THE ENIGMA OF HUMAN EXISTENCE

I once read a beautiful story of one of my most beloved Oriya fiction writers,Puspanjali Nayak, in which the hero who is a senior administrative officer, is confessing his failure as a person and a human being. He has acquired wealth, status, prestige,all the comforts of life, yet, he is terribly unhappy and passes his nights tossing in bed. His high society wife's marble white body doesn't evoke any desire in him, his children are so engrossed in their world that they have moved away from him.At the pinnacle of success,he is tormented each moment. At times, he remembers the simple village girl whom he once loved, a girl who only knew how to love with all her heart, but had no eligibility to be the wife of an administrative officer. She had tried to kill herself after he cruelly broke their engagement after being selected in the I.A.S. exam and chose to marry the aristocratic,English educated daughter of a senior administrative officer.

The story is beautifully written and the pain and agony of a so-called worldly wise man is so vividly brought out that it raises a question on the validity of the modern man's self-centred life without any love or dedication to a higher purpose in life. Man today has become an emotionless, mechanical, pervert who only moves in certain spheres of existence in the mad frenzy of achievement.What man doesn't understand is that any endeavour, any pursuit without love, commitment and a pure purpose can bring material success, but it can never lead to happiness. Wealth and fame can never buy contentment and satisfaction. They only give a superficial sense of achievement, undermine the higher purposes of life and ultimately lead to a life of emptiness and discontentment. On the other hand, things done with love and sincerity with right understanding of situations and people leads to general well being of individuals and the society and leads to bliss. Resultantly,the human soul remains calm, unpolluted and pure and thus dwells in bliss.

PAIN, REVISITED

-1-

It was hard to come by,
There was not a sign of it, nor the sound of it, for ages,
But it came such an odd way, one day,
through the hardy terrain it came
burdened with disbelief and disgust,
but it came,
climbing on the soft, magical wings of a crooning,
And nudged the heart,
then entered it, pierceing through,
The walls closed around itand it remained enclosed there,
It still is.
To release it and to give it wings to fly back
and to fly away somewhere,
will require a lance-blow, a tear, very strong and deep blow,
a death.


-2-

I hate that 'karmic' madness,
and that feverish mind that keeps jumping from branch to brach
like a monkey in pain,
I hate the long silences
that seem to dismantle things,
I hate the surface dreams,the forgetfulness,
that surges over the sand and keeps earasing the good,
and the memorable,
The rude words that break the heart time to time I despise,
yet Underneath all, runsa a stream, cryustal clear,
the slime never rises to the surface or muddies the stream,
It flows, queitly,
Through seasonal tears and pain, and flows,
Because love never quits.