’s writings seem to be more like a sleight of hand than a prowess of the mind… the way a magician conjures up rabbits out of hats, so does this author weave yards of magic through the looms of his unchained imagination. When he writes, ideas and stories merge into each other like twirling layers of chocolate in a four-flavor ice-cream.

And in Shalimar the Clown, he is at his best again. The story moves seamlessly from California to Kashmir via France as if Rushdie intends us to catch a non-stop roller coaster across the continents with the glorious scenery unfolding in front of our bewildered eyes.

The lead female character is aptly named “Kashmira”, and the author ensures that her life somehow proceeds in the same disturbing way as the beautiful land from which her name was derived.

The oft-recognized artistic imagery is evident right from the time he starts describing the sun-lit California:
“On those rare mornings when she awoke to cloud cover and a hint of moisture in the air she stretched sleepily in bed…
…But the clouds invariably burned off by noon and then there it was again, the dishonest nursery blue of the sky that made the world look childlike and pure, the loud impolite orb blaring at her like a man laughing too loudly in a restaurant.”

And then the truth about broken dreams in this promised land:
“The beautiful came to this city in huge pathetic herds, to suffer, to be humiliated, to see the powerful currency of their beauty devalued like the Russian ruble or Argentine peso…”

On the other hand, the disturbing reality of Kashmir could perhaps not have been depicted in better words than these:
“Who raped that lazy-eyed woman?
Who raped that grey-haired lazy-eyed woman as she screamed about snake vengeance?
Who raped that woman again?
Who raped that woman again?
Who raped that woman again?
Who raped that dead woman?
Who raped that dead woman again?”

Nothing but a series of questions that jump out at you from the pages, and the beauty of it all lies in the fact that these are questions no one wants to face.

That’s Shalimar the Clown for you.

Emotions…

It is true that your heart is all used up, and that most of your emotions have been burnt to smoke and ashes; but I still feel there’s something of a human left inside you. Whether I feel proud of that element of humanity, or sympathize with it, is still a question I haven’t answered.

And what can you salvage from this emotional wreckage?
You will find a few tattered, fluttering pieces of love somewhere, shivering in the wind; another few crooked, out-of-shape, rusted fragments of empathy trying to fight the heavy rains; and somewhere in this mess you will observe, shuddering in a dark and wet corner, the bloodied remains of trust.

You can pick and choose the battered emotion of your choice. You can even play with it, it won’t complain; there’s nothing left to complain anyways. You can break them further, just to see how far can emotions be actually broken; you can try molding them like clay, just to find out how much can emotions be bent.

I am sure you will be surprised by what you find…

Money

What money can do, is magic. What it cannot, is reality.
There’s too much truth associated with money. People swear by it, more than they swear by God. Infact, a lot of people live for money. It’s equally true that a lot more die for it.

Money often breeds hatred. Surprisingly, it breeds love with an even greater ease.
Money changes people. And then there are some who use it to maintain status quo.

But they say money can’t buy happiness.
Maybe they are right. But I still feel that it can at least buy your sadness away…

And the only thing certain…

… Are uncertainties.

It’s strange that even at this stage, there does not seem to be a clear light in the distance. Even Heisenberg would not have predicted this level of confusion in the basic framework of matter.

I feel sometimes I am living in a number of different parallel worlds. Parallel pasts, and consequently, parallel futures. Only this time, it’s not science fiction that I am talking about. But my own trysts with those disturbing parallelisms. A huge world of ifs and buts. A road chockfull of forks. Each leading to heaven, each leading to hell.

I hadn’t expected this to happen. The mist should have cleared instead of deepening.
But maybe I have found the reason.

Maybe it’s true (and no matter now ironical it may seem, but that is the only plausible explanation), that the farther you have traveled from your home, the more lost you really are…