Friday, June 10, 2011

The Barefoot Dreamer



Sometimes..just sometimes my heart screams out...we bloody humans...

Human, humane, humanity.

Oxymoron, isn't it ? I sometimes fail to understand human beings. Even the wild animals live by better rules and ethics that humans. 

Every writer has once in his life said, these are strange times. I think times were never strange. It's just the humans who became stranger and stranger, a stranger to themselves and humanity. 

When people die, you rarely cry for them but more so for yourself, thinking of the pain, of the vacuum it will leave in your life. When i heard of M F Hussain's demise, i cried. I do not yet know what i was crying for. Was it the lost hope? Was it the utter senselessness of his dying in a foreign land? Or of losing a genius who always lived by his own rules?No, i do not know.

Even in his death , he is spectacular. He proved like many great people before him, that he did not live in any boundaries, so could the borders of any country keep him tied down? Even in death he unified. It's funny how the government rises to an occasion offering to bury him in india. Dear Government, you didn't deserve him. We didn't deserve a man of his greatness. Some say, he should have stayed on here and fought his critics, about his freedom of expression. Why should he have? Why? In this country where everything runs on blackmail and black money, why should he have cared? After decades of painting india internationally, he did not need to do it . Yes, we did not deserve him.

I think of his life, his journey and his end. All i feel is awe and reverence. In his death he has taught a lesson , at least to me. In life, you live only once. Live by your own rules. Sometimes, by not caring about boundaries you can create your own horizons. In life, people will always judge. In death, the judgements don't count.

The barefoot maverick , his signature long brush in hand, painted his own skies . I am sure, he is still walking barefoot on the clouds  and painting his own skies. 

[Freedom of Speech and Expression is one of the basic and fundamental right of citizens in almost every country in the world. But this hasn't stopped the fundamentalists in those countries to flourish and wield a power over governments and its people that has forced many artists, mostly writers, to live in exile. 

Tasleema Nasreen, Orhan Pamuk, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, from Bangladesh, to Turkey, to Cuba, from Germany, to Iraq , Tibet, Mongolia, China, Russia to Nigeria, people have lived away from there beloved land. A Reporter shot on the middle of the road, a painter burnt at stake, from Galileo to Da Vinci, they all have faced this at some point of their lives. From being charged with sedition to being labeled as extremists and enemies of the state , they have chosen to live in exile. These people live a life hidden from public memory, surfacing now and then, being criticised, and then remembered in death.]