Dioscouri

I have tried, in vain, to be a part of the blogosphere for many months now. Something just didn’t work. Perhaps the problem was that I was writing for others. Pretence really isn’t my cup of tea. And yet, I found myself writing things that I didn’t really want to say, that I couldn’t hear coming from my mouth or being a product of my thoughts. And yet there I was trying to write intelligently, wittily, funnily, overusing my thesaurus. It was all too fake. I suppose pretence really isn’t my cup of tea.

I begin Dioscouri with the particularly narcissistic intention of airing my thoughts for myself and for the express purpose of preserving my (in)sanity.
Reason enough, right?

Dioscouri (also spelt Dioscuri) is the name given to the celestial brothers- Castor and Pollux. Sons of Leda and Zeus, they signify all that is one and yet varied in nature. Sophistication and naivety, crudity and gentility, privilege and the common touch.

I find myself relating to the Dioscouri complex everyday. Its just some innate relation you have with a word, you know? You might never have heard it, but when you read it or hear it for the first time, you can’t help but feel it slide neatly into the jig saw. I had that with Dioscouri.
It just fit.

I don’t quite know what to attribute my duality to. Like all things, I suppose it’s a shoot of many roots. I quite enjoy it, to be very honest. I like contradictions. They seem to fit into the life I am leading. There are contradictions all around, it is only inevitable that I feel them seeping inside me all the while.

What is it about contradictions? I find something intoxicating, near powerful, about the unpredictability that they supply. The feeling of not subscribing to a single set of values, ideas, emotions, beliefs; but instead allowing myself the freedom to be the person I want to be, the moment I want to be gives me such a kick…

A couple of years ago, I fixed my boundaries. And for most part, I stayed within them. And so long as there was a sense of security and stability in my life, I loved those boundaries. I loved the matching sense of solidity that they seemed to provide. Every thing was just…in order. Everything worked by the rules.

But the thing is, so little is predictable! That’s where another word I love deeply, truthfully- transience - comes in. The rule of everything is to change. And stability soon shifted to temporariness. Suddenly, every experience, every relationship had turned impermanent. The boundaries of most things suddenly became very nebulous.

Perhaps this doesn’t sound like much, but to someone who, for a while, thrived on the predictability of set emotions, a pattern to pretty much everything, this was…well, devastating.
Suddenly, there was little to be said to trusted friends, the air and the seasons were different, so were attitudes and perceptions- suddenly someone had shaken the toy snow-globe and given it a very rough shake. The snow flakes were flying with wild abandon and they just refused to settle.

When I tried to apply my old rules to this new situation- suddenly everything was malfunctioning. My rules didn’t work! But how could that be? Everything worked by my rules- how could that change so suddenly?
Every experience was adamant about being so different from anything I had felt earlier. And my rules just didn’t apply. I struggled for a long while, trying obdurately to throw the switch back to predictability, to set patterns and emotions.

That was when I discovered transience. And it was a perfect fit. Somewhere that single word built a complete bridge from my old world to my new. It bridged change with stability, patterns with havoc and sense with nonsense. That word connected so many broken, jagged ends, it finally made a whole.

When I finally allowed myself to let go of the old rules, old boundaries- more and more things suddenly began to make sense. Other people, the way the world works, relationships, principles- and most thankfully, I began to make sense to myself. I suppose I just allowed myself some room to go with everything, to grow with everything, to change with everything. I began to understand myself only after I allowed the transience to creep inside me.

I suppose that is precisely why pretence isn’t my cup of tea. Like the boundaries of everything else, I like my boundaries to be nebulous, ambiguous. Pretence would mean forgoing the sense of freedom I get from being an individual created by disconnected moments. Pretence would mean reverting to the world of trying to be one thing, to limits and rules that govern everything.
And what’s fun about that?

And that is exactly why the Dioscouri complex makes so much sense to me. The duality of Castor and Pollux. Sophistication and naivety, crudity and gentility, privilege and the common touch.
I am chai ki tapri and coffee bar, salad and dabeli, naivety and maturity, crisp mountain air and salty chowpatty breeze, generous and unforgiving, principles and amorality, prudishness and innuendo, writer and writer’s cramp, Gogol and Manga, intellect and premature senility, assurance and insecurity.

I am all of this and yet, I am nothing. For if I allowed my contradictions to be the sum of all that I am then there would be no room for transience.
So,
I’ll just let myself be.
Castor one moment.
Pollux the next.
And blank canvas beyond.