Mistakes are normal, but some can ruin us
Shaadaab S. Bakht
Shaadaab S. Bakht, who worked for famous Indian dailies The Telegraph, The Pioneer, The Sentinel and wrote political commentaries for Tehelka.com, is Gulf Today’s Executive Editor.
- 05 Feb 2021
My friend, displaying a rare bout of aggressive or maybe arrogant energy, triggered by success and youth that fallaciously gag logic, committed a huge wrong.
An act that cost him nothing when it was executed, but gradually proved expensive as his mornings turned grey and now the afternoons are fast preparing for the dusk to arrive. He is dreading the dark hours when sleep plays truant and dreams become a distant dream.
…A hundred parties can’t make up for one coffee break that’s rooted in desire, in heartbeats…
The deed keeps gnawing, he says. The thought of it keeps coming back with the unbridled ferocity of starving beasts and the fury of killer tempests. And it aches perpetually because its hour of entry for years has remained unpredictable. In other words, his grief follows no schedule. Sorrow, I suppose, can’t bother itself with an itinerary.
What makes the distress unmanageable is that it can’t be undone. We can balm the pain caused by such inconsiderate acts, but never bury it. This is something he keeps repeating every time a discussion erupts.
It was just some days away from the beginning of a new year when he committed the ruinous blunder.
My friend always admits he made a huge mistake. He understood the loss’s invaluable nature when life ruthlessly turned the tables on him and when he toddled into many empty nights without admitting they were so and often left him in tears.
The denial was fake, the emptiness real. And reality, unlike its fictional portrayal, is insurmountable. It is a mountain, which even seasoned climbers dread. Because rocks can be reshaped, not human beings.
He wanted a thousand times to go back to the pre-disaster days because he discovered subsequently that a hundred parties can’t make up for one coffee break that’s rooted in desire, in heartbeats, in dreams and is not an exercise that fills up our routine hours.
It didn’t happen, but left one lesson for him: one can’t mend fences as far as relationships are concerned. They, unlike fences of metal, can’t be hammered back to shape with the active assistance of skilled craftsmen.
The fences that go up between people are impossible to be removed. They really mean business.
Therefore, one would like to suggest to all that treasure love above materialism and homes above resorts. And relationships above all. Therefore, do lie upon the heart of your desire to hear it heave and you will know why we are advocating what we are advocating.
