Ruchira's Ramblings

Have I drunk of the hemlock? How else do I explain this numbness of the soul?   As part of his death sentence, Socrates was offered a cup full of hemlock, and ordered to keep walking after. I read this story in fourth standard history book and somehow remembered that last part- “You must keep walking.” Years later, a professor in college explained that the effect of hemlock begins from the legs and makes its way upward, till it reaches the heart and stops it. And the brain knows the gradual numbing of the toes, the feet, the legs, the thighs… it feels the slow but certain disconnect from everything that orients it in the world, and it knows the assured arrival of death. Sometimes on the infinite cosmic stage, the trappings fall away, briefly, to reveal the utter nothingness of it all. Ennui, we term it. Must I smother my soul daily thus wasting this one, singular chance that comes with an expiry date without an alarm bell? But what feeds a soul if the body dies? The soulless...

What's in a name, you say? In Kalimpong I overheard a little girl complaining about the name of the mountain to her father. "What kind of name is Kanchenjungha? I don't like it." "And what do you think the mountain should be named?" "Megha Mountain. Because it touches the clouds." A while later, as her parents called after her, I realized she had given the mountain her own name. We were leaving, so I didn't get around to asking them, but I have questions. Did she mean to claim the world as her own, or did she want to become the world? Or did she, as a child, recognize that she was , in fact the world- she was the mountain in the horizon and the clouds kissing its snowy peaks? Kanchenjungha is a Tibetan name, by the way, meaning 'the five treasures of the snow', named after its five high peaks. The mountain is worshipped by the people of Darjeeling and Sikkim. And mankind has long worshipped the immens...