Of sad poems

It’s very easy, if you think about it, to sit next to a forlorn window, look around and think about the things that bother you and start writing your feelings in some sort of dark metaphors and call it poetry. Play a sad song with it, a lot of instruments, saxophones and even bagpipes, and looking out, if you see that at the far end of the uncharacteristic azure of sky, there is a hint of grey, you might even wish for a drizzle to come, which would go perfectly with those impassioned and heart wrenching expressions that you write about. Sadness puts you in a kind of a stupor, makes you quiet, and helps you come up with beautiful metaphors and you realise, that putting down your sorrow on paper, might not be the toughest thing under the sun.

Sadness makes you a poet. Sadness also makes you grow up, in a way that you would probably not fathom. You grow up to be someone who you would have never predicted. When you were young, and there was the whole world out there to be explored, an entire path of mistakes to be made, you would have always thought how you would be once you would grow up. Kind probably, or extremely strict, you would be the one to bridge the gap between the revolting teenagers and reticent adults, you would never desert your parents, and would always love with all your heart. You would have probably thought, that you would never make the same mistakes your parents made, that when you would grow up, you would be something that probably would be a little different from what you were then, but in spirit you would be the same, much evolved, but not much removed. And then you actually grow up. You make mistakes, and you go through to all those emotions which you had always thought as things that happened to someone else. You float in the tides of happiness and seldom see that you might be leaving your trusted land. You become a whole new person, and do not even realise it.

All your insecurities would be questioned in that voyage, all your weaknesses, known and unknown would appear from the depths of certain unknown place and laugh at your face. You would find yourself in a very strange place then, a place you never even thought about, your nightmares never seemed to have the imagination to sketch the landscape of this place. And all you would feel then, is as if somehow your heart has become a philanthropic porter at a busy terminus and someone has put a lot of weight on it. Stomach would churn, tear glands would tease shamelessly and you would probably see a very large cloud hovering like a speech bubble showing you nothing. And you would say hello to sorrow, to being truly sad. The sad that grownups talk about, the sad that makes Tagore write Ki Pai Ni, or Emily Dickinson write I Held a Jewel. And you would realise, that writing something sad is not the toughest thing in the world.

I have found out, heard and read at great many places, about people writing about sorrow. Letters, poems, emails, I have even seen a few extremely organised women write something like ‘Sigh’ in cursive on their sticky note and carefully paste it at their work stations. Whatever the mode is, form is, I have noticed that all you have to do to write poetry, even if you aren’t really a very good poet, is describe sadness. I give you my word, that whatever you write, it will end up being if not intense, but at least slightly poetic. Someone once emailed me talking about his frustration in the field of academics. He was ranting mostly, and he said, “it’s like at the end of it all, I can’t help but often wonder, is there a point to all this?” Sorrow is like the capital city of the beautiful country of rhetoric. When your loved one suddenly decides that you aren’t really good enough for him or her, and gives you a very sad but understanding smile, and hugs you tightly and leaves, and you ask yourself “why?” all you have to do is describe the entire thing at a later time (depending up on how much deep in shit you are) like a second rate reporter and read, you shall see, poetry has been created.

But there is nothing poetic about sorrow. Every time I am truly sad, the feeling is not something I can describe as being as beautiful as poetry. Far from it, it has often felt like someone squeezing my intestines till he makes them talk. It’s like all my sense organs are going on a large scale strike, which, with time, would turn into some kind of a masochistic demonstration where all of them would collectively make you cringe in pain. A pain that you will not be able to describe, or pin point. A pain for which medical treatment would either seem ridiculously pointless, or seriously pretentious. Tears would flow sometimes, in secrecy or otherwise, for the frustration and pain to come out into the open; liberation in salty liquid that the poets would later romanticise as something heartbreakingly beautiful. But when we cry, there is nothing poetic about it. There is nothing poetic about drowning head inside the pillow and screaming oneself hoarse, reluctantly conscious about avoiding social embarrassments. There is nothing poetic about missing someone. It is an empty feeling, a hollow feeling where you lie to yourself that your mind is unable to think of anything. For in your head, your mind is playing a 72mm reel of the person or the thing that you are missing, throwing memories at you as if they were some cursed spells. And then you would perhaps know, that there is nothing poetic about sorrow.

Yes, sometimes when we feel such emptiness, the sudden lowering of an overcast sky makes us feel emptier; when we are alone, a certain tune dressed in lonely words often lends its empty hand of silent companionship. A few stanzas touch a few chords, and a few stories tell us that we aren’t the only ones who have gone through this misery. And then when we put those very feelings, those dark, empty, lonely, painful, cringing feelings in a frame, we realise, that writing something sad is not the toughest thing in the world.

But then, there is nothing poetic about sorrow.