What is the point of it all

At 20, John Stuart Mill, already a brilliant polemicist, went into a deep blue funk. And yes, without the aid of modern music. What is the point of it all, he wailed, till he discovered poetry. You may not agree with him if you are thinking Ogden Nash but then, Mill was luckier to have been born early and found Wordsworth. I would have thought a depression perfectly normal at 20, not because I'd already had it at 15, but because that is the job of a good education and the best universities. That is to make you question the point of life and living and this world. As 15-20, as a bundle of hormones play ball with the inside of your body, and your brain have turned all the pages, in historical succession, of all the great thoughts that made the world what it is today and the people what they are--and yes that includes Marx--what else do you do but want violently to tip yourself down from a window-ledge in the nearest tall building? Of course, if you have also read poetry by that time, you might want to do it from a mountain. But your overwhelming thought would be, Man, is this the world they have been fattening us for, to pit us against this unjust, iniquitous, power-hungry, compassion-bereft, unchangeable world?
So what is the point that I am trying to make? None, except to tell you another story. In the olden days in India, there was a bright child forever hungry for knowledge. He was sent to the best-known sage his parents knew in the locality. he studied with him for three years, till the sage threw up his hands and said, "I have taught you all that I knew." For more, you have to travel far and wide for a month and go to this sage with matted hair. He really knows a great deal." The boy travelled and spent three years with the matted-hair sage, at the end of which the latter said, "Rejoice, for you have now learnt all." The boy said, "Are you sure? I don't feel so. Isn't there really anything more to learn?" The matted-hair sage said, "Well, you can go my teacher who is as old as this earth itself, maybe he can give you what you want." The adoloscent walked for days and months and years and reached the home of the really-old sage who lay deeply sick. He cried, "Oh master, how can you leave me thus? I feel I know nothing." The dying man flashed a smile and said, "Young man, only when you have learnt all that is there to know you feel such. Go now and create your own knowledge."

A little sunshine

Some moments are like a rare, rainbow-coloured shell amidst a lot of dirty sand, bits of plastic, and dead sealife that cling to your instep in a receding tide. You stomp, trying to free your feet from the clutter and the discomfort, like that pea under the mattress, and put out your hand to dislodge that thing between your toes, and there's a little sparkle in your palm. You came here hoping to erase your mundane memory of yet another day in the life of X, thinking that the splash of water and the sight of softly folding, grey foam would cleanse your brain of the missed deadline, the boss's fading oldface, the stacks of paper, and the security guard's tired "good night madam". And it almost does. That thing you saw, that little bit of sunshine at 8.30 pm, somebody sent it for you from the depths of the green-blue-grey water, churning millions of pieces of floating garbage, to redeem your dreary day, to lend you that briefest of eternity when your soul fleetingly winged out of you, to tell you that the Creative Cursor writes, and having writ your smile, moves on to write another's.