His departure made life smooth again and soon everybody forgot him. Lecturers became
professors and professors were awarded with medals. I also earned a scholarship for higher
studies, which would otherwise have gone to him. The peacock of a PH.D. was put on my head.
My books on education and literature became part of every syllabus.
I have come here to deliver my scholarly lecture. I shall tell people how I worked hard to
educate the generations of my dear fatherland. My words will make them spellbound and then
there will be much applause. In the pleasing sound of that clapping, I will forget this tormenting
image. My ego will become stiff and proud.
But, he has again appeared here, in a very concrete form. Before today, he was washed
from my memory, but today he has appeared after thirty years. He is sitting in the dark and aloof
place of this very old, city railway station; it was his favorite place then, too. I can see him lost in
deep thoughts. What is he thinking?
Yet, his thinking has not reached to the logical end. Except for me, nobody knows that
this silent man's voice can move the statues; his thoughts can melt the frozen brains and his
words can purify hearts. Alas! Nobody knows but one who has locked his tongue. A desire to
talk to him, at least once, overwhelms me. Something inside me is pushing me towards him;
something is quenched in me that wants to burst out but something equally strong is stopping my
movement. I am like a person whose feet are chained but stormy air is pushing him forward.
What can I do except fall? Yes, I am a fallen woman. Does he still remember me?
I do remember once he said: "In this tiresome journey of life, sometimes somebody stops
us to make us relaxed. He makes us laugh. We laugh so much that our eyes become wet, then
suddenly that person says goodbye because he has to go on his own journey, towards his own
destined direction. In the beginning we remain lost, missing those heavenly moments,
remembering everything about which Death cleans, while making its own memory. We fall
down, but, life goes on to write more mortal tales with the same excitement. We see the disloyal
life moving swiftly in the arms of somebody else, without even looking back to us. Before falling
down, we try to make her remember her commitments, but our feeble voice can't even touch our
own ears. We die to be forgotten forever. This is the total achievement of life. Our tiring long
effort plus death equals absurdity. An awful nothingness! This is the result of life, for whose sake
we go to the maximum extent of meanness; for whose sake we deceive our dear ones; for whose
sake we suck the blood of our own species, and then suddenly we are deceived by this. At that
moment we try to spit on it, spit which then returns to our own mouths."
I want to meet that untamed solitary soul. I want to get rid of this tormenting burden of
conscience but at the same time, something invulnerable and unburiable stops me. I know it is
my false ego, which will never allow me do so. I know we so-called scholars are slaves of this
ego for centuries. We will keep on killing such genius by the fatal poison of our suffocating
mediocrity. Yes, I should move now. People are waiting for me. My lofty words are awaited
there. Good luck to you, the burden of my soul.
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