Hope And Fear Tetralogy: Three, Fire

By Shankhoneel Ghosh

Sometimes, I have the feeling that there is a fire inside my belly - sometimes raging, sometimes smouldering - that wants to come out and sear everything within reach. Sometimes, when I am fortunate, that fire makes its way into my hand - the fingers of my right hand, to be more precise - and that is when I can make it, rather, it makes me make it, by using me as its instrument, flow out in this form of literary quips.

If I do not allow it this avenue, then it finds other ways - often, they are worse ways - to come out, in all its destructive glory. But I have found that it is only through writing, even if it means simply putting pen on paper, that this destructiveness can become something creative, something that flowers and fruits meaning and beauty. I must admit that I am rather proud of this phenomenon that happens, not to me, but with me.

It makes me ask - am I a genius, a fabled sleeping genius - rather, does genius sleep within me, and has gifted me this particular talent to express it in my stead? There have been long durations - months, even years, when I was too occupied with other matters to give myself as a vent to my genius, and those were the times at which it mutated into hideous forms that mutilated me - my demeanour, my style, my object, and my life.

This view of mine re-confirms the adage that creation and destruction are but the two sides of the same deity, that they are only two different, if not opposing, orders that carry the same degree of extremeness as the power that lies in the deity, the power that is the symbol of the fire of genius, the fire that lies within the ordinary man, i.e., ordinary men such as I. The torment of man by genius is such that his ultimate fate becomes in unconditional surrender to its overpowering forces, at which it shall do with him as it pleases, and he shall do its bidding as the sole and final object of his life.

The cost of executing, no, enduring the work of genius so thrust on man is also the reward of man - such is its paradox. From outside, this might appear as a mad, mad expenditure of the man that goes unrewarded. It is best, not by accident but by design, this way - as the award to the man who does the work of genius, may not be in this life and may not even be in the next, is so great that the onlookers from outside are too surprised to take note of it, and so dazzling that they are quickly driven to envy by it.

Genius protects its subject, i.e., his man-servant from baneful common eyes, only so that he is not impeded in the pursuit of its object. This cost of self-inflicted destruction, however, is in every way lesser, much lesser than the price that it exacts if the man himself thwarts genius’ aims, i.e., does not make them his own. Criminality, insanity, murder and suicide are only the salient descriptions of the pain that is inflicted on the man of genius, i.e., the man who belongs to genius, if he refuses to oblige his one true lord and master. The proverb that goes, “If you do not wish to feel the pain of regret then you must feel the pain of sacrifice”, and other such motivational chimes that are parroted by ambitious people, are only a muddy reflection of this enormous charge that cannot be paid, even at the cost of life itself.

By Shankhoneel Ghosh