Deathly tauts

I love Pink Floyd but I hardly get the urge to listen to their songs. I have been unable to explain this phenomenon. In the case of many other bands, a bit of their music comes into my head from nowhere and I feel the irresistible urge to listen to their songs. But in the case of Pink Floyd, I never get the feeling (except for the album Division Bell, which many die-hard fans don't accept to be Pink Floyd at all). There's one song by the Pink Floyd that deserves a different treatment though. Its "Free Four" from their 1972 album "Obscured by the clouds". The album is quite an interesting listen but "Free Four" is the best. It is a happy tune with morbid lines woven into it. Of course, David Gilmour puts in some scorching riffs and leads to make the song a great rock song.

I love listening to this song for two reasons.

1. The chorus at beginning of the song, which goes "One, two, free, four"

2. Soon after, two lines that seem to have become the motto of my life appear.

Life is a short, warm moment
And death is a long cold rest

I find the first line, a reason to live - life is warm and it is short. Should we not enjoy the warmness of life, especially when it is only available for a short moment? When difficulty strikes, I love looking the short part of the moment though; at that point the thought of warmness seems a rude joke. But the thought that the difficulty and life will pass on soon, gives me the strength to live with the difficulty and either get used to it or overcome it. 

And then, there's death. Death being long cold rest somehow sounds attractive, especially the long and rest part. The cold in the middle seems uncomfortable but it is not necessarily so. There are two ways to die. Either you let it come to you or you go to it. The former is completely beyond one's control. Many think that the latter is under their control but the thought is far from reality. I have heard of two cases, where people walked up to death but did not reach it.

A lady, frustrated by the issues in her life, decided to jump from the terrace of her five-storey building. She went up to the terrace, got on top of the parapet wall and jumped. She probably saw death and attempted to grab it. But she could not reach it, her hand got entwined in a cable. This broke the fall and she ended up on bed with a few broken bones and many embarrassing questions to answer.

A man, tired of the challenges life hurled at him, decided to cut a couple of his arteries. He cut an artery on his wrist and one on his neck and waited for death to come. An hour later, all he had lost was a lot of blood. He had not even lost his consciousness. He felt weak but his mind was agile. He reached out to his friends and requested, in desperation, for their help in getting to death. The friends rushed and found him at the centre of a room submerged in blood. They rushed him to hospital and he has now lived for more than ten years since that day.

I am sure, people are aware of others who have reached out unsuccessfully to death. But, I am sure there are many others who have done so successfully. My own head reminds me of a few faces whose owners have hung, jumped or drowned to get to other side. There are times, when I have thought about it myself. If I want to go, how will I go?

The sun had not set yet. I stood on the side of a busy highway. I looked towards the east, away from the traffic, which sped past me without care. The sun was on the other side of the world and darkness crawled stealthily from below on this side of the world. I watched at the sea in the distance; a large expanse of sand and bushes separated me from it. I took a step off the highway and walked through the sand to the sea. The place was in the middle of nowhere and so the beach was empty. I sat down right at the edge of the waves and let the water touch my feet. As darkness took control of the sky, the water embraced me some more. Soon, the sea lost interest in me and the waves started pushing me away. I did not make any voluntary movement. I sat there and let the sea play its game.

A few minutes or maybe hours later, I got up and started walking into the sea. Unlike the Red Sea, this one did not part to welcome me. It tried to push me away. It was probably trying to tell me something but my mind had turned deaf and I continued walking into the water. Suddenly, the ground underneath my feet disappeared and I lost balance. I was surrounded by darkness and water entered through my nose into the lungs. I sputter and cough and breathed in more water. Now, I listened to the sea's warning and kicked up. I managed to break through the water and attempted to take in air. But the coughs did not let in much air. I struggled to stay afloat but the sea has fallen in love with me and was desperate to embrace me. I felt his arms wrap around me and dragged me down. I lost my ability to differentiate between him and me. Soon, I gave up the struggle and fell to the bottom like a wafting piece of paper. I can clearly see myself going down to the bottom of the sea. The darkness that enveloped the earlier happenings is shadowed by sunlight streaming through the sea. It seemed like a scene straight out of the movie Finding Nemo. 

The problems in life are never too much for you to walk into the sea or train or bus or fan. You give the problem a day or two and it creeps into some unknown hole. But when we live through it, it provides a never-ending stream of misery. It is not the problems that makes one think "how much longer!" It's the boringness of life; its monotonousness. I mean, let's move back and look at our lives objectively; lets keep that damned feeling called emotion in a strong black box with a strong and big black lock. What do we see! We see a pattern. 

You run into a problem. It hits you like truck on a highway. You look all around and scream "Where the hell did that come from? I did not see it coming." All the shouting and screaming is of no point, it is here to stay for a few days. Its like the common cold, you steam, gargle, medicate and at times, stand on your head too but it will not let go of you for two weeks. At first, you try and push the problem under a carpet but there is no space under the carpet and it jumps right back at you with double the force. You look at it, like the neighbour's obnoxiously sweet baby who has just urinated on your lap.  It smiles at you very sweetly and you get angry. You shout, fret, scream and make a mess of yourself. All the energy you have let out, gets right into the baby problem and it turns into a healthy teenager (Now, I understand the law of conservation of energy). You sulk, wear dark glasses, wear a dark shirt, wear a dark pant, make your face dark with a frown and a beard and in many cases, start glugging dark liquids. The problem is now of married and gets a spouse. Now you have to take care of Mrs. and Mr. Trouble. One day, you throw away all the dark items and the trouble family disappears. I am not sure, if the throwing away is responsible for the disappearance of the family or vice versa.

Our life is a series of issue landing on our plate when we least expect it, which is always, and disappearing suddenly, in some cases due to someone's intervention but on many occasions for no logical reason. That is all we do - at a hourly level, daily level, weekly level, monthly level, yearly level, decade-ly level and ... Thank god, not many of us live till 100. How boring is this! Shouldn't we be doing something else than solving problems? Can't we just sit someplace and do nothing? Oh yes, that will make life boring, which is a problem. To solve this problem, you jump into something and now you have many more problems. Your pleasantly boring life turns into a roller coaster and you feel good till the day you realize that you have too many problems and feel like letting it all go and do nothing. Hell! Did you not start from there? Human beings are nuts. They developed their brains and are now struggling to keep it occupied.

When one looks at life, at this mega-level, you realize the frustration and want to let go of it. But how! Most of us don't have the ability to just sit in a corner and leave. We have to put ourselves through a lot of violence and cause trauma to oneself and others around you. That is no way to leave at all and so we live on.

What the hell am I writing! I should stop. As Pink Floyd said in the song Time

The time is gone, the song is over, thought I had something more to say