So the year 2017 has finally dissolved into the insatiable river of oblivion – thereby allowing the year 2018 to pick up the reins. Life moves on, come what may. We can never put the brakes on the incurious and unruffled wagon of time. Whether it sounds saccharine or vinegary, we have to swallow this reality without fuss; after all what is the fun of crossing swords with the inevitable?
Naturally enough, at the very expiration of a particular year, things & events – that we rub shoulders with – in the course of these twelve months, huddle around our memory. Experiences we come to grips with – unsurprisingly enough – constitute a curious farrago of delectable and the unpalatable. We tend to relish & cherish the experiences that stir up feelings of felicity & festivity in us, while as we want to banish out the ones – heavily burdened with cargo of memories.
Any attempt on my part to harp on the string of outgoing year by placing it within the matrix of Kashmir – is bound to end up in an abyss of abject failure ; for the fracking nakedness of hair-raising torments that my hapless vale had to lock horns with – is too humungous and grisly to be swathed in under-sized garb of sterile words. How can a mere assortment of verbs, nouns, adverbs & adjectives perfectly lay bare the severe anguish of mothers whose beloved children fell prey to bloody bullets? What about those who got crippled forever – in one way or other by the acidic rain of pellets? What about the families that got wiped out – lock, stock and barrel. Can’t go beyond that. Sorry!
On a personal level, the year as usual was overstocked with devastating jolts and utter disappointments. As happens to the humongous chunk of people in every part of the world – only at spasmodic occasions did fugacious beams of euphoria shine upon me but that too were enshrouded by tenebrous brume of sufferings in all its monstrous horror. But I must admit that I learnt a lot of lessons from that, after all don’t adversities make us rugged and robust?
No matter, the plate of life is surfeited with woes & worries, fears and frets, dilemmas & delusions, problems & puzzles, ugliness & untruths, horrors & hurdles, absurdities and atrocities, but I believe that some among us can tackle all this bitterness of life by rendering our tragedies into this & that art – as a cathartic exercise and rest can take recourse to other methods available to them. If all else fails, let us take refuge in a chief consolation that we are not here for a perennial stay; one day we have to bid farewell to this world, so why care?