The Brave Pedestrian

“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high… Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, Let my WORLD awaken.” – With apologies to Rabindranath Tagore I keep writing about freedom, but so far I’ve tended to write about it in a marital/sexual context. Freedom, if it is present, touches all areas of our lives and makes our lives sublime. It raises our lives above the mundane by liberating us from whatever is petty and crass in our lives. We cease to exist as men and women, and learn to live as MEN and WOMEN. We cease to exist as mere consumers of goods and services, and live as CITIZENS. We cease to merely think, and begin to SEE and FEEL. We cease to merely exist, and begin to LIVE.  We cease to be cogs in a wheel, and become little wheels in our own right. This I firmly believe. How does this translate into reality? How would it feel to live in a world where freedom dwells in a lot of hearts? Let me put it in the form of a short story (or a series of short st...

Our greatest joy in life can leave the biggest hole in our hearts, she reflected, standing before the mirror, studying the way her saree now draped around her. It looked good. To an outsider, it would look perfect. It would look as though nothing had changed. But everything had changed. Oh God, how rapidly everything had changed! Ten months? No, less! Far less. Tears welled up in her eyes. She wept for herself. And then she wept for her husband. Sobbing softly, she wept for them both. Just a few weeks had elapsed since she had first felt those lumps near her armpit, while soaping herself in the bathroom. Concerned, she had called her husband in. He had stepped into the wet bathroom, grinning. “So, you want me to help you soap yourself, huh? With pleasure, darling, with pleasure!” Suppressing the anxiety that was already gnawing at the pit of her stomach, she had handed him the bar of soap, and allowed him to soap her breasts, closing her eyes. It never ceased to amaze h...