Red slabs--MC
It has long been my view that I should not have been born. Having been born, life has lived up to my view that I should not been born.
Of course, there has never been anything dramatically wrong with my life just as there has never been anything particularly spectacular about it. One wakes up, does things and goes to sleep.
I always think of two verses when I think of my view that I should not have been born.
One is by Ibrahim Zauq (1790-1854) and it is one of the most memorable poetic-philosophical constructs of all time.
लाई हयात आये
क़ज़ा ले चली चले
न अपनी ख़ुशी आये
न अपनी ख़ुशी चले
Life brought me here
Death took me away
I came without my consent
Without my consent I went away
--Ibrahim Zauq
The other one is by the Pakistani poet Ehsan Danish (1914-1982). It goes:
ज़िंदगी बीत रही है दानिश
एक बेजुर्म सज़ा हो जैसे
Life goes on, Danish
As if it was a sentence without a crime
--Ehsan Danish
I used to broach the subject of being born with my mother Snehlata. I would occasionally ask her, “What was the need for you to conceive me? You could have easily done without giving me birth.”
Know this. I would say this conscious that who she was conceiving and giving birth to was as much a matter of chance as the fact that it would turn out to be me who would ask such questions.
She would be both amused and bemused by my question which eventually became just rhetorical. My point was after giving birth to my eldest brother Trilochan and sister Pallavi, Snehlata and my father Manhar could have done without more babies. They did not and the result is that you have to read such drivel.
As I enter the twilight of my life, my teenage conviction that I bring nothing of consequence to the human discourse has been proven accurate year after year. It has mostly been a tangential life that changed fuckall in the universe. I say this in the context of the fact that no one changes anything in the universe. We all eventually lead lives of futility and inconsequentiality.
