I Am Me

by Ram Sundaram

  I haven’t drawn breath in years.

  No wonder you’re in the middle of a large, indulgent dream then… says the small, pragmatic voice in the back of my head. Your brain is starved of oxygen—you’re hallucinating.

  So what if I am? Perhaps I am actually lying on a hospital bed, strapped to all kinds of machinery, while a group of medical experts hover over me like botanists over a rare, exotic specimen. But like the botanists, all the medical experts can do is observe me. They can manipulate my body however they wish, rescue or murder me per their whims, but they cannot enter this realm that I currently inhabit. Within this world, dream or not, I am a master of my own fate.

  Well, the voice of reason with me says, then why can’t you dream anymore?

  Four

  Thoughts flood his consciousness and he releases them onto paper through the pencil. When he finishes his first thought, he takes the paper and tries to imagine a vessel into which he can store it. A bottle appears readily by his side, but he ignores it. A message in a bottle is hardly an original idea. He strains his mind for an alternative, for something (for anything) that would be a distinctive, inventive substitute. But he finds nothing. The sea is draining, and the world is fast turning real.

  So he puts the message into a bottle and casts it into the sea.

  Over time he writes hundreds of messages and casts hundreds of bottles into the sea, such that he feels like a large wheel, endlessly conceiving new ideas, transferring them onto paper, and then releasing them into a world that is now deprived of colour and perspective.

  He wonders if there is anyone left in this existence to find the bottles…

  Five

  Sensitivity is a sieve into which we add our thoughts, our sensations and our experiences. The thick sludge of life that is poured into the sieve is then drained and purified into a crystalline potion of spiritual and emotion relevance. It is this potion that lends us clarity amidst a haze of delusion and distraction. The world that is painted in black and white is cold, harsh and angular. Sensitivity is the colour that softens the edges of this world, while adding warmth and character to its features. It is sensitivity that breeds the imagination, which ignites creation and gives rise to art.

  Of course, not all of us are sensitive. There are those that thrive upon leading organized, pragmatic and ordinary lives. They do not dawdle away time by investigating the seemingly fruitless avenues of fantasy; they are content instead to serve humanity in another manner. It is due to the efforts of these realists in the everyday, practical fields of life that artists find the technological and economic support required to grow and develop their creations. Together, through the many diverse roles and duties that we each intentionally or inadvertently perform, we construct the fabric of our society. All of our lives, whether we be artists, engineers, dreamers or realists, are connected.

  So many thoughts… all these ideas and notions and theories that I have tortured myself with, what do I have to show for them except frustration? As a society, we tend to believe that knowledge increases understanding, but what if knowledge actually impedes understanding? What if it inhibits our ability to accept? Why else does life grow increasingly difficult as we grow older? As children we’re ignorant, and that ignorance allows us to absorb answers and to understand them. But knowledge eventually corrupts that understanding, and dilutes it. Knowledge dispels all illusions, all fiction and all imagination. It leaves us intolerably vulnerable to that cruel nemesis: reality. And so, whenever we stumble upon an answer, we dust it off, measure it, and then finally hold it up to reality’s expected standards. But more often than not, the answers fall short; so we discard them and move on. Until eventually, there are no more answers left.

  I write all this down on another piece of paper, and drop the bottle into the sea.

  Perhaps that is the answer then: stop searching for answers, stop looking for meaning, knowledge and understanding. Choose instead to live, dream and hope; for there is as much truth in fiction as there is in fact; as much truth to fantasy, as there is to reality.

  And yet, dreams are infinitely better than reality.

  So perhaps imagination is the real answer?

  Illusions, dreams, fantasies, chimeras…

  The sea swallows yet another bottle, but still appears hungry.

  Six

  He notices the irony of the situation. Lamenting the drastic transformation of life from fantasy to reality, he transfers all the artistic ideas within his mind into sensible, logical messages. For he figures that in a world slowly becoming devoid of imagination, it would serve him better to translate art into fact, so that the ideas may wander time without need for artistic interpretation. For fact is the one version of the truth that does not require sensitivity in order to be understood. So he jots down theories, draws diagrams, explains his ideas, and translates all the artistic concepts and creations that had once flooded his mind, into a plain, common form of language.

  On the very last piece of paper, he composes not a work of art, but a summary of existence.

  Seven

  The Summary:

  I

  I is the roman numeral One: the highest number, rank and position.

  I is why insult translates as offence, and betrayal leads to revenge.

  I is why a mother risks her own life to save that of her child’s.

  I is why a lover hesitates, fears, but still loves.

  I is the cause, the motive and the purpose.

  I is the unwanted residue of intelligence.

  I is the intelligence and the imagination.

  I is the answer to life and to existence.

  I is the first letter of my name.

  I is the individual.

  I is Ishvar.

  I stand alone under the Banyan tree.

  Above the tree lies the vast expanse of cloudless, starless, formless sky. It is untainted by even a faint streak or blemish. The sea too is unmarked, and is swelling in the distance.

  I watch with apprehension.

  This tree is my last refuge, and my last friend; but how long can a tree stand in the face of an apocalyptic flood? I gaze up at the gnarled branches, knotted in and around one another like a wooden cobweb. It bears no fruit or leaf, and yet it is maternal, for it houses me.

  I watch the tide rise in the distance, swallowing another lap of land. It won’t be long now before it consumes the entire world. Standing beneath the tree without shadow, I wonder how this came to be? Where did all this begin?

  I was born, I lived, and therefore am special. In fact, I would like to believe that I alone am special. But I do not exist alone. I could not have survived without them, without the Banyan tree, the Banyan leaf, the sea and the sky. I am a part of them, just as they are a part of me. We are all one and the same. You, me and them. I is immaterial.

  I, an individual, should not matter.

  I, Ishvar, should not matter.

  Ishvar is insignificant.

  I is insignificant.

  God

  Eight

  I see a tree.

  But there is no land beneath. The tree grows out of the water. It is a Banyan tree, much like the one from which the leaf I now occupy came from. I paddle towards the tree. When I reach it, I leave behind the leaf and climb the tree. On one of its branches, I find a small boy.

  He is beautiful. His skin is dark, so dark that he looks blue. Or it is fair, so fair that he looks blue. He has wide, expressive eyes, and delicate, red lips. His thick mane of curly hair is adorned with three peacock feathers, and he wears golden anklets and bracelets. He smiles at me.

  I stare at him, lost for words. And then he inhales. I am swept into his lungs along with the sea, the leaf, the tree and the skies. Within his stomach, I find another Universe, another ocean, another leaf, another tree and myself per
ched on it, staring at this beautiful boy. But there are more Universes, millions upon millions of them. He has swallowed them all. I find myself sitting before him again, gazing into his resplendent face, etched with an ethereal, translucent beauty. I say translucent, for though he sits before me in a solid presence and I can see his features, his hair and his body, I also see everything within him, as though he is transparent.

  I ask him to show me Maya, a kind of cosmic illusion.

  So he opens his mouth in response, and I am once again inhaled into his stomach.

  I awake in a meditative pose, alone upon a beach, beneath a Banyan tree. The sea sits idly before me, like a mere spectator to this grand show. I turn to examine the tree—it is the same tree as it has always been, except there is no boy perched upon it this time. I wish he would return…

  I sit back down on the beach and meditate over this world…

  The sea is rising. The skies are clear. I am Me.