The Peculiar Pillar

By- Sayan Bhattacharya

Nearly a century ago, there existed in a city crematorium, a peculiar pillar, with cement spikes protruding from its surface. It was constructed with the aim of providing a beautiful roof to the unheard, lying underneath for years. As is the custom, the soldiers of God found it violating the customary protocols, and declared immeasurable disgust at the budding of such a visibly unholy, impious propagation. The self-acclaimed Protectors of the Almighty, thus slammed against the ferocity of those bulging spines, the frontal lobe of the jubilant yet juvenile twenty-two year old son, who unfortunately owned the criminal pair of hands that created the ‘murder-weapon’. The proprietors of the heinous act detected humour in the poetic death of the youth, enabled by his dearest creation and the ‘out-of-the-box’ dream that made death his reality. Hence, a sniff here, a smirk there and bit-sized fits of laughter were doing the rounds among the stalwart soldiers, when the womb that had nourished the defeated flesh and blood for nine whole months, appeared in the scene with limitless flow of tears and her lifeless body.

The city rejoiced and gasped at the grandeur of this young man’s cremation whose pillar stood unattended with chunks of dry blood and its allied speckled spots on the ground, while the Mother cried. In one moment she questioned her upbringing, in the other she was filled with colossal affection for her only son from a father who had fled years ago after a fake ‘happily-married-ever-after’ promise had fetched him access to her vagina.

She had more in the grooves of her encephalon to reflect on, than decide on the course of actions against the murderers standing tall in front of her. And weak as she felt, and had lived all her life, she checked hertears further, and embraced defeat. She sighed at her inadequacy to deliver a puppet, dancing skilfully and happily at the pull of strings by those above. The steady downward glare of the proprietors symbolised in the very moment, the utter strength and fierce authority that the Guardians of God possessed against the devotees who would readily sacrifice their lives for a worthy, pious cause, though the very idea whether they have something they can denote with the lively word ‘life’ from the English glossary is debatable.

The first few steps of the retreating, defeated mother were accompanied all at once by approaching feet of a weeping fifteen-year-old, his once-joyful mother resting peacefully on the shoulders of four well-built men unknown to him. When the subsequent religious procedures set in, the adolescent found himself short of courage to permit his retina to process the visuals of soil hugging the lap he laid his head on for all these years. He viewed himself as an insufficient son to a woman sitting on the throne of elegance and perfection. “I’m at fault” he screamed, and in a flash, rushed towards the peculiar-pillar, exhibited voluptuous intentions and cracked his head against the spikes. His feeble, fresh, warm blood consulted the spirited dried patches of the youth’s. In a jiffy, the startled Guardians expressed bizarre concern and disquiet, as their knowledge and God’s instructions had taught them to protect every naïve, innocent Child of God from the irrational claws of Destiny.

They undertook every measure to revive spark in the young soul, and kissed the feet of success at last. It was mixed blood that ran through the capillaries of this resuscitated soul. It had a share of courage and hope. And soon through a newly acquired gaze, his brain comprehended a motherly woman, slightly olderthan his own… The mother of the ill-fated innovative.

There was something peculiar not just in the hopeful Pillar, but in this gaze. A sense of loss, a hope of rejuvenated spirits, a craving for each other. The Mother proceeded to bestow the long lost warmth of her lap to the injured head and mind of the boy.

The assembled soldiers stole the show, and named this to be “God’s Will”. The enthusiasts followed. The justified murder met a sublime ending. The boy and his new Mother did not whine. They let their losses stay confined to those coffins.

Everyone confronts the dreaded devil named “Loss” and its comrade “Defeat”. Few possess the ability to row their boats past the phase of sea this devil resides in. The others need to realise that the sole motive of this devil is to shatter that part of you which willingly accommodates the pre-defined patterns of how to live, how to judge people, how to fail to understand their point of view, how to hurt them conveniently to march forward in the rat-race, how to play with others’ emotions while elevating one’s own feelings to an absolute podium, how to thrash old relations for new ones, and finally to satiate one’s ego and self-worth at all costs; conditioned into us as early as the youngest boy in the incident above. We all nourish and feed each of these traits in us with the fragile hope that only the good character will show up, and simultaneously be reciprocated. In the process, we create our very own peculiar pillar with a hundred spikes, to shelter the ear-marked negative traits thriving within us.

Equally significant it is to realise for anyone honestly viewing oneself in the “others” category, and keeping distance from the improbable category of the “few”, isthat this is a neither a story, nor an article suggesting how one must walk through life. It is a very personal letter to you from me, for what runs in your mind about yourself, concerns me profoundly enough. I care.

However, unlike the last line you just read, everything else you spent your time reading was my mind creating a peculiar pillar for you to recline against and seek solitude under, amidst the storm of your self-doubt. Again, because I CARE. I DO.

Vividly speaking,

None of it was factual; the mothers… the sons… the soldiers and more.

All mere puppets of my notorious head,

Hopping and skipping at my fancy

Working to fill the crates that in yourself you bore,

Telling the tale of my fallacy.

I don’t aim to uplift you for a short span. You’ll often catch yourself encircled by people ready to play that part. I simply desire to hit that tiny alcove in your heart that acts as the trigger for your brain’s horses and bring them into action. To see anything as it is, unsullied, untouched is a tricky skill every bit of me wants you to master.

I cooked the cocktail of those characters for you to visualise how the anthropogenic borders separating the right and wrong aren’t necessarily congruent to those defined by Nature. Additionally, I garnished it for you on a carefully-wiped plate, as trapping yourself in the vicious cycle of self-blame and meagreness, only to forcefully demarcate the right from the wrong is a tedious, unyielding and self-mutilating activity I never want you to be a part of. Again – needless to specify –the reason is that I care. For some queer reason, I DO.

And for all the care and love I have for you, could you replace your self-harming blame-game with self-reflection? Could youscrupulously search and find the other side of the coin you are, and attempt to uproot the weeds germinating there, if any?

I hope this letter helps you clearly see the blurry society we’ve created for us to reside in, give dubious people a taste of their own medicine as they approach your life, treasure the rare prized people who love you enough to do anything remotely as crazy as this, or support you whole-heartedly in each endeavour of yours, or those who are vested in your heart, no matter where you go.

I’ll sign off saying, I care for you. I do.

You are now free to imagine this letter lying next to the architect of the Peculiar-Pillar, in his splendid coffin underneath – unheard for years -  inscribed by him as a last memorandum, just to put a suitable end to the story I just framed.

Sayan