Secret Sorrows

Someone committed suicide today. About a couple of hours back...somewhere around Connaught Place. This man was well educated, financially well off and had recently returned from United States. Wonder what drove him to take such a gruesome step. But then life goes on.... he’ll gradually fade away from everyone's memory.... only for his aging parents perhaps.... tragic for them.... They’ll be devastated, living every moment wondering what went wrong, analyzing their dead son's life bit by bit.... assessing themselves bit by bit…

Then again there's this mad woman who wanders around my hostel. At times, I find her sitting on the footpath, blabbering away.... I wonder what she must be thinking about...who or what drove her to such madness?
Errant son? Death in the family? Wayward husband? Some other family problem? I wonder what has made her so miserable.... There have been days, this winter, when I saw her without a sweater or shawl...without a care in the world. Sitting on the same footpath...blabbering away...Tried coaxing her to shift to the safer side of the footpath...but she wouldn't budge...kept murmuring in a strange language...

Two sad people...sad for different reasons.

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”

- H. W. Longfellow

O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell

O SOLITUDE! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river’s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
’Mongst boughs pavillion’d, where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I’ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin’d,
Is my soul’s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

- By John Keats

Indulgence, For Free

Indulgence of all sorts

at your call,
Not much of a strain here,
your choice, in all.

Choose this and choose that
your fancy running free
The world hardly matters,

in your indulgent spree.

Manipulate, cajole or outright reject

whatever the need be

Indulgence of all sorts,
for you, for free.

The Lake Isle of Innsfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

By William Butler Yeats