Resistance

Author: Gnana Selvam

The sky may seem parched, blue-black with no stars. A shimmer of light is fighting the gravity of the horizon, to rise up, and flood the sky and beyond, with all its glory. The weight of the night may overshadow the winter’s dawn. The weight will try to pull the curtains and keep it down. But the dusk shall break into dawn, winters shall pass paving way for the spring yet to come. I understand poetry are to be set on fire to keep us warm on winter’s night and clarity is the north star, that is pointing the way back home to the stranded. How far have we stranded into the desert of solitude my friend, for life now seems to have lost its charm? How far away from home, for life now seems to be a mirage, an illusion of sorts? Home is not necessarily a place, home need not be kin. Home could be where life shines bright, home can be within or without. How far from home have we stranded my friend, for life now feels so meaningless?

What if I told you, my friend, that life is what that lies between the paradox of meaning and meaninglessness? Would you believe me? What I’m Proposing may sound ridiculous to you, but would you trust me with your hand while we walk amongst the mazes of words and narrative built all around us. The narrative of the quintessential nature of meaning in life and life portrayed unworthy in the absence of it. At times this maze of meaning and its absence may seem claustrophobic and panic-inducing but remember we are walking together.

While we are in the maze, let us alight the love on fire. Let it burn bright and lead the way. The love can be for the one another but it need be the love for self at first. To love oneself enough is to forgive oneself from actions and inactions that were orchestrated on the shifting sands of choice. Love ourselves enough that we remain empathetic to us and ones around. The selfish of act self-care when imbued empathy works wonders and brings out fragments of us that we have told ourselves no longer exist. While love and empathy build bridges within and saves us from ourselves, hope flutters like fireflies in the night sky, it can wan out with our indifference but with our help can float high enough to secure a seat among the sky full of stars keeping us company as we unravel the mysteries of our maze. Hope is fragile yet is strong. Hope can scatter into a million pieces with a wisp of despair escaping our innermost treasure chest of fears and loss. While, when hope is taken care of, it can scatter a million mountains in its path in the blink of an eye. The nature of the treasure chest is to proliferate what is protected in it. To treasure will or despair is a heavy

choice, but deliberate a choice nonetheless. What is love, hope or meaning in the hour of tragedy? But before that let me tell you a story my friend and you can decide to answer that.

This is the story of a flower seller and his war. This is the story of Abu ward of Aleppo. Abu ward or the ‘father of flowers’ was the name given to the man with love by the locals. In a war-torn Aleppo, Abu ward insisted on selling and tending to flowers and thereby bringing joy and hope to the people. People far and near visited his garden in search of solace among flowers. An oasis among the debris and dust clouds of shelling. For Abu, the act of tending to flowers had transcended the nature of vocation to the purpose. Aleppo, the heart of the Syrian civil war missed a beat when Abu ward was bombed to death. To paraphrase Susan Abulhawa, death sometimes comes to reside among with us becoming the member of the family and chooses to spare us, but even in such scenario of hopelessness, we can choose to embrace life. To steal words from Abu ward’s mouth, “flowers help the world, and there is no greater beauty than flowers. Those who see flowers enjoy the beauty of the world and when you smell them, they nourish the heart and soul”. His garden now stays closed. Like Sisyphus, he rolled the boulder uphill just for it fall again. But Abu ward resisted the meaninglessness with meaning attributed by self to the idea of the world around. This act of resistance against death and despair with purposeful existence is what makes ordinary beings transcend into the realms of everyday heroes.

Abu is dead in flesh but lives on in our memories as a testimony of Camus’ absurd hero. Order and rational can distract us sometimes from the innate nature of this world and can catch us blindsided, but that is the beauty of it my friend. The world can be chaotic and can seem meaningless, but that is alright. I understand my friend that we now seemed to be stranded from meaning and reason in life sometimes by the shifting sands of choices and other times by wayward winds of time. Choices may overbear on us while time may slip beneath us as Sisyphus burdened by the eternal turmoil of repetition. But meaning to life is never given to us on a platter, meaning to live is what give to it. Meaning to life in the hour of tragedy is the dance between pain and suffering. Heroes are not just the ones who entrench themselves in the pages of history with blood in their swords and mind. A hero is also in everyone else who are waging war against the absurdities of the life with all courage that one could muster. Courage to face life, one day at a time. Courage to laugh at the face of absurdities underlying the fragile order and rational that we have wrapped around the immensely chaotic world. Courage to plant flowers in a land of war. We are heroes, you and I, my dear friend, for we are here and we decide to stay till we wither like flowers to the gust of time.