The Colour Of Darkness.

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty 

What is this colour, Colour of darkness? Is it a colour in spectrometric display? Where is this colour? At nightfall, noctus equi , the predawn syndrome of mysteries: where? Is it visible like Dante’s hell? Or is it Beatrice in reverse glow once your pain of separation darkens your heaven ways. The vision of beauty and spiritual transcendence is now dark. God created the world of biodiversity and named all creatures, trees, flowers and all. But god’s nouns are now multiplied; adjectives and pronouns have made the world more than a noun. The very language which expressed feelings, ideas and created new codes of human creativity, has now caused a dispersal, diffusion, deconstruction of meaning. Faith we knew, love we knew, these two words meant life and world. Today when someone says diabolical, radical faith or sinister love or adds Jihad to love their entire human world loses the light of life. Words are perverse instruments of torture, words hurt, gods of various kinds cause destruction. Religions divide humans to sparring and killing animals. But words are not sounds or figures of speech: words are objects, things, the world. Now this world is lost in darkness’, all flags of glory are gory with human blood. We have been raising baroque monuments, carving out Byzantine finesse only to demolish them with words which have lost meaning. The chaos of the interior of the human body defines the black narrative of darkness.   

 

I have seen, felt and breathed darkness, when my love chews vitamin C to get immunity and watches my outpourings of ancient wisdom, my protestation of solemn resolve to raise her above Venus, she just stares with lustreless eyes and pellucid innocence to my true voice of feelings. My truth is chewed and swallowed to a parched state of mental murk.  When I write a penetrating analysis of water on moon she laughs saying: why there should be water on the moon? And it’s cool there and if you need privacy jump into the craters… Then I realize that I am on the other side of Moon – all dark, endless suffocating darkness. It’s like the backside of the mind, the cortex, epicortex are sealed with inviolable darkness. One cannot see the hands to wave the darkness to a ripple.

 

Darkness is our fate. The womb is an encrypted cell. What the mother communicates is silent, privileged and inviolably confidential. The push through the dark birth canal is painful, bloody and infernal: then you are ejected to the world to the nurse or midwife’s hand, if you are lucky. Otherwise you fall bloody on the earth. What you call the earth is a dark tunnel sealed at both ends by fate. If you are a soulful being you will push manfully the seals and break them to make your destiny. At every step and bend and culvert there are deceit, lies, fear, suspicion and other such worldly trap to push you into the embalmed darkness.

 

Where you shall plot rebellion against the creator's  Bhul Bhuleian, his handicap race. If you have no such resources to draw upon, you will escape into poetry, music and other freaks to earn a living all the time thinking that life is a spring ghost at the mouth of a trapdoor uncertain to go in or out. You will see thick billowing smoke at midday- gypsies playing dice on your bed when you go to fall on the bed after 18 hours of harakiri. Often you will be tempted to smear darkness all over your mind to manipulate all bright things, glowing attributes innate and acquired for a turbulent belly dance for money and pleasure. At times you will steal away from your bridal bed to meditate on the futility of all pejorative glamour enjoyed fraudulently by inheritance.

 

Darkness has immense possibilities if you know how to darken your soul. Yes, that too is an art as manipulation of brightness is what you call daylight robbery may earn a new connotation and terminology- say murky delights. Darkness gives the human a safe secure environs to contemplate love’s discursive multitudes. Death wish too is a possibility. But very often and in the present day world we are compulsive listeners to the sound of darkness.  As the poet imagines ‘loud colour’ the terrorists, bigots and faith ridden vengeance seeking demented people listen gleefully to the agonizing cries of death. The dark defying sleep of not so innocent simpletons gets shattered in the darkness of night by year splitting staccato of AK 47s accompanied by choric wailing of deathstruck families. The piercing whistles of guards, royal or democratic boots in all directions, sirens and the late opened TV’ adds to this imposed sadism.

 

The colour of darkness shows puddles of blood, almost of the same colour making darkness grim and blood cuddling. But darkness also has a smell, not the aroma of the breeze, but the smell of love, hate, indifference and helplessness. All these inorganic scents make human minds digress to almost nonsensical thoughts, dreams and actions. But it also has a soft touch when you are in a lonely prison cell chewing the cud, ruminating over your blues. It sharpens your memory, the past parades itself without, however, any order or rhythm. You know you have no future in the cell yet you dream of playing hide and seek around trees as the 1960-70 lovers did in Bollywood romances. Darkness is the heart of light. Its silence, noise, embrace, provocation and forced insights often excite you to action. Darkness shows you what you are. It’s the mirror reflecting, not your form- face-gait, your heart and soul, your conscience and moves you to resolve conflicts, respond to your inner calls and to confess and apologize for your thoughts- actions of self- shaming character. It purges your soul to sharpen the inner glow of human goodness. And if you are a Man you will brighten the darkness with your­­ – you know what!