by Sayan Bali

Created on: April 08, 2010

The Oldest Human Medicine  

I have no idea why but my mind dropped below freezing temperature on a most radiant day in Kiev. My heart sank and turned into a block of ice. Outside my body it was early August but deep inside, it was like late December. Things happened fast, overpowered my will and sent my reason to a Siberian exile. All of a sudden life looked insignificant if not downright ridiculous.  

When women feel low, they cry. We men are probably less advanced on the scale of evolution. When we don’t feel ok, we need beer or violence, ideally both. That is why we created stadiums and that is that is why, for every twenty four men running on the field, there are one hundred thousands sitting and stuffing themselves with food. A Dutch painter called Vermeer, a man who was ahead of his time caught the phenomenon of beer brawls in striking sketches. There is a bit of Dutch brawler in all of us.

Beer would have been most welcome but the fridge was empty. To steer away from that icy mood I needed to get away from the only source of my problem: myself. What better way to escape from oneself properly than watching a movie? It is legal and the side effects are minimal. I looked into my modest DVD collection to find something.  

I don’t know what caught me but few months ago in Phnom Penh, I had bought a black and white Indian movie called Andaz. This movie has been made in 1949. Why did I buy it? I have no idea but it seems that as we grow old, we like to be surrounded by things old enough to make us feel young.  

As I was watching Andaz, there came a song that made my spine tingle. A second one, a song called Darna Mohabat Karle brought a tear into my eyes. The song was about love and the fleeting character of our existence on this earth, the evanescence of things and the ludicrousness of the human ego. A third melody turned the ice inside my heart into a spring brook and washed my sorrow away. I heaved a sigh of relief something only the right medicine, given at the right time can produce on the patient. And I was sick, sick from a case of mental flu that made Camus sound like a peptimist.   

The songs released me from the clutches of a spiritual cold but did not replace it with smiles and laughter. No, they brought into my heart something more satisfying. They brought in an incredible feeling of serenity, awareness and wholesomeness. They brought me what the Zen Buddhists call the Satori.
Only then, did I realize how much I had missed my higher self, that divine side we all have in us and that gets lost in the nitty-gritty of daily life.    

  

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