Sunday 17 February 2019

“Books are the mirror of the soul”



 There are few things in life which can tell one about oneself as convincingly as books, if only one knows how to read correctly. When I read a book, I read more than the letters and the plots, I read a lot more about me. As I read, the words come together and form a narrative closely linked with the reality I was wishing to escape from or trying to grasp a clearer hold of. My apprehensions about my career, my fear of ending up doing nothing of value joins some hostess’s anxiety of being reduced to an organiser of an evening full of futile entertainment. Maybe she wanted to be more than a hostess, maybe she chose the flowers herself because that’s the only thing she can seek appreciation through. She wants to be more than that but how could she ever be, so she’ll be the best in what she can be. This is my review of a book I liked more than I understood. But my Mrs Dalloway is so different from the next reader that I should doubt my understanding. And I would. Had I not understood that what I see is what I wish to see. Woolf could’ve whispered in my ear that Dalloway can never be touched by my everyday anxieties and I still wouldn’t separate them. Because what’s a character that cannot tell me what I am and what I’m not? And what’s a book that doesn’t show me myself.
But do books show or tell? Or maybe Woolf is right in that books reflect, somewhat like mirrors. Mirrors are some of the most fascinating things for a child. The first sight of their own reflection is an absurd image because it moves with them, its eyes seem to be staring into the soul. The realisation slowly sets in that this image isn’t a trick of the mind but our own self. And we finally perceive what we are and how we’re seen by everyone around but us. This must be the strangest power an entity can hold – making us see our own possession. I believe books hold the same power. Like a fascinated child, we explore the lines and look for things to make sense of the absurdity someone once wrote down. Authors and their intentions stop holding meaning beyond an extent as these carefully constructed worlds are handed off to a reader who comes in either with naïve notions or high headed expectations. For people like me, reading books is usually a scavenger hunt because we locate the pieces that can fit together for our strangely preconceived interpretations to fall into place. I wonder how I know how to create this coherent meaning suitable to my worldview. Maybe Woolf is again right in pointing that the origin and source of these interpretations lie within one’s soul. Where else would that empathy come from which I felt for Lawrence’s Mrs Morel even when she suffocated her son with adulation. The never-ending battle between mother and son was inevitable but had no wrong sides for me. Sons and Lovers, for me, became the first book which showed humanity in its rawness. All characters were shades of grey and understandably so. For someone who resists absolutes and binaries with all their might, complexity is the ultimate refuge and books about Dalloways and Morels offer me just that.
But if books reflect then reflections are never perceived in the same way by two people. You may look at your face in the mirror and get fixated on that spot of skin which is still blotched from that time when you had carelessly popped the zits on your face. While your mother could stand behind you, look at the same reflection and see a child who grew up too soon to start worrying about zits. Books too are subject to similar inconsistencies of perception. There are times you can’t make yourself see what others are seeing, making you a part of unpopular opinion holders. The Kite Runner was a similar experience for me. I didn’t appreciate the book as intensely as those who suggested it to me. The book ended up teaching me that I’m a stickler for rawness and authenticity. The series of coincidences kept reminding me about the impracticality of the situations and prevented the book from becoming a favourite as I’d hoped it would be.
Just as one’s mirror image is flipped yet rooted in reality, I realise that this matter of the soul cannot always be beyond the expectations of one’s realism. But the soul isn’t ruled by the mind alone, the heart is equally compelling. And this is why books seem to exist in a plane where the yardsticks of realistic and unrealistic lose conventional meaning. Whatever hits home is realistic and whatever doesn’t fit into one’s pursuit of pleasure from reading is rejected. Books are the mirrors that reflect our souls both explicitly and from between the lines. The latter is deemed difficult, but what eludes us the most is reading what lies at the forefront. But once we learn to grasp the reflections from those pages, we end up with a knowledge which is at times inconceivable but always invaluable.

 - Asna Jamal
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Sunday 3 February 2019

Let yourself be silently drawn by the strongest pull of what you really love




If one was to ask an academician, Maulana Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī was the master of Love. However, for most people, Rumi was a mystic Sufi saint, whose lyricism and scholarly abilities have nurtured the future of thousand poets and artists in modern age. Rumi had always been a great scholar, teaching law and theology to his students. Being an erudite, his eloquence attracted many disciples, despite the fact that he was still in his early twenties. But the appearance of Shams transformed him into a devotee of music, dance and poetry. Albeit with his disappearance for the first time, Rumi immortalized Shams by celebrating him in his poetry as the embodiment of the divine beloved. History has it when Rumi and Shams met again, they fell at each other’s feet, not knowing who the lover was and who the beloved. Rumi named an entire collection of his odes The Works of Shams of Tabriz. Strangely, apart from researchers, little is known to the world of his lover, his companion in mysticism, his beloved disciple, Shams ad-Din of Tabriz. Some even wonder if he had been a real person, at all.

Shams, which literally translates to ‘the sun’, was a wandering dervish. A fireball, who had a remarkable curiosity and was a keen observer. Calling himself an interpreter of dreams, Shams had always known about his innate difference between himself and the rest of the world. He once asked his father to go back to his coop, if he wasn’t an ocean like him. Shocked at Shams behavior, his father was worried about his survival in the world. Little did he know that his son was anything but ordinary. Shams repeatedly claimed that he never had dream, instead he just had visions. These very visions were the beginning of his search for love and companionship. To him, ‘a good man was one thing, a lover something else’.

Long before Shams of Tabriz met the glorious Rumi, he was aware of his revered existence. Uncanny as it may seem, the search for his venerated companion made the dervish travel across the entire Middle-East, when he finally met Rumi, in Konya, to devour the sherbet of knowledge and to fill the void that had left his life incomplete. Such was his devotion that he was ready to sacrifice his head in return of the love that he was to receive. As for Rumi, Shams became a part of his dream. His longing grew stronger with each passing day. The finality of their meeting was that they were inseparable. The sohbet (conversation) between Shams and Rumi were endless, leading to the inevitable envy amidst their other loved ones. Their illuminating oneness is still a mystery to millions. They let themselves be drawn to each other, which paved the way for the most beautiful poems in the history of poetry.
“The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere.
They’re in each other all along.”

Interestingly, Huston Smith goes as far to compare Dante and Beatrice to Rumi and Shams. One might always wonder, why Rumi loved or was affectionate towards Shams to such an extent, that he paid no heed to anyone else. Perhaps, the answer is intertwined between the memories of those who claim, it always takes but a lover to find his beloved. It was Rumi’s eyes which found the spiritual magnificence in Shams.

For us millennials, perhaps the most difficult theory still remains. What really is love?
Is it as easy as what Shahrukh Khan narrates in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai?  Pyar dosti hai. Love is friendship. Some of us would surely cringe on that dialogue, and others perhaps would drool over its romance. Maybe we share secrets, ice-creams and coffee, trying to decipher love in letters written over WhatsApp statuses.


Or is Love as unconventional, complex and philosophical as we read through in Rumi’s quotes? Metaphysical, if one may call it. If we are to dive deep into them, we would find ourselves lost in the unnerving ocean of words and their countless meanings. The silence of love has been a matter of discussion between great scholars since time immemorial. Silence too is deafening, when there is a storm of separation between lovers, and perhaps the last conversation they ever share is through the silence of their brimming eyes. Rumi talks of this silence when lovers are drawn into union of love.

As for my part, to define something I am drawn to because of love, only reminds me of my father. The minute little things that he does make me feel the most cherished. Something as mundane as cutting nails becomes precious, if it is Baba who does it. His stories of struggle in Leh, Madras, Gujarat can keep me glued to him for eternity. I think, rice, dal and mashed potatoes are the tastiest if he feeds me. You may call it a stereotypical father-daughter emotional connect. Nevertheless, it is the stereotype I most admire.
To define the ‘pull of love’ in vaguely literal terms, can just bind it to shackles of chains, I believe. True essence of it, is rather subjective to each human. Let us then reminisce Rumi’s words, “Love is the religion and the universe is the book.”

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