The Auditorium

After much excitement and curiosity, I went into the Auditorium. The average age of the audience was 60 years, as if even after spending 40 years of their lives with their respective soul mates, they were looking for a ‘one point’ peace in life. And, I, being less than half of the average age, had already realized that it doesn’t exist.

The stage is set. The eyes are waiting. And the music of peace begins.

Gradually, the fumes start evolving out of our burning hearts, whereas we had, so strongly assumed that the flames inside us had extinguished with time??

No, the music was just a valve, not water.

There is no water actually, to extinguish the fires of the heart.

Only fire. Only sting. Only pain. The enjoyable, glamorous pain. Some have legalized sophisticated ones, which are sharable. Some have bigger un-sharable chunks.

But, pain is pain. Only definitions and perceptions differ.

I was happy that I was feeling the correct thing.

I was alone, and I knew that I was alone. So, I felt alone.

People, there, were not alone, but they felt more lonesome that I.

As the music started, the eyes started to get watery.

The handkerchiefs silently, hesitantly, getting humid.

Women can cry openly. Men can’t and they don’t.

I suggest they should.

Sometimes, I think crying is like masturbation. It is just playing, talking to your own self, your own pains, and your own words, emotions and your world, and there, with every drop, leaving your eyes, you self relieve your discomforts out of your body, and feel relaxed.

Every ghazal sung, every verse shared, had a meaning- in everybody’s life.

Each one of us has encountered a moment of falling in love, a moment of losing our love, a last moment in life, with somebody, an irreparable damage, an irreversible time, an unending hope, a betrayal, infidelity,  loving inspite of infidelity, acute hatred, and loving back again.

It is love, that’s the measuring unit. Isnt it.

All the stories range from no love to acute love to dead love.

Love, a lot of love, a loveless love, betrayal in love, no love, absence of love, a painful love et al.

In the dark auditorium, and dimly lit stage, as if we all were seeing, our past reeling, in every single word sung, and every beat of sitar.

I doubt, only women cried.

People come to realize their pain and cry. On these occasions, they get a reason to cry legitimately.

I concluded, probably there is no peace, for which we keep yearning, all through our life.

There is only, a hope for peace.

 A hope that remains a hope forever, and dies with us, finally.

What do you say?