A man may gently rage

About two weeks ago I met with the executive editor of a locally-based publishing company on the third floor of the Calcutta Rotary Club. The meeting went well, and I’ve sent the company proposals for two books; of course a proposal is nothing close to a contract, but I feel positive and encouraged nonetheless.

Immediately after the meeting, half-celebrant and half-relieved, I went to an Italian restaurant for dinner. I ordered a beer, drank it, and ordered another; I was served but soon afterward a nervous waiter approached me and explained in semi-comprehensible terms that I needed to finish my second drink quickly; he had made a mistake; it was a holiday – Gandhi’s birthday – and serving alcohol was therefore illegal.

I was surprised but happy to comply. I gulped down my second beer and as I finished my meal, I felt a little drunk.

After I left the restaurant and its chagrined waitstaff, I felt myself wander along the edge of satisfaction and desire; I wanted to keep drinking; because I was already buzzed or because I was still emotionally high from my meeting or simply because it was forbidden, I wanted to find another beer. I wanted more.

My desire grew as the real impossibility of finding alcohol became more apparent. And yet a part of me delighted in the doomed search; a part of me felt playful and wild; and as absurd as it sounds now, a part of me felt the once-familiar and intense Dionysian urge to feel nothing and everything at once: the desire for oblivion.

But then the search suddenly felt pathetic. I admitted to myself that my small craving would be unsatisfied, and even though I accepted that desire – even when it is foolish or pitiful – is an elemental part of being human, I still felt somewhat ashamed. I went home, and started asking myself questions in my usual melodramatic way:

Hadn’t I outgrown self-indulgence? Hadn’t I turned away from unchecked passion? Hadn’t I already decided that the deliberate pursuit of insobriety is childish and selfish and vain?

…More than a week later, I joined one of the monthly trips to the Gandhiji Prem Nivas Leprosy Center in the Kolkata suburb of Titagarh. We met at Mother House early in the morning, and were briefly oriented by Sister Margaret, the diminutive and kind-hearted Japanese nun who speaks barely audible and barely comprehensible English. Because she recognized me or because she mistook me for someone more knowledgeable, Sister Margaret chose me to lead the volunteers to Titagarh. I agreed to help because I felt obligated and because I hoped to impress an aloof, stunning, and newly arrived American volunteer I’d noticed the day before; but honestly I felt anxious until an Italian monk (and Prem Dan coworker) named Luco smiled broadly and offered to be my equally unqualified partner.

(Luco is formerly of the Franciscan order, and although he still wears the brown Franciscan habit, he is now an independent and itinerant missionary; he travels with other like-minded pilgrims who he refers to as his “family”. When I met Luco, his long brown hair had been twisted into dreadlocks and tucked into a brightly-colored Rastafarian cap; within a week, Luco became so sick with fever that he cut off all his hair and collapsed face-first onto the edge of his bed; his hair is now closely cropped and a diagonal pink scar crosses the middle of his forehead. He is among the happiest and most genuinely loving men I have ever met.)

Luco and I completed our modest task; our group successfully boarded the bus to Titagarh and found the Leprosy Center. After a quick talk by one of the center’s administrators in the reception building, we walked across train tracks to the main facilities; once there, we strolled through green and purple gardens and passed quiet black pools stocked with fish; we visited a classroom and listened to children sing songs in English and Italian; we toured the very long corridor of clacking looms where towels and bedsheets and the iconic Missionaries of Charity blue-and-white saris are made. We met the patients.

The tour was relaxed, and although I was excited to reconnect with two patients from Prem Dan who had been moved to Gandhiji Prem Nivas, the day was fairly uneventful. I hesitate to say the trip was boring, but I will admit that I felt none of the shock or fear or biblically dramatic catharsis I had first expected. And in no way do I mean to diminish the suffering of the patients I met, but it became clear to me that the famous Leprosy Center was simply a functioning hospital; it was a rehabilitation center; it was one of many places in the world where diligent and consistent help is needed – and is given.

On the bus back to south Kolkata from Titagarh, I felt a sense of relief. Because the ride was long and because we passed a changing landscape of semi-rural and suburban Indian neighborhoods, I felt a pleasant sense of travel and transformation that I’ve realized in a near necessity in my life. Because I was relaxed from the day’s events and because I was tired from the early morning wake-up and because the air outside was cool and rainy and drizzly, my head nodded forward a few times and I fell asleep.

When I returned home that afternoon, I busied myself with reading. I continued my slow but joyful progress through War and Peace and revisited favorite poems; I identified with Tolstoy’s character Pierre, who struggles to live life virtuously and accept death fearlessly, and I identified with Princess Marya, who desires earthly love despite her obvious spiritual calling; I read Tennyson’s Ulysses and Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind and Thomas’ Do not go gentle. I relaxed.

That day and in the days before and after, I thought of the mysterious and fascinating details of my life; I thought of riding the train to Prem Dan and glimpsing big piles of empty brown snail shells alongside the train tracks during a normal but inexplicable between-stations stop, and how the shells seemed somehow indicative of a life I will never fully understand; I thought of this week’s Durga Puja festival and how my neighborhood streets have become crowded with corporate kiosks and with cotton candy and popcorn vendors and with fresh vegetable chaat vendors and with multi-storey bamboo scaffoldings under which arched tunnels admit cars and under which huge temporary castles called pandals have slowly grown and become bright gold and white and orange homes for statue-gods and animals, and how white light-strings dangle everywhere and bubbles float in the air and how green lights rise in the trees; I thought of the red-turbaned teams of railway construction workers; I thought of the very tall and old Italian woman with bright red up-swept hair who volunteers with me at Prem Dan and wears elegant black dresses and dark purple lipstick every day; I thought of St. Teresa’s Church and the tiny white worms bending and crossing in piles at the bottom of the holy water bowls and of the two altar-flanking statues of angels holding candelabras and how one angel’s gaze is lifted and the other’s gaze is lowered.

It’s become my habit to observe and list the exotic details of my life, and likewise it’s become my habit to compare those exotic details to the mundane. Amidst hypnotic and arresting mysteries, I live with simple struggles and obligations – both familiar and unfamiliar – just as I always have; I feel a sometimes fading sense of determination and purpose, and forget why certain things seemed important or even essential in my life; I feed my housemate Ip Pui’s cats (whose names are Lani, Hanuman, Passerby, and Siufafa) while Ip Pui travels to China; I feel disconnected from the people about whom I care most deeply, and long for cathartic conversation and emotional exchange; I boil pasta for dinner; and I recline on my bed, propped on my elbow, and think.

…Despite mundane struggles and thoughts, and even despite new experiences and sensations, I often find myself considering the positive changes in my life. I recognize that I am learning how to live simply – to be mild – and to breathe. I believe my romantic soul is maturing, and I no longer resist or turn from the antitheticals to passion: old age, patience, silence, and slow dignified death.

(Although “I cannot rest from travel” either, the endless search for adventure in Tennyson’s Ulysses seems arrogant, selfish, and foolish to me now; Ulysses’ ultimate departure seems like evidence that he is not “strong in will”, but only restless; I agree that we must all answer our life’s call, but now I wonder at what cost.

And likewise I find Shelley’s celebration of wild uncontrollable wind in his Ode to the West Wind and his praise of the “tameless, and swift, and proud” spirit immature and – in Shelley’s own language – “impetuous”; although I once did, I no longer identify with the scattered “ashes and sparks” of “an unextinguish’d hearth”; I now seek something much more sustainable and quiet and calm.)

I believe I am now cultivating a sense – just a sense – of genuine responsibility, accountability, and reliability, even though my responsibilities are small, and even though I am mostly accountable only to myself. I am now considering the ironic possibility that passion is a hindrance to the greatest artwork, and that control, discipline, devotion, and effort-over-time are better creative forces than tantrums, sudden revelations, or moments of ecstasy; I am now starting to believe that art – and also an artful life – is necessarily the result of habit and not any single event.

But of course these new modes of thought admit doubts. I have to acknowledge that perhaps only fearful solitude causes my romantic soul to draw inward and pretend it no longer believes in passion’s value. I have to acknowledge that I am embarrassed and even angry on behalf of my younger more passionate self as my values change. And I have to acknowledge that I still love the energy of Romanticism even as I disagree with its sentiments; that I sometimes wonder if the Romantics may have known better; and most importantly, that even if I am truly leaving behind my wild and selfish passions – I long for them still.

And yet, despite doubt there is also certainty.

I am certain that the world needs better helpers. And I don’t mean this in any grandiose sense, but in a human-to-human context; I am certain that we need to be more reliable and less selfish for the sake of those people we help, but much more – and paradoxically – we need to be less selfish for our own sake.

(I don’t know if I will be considered – or even if I will consider myself – among these ‘better helpers’. But as far as I can tell, there can be no more significant triumph or success, even if it means a person will be considered dispassionate or ordinary or boring as he or she becomes more like what I imagine God must be: compassionate, patient, and constant.)

I am certain that a person can find what he values most despite the occasional distractions of half-drunk desire, and despite the mental and emotional competition between the thrilling and the mild. And I am certain that there is greatest value in the quiet daily work of a hospital where people heal and tend gardens and where – thread by thread – clothes and towels and bedsheets are made.

Finally, I am certain that my soul may flourish, even as my body grows old and – like the transitory self – eventually dies. I am certain that I may “rage against the dying of the light” and “go gentle into that good night”. And moreover I am certain that light does not die in moments of silence and devotion and humble patience, or even in moments of motionless nightfall; I am certain that a more subtle light – and yet brighter and greater – shines in stillest, darkest places.

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