It is midday and I am sweating my way up over water-smoothened rock, blue-faced lizards and a mountainside of sun-bleached thorns. High on top, on the ridge that runs north to south, the wind picks up and you forget about the sun. There are gazelle droppings and green shoots. I have walked a hundred metres above the baking insides of a wadi filled with loosened stones and brittle scrub and reflected sunlight, and it is better now. Far away to the south even the cement factory looks palatable, and the city, all blazing white, starts to the north, just under the blue swath of sea. All it took was an hour’s worth of climb, and you could imagine having a little shack here. All it takes is a bit of altitude.
I edge towards the last bald patch of mountain. There is a whole network of dusty tracks far below, crisscrossing each other back to civilisation, making their way through the chunk of rocky canyons, no-man’s land and air-force shooting ranges beyond.
For one wild moment I have this sudden urge to run to the edge and fling myself off, a thought that I had buried for decades but one that rushes back now. I remember it from my terrace in Bombay, from the grass and fog-covered side off Mahabaleshwar, from the drawing-room window over the almond tree in Juhu. I clutch at my hat and stumble back, not trusting myself.
This reminds me of what Kundera said: Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect some day to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? Then why do we feel it even when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts us and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
Now I must admit I could be a fan of things like ‘the voice of emptiness.’ But it also reminds me of something I could have written when in college. I have waited years to get my hands on this book because its title, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, always sent a shiver down my spine. I must be the last fool to have gotten his grubby hands on it.
I’m halfway through and I’m not sure I like the style, or the book. It lectures. And it mixes up two ways to say something. One way is to use metaphor, or a story. Another way is to just say what you want to say. But I’m getting a bit tired of Kundera telling me of a dream that a couple of lovers have, and then proceeding to tell me, just after, what that dream means. Why not just go with the dream and let me come to my conclusions? Or just tell me what life is about without going through the bother of cooking up the story?
Maybe the book will get better once I’ve finished it. Maybe everyone’s so hungry they’ll grab a midget of an intellect. Maybe I’ve just waited too long to get my hands on it.
A couple of kilometres to the west, a military helicopter is flying low, and disappears behind a canyon parallel to me. I sit still. Its thwack is lost somewhere among the rocks, and in the crunch of my dry biscuits. I bite on a piece of unbearable British cheese.
Far away, in Muscat, Pakistanis are flying kites.
One Comment
Abyss and the Unbearable Lightness of Being. From an Internet Cafe in a big Dubai Mall, I write trying to fathom your urges to plunge while in your native land. Hard to imagine, for someone so luminous and accomplished. But easy for someone who knows one thing, that they know nothing. Someone who takes risks without forfeiting a single part of freedom.
I read the book when younger than you and you’re right, that bit of lecturing bothered me a bit at the time. Soon I found it dreamy, though, and felt it was kind of cool to be lead to a dream without needing to make the effort. Effortless reach to beauty isn’t bad, especially at the age of 25. I don’t know what it would have seemed like now. I must say I watched the film with greater pleasure than reading the book. The film had its own sort of abyss, almost like “Les Amants du Pont Neuf”. But then again, maybe the Abyss isn’t a given. And it isn’t obvious. Maybe, like many other things, it is open to interpretation.
I’m glad I came to the Internet Cafe today, my Internet connection at home completely out with the fairies. No idea when they’re going to fix the thing, Prophet’s Birthday and all. Have the town is either depressed because of the crisis or away on holidays. Speaking of Abyss…