Skip to main content

Love’s Intoxications



“You are the master of vanishing acts,” Kartik told the magician. “Make me vanish.”

The magician smiled.  “What do you mean by make you vanish?”

“I want to disappear from the world. I’m sick of the world.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You make even a train vanish. You made the Taj Mahal vanish once. Why can’t you then make a small creature like me vanish?”

“Magic is just illusions, young man,” the magician continued with his unfading smile which had a magical charm.  “The train doesn’t vanish actually.  Nor does the Taj.”

“Then?”

“I merely divert the viewer’s attention to something else.”

Kartik looked at the magician incredulously.

“Have you ever seen a circus?” Magician asked.

Kartik nodded his head. “Yes.”

“Have you watched the trapeze artistes?”

Kartik nodded again.

“Sometimes the artiste on a trapeze vanishes temporarily from the attention of the audience.  The audience is sitting mesmerised by the artistes jumping from trapeze to another, like a juggler’s pieces flying crazily in the air. Then comes the clown wearing a skirt-like loose garment over his motley.  We expect the clown to catch the next trapeze or to be caught by the artiste on that trapeze, as it happens with the other artistes. But the artiste only catches the clown’s skirt. The clown comes falling down, falling down, with a shriek and with his little limbs flying all around. The audience gasps for a moment. But the clown lands in the safety net and jumps in it comically like only a clown can.  All the while, the trapeze artistes have vanished. It’s their brief rest period. Actually they have not vanished. They are there at their high stations. But the audience’s attention is diverted from them. That’s the vanishing trick.”

Kartik was listening intently. “I understand. Living without attracting attention is the vanishing trick.”

“That’s not going to be easy for you,” Magician said as Kartik was about to turn and leave.

“Why?” Kartik was surprised.

“You belong to the type that can’t vanish even if you want to. You belong to the type that draws people’s attention to themselves even if they don’t want to.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was watching you come in.  As you were walking in, a little girl out there in the yard fell down.  Immediately you bent down, picked her up, patted the dust off her little dress, rubbed her hurt knee, and noticing that she had tripped on her untied shoelace you knelt down before her and tied the lace.”

“So?”

“You are addicted to love. You love the intoxication of love. Anyone who knows such love will draw attention even if he doesn’t want to.”

Kartik stared at Magician blankly. Wistfully. Confused.

“That little girl to whom you gave your love,” Magician continued, “is my daughter.”

“Does that make any difference?” Kartik wondered.

“Not to you, but to me, yes, it does.  And every person you love is somebody’s son or daughter, brother or sister. That way, everybody is connected to you, to any person who is addicted to love.”

Kartik didn’t know what to say.

“Savour your intoxication, young man,” Magician continued. “It’s a good intoxication though it’s dangerous too. It’s good. Dangerous too. Like other intoxications, it can make you what you are not sometimes. Many times. But it’s good. Dangerous too. Live dangerously. Don’t vanish.”


Comments

  1. This one is marvelous piece of writing with deep philosophy and logic.
    Presentation i very much intellectual.
    Loved it a lot.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you, Jyotirmoy. Sometimes a comment like this is a good pep pill :)

      Delete
  2. It was amazingly linked with our view to see the things and our problems. You really did excellent piece of work.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Remedios the Beauty and Innocence

  Remedios the Beauty is a character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude . Like most members of her family, she too belongs to solitude. But unlike others, she is very innocent too. Physically she is the most beautiful woman ever seen in Macondo, the place where the story of her family unfolds. Is that beauty a reflection of her innocence? Well, Marquez doesn’t suggest that explicitly. But there is an implication to that effect. Innocence does make people look charming. What else is the charm of children? Remedios’s beauty is dangerous, however. She is warned by her great grandmother, who is losing her eyesight, not to appear before men. The girl’s beauty coupled with her innocence will have disastrous effects on men. But Remedios is unaware of “her irreparable fate as a disturbing woman.” She is too innocent to know such things though she is an adult physically. Every time she appears before outsiders she causes a panic of exasperation. To make...

The Covenant of Water

Book Review Title: The Covenant of Water Author: Abraham Verghese Publisher: Grove Press UK, 2023 Pages: 724 “What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.” This massive book explores the intricacies of human relationships with a plot that spans almost a century. The story begins in 1900 with 12-year-old Mariamma being wedded to a 40-year-old widower in whose family runs a curse: death by drowning. The story ends in 1977 with another Mariamma, the granddaughter of Mariamma the First who becomes Big Ammachi [grandmother]. A lot of things happen in the 700+ pages of the novel which has everything that one may expect from a popular novel: suspense, mystery, love, passion, power, vulnerability, and also some social and religious issues. The only setback, if it can be called that at all, is that too many people die in this novel. But then, when death by drowning is a curse in the family, we have to be prepared for many a burial. The Kerala of the pre-Independ...

The Death of Truth and a lot more

Susmesh Chandroth in his kitchen “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought,” Poet Shelley told us long ago. I was reading an interview with a prominent Malayalam writer, Susmesh Chandroth, this morning when Shelley returned to my memory. Chandroth says he left Kerala because the state had too much of affluence which is not conducive for the production of good art and literature. He chose to live in Kolkata where there is the agony of existence and hence also its ecstasies. He’s right about Kerala’s affluence. The state has eradicated poverty except in some small tribal pockets. Today almost every family in Kerala has at least one person working abroad and sending dollars home making the state’s economy far better than that of most of its counterparts. You will find palatial houses in Kerala with hardly anyone living in them. People who live in some distant foreign land get mansions constructed back home though they may never intend to come and live here. There are ...

Koorumala Viewpoint

  Koorumala is at once reticent and coquettish. It is an emerging tourist spot in the Ernakulam district of Kerala. At an altitude of 169 metres from MSL, the viewpoint is about 40 km from Kochi. The final stretch of the road, about 2 km, is very narrow. It passes through lush green forest-looking topography. The drive itself is exhilarating. And finally you arrive at a 'Pay & Park' signboard on a rocky terrain. The land belongs to the CSI St Peter's Church. You park your vehicle there and walk up a concrete path which leads to a tiled walkway which in turn will take you the viewpoint. Below are some pictures of the place.  From the parking lot to the viewpoint The tiled walkway A selfie from near the view tower  A view from the tower Another view The tower and the rest mandap at the back Koorumala viewpoint is a recent addition to Kerala's tourist map. It's a 'cool' place for people of nearby areas to spend some leisure in splendid isolation from the hu...