Nazar v/s Nazariyaan: Ram Kapoor
It was the night under the rain. A man drenched with the idea of love; love, his belief, happens only once in a lifetime. He promises [himself] to love her forever where there is no place for anyone. He was wearing black and she, magenta.
What is an idea? We define an idea as a thought or a formulated thought, an imaginary figment of the mind or belief. What if an idea is just an illusion? If an illusion, then will that idea ever be tangible or concrete?
She asks him a favor, and he promises to fulfill by next year's rain. He has never learned to say 'no' to her. She comes forward to thank him but is startled by the lightning.
"Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you'll spend your life yearning for a man you can't have." ~ The Palace of Illusions.
He stood firm on his ground. She stepped back. It started to rain. She protected herself from it, but he, drenched with the idea of love and the illusion, reminded her he still loves rain and took a step back. But, he said – "whether I am in your life or not, my life is all yours; no one will ever have a place in it."
Black, a color that absorbs all colors. A color that is unambiguous, definite, and exudes authority and power. Magenta is a color that DOESN'T exist. Magenta is a lure; it is an illusion. Hevel (vapor in Hebrew). The color magenta is just an illusion created by our eyes. It is not found on the visible spectrum of light, and there is no wavelength of this color. How can then unambiguity and illusion ever be together?
How can we conceptualize an idea whose foundation is an illusion? It is a mist that disappears before our eyes could even shape, name, live, dream, or even build. On the contrary, what if our idea is an imagination? Then we can conceptualize it. He dreams of merging their families with his sweetheart sister's wedding to her brother-in-law. There will be a wedding but not them as bride and groom. Their hearts will never be together; still, deep down, he is happy to be with her in the same room - to ask for nothing but a slight presence. But, "doesn't the imagination always exaggerate – or diminish – truth?" ~ writes Chitra Divakaruni. Yes, it does. His dream of togetherness shattered. It had to. After all, it was built on illusion.
"Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor [hevel] that appears for a little while and then vanishes away." ~ James 4:14
The illusion had to break because the dream was impractical. "Apni naiyyan toh nikal chuki hai boss. Iss toofan mein yeh kashti akeli ghumegi." It had to shatter someday. No one, even his imaginary beloved, waited for him to arrive at the engagement. When our illusions break, then only we realize the difference between pretense and love. We realize that couples fight, argue, taunt, hurt, exude all emotions in true love. Without this, we cannot experience love.
What is love? What is unrequited love? "This thirst!" Eleanor Catton asks, "but is it love, when it is unrequited? If home can't be where you come from," she asks, "then home is what you make of where you go." Yes, one year later, on that rainy day, when his car broke down, Adi advised him to take an auto which will take him home. "Jaa Ram, yeh raashta tujhe tere ghar tak pahunchayega." He couldn't catch the auto because the right time was yet to arrive.
He is sitting in a dark room. The room has no windows. No crack in any walls will allow any light to come in through. Then one day, he saw a yellow smear on the wall. Wondering, is there a crack? What is it that sits on the wall? He turned towards the opposite wall. He sees a spectrum of different colors that a human eye can see. He gets up and walks towards the opposite wall, and rubs the iridescent surface. They are all visible colors. He touches the yellow, red, blue, green, and PURPLE. Yes, they are real. [She IS real.] He turned around to look at the inception of the ray and trudged towards it. Once he reaches, he fudges with it. Surprisingly, it became a bit bigger. Is that a crack, he wonders? The circumference of the light became bigger. Sunlight burst through it. His eyes were used to the darkness, and the light blinded him. Time passed, and he started to get used to the light around. "Time," as Chitra Divakaruni writes, "is like a flower. It visualized a lotus opening, the way the outer petals fall away to reveal the inner ones. An inner petal would never know older outer ones, even though it was shaped by them, and only the viewer who plucked the flower would see how each petal was connected to the others." He began to experience life: anger, happiness, irritation, expectation, hatred, calmness, and above all else, true love. True love weaved with anger, taunt, fight, argument, laughter, care, anticipation.
He found someone who waits for him to return home; who cooks for him all the cuisines he craved watching Yash Chopra movies; who lights up his house; who would make rangoli on Diwali; who fasts for him in festivals; who taunts him on his whims he'd least expect; who fights for his justice; who punishes her brother for calling him, stepbrother.
"He[Ram] took her face between his hands, turning it up, and looking down at her for a moment before he kissed her. "I do love you, Jenny [Priya]," he said gently. "Very much indeed-- you are part of my life. Julia[Vedika] was never that - only a boy's impractical dream." ~ A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer
Reference: https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/artsbrain/2020/12/02/magenta-doesnt-exist/
Extremely beautiful and heart warming. You make me want to re read palace of illusions ❤️❤️
Vedika was an unattainable illusion , his khwaish dream..
Priya is his need his zaroorat .. He can't do without her ..
Why chase an illusion ,an unattainable dream when the reality is finally more beautiful than dreams ??
I think you should post this as a separate post too in IF , EDT me kho jayega , it would be tough for us to search and re read this beautiful write up !!
Cricket
