Marugelara O Raghava and O clarity of thought?!

Not that I have anything new to say but then new is a relative term!

What is new to me and familiar to the inside of my head might be a rude awakening for someone else.

Through meandering paths and wandering ways, managed to stay away from this task of writing and talking and coming clean for a while now, and all this time, procrastination has certainly been the skill I have honed.

And the art of holding on to thoughts is sadly, something I have lost!

Even now while I type and enter all that I have to say, the thoughts are faster and perform the trapeze to keep flying away from my grasp.

Often I have found in the recent past that it has become difficult to hold on to thoughts especially when accompanied by silence, it's as if chaos and the noises of the background have done more to aid my concentration than to detract from it.

While playing a game or listening to a song or while preparing for the so called academic exams, it's the pressure that eggs me on to focus and not the other way around, although the twisted logic of this habitual occurrence still doesn't make much sense to me!

Lacking structure and actively defying it seems to have become a permanent feature of my being and behaviour and while I don't know if it's necessarily a cause of lament it surely does raise concern.

However, in an attempt to gain some of that structure, The song that led me here! And then to the next one!

Anyhow, going ahead with the task at hand, rather tasks at hand, which are presently karaoke-ing with Vasanthakumari to Marugalera O Raghava, pondering over the syncretism of my present leanings of pantheism and the leanings of the past and the poet Thyagaraja, the wider implications of all poetry, the metaphor and the spirituality of the tone of this song, and worrying about the other things waiting to be done in the physical realm of my real life and (you'd think) most obviously, the task of writing and putting into words the things that don't make complete sense to me.

This, writing, has always been a vital act of cleansing but sacred only up till the last full stop.

Meaning the act of writing itself is sacred but once its out there it's no longer so, and the need to keep it hidden in the recesses of my mind and to my private self vanishes. The impact it has on the reader is not really my foremost concern and the reactions are not one that I can fathom or care for.

This brings me to the crux of this sudden outpouring, a thought that I have held and played with for a long time now, is the beauty of art in the beholders eyes or does the artist do it for his consumption primarily? Will music be less melodious to the creator's ears if it does not resonate with his audience? Or has his journey come to an end once its been created? If that is so then what purpose does it serve after it's out there? Self consumption is done but does/ should the artist have any expectation from or any responsibility to the other, the receiver?

Similarly, with the issues of faith, giving and interaction between one sentient being and another, not necessarily human and God, but even in pairs such as human and human, human and animal, human and plant, how is the balance to be attained? How are the dynamics determined?

Though I totally believe in Love Thy Neighbour As You Love Thyself and Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do To You, what about self preservation that is taken as a given here? What happens in situations when self love isn't a given? Or when only self love is present as in most cases of humans we meet with?

Where do we draw the line with another person and at what cost do we do the barrier building? Optimism, innocence and cleanliness of the heart that get sullied are only the surface payments and there are other long term implications of that barrier resulting in damaging other interactions getting and the listing of which are not really possible for my flighty state of mind!

Everything is either permanent and rock solid with no chance of change or in such a perennial state of flux that it cannot even be classified as transient, with the fractional duration that it exists in.

Stretching this to the realm of man and the globe and then the universe around us, the questions begin to boggle my brain and with no clear answers beginning to take shape, there is a very interesting foot tapping jingle that is calling to me along with the delicious smells of garama garam ghar ka khana! So for now, Namaste!