The Vacuum

Ali Mohamad Lone

This vacuum! Endless and vast, only ever-increasing in extension day after day.

This vacuum, to be sure, does not exist in space outside the earth, but it is there in my heart and head, one that will never get filled in the rotation of day and night.

A meaningless phenomenon.

It is daybreak and there is light.

It is evening and there is nightfall.

That the day has worn on and the night has also ended, are immaterial to me as I cannot think at all.

I am not an introvert, despite my friend's tagging this epithet on to me, I have but the gift of gab like they.

Introvert I feel like laughing of being accosted thus, not actually laughing, but a mere smile creeping over my lips, keeping mum no with standing that. There is no way out but to keep mum when you do not know how to talk.

The thing had gained currency among my kith and kin that I am a reserved man, talking only when I must.

"This is what is called wisdom", the elders pass the judgment. “That is conceit”, others jeer. "When one reaches the height of wisdom, one gets laconic of oneself", say the less educated friends. I reply to them with slight parting of lips, and that too far from being sarcastic at what they say, but because I find no justification for this silence. Now, this vacuum, how can this be helped? It is ever expanding and so enlarging in extent that the universe itself seems to me shrinking to an atom or less. Who knows what to make of this state of mind.

It is raining today, cooling the surroundings. People shifting their suits for their bush-shirts, but this vacuity of mine is unaffected, unmoved by heat or cold from within or without. When there is no emotion of any sort, the varying expressions of nature have no effect on my mind. The vacuum will be there insentient,

lifeless and immobile wall. Let you tell me what the purpose of existence is. Why I am? Why I am not?

These thousands of books; I could not get at the answer of this question even after going through hundreds of philosophies. I ransacked all the religions of the world, all its points of view, only to find my question still awaiting an answer, reaching no conclusion.

That is why I feel myself, my being and existence lending to no use, without an aim, lifeless. Even a robot or an automaton is possessed of some purpose, constructed with an end in view, which it does in fact fulfill. What I am? Why I am? I never understood that

People get yoked into chains, fetter of business, those of family those of social nature and enchained thus, they are oblivious to everything, plod on the path of life donkey like and conclude the journey of life somehow. What then has fallen me? I, too am a prisoner of those chains, but why do I still feel free of those shackles, aloof apart and alone? Do some people really live without these chains?

To leave for the office in the morning, return in the evening, take your meals, listen to radio, read your newspaper, take a stock of your daily provisions, then many other odds and ends besides, G.P Fund, Insurance, Income Tax, House Rent, deaths and sorrows, births and marriages. Even after taking upon myself all these things, I feel stifled. Despite my not believing in God, the cry often leaves from out of my heart, "Oh my God!"

Meeting an accident recently as I fell down my bicycle, a cry slipped out of me: "Oh my God!"

But when people pulled me up, I showed no feeling like fear, adventure, or lack of calm. As the doctor brought me near the screening plant and stretched out my arm, I cried out merely from my physical pain, my entire frame was sweating. Who knows what the doctor made of it as he with his trembling hands anxiously told me that it looked like a fracture. I burst out laughing at the doctor's anxiety. The doctor was taken by surprise at my laughing thus. Then as they put me on the platform, of the X-Ray machine and stretched my arm, I shrieked out with pain. The doctor said warily, "It looks like two fractures are there"

"Only two?.. I laughed aloud.

The doctor got angry and said, "My dear man, why do you take it so lightly? It will take your bones at least three months to come right".

"Three months only! tsu, tsu!"

I do not know why I got dejected at hearing that, the doctor felt my head also and said, "you may have an head injury also". I remained silent now. How could I tell that fat head that the head could be injured only if it had a power to think, an inane skull could not be injured at all.

I got all the more disappointed as I saw the X-ray film, the bones of the arm were uninjured. The doctor was happy and said, "You are lucky, thank your stars".

“Oh….!”

At least one opportunity to live sometime somewhat different from the daily rounds of routine had presented itself, that too I missed because of my ill luck. To keep your arm curbed under plaster, to lie on the snow-white and warm bed of the hospital, a romance which my fate denied me, and this mum skull of a doctor telling me, "You are very lucky, thank your stars". Idiot!

People, for want or lack of some materials, expend their dear lives in availing themselves of such things, but I suffer from no want of any material sort, absolutely none. What I suffer from is an inner lack, in having no feelings like fear, happiness, grief, romance, love or hate.

The wise people say that man does not live on bread alone; one's daily meals, water and other things like that keep a man alive. But there is something very different in human constitution which needs food of a different kind and variegated. Sometime before, I was aware of the truth, and so I read books, wrote stories. acted out roles in dramas, listened to songs went to see the films, attended clubs and social gatherings, hobnobbed with people, laughed and wept with others .., all this, however, took place in my past I, now, conduct myself entirely differently; finding all that I did quite futile and irrelevant. Reading books only exhausted my brains, my stories only tangled and wrapped my own life-story, dramas are nothing but imitation, singing without an understanding; drives you crazy; films to no purpose, and club-going a mere hypocrisy. Attended social gatherings and laughing and weeping with others is mere formality. I shall even make bold to say that I find even my living with my family members a formality.

What is it then, that I want? ... Nothing at all, but still this vacuum in my head and heart devours me sometimes. Would that it were filled in, somehow. One might then ask what is needed to fill in the vacuum ... love from somebody? Affection from others? Sympathy from others? Granted that all these things are provided and the vacuum is not filled in, what is one to do? ... Ugh!

I am not even fed up with this! To be fed up were also a feeling, which could fill this emptiness of mine this way or that ... Oh my God! Is there any remedy for this vacuity in one's head and heart?

It might be raining, creating a coolness in the surroundings so refreshing and soothing to the body. To be lying in bed under a white quilt in such cold is not less than a luxury, available only to those who wait for the daybreak as the night is over. But what shall one do in whose fate to wait is not in store? Where shall he go to?

Oh, this misery!

Oh, this vacuum of mine! Would that it were filled in somehow!