She must have written more - in fact, she had - but there were so many of her writings she had torn or burnt in her life... almost as an effort to erase the past and start afresh...
I have been out for a walk with Woozy - and I thought Woozy is the point! Woozy is absolutely here and now, only full of trust in others, only totally dependent, much more human than most of us.
And for me Bitti is the point. There are kids who grow up without their mothers, but I want to grow up with her at least for a few years.
This relating to others is the point - the point is that I wept a lot when I read P’s three letters to her mother. I wept when V wept and hurt - not for anything but just because everything can hurt...
...The fear is that one can get trapped in the hurt itself - look! I can feel hurt! Or I can cry! Or look it feels good to weep with someone else. So that is the point. The final pointlessness is that I existed and made no difference to anyone else. And then I died and made even lesser difference.
But did I do anything about it? Perhaps I could manage the meaning? Something like that. And mainly it is the here and now...
...I feel personally hopeless. Because it mattered and seemed to be the whole point of my life to see that I had stakes in others... in him. And because we had the “tunnel vision”, it mattered. The point is that there is no point, and yet it matters... If you take away all the points which have anchored you at various points in time, nothing matters. Even otherwise in the long run all is dust and meaninglessness. So it does not matter?
It is perhaps even more important to hold the fleeting moment and recognise the truth in it! In a whole lifetime, even one such moment is important - it is the point...
The other day, Chitrak reached out to me - he was in Parul’s lap - he explored my face, put out one arm and clung to my shirt and sort of jumped into my arms... abs Woozy like in here and now, and full of trust... Then he cuddled up and hid his face in my neck. It was a wonderful thing to happen. It was the point of the whole of my existence - all that I am and have been, all the hurt and anger and incompletness - did not deter Chitrak - it was OK - and I felt loved, even more because it was only for one moment, and unconditional.
It freed me to express a lot of my love for Bitti. I told Bitti later that evening, “I know it will sound a bit stupid right now, but I want you to know that I love you very much.” She laughed and said it doesn’t sound stupid at all - and that she also loved me very much. I could have wept then... Because that is the point...
...I guess it is for you also, and I have decided to let you read it. It is like this - it has to be different for everyone. If twenty years back someone had told me all that I would feel, or that there was a point - I would have thrown it all out without a second thought - because nothing mattered when I was 18; there was no point. I tried to kill myself becasue of the pointlessness of it all - several times - and yet... even that was pointless.
Life for me began when I related to Bertha, one of my lit. teachers. Then again zero. Then other things happened, and from time to time I lost track of the meaning behind it, and went into various types of tailspins, drunken stupors, neurotic breakdowns, hallucinations, blackouts - Not all the time, but time to time... I still have to put it all together. And no one else can make this story work out for me. This is a crisis even now, in fact, now larger than life.
And still, when I am not there any, I want you to tell Bitti, it mattered.
I said I would like to travel with you at least part of the way. I think the image I have resisted putting on paper is the Confluence. Two rivers coming closer and joining for a while - but each has to take a different direction. Each absorbs the other for a while, and nothing remains the same. Yet, the point of the river is to flow. The point of the human being is to remain human and vulnerable...
And still I want you to tell Bitti, that it mattered. There was a point to the music, the chocolates, the fancy dresses, the loneliness and the hopelessness, the talks, the walks, the dreams and the mourning, the helplessness in the face of hurt...
...That is the point for me. Please don’t call it a quest for immortality or any such thing. It is not for my sake that I wrote this down. It is for her and you - but because of all that, it is for me also.
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