By Mitali Bhattacharya
A mother reads a newspaper headline,
'WAR DECLARED'.
But she is preoccupied with cooking lentils,
where she pours them into the chaos of boiling water.
And the chaos of the war and the calm of the simmering lentils become one.
History of war has always been a man’s prerogative,
made by them, marked by them, only to be dictated by them.
A girl paints her narrative of war and love,
as her chaos has never been just about being a female,
while her calm isn’t that easy either.
Her therapist refers to the word 'dissociation'.
Then she says,
“The mind and heart are one, only to be torn apart into pieces, multiple and one.
But, time and again, you must tend to your chaos,
by applying ointments and balms,
of closures, of expression, of letting go,
slowly to enter a state of calm."
A woman believes in revolution, not just being about public protests.
It is also about speaking up when pushed into the abyss of silence.
But she still feels the pain even after rising from the ashes of curtailment,
as her chaos lies in the calm of complete freedom.
Complete freedom being a myth and a mirage.
Once, there was a road resembling trauma,
that culminated where people willingly wished to forget all their pain.
Now, on that road,
stands a mighty building,
just like the politics of erasure and forgetting.
They say, “let bygones be bygones”,
but what hurts isn’t erased,
and gets carried forward too, struggling to achieve its calm.
The present is not regulated by authenticity.
Rather, a forwarded WhatsApp message,
holds the power to shake us all.
And, the chaos of the digital world threatens the calm of our existence.
Where does calm find its nest?
Is it poles apart from chaos?
Or is it in its foil?
Or simply, is it something deep inside?
The answer, my friends,
perhaps exists both within us,
and something that meanders beyond our reach.