‘And
then it occurred! A pair of silver drops, one in each eye with a timid stealth
came out as if to check whether her hands are going to decimate them by wiping
it off. But this time it looked like they too are waiting to adore the beauty
of their dancing. And as if those two drops had understood this and given the
cue for their safety, within few moments, the other drops gushed out with glee
to stage their flow and it was one colossal cascade from then on!!’
In case you are still wondering what I'm trying so
desperately to describe, I guess, I've ultimately failed in trying to step into
the shoes of a poet and poetize the most common phenomenon in the most uncommon
way. Having said that, I do also know that this is the zenith of my ‘being poet
phase’ and hence I’m going to deliberately ignore my failure and continue with
the writing.
Human Tears! Arguably, one of the most distinct flavours of
human emotions. And if you have already prejudiced like I'm going to give that
one so called formula to live our life in eternal bliss devoid of tears like
one of those mystical gurus in a prime time soap opera in our television, all
I'm going to say is, please stand corrected!! (I stole the last three words from
my Associate Dean, wondering how funny it was when it came out of his mouth). I’ll
never stop you from crying. In fact I’m encouraging you to cry as much as you
want. And this is what I'm going to ramble about in the next few stanzas.
Tears are one of the most aesthetic and sacred part of human
emotions. Probably why, a wise man once said, ‘There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears
and in the sea’. It is one of those rarest assets to accompany us during the
ying and yang of our human expressions - the saddest and the happiest occasions
of our life. Every drop of them will have
some stories to brag about, stories unheard and stories lost in time, be it the
dreams aspired and achieved, the dreams shattered and lost, the people lost, the
people united, the things sacrificed, the things yearned for and millions of
other such unexpressed but deeply felt emotions. True tears often speak for the
longed and venerated things in one’s life. Sometimes, they do speak for the
compassion towards other co-existing creations of Nature. I
still remember my mom crying for many things related to me. During my eleventh
grade, I bunked my tuitions and went to movies. When my parents came to know
about this, my father, as usual the gentleman he is, just said if you really
feel like going for the movie either do it after the tuitions or better stop your
tuitions totally and then watch by letting us know that you are actually going
to a movie. On the other hand, my mom didn't say even one single word. Instead she started
crying, crying and crying which was too hard for me to take. Finally, when she
ended the ritual and the moment lightened a bit, I asked her, of course
with anger, why are you crying for all the stupidest and mundane things on
earth. Her face reddened and she shouted back, how dare you. You don’t have any
right to stop me from crying for my son. I started laughing, probably one of
the most stupid thing to do then. But thank god, it worked in my favour and she
too broke into laughter. One other instance was the death of my pet dog before
two years. Only the time that passed with me knows how long my eyes misted for
that. It might look a bit weird for a twenty four year old to cry for his lost
dog. People, including my parents, thought that I was so compassionate about the
dog that I couldn't bear the loss. But when I look back at it now, more than
the loss, it was my inability to do anything about it which agitated me more
and maybe those inexpressible emotions vented out in the form of tears. Those were
the moments, I guess, I realized that people’s tears are reserved only for their
most prized possessions in life. After that, I stopped saying people not to
cry.
Our life is never going to be one ‘happily ever after’ ending fairy tale. And
even if it is going to be one, we will need all those conglomeration of emotions
to realize the eternal bliss which is going to be the crescendo of that story. Probably
because without sadness you’ll never be able to define happiness as like
without darkness there is no light. This is why, probably, Nature has conceived
us as a bag of emotions. In fact, Nature herself exhibits her emotional tears as
rain which gives life to every living being embracing her. Trying to suppress
one of those feelings for the hegemony of other is equal to committing an
ignominious act of questioning the Omnipotent, Herself. If we really weren't in
need of a particular emotion, Nature would have taken it back in the course of
evolution. Then we all would have been these always-smiling-idiots without
nerves through all our adversities of life. I've also come across people who
claim crying to be an act of cowardice. On the contrary, I feel, we don’t need courage to smile. But, to shed tears, we need immense
courage, especially, a man’s tears! (Sorry, I'm still not able to divorce that
male chauvinist in me). To me, a man who cries, disrobing all his pride, for
the thing he loves and respects, is the rarest courage he would ever display
and this courage is much nobler than what thousands of others would have
displayed physically in any battle field. What about a woman then? A woman who
cries is a poetry in motion! (Might look like I'm a sadist but poetry can be
either euphoric or melancholic or at times both). Her beauty just gets enhanced
by thousand folds with every drop that glides out of her eye. The irony is that
then the (so called) powerless woman with her tears becomes the most lethal
weapon a man can confront with. It’ll pulverize even the most cynic of hearts in
the world. This I had personally
experienced with many right from my mother to the girl I adore.
Tears are the revered act of validating the things for which we
have unconditional love and respect. It is also the things which we completely believe
in. And if we don’t have the courage to stand up for those things, all we will
end up is living a life of fallacy and hypocrisy. Tears are also the best form
of emotional catharsis imbibed in the DNA codes of our cells and passed on
through generations. Even the worst distress can be mollified by a few minutes
of torrential outburst. That’s why I consider Tears as the elixir for all human
agonies! So next time when someone says crying is an act of cowardice, better
don’t listen to them. Because if we need to live our life to the fullest, it’s
better to cry when we feel like doing so, even if it is going to be a stealth
act inside our home or merely confined to our bathroom walls. Suppressing it is
like amputating one of those important phases of your life. We live our present
with our past and our future with our dreams and if our past has to be a
memorable one, we should be courageous enough to at least cry for things which
deserve it. Because after living our life, if we are going to turn and look at
how beautiful our lives were, it is those embers of emotional tears which are
going to make up the bright colours of that canvas of life. Believe me, then, our
nostalgia will be more rejoicing than regretting!!
-
ARULMOZHIVARMAN T
