Latitudes of Longing

by Shubhangi Swarup

Or mindless chatter. Islands are mindless chatter in a meditative ocean.

The bachelors may keep the world spinning, but it’s the married ones that keep it grounded.

That is all there is to it. One cannot judge the natural world by human laws.’

Besides, though they are alone, this is the 1950s, and physical distance between men and women isn’t imposed by society alone. It is created by the men and women themselves. Affection is the sole privilege of stone figurines in temples and caves.

To the Hindus, Buddhists and Jains, Mount Meru was the physical and metaphysical centre of the universe. It was the highest point, beyond human comprehension and measurement.

Disbelief, it turns out, is belief of its own kind. It is a river that flows against the overbearing currents of time and truth to make the opposite journey. It gathers all the mysteries of the ocean and returns them to their frozen origins. In the form of a glacier, it holds its head high up to look at god hiding behind the mists of heaven. What is the purpose of belief if even god can’t put the world back the way you worshipped it?

In the Andaman Sea, each island is a person and each person an island. Tremors and quakes are common, eager to exact their inch of land and pound of flesh. Everything here, including the sea, belongs to the ocean, and will be claimed in due course.

To him, they are the contemporary shorthand for expressing an emotion that old people like him had invested a lifetime of silence in.

‘What good is hope to dead people?’ ‘In death, we find the hope we had surrendered at birth.’

‘Spring is the season of the heart. Its arrival and departure are felt in the heart more than in the fields.’

But love is love. So long as you feel it, you give it and receive it, it is enough. You are connected through the force of love to everyone and everything.”’

‘O Saki, pour me a goblet of poison,’ Ghazala smiles as she recites the couplet, ‘and I will gladly swallow it. Death has greater honour than a lover’s pity and compassion. All this parched mouth seeks is a drop of heavenly love.’

This isn’t merely the past. It precedes her birth. It is a time when the spirit and the landscape were one. When tropical rains gently descended as snowfall, and deserts expressed themselves as tornadoes of dust on the moon’s surface. When oceans slept as ponds within volcanic craters, lulled by the wind’s tales. When freedom wasn’t a burden, and love was not compromised. For they were one and the same.