Excerpts from the past - 'The Body and the Mind'

“Fuck!” he screamed tacitly. His eyes were numb and face frozen. They spoke defeat. They screamed loss. Inside of his lanky self lay a mind that had been, for years, secretly drinking tears originating at another part of his own body. It never let any other part get affected by the poisonous emotions that flowed through its indefinite shape. Over time, it had gulped down plenty of bottles of venom. It had seen pictures that seemed unintelligible but horrific. It had heard voices that howled through the dark. That tiny little mind had experienced the gloomiest of the days, and yet had bravely walked on the roads that emanated fear on every step that it took on moonless, starless and in turn, lightless nights.

In spite of all this, his mind was a plucky character. It had seen him through the most miserable of the time phases. Till now, hope was its biggest strength; its most lethal weapon of defence. But today, it had given up. Its optimism had begun to wane with repeated failures, and today, finally, it perished. It vanished as if it had fathomed its own superficial nature; as if, his mind had suddenly presented itself before reality after a long sabbatical. It had no reason to deny the fact that his optimism did not have even the slightest of a realistic touch to it.

“Hope is a pseudo concept introduced to enervate the pain of failures,” his mind uttered as the words resonated inside his body, “me and happiness are like a person and the horizon. However much he walks towards it, he is always going to find himself as away from the horizon as he ever was.” it continued, with his eyes reducing in shape and eyebrows coming closer to each other. His hands and legs remained as the thought transpired through his body. Finally, his mind had affected the other parts of his body. It had failed to quarantine them from the pain.

“Another loss!” it said. Perhaps, it was lachrymose today. It was sorry to the body that carried it, that gave it a feeling that it was alive. Helpless, as the mind looked then, it was always loyal to the body but never useful to it.

- Mihir Chitre

-3^rd March, 2008.