The Poltergeist

The belief had turned into faith. I kno it now; there is sumthin uncanny and mysterious in my laptop. Perhaps a ghost! Yes! A ghost. Everytime with whatever problem it is taken to the service center, it wrks perfectly, never allowiun the problem to be detected. This is irritating. The problem wid its screen, which almost had been stifling me for the past month, simply vanished when it was sent to the service center at the oder end of the city – can be nuthin else bt a poltergeist.

However a ghost perhaps resides in every corner of our lives – in our thoughts, in our beliefs, in our understanding, in our world perception, in our mutual relationships, at our sides, here, there, everywhere. That is perhaps why there is a perpetual lack of stability in this world – a fidgety ghost perhaps pervades us all or else only me at least.

Seated in Court Room No.5 of the Supreme Court of India, my belief is getting strengthened. The matter that is being argued is abt some taxation matter and hence extremely boring. However it is interesting when it seems that the poltergeist of instability has pervaded this court room as well. Justice Kapadia himself it seems had delivered a judgement before, which was on a very similar fact situation – that is the basic contention of the petitioners and thus he prays that the same be applied here as well. However today he is adamant on the contrary and therefore the clash of arguments, sections and subsections – the unstable mantle of justice – the poltergeist playing.

The dance of instability stretches far beyond this court room. The lack of certainty is acute. The relationship which yesterday it seemed was filled with the promises of hope, one which I could clutch along to sustain, seems today to be of much lesser weight. It is not that in a matter of A vs. B, one party has to be at a fault alwz. If B refuses to accept the bond of a relation even A cannot help the situation. How long can one possibly wait! Even if one wishes to, the normal sensibility of a human being prompts him to move on. There’s no space to think abt certainty, nor abt stability – helpless at the game of the spirit or that of the ghost. The mind and the heart yearn to maintain the status quo of the matrix that existed yesterday. Somewhere seated in the soul the witch-master continues to chant, to tame that excited poltergeist – we continue to hope. The shadowy cloud might be for a span that’s temporary, beyond it there mght be light, and there might be Hope.

Perhaps this is why relationships do not have a reason; do not have a rule. They do not require one. In the sway of our expectations and hope, whatever seems apt, as we keep a hand on the heart, it is declared to be so.

I feel this is where the answer to all ‘uncanny’ness lies. No rule, no stoppages, no reason, no bindings, hence to come close and give a name to a relation has no direction of its own. Consequently there is no check on drifting apart and being torn to pieces altogether. Just to float on the ‘wings of poesy’ is hence what a relation is. A or B, neither is thus at fault, none had the responsibility to be bound or binding another. Relationships hence are the imprints of cacophonous tumult of uncertainty in the mind of an individual or a mismanaged nation/notion at the level of thought. What has its birth in the depths of perception (notwithstanding any rule or scheme) gives rise to the unstable sensation of ‘like’ or ‘dislike’. Hence it is ephemera, a reflection of uncertainty.

I believe that therefore, it is true that a ghost keeps dancing within us day-in and day-out. Without abiding by the rules of addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, it calculates the non-‘sense’ within us. Being kaputt, it shies away from the world, never revealing itself…… but only to some chosen witch-doctors…… just like my laptop……