While recently conducting a survey as part of my research on the next book, I asked around what the youth thought were their burning issues today. (I don't actually use all this research, but it makes me feel smug). Around seventy-one per cent* responded with "Heartache". At the outset, this response can be promptly classified into one of frivolity or inadequacy of pathetic life experiences. Especially if it comes from teenaged boys whose moustaches still look like they are made of goat fur. But if I delve into my own enriching years that belie my youthful countenance, I realize heartache is a real and potent wreckage of the mind. Worse, it is cyclic and permanent.
I must have been fifteen when I was first victimized. I didn't even have goat fur for a moustache, although some semblance had been offered thanks to a razor that otherwise lay useless in my Biology class' dissection kit. A friend who had been through the drill suggested I cope up by locking myself in a room and play intense music on a guitar to purge out the sadness. It sounded like a great idea, except that I didn't know how to play a guitar. Ronnie from school lent me his Gibson very kindly. I learnt a few chords, played intense music, so intense it snapped Ronnie's guitar strings. The heartbreak was successfully transferred to Ronnie, I had found my catharsis and had thought I had conquered a wounded heart.
But it always came back. In the alienation from a social circle, in the job that did not get me a Jaguar, in a dream yet unrequited, in Sachin Tendulkar's retirement, in the Zanjeer remake. Well, what doesn't kill you only shows you a pattern. The presence of hope lying beyond dismay. The realization that bad as it may have gotten, there can be worse later. The relief that your neighbour's unhappiness is bigger than yours. The empathy for the person who chose to end it all with one big leap, who chose not to wait for the happy interludes in the ballad of distress.
Wait for the happy interludes. They don't just give hope. They give us a sense of humour, and if we get that far, they also help trivialize a heartbreak of the past. I guess this is our best shot at countering it. For when we look in the mirror, the stubble will have thickened. And soon it will grey. But despair will continue to peer over our shoulders, challenging us to make the next move.
*Just corroborating my argument with a useless statistic.
I must have been fifteen when I was first victimized. I didn't even have goat fur for a moustache, although some semblance had been offered thanks to a razor that otherwise lay useless in my Biology class' dissection kit. A friend who had been through the drill suggested I cope up by locking myself in a room and play intense music on a guitar to purge out the sadness. It sounded like a great idea, except that I didn't know how to play a guitar. Ronnie from school lent me his Gibson very kindly. I learnt a few chords, played intense music, so intense it snapped Ronnie's guitar strings. The heartbreak was successfully transferred to Ronnie, I had found my catharsis and had thought I had conquered a wounded heart.
But it always came back. In the alienation from a social circle, in the job that did not get me a Jaguar, in a dream yet unrequited, in Sachin Tendulkar's retirement, in the Zanjeer remake. Well, what doesn't kill you only shows you a pattern. The presence of hope lying beyond dismay. The realization that bad as it may have gotten, there can be worse later. The relief that your neighbour's unhappiness is bigger than yours. The empathy for the person who chose to end it all with one big leap, who chose not to wait for the happy interludes in the ballad of distress.
Wait for the happy interludes. They don't just give hope. They give us a sense of humour, and if we get that far, they also help trivialize a heartbreak of the past. I guess this is our best shot at countering it. For when we look in the mirror, the stubble will have thickened. And soon it will grey. But despair will continue to peer over our shoulders, challenging us to make the next move.
*Just corroborating my argument with a useless statistic.
