Words – they tear you apart, cajole you, excite you, motivate you, make you cry or make you laugh laugh and experience a range of emotions. Sometimes… just sometimes, you hear or read something and then those words clamp up your heart, nibble at your soul and drop themselves in your psyche like a boat anchor; forcing you to pause and ponder.
My memory fails me whether I read, heard or experienced it myself a few decades ago; but here’s the gist of it. A person seeing his blind friend read a book in braille says, “It must hurt you to not be able to read the wonderful prose”. His friend replies, “I’m the lucky one. Have you ever experienced touching the words and feel them touch you back”?
This taught me the meaning of perspective.
Couple of days ago I read the blog post How to let your life speak… The opening lines read – “Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney,” young Vincent van Gogh wrote in a letter…
This has taught me the meaning of loneliness.
This also is the inspiration behind my new poem in Punjabi. I’ve also translated it in Hindi but not sure if it has the same impact as the one in Punjabi.
