Stories

The late-winter westerly winds are carrying with them quite a few pleasant rains. I hear the raindrops hitting the tin roof of our garage, and in the incoherently soothing sound I find melodies from a piano solo of a Jazz pianist in a Jazz Club from the previous century. It’s cold. I am wrapping myself in the blanket, but I am still getting sudden shivers being sent through me by my favorite season of the year. The piano of rain is now being accompanied by the expert flute skills of the westerly winds- playing with the electricity cables. My neighbours must have left a few windows open, because now I hear some drums coming into the performance too.

The electricity has been cut off. Maybe somewhere the lines got damaged by some tree that couldn’t fight the westerly winds and like a warrior stuck by an arrow to the heart, it fell down. It’s total darkness around here. My parents are asleep. There is no moon visible in the sky. Clouds are winning their everlasting battle today.

Some insects have joined the Jazz band as vocalists. 

Engulfed by the darkness and the Jazz of March, I lay here in my bed, curled up inside my blanket. And inside me there are a thousand conflicts. Conflicts that were suppressed for quite a few days by constant academic and professional pressure.

Tonight I lay here, on the old bed of my home, after eating a nice dinner cooked by the magical hands of my mother, trying to rinse away all the academic and professional pressure that was blocking my inner productivity systems throughout the day. And as I succeed, the conflicts comes back up, and fills up the space inside my head.

No, conflicts are not always negative, as we think.

For me, productivity demands some kind of a conflict. Always. Whenever I look into a piece of creation by any artist in any form, I see or hear a conflict within them. Sometimes, it is about conflicts between two groups of people. Sometimes I find conflicts between nature and humans. And most frequently, I find instances of the artists being at war with their own selves.

I cherish the third kind of conflicts most. For I am someone whose inner productivity system is always triggered by my inner conflicts. 

No, inner conflicts don’t always mean that I am depressed or having relationship issues et al.

My inner conflicts arise mostly due to the difference of perception that I find within different aspects of my own self. Yes, I probably have a multiple personality disorder going on inside my own head, with each of those “personalities” perceiving the different events of my life and the different things that I see or hear in completely different ways. And there always is a constant war going on between them. Sometimes, one of those perceptions come out as the winner, and that perception dive into my fountain of emotions, in which I bathe my words before they come out of my pen or into the screen of my phone or computer.

The idea of perceptions have always intrigued me. I compare them to raindrops. They might look similar, but each of them carries their own story. The story of their origin as water vapors, their ascent to the sky, them coming together as clouds, and then beautifully falling apart as raindrops. 

I probably compare almost everything to rain. The annoying Pluviophile that I am! I remember writing,

Raindrops and words, aren’t they the same?

Both let me bleed of emotions: through tears, through a pen, or through sleep-deprived swollen eyes. 

Perceptions also carry a story, each of their own. These stories are very tiny, compared to the stories of raindrops. But, no story is less significant than any other story. Perceptions carry in them the stories of their emergence due to the interaction of my brain with different elements of my surroundings at different times and in different circumstances. And in the never-ending conflicts inside my mind, these stories collide like out-of-control cars in a racetrack. 

Some stories are not strong enough to survive the colissions. I feel devastated at the thought of it. But this is nothing but the rule of survival of the fittest. Darwin’s theory works inside my head too, it seems.

When I read a book or hear a song or stare at a painting, sometimes I try to search for traces of the stories that die in the process of the creation of these art forms. I fail. Still I can sense the conflicts that are behind the process of creation.

Maybe the creation of this whole Universe is the result of a conflict inside the mind of a greater existence.

I feel lost when I imagine what kind of stories were dead in that conflict, and I am spellbound at the thought that we are parts of the winning story. 

I consider the Universe to be a story, written in the language called “Mathematics”.

I deviate from the topic too often, I guess. Maybe that is also the result of a conflict!

Conflicts and chaos are what keep me alive and what make me seek life inside any form of creation that exists in nature. 

So tonight, inside the March Night Jazz Club, I’ll drink from the age-old bottles of stories, I’ll watch the chaotic yet soulful dance of conflicts within me, and I’ll tell myself, “you are alive, Snehashis. Act like it.”