The Elixir of Life

       ‘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