My friend, you ask me how do I know, how am I sure.
You say, ‘shouldn’t you be giving it more time’, you say, ‘shouldn’t you wait a little more?’
But I am sure that I have found the answer! You ask how? I am not sure if I can explain but let me see if I can cook up something for you..!
One lonely afternoon, in my verandah, I got into a strange tussle with my memory. The wrangling was to unearth a word I had come across in the past but was now giving me the slip. I remembered a lot of its associations and feelings, but I had nothing concrete to show when it came to its meaning. The word I was looking for denoted some kind of desperation, a state that possessed your whole, an all-eating preoccupation. It perhaps also had to do with anger. It connoted confusion and desperation. It had the smell of a revolution around it-you know, that fervor and idealism; a romanticism about it. Or that’s what I thought.
But what was the word! Which of these associations were misleading me, which were guide-posts? I tried hard to focus on the vaporous raw material much like cigarette smoke in a still room. Imagine me trying to lock up the lazy blue smoke neatly in a box. That was how I felt, trying to lock up the myriad meanings neatly in that one magical word. Much of love, I aver, is such my friend. That one being to contain all our desires, needs, insecurities, and generosities-that’s what the search is all about.
I never doubted the existence of this word that shall neatly, wholly, without leaving anything behind or quite spilling anything, encapsulate fully what I was imagining. If I do plumb my depths and unearth that magical word, I shall never ever forget it again in my whole life. Yet what was the word!
I was paralysed because I couldn't quite figure out the way to go about it. Earlier experiences of recall (and those of solving a knotty problem) have not been completely under my control. Sure I used to break my head over a problem for hours together but the solutions for the worthy problems always hit you suddenly, unawares. I recall an incident involving mathematician Poincaire (as recounted in the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) who left for a geological trip after having worked on a certain path-breaking mathematical problem with great intensity. As he stepped onto the bus that was to take him on the tour the whole solution hit him like a wave and he knew that was it. Without feeling the need to work out a formal proof he felt confident about the veracity of the solution. Of course without laying claim to any such greatness, let me just say that the creative processes in the greats and in the commoners seem to be the same. Solutions pop up when you least expect it. And you are surprised by your clarity about the right solution. You know this is it.
I have read somewhere that our mental faculties work like a magnet. Once we are emotionally and intellectually attracted or locked in with a certain aspect of the world we zoom in to anything that has to do with our attraction. Well I didn’t feel as confident as this auto-zooming mechanism suggests I should be. Sure I was all sleeved-up for a search but then felt like a young man who heads west and finds a whole valley at his feet but no shovel in his hand.
I made the first tentative effort based on phonetics. I ran through the whole list of alphabets, stopping by each character and trying to figure out if the consonant or vowel had anything to do with my word. With the belief that I shall know my word when it comes by, I scaled up and down the hill. A, B…F, G, H-no, no- J, K…stopping for a long time, L, M...arghhh! Then I stopped this futile exercise. I was growing impatient and it was not a right sign. I stood up and paced the verandah. The alphabets and sounds were not helping yet…
‘I examine that vaporous existence inside me- a certain helplessness, a grave all-consuming feeling, an anxiety of too great an import nibbling at one’s self. Ah..! I just have to focus on the feeling and I am definite the word would surely pop up-have to, sometime or other. It is inside me. I know it exists. After all I had once known it. Then, I must have ignored it, slighted it, shoved it carelessly in some corner of my existence and gone onto attend far more interesting things. Uh! Did I know its devils shall be afflicting me thus! Brilliantly conceived punishment ain't it, if at all I have to look at it as a punishment. I can't say I am enjoying the process. It is strange why I am still at it, but yet…maybe it is due to the reward at the end of the search. So plunge the depths, keep the breath, search intently and rush up triumphant with the treasure. Ain't this what pearl divers do? Using whatever…ha I am digressing, digressing from this A, B, C..business. Now should I just leave it and let this word bubble up on its own-It shall some time or other, wouldn't it…’
Yet that summer afternoon with nothing else to do my mind and pride fixated on this single act of retrieval. So without much ado, I forged on. I ran through the alphabets once again. I was searching for that explosive combination of phonetics, meaning, emotion-the wherewithal to trigger and shake loose my subaltern of memoria.
A-agony, anxiety, aggression, apprehension…
B-boredom, botheration, bomb, breakneck, blacked out…uhh
C-concern , no not c, not the ‘ee’ sound, it’s the ‘aa’ or the ‘a+e’ sound..
D-distress, disquiet, no the sound is not right…
‘Now why in the first place did I remember this word’s existence..! More importantly how did I? What did I do and what did I think that has led me to mull over this word and its whole network of meanings and emotions? Like a somnambulist I have gotten into a strange place I only vaguely recollect ever seeing before and one way to know its name is to travel backwards along the path I had taken to this place. Hopefully as I tread backwards, the more familiar neighbourhoods shall gradually reveal the identity of the strange place I am grappling with. Like someone on a treasure hunt game I am flogging my mind to go from one post to another post in search of vital clues. Will it lead me anywhere at all or just dump me into greater mire?’
With these doubts flickering in my mind I stopped in my tracks. I had unconsciously reverted to checking out the alphabets from the one back in a unconscious way to my A, B, C routine…this time I had decided to spend a lot of time on ‘A’ which I had earlier ignored!.
‘Agnorra
Angiform
Angle
Angel
Haa…what am I doing, spewing verbiage?’
Now hold, this is the feeling I want you to know. This is the answer for your question-how do you know if this is the one; how do you know u are approaching, that you are deliciously near? A few full moments before the word burst out like spangled sun...I knew the word was coming.
Angst, my friend is the word! Angst-it shall never slip from my mind.
And well that’s the feeling my friend, that’s how it feels. When I saw her I knew my search ends here, fullstop.
