Divide
Bitter thoughts of a has been Indian journalist.
The gap, the distance and the disbelief keeps spreading. Sometimes, now more often than ever before, my internal conversations veer around the same relentless topic. External conversations have all but dried up, it no longer makes sense to engage with people in conversations that have no direct necessity to whatever it is that brought someone in to that conversational space at that instant in time and existence. Internally you cannot run away from your self , or your bitterness, of being stuck in this particular moment of being.
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“Think of Syria” That’s my wife generously poring out her bucket of cold water. “The West Bank; Donetsk; Kashmir” Her bucket is large and she could go on. But let not her occasional splashing of reality confuse your take on her mental and emotional wellbeing. She is hurting as much as I and as agreieved, only that she is better at masking the truth that assails her. She is the only one with whom I still have conversations, adding to our bitterness as aging adults with nothing good to look forward to.
I have stopped following the news, I have dropped out. My wife hasn’t and she keeps me posted on all the ridiculous happenings that surround us. Therein lies the irony, I spent 30 years doing the news and she, till relatively recently, had no interest in its making. Now she goes beyond the obvious and, like the splendid antenna that she has become, tunes in directly on the same malafide intent behind its unidirectional churning.
News and the information business put food on the table and a roof over our heads. It gave me in unequal measures, identity, heartburn, syncope, recognition and purpose in my daily doings. And then the divide set in. I could never have believed that the transition, not mine but that of the society in which I functioned, could change with such rapidity. The wedge that was driven amongst us cost me my job, acquaintances, friends and family. I withdrew, refusing to compromise with the great evil that had begun to stalk the land and people today. Every action, every conversation got singed by questionable intent as I went fighting windmills till that became my epitaph in an otherwise commendable career of judicious journalism, tired of the effort of pushing back I left the battle.
Left with my internal conversations and confusions I grow more pathetic every passing day of idleness and inaction.
