Back To Bliss: A Journey To Zero by Santosh Jha (pdf e book reader TXT) 📕

The music had replenished the space with compassion... it was made possible. The stage was ideal. Love and intimacy, the supremacy and all pervasiveness of it, sets it on. The absoluteness of intimacy initiates the poetry and the heart is soaked up with compassion…. He had felt his guilt washed away...passion had bowed out the moment compassion ascended the throne.

The transformation had begun...! When rains wash the face of earth, each and every speck of it looks new and different....her eyes looked so large and heavy; he had seen them before. The long and black curls of her looked longer as his hands reached their ends...her limbs, her back, the neck...the soft shoulders...the verve below...the ascent and descent of seven steps of heaven...oh! …every touch made him realize he was discovering a completely new she.

A déjà vu...certainly...most certainly...she was not what he had known for over a year but the new ‘she’, was very much what he had known for ages...what? Something so vivid, so ostensible but still so elusive... so intangible...! His realism had got metamorphosed. He did not stop...the journey must not stop before it reaches destination and then, the realization dawns upon that it was not what had initiated and energized the journey.

And finally...he touched the woman...moments of beinglessness…a sharp shrill down his spine...and he attained it...he dropped the soap...curled up, crying, closing all his senses... he crept into her lap...slowly but surely pushing himself to her womb...she wept too...curled her up and shoved him firmly to accommodate him, imbibe him in her fullness. The compassion took both of them in its refuge...compassion made her the womb...the highest repository of human compassion. And, compassion melted his gender...made him a fetal reality...! Coiled up in her womb, he understood the déjà vu...he attained it...the infinity... he realized the unknowable...

She remained motionless in his arms. Both of them had forgotten dinner; opting for the comfort of the bed, resting as just-born enjoined twins. Nothingness is the recipe of intimacy...even redundant is unnecessary...! Time however cannot be wished away. It was 2 am when she checked the watch. He too moved as she slipped out of his embrace. She went to the kitchen to make some tea and he opened the windows to allow the fresh breeze in. He took out the bed sheet, clothes were such a burden… wrapped the sheet around him and moved to the living room. She brought one large cup of tea. He took her inside the bed sheet as both sat on the couch. They sipped tea together.

Rise up before the Sun does and see the magic, the old prudence has it. He was used to the timing. He would not return home until the printing machine ran the first copy of the late city edition at 3.30 am. For her however, this was a new experience. She felt a strange rejuvenation. This was the right time to direct the climax that she had in her mind. How unaware he was...

“Say something...”, she whispered in his ears.

“What...”, he asked softly.

“You had said you wanted to talk...something important!”

“Yeah...I did. But now I am not sure what I wanted was necessary...even right.”

“You are always right. I cannot see you go wrong...I don’t want to. And, I think I know what you wanted to say. That’s why I say you were right.”

He looked in her eyes; her determined self was clearly visible. He kissed them.

“My princess, you do not know us men. We breathe the legacy of corruption of intellect...we are the directionless and destructive energy of the universe. We men are born in contradiction and die in confusion.”

“My man is not part of the legacy”, she said promptly, rubbing her lips to his and grabbing him in her arms. “My man understands contradictions and that’s why he is above everything...he is not the man the way it is... he is my God; gender-neutral and formless like him.”

He could not say a word. He appreciated the word gender-neutrality. He had often realized that he lost his man-identities when in total intimacy with her and even did not register her as a woman. The formlessness anyway was his favorite existential positioning. But this was not easy.

“You scare me”, he whispered to her. “You put me on such pedestals I can never justify. I am already so nervous...I never think I am good enough to deserve you.”

“You say that and I may say the vice versa. The reality is; we do not have to be in deserving business. We do not even have to be in the confusion of mutual expectations. We are two lives and we have to ensure that together we create such a positive environment which develops and perfects conclusive complementarities between us. Of course; I am a woman and you are my man. But when I and you will it to be us, we will need to rise above socially prevalent standards of gender-role exclusivity.”

Since evening she had been a revelation. He had never expected her to say what she had said. He realized she had more to say. He understood; the first ray of Sun would bring in a new world where some of his questions would lose relevance and rest would get answered for good. He put in his left hand fingers into her curls and very tenderly rubbed her back with his right arm fingers. She rested her head on his chest.

“Say it please...don’t stop”, he said and kissed her forehead. “This day is so unblemished, so full of divinity’s exquisiteness, so very enlightening...I am very sure each of the words you speak will add a meaning to our lives.”

“Hold me tight so that I have the confidence and conviction to speak to my God.”

“You are a woman, you need no help, and your womb holds the truth of the universe...your God is born out of your womb.”

The Sun is not the first to rise up. Before it wakes up, the breeze gets up and heralds the morning. The pre-dawn breeze wakes up the trees, the birds and those humans who understand life. The nature wakes up before the Sun does and nature stirs the potential from slumber. The potential hits the morning alarm bell for all those humans who understand purity and purpose of life. As she readied to say what she had planned to say, the pre-dawn breeze started to blow. The nature and all its elemental energies sat around her to listen. The light of the day awaited her...

“I have understood what you have been trying to make me realize”, she said in low whispering voice but he was all ears. “I did not tell you but I’ve been thinking over it. I am so happy, so proud of you...I feel so blessed; I feel no need of prayers and I call you my God not out of the intensity of my love for you. I understand I have to be in your light to become a perfect person and that is what God is – the highest benchmark of human perfection. I know, you too would wish to say the same about me. And God you are for me because you want me to be perfect not for yourself but for my own joys and satisfaction in life. I am so proud to have you; I am even scared at times.”

“But, I am a human, probably better positioned to qualify as your man than God.”

“That’s where my problems also start. I am a woman. We are into a man-woman relationship. If I can understand what it is to be a woman, I also do appreciate what it is to be a man. You look at life in terms of purpose, higher attainments, issues and agendas. I am a woman. And I think I understand what is being a woman. You have also helped me immensely in understanding what elemental womanhood is and I call you my God because it is the woman in you that made me learn what I was missing as a woman. You made me a perfect woman and I am so happy and proud that I have attained what I was born for. But you are a man. You define perfection from benchmarks which you see not as man or woman but human; a goodness common for all. Here you think I need to do more and add in my personality. You think it will make me happier and enhance my contentment; not as a woman but as a human.”

“...it seemed to me that life’s goodness and purpose was gender-neutral. Woman or man is a non-issue. Both are humans and equally entitled to attain the goodness of life. But that was yesterday. Today I feel unsure. I can say what I said probably needs scrutiny. This evening has probably changed something in me. I am even not sure which way I should say I am a man. I am probably more woman today. You have sort of absorbed me fully. If I am a man right now then probably like a baby boy; unaware of my gender.”

“You know, I am never good with words. You too know it well that my expression is poor. But I have been wanting to tell you that I have been thinking over this conflict of sorts between us...forgive my ignorance for not choosing the right word to express myself. I have spent many sleepless nights over it. I assessed what and why you wanted me to see things in life and groom myself for that ends. For many days I felt confused and even in some sort of conflict with your ideas. I think I am either a big fool or too innocently simple but I could only come to the conclusion that we basically want to reach the same destination in our relationship but our roads to approach it looks separate. I am not sure how to put it but I hope you get me right. I think there are two broad issues with us. First, we are into a man-woman relationship...I am a woman and you are a man; there cannot be a denial to body segregation. Second; we are into love and supreme intimacy. The fact looks like; the gender agendas are different and love’s requirement is different. Gender seeks role segregation and love seeks unification. Is that what we wanted to talk about?”

He nodded in affirmation and kept quite. He did not want to obstruct her flow of thoughts by making certain refinements in her observations.

“What I have come to the conclusion is; and again I say, I am probably too foolish or too simple to form such an opinion; there is actually no confusion, no conflict. When you live true to your gender identity as man, you also want me to refine my woman-specific gender role and rise up to accept roles that are human; not man not woman. That basically means that life’s attainment requires us to dissolve our gender-identities. And, when you are in complete intimacy with me, you yourself said you stop being a man and become more of a woman. I too lose my identity as woman. Absolute love dissolves gender-identities. So, you see; when you think as a man, you wish to attain something which ultimately reaches the same stage where you reach when you think as a woman and peak in love and intimacy – the genderlessness…”

He had no words. He could not feel the need to be a speaker today; he just wished to be a listener. He waited for her to continue but she did not say anything. He intuitively felt there was something more that she has to say.

“So, what you think is the one out of the two roads we should together tread to reach our common destination?”

“Here I am