# 3. Breaking and Building
Beyond the broken bridge
Past the broken lotus—rotting stems, crushed petals, yet the last whisper of fragrance—crossing the rickety footbridge, a sunlit morning stands like an old friend who knows you will come, who never checks the clock.
In the house of worn sweetness, a tree stands silent as a statue—its meditation so deep that roots have touched the abyss, found the earth’s heart following veins of water, yet there is no proclamation, no plaque. All depths are like this—the ocean floor is silent, light does not reach there, fish themselves are lamps; the noise is only on the surface, in the foam. We shout to declare what we know; trees show silently what is possible to become—a hundred years of proof hanging branch by branch. Perhaps, if it wishes, above the cremation ground’s smoky light, green leaves will stir again—only a volcano knows what happens when a seed falls on ash.
Even when joy and sorrow are trampled, one thing remains unbroken—anguish. That anguish is mine alone, singular, unrepeatable as a fingerprint—each tree has its own shadow, each river its own bend, each wound its own language.
Dreams and their fragments
Sometimes harsh solitude shows life to us in its simplest form—without ornament, without makeup, bare as raw flesh, naked as a body laid on a hospital table. In a broken house, on the seventh day of monsoon, someone gathers straw—a vast tree is not needed to build a nest, the sparrow proves it. Someone seeks pollen—steals darkness from clouds, from the sun’s back; in stolen darkness hides the most secret light, as in photography’s darkroom the image blooms.
Some hearts break again and again—in grief, in wound, in wound again, layer by layer, like aftershocks of an earthquake. After each blow, a crack runs through the heart’s wall—but through that very crack light enters, through that gap the wind blows. Broken things are mended with gold—not hiding the scar of breaking, but celebrating it in golden lines, the map of wounds becoming geography of pride. Even when dreams shatter, dreams save us—the most unbreakable support for survival, the thinnest rope yet the strongest. To see, you need only close your eyes.
Burning and radiance
Fire does not only burn—in burning, it exposes the deep, suppressed anger of the self, pain, unspoken words, lifelong swallowed screams. Fire was hidden inside the wood—the wood did not know, the fire did not know; friction introduced them to each other, collision is the most primal language of knowing. Raw clay is weak, crumbles at a touch; fired clay is eternal, does not dissolve even in water. Not everything burns to ash—yet in every heart some fire burns, in a low flame, in a blue glow; even where ash is visible, beneath the ash an ember still breathes.
Not every word becomes sculpture in the offering of pain—some words become ash, some dissolve into air as smoke, some settle in the chimney’s soot unnamed. But what survives the fire—in that burning’s womb dwells the most beautiful face, the immortal statue of fired clay. That is beautiful which has passed through fire—bearing the scar of burning, yet in its eyes the light of new dawn, on its lips the melody of a song that burned.
The birth of sorrow
Some sorrows of life burst forth in impact—water dashed against stone becomes foam, blood suppressed by pain rises to the lips. That foam sometimes becomes molten verse—poetry born of pain, letters written in blood, calligraphy drawn in veins. Perhaps on some day free of debt, waking to salute the sun—when after a long illness you open the window on the first morning, light strikes the eye, beautiful as becoming blind; above the hospital’s antiseptic smell floats the kitchen’s smoke, the smell of grandmother’s hand grinding dal and rice.
Drop by drop falling, perhaps it will become the loveliest face of the sky—blue breaking through clouds, health born from within the wound.
# The Debt of Amrit
Some golden dreams draw the heart’s chariot along their own path—no charioteer, no map, compass shattered—only a vague direction, instinct carved into bone—toward the light.
## The Debt of Amrit
What is the meaning of this eternal game if all dreams collapse—as the lighthouse breaks in a storm’s night, as ships lose their way in dark seas, as the compass needle spins like a madman—then what? Flowers fall ceaselessly, the distant window’s image bloodies the chest—what is life’s worth to a time that has lost itself, on which side of the coin is it written? Not pictures—clouds bring trembling history, dripping, slowly, drop by drop. Water falls from a cave’s ceiling, takes a thousand years to build pillars of stone—stalactites, the architecture of patience, cathedrals of time.
Yet on memory’s shore, each day the boundless beauty of the world makes me a sky—not above my head, but within. The sky that is blue outside is infinite within—the outer one can be seen by the eye, the inner one only felt. Deep in the earth too lies stored power—calm grass on the surface, inside a turbulent heart of magma. Once you taste amrit, all the waters of the mortal world turn bitter—after seeing the ocean, the pond no longer pleases.
## The Return of Amrit
The call does not cease—on the eyelids burns the image of radiance, the eternal lamp of equality—which the wind cannot extinguish, which the storm cannot overturn, for its flame burns from within. In the heaving breast, only one question—where will man find forgiveness? From himself, or from God? Or is forgiveness itself a god?
I beg with both hands outstretched along your great path. Not mercy—mercy descends from above, like a waterfall; not love—love flows on the plains, like a river—we seek what rises from below, from root to branch, the invisible ascent of sap. Cruel hatred only spirals in the dark’s serpentine alleys—its own labyrinth, its own prison, its own lock and key.
Eternal messenger of art, bring amrit once more to this weary life—with sensitivity, forbearance, deep intimacy, as a doctor carries medicine in his bag. O spring-harbinger—return, for spring returns—each time a little different, each time another hue, but spring each time, flowers each time.
## The Riddle of the Imperishable
Worlds can be born—but hearts? A heart is not a puppet in the hand, not a clay frame, cannot be drawn on a blueprint—it will float, it will break, it will rebuild, but never quite the same as before. A broken bone, when it heals, grows stronger—callus, nature’s own cement. You can dam the Padma, stop the river—but the sky? Who will build a dam in the sky? Beauty can be born each morning—it cannot be held each evening, a sunset cannot be framed. No one has the power to shatter the sweetness of the heart—like broken glass, even in fragments each piece holds the whole sky.
## 4. The Visible and Invisible
## The Lamp of Ages
I keep printing many versions of myself—palimpsests, new writing over old—the river rewrites itself each day in the language of its changing shores, not the same water, not the same river. I am a shadow crossing ages—sometimes slow, a quiet horse through darkness, hooves drinking sound from the earth; sometimes stumbling on the winding path, knowing comes—falling is the condition for rising, only by touching earth do we know earth.
Fireflies glow here and there along the path—each one a faint protest in darkness’s parliament. On evening-forest trees is drawn the hem of depth—in the mixed speech of mist and sun lies a mystery that only patient eyes can read, all blurs through the spectacles of haste. Daughters of the cloud, face to face with death, yet dance in the whirlwind’s dizziness—let the dance cease and death wins, let motion stop and rigidity takes hold.
How many things float in emptiness as images, as unfinished dialogues, as letters never sent. What the tide takes, it returns in two hands—what the flood steals, the ebb brings back, in another form.
The light burns on even after the final curtain falls—those are the eternal ones, who kindle themselves again from their own ashes, not phoenixes, but candles—ordinary, yet indispensable.
The Violin’s Secret Melody
Still the flowers paint themselves in bloom before my eyes—through cracks in brick, piercing the pressed earth, splitting the sidewalk’s concrete. Life is rainfall—sometimes fine as powder, liquid painting sketched on glass; sometimes torrential, turning streets to rivers; yet in certain parched hollows water gathers even in drought—at the bottom, in secret, beneath the frog’s sleep. Supporting characters perform—garish, foaming, on sharp-crested waves, yet the camera never turns toward them.
And still I hear, in wonder, a spring melody on the violin—played by someone no one knows; perhaps invisible in the crowd, solitary by a window, or in a hospital bed drawing life’s fluid through a plastic tube in the vein, fingers trembling imperceptibly. If you move the rubble of subjects aside, you see it—something wakens behind sorrow and decay, a diamond beneath the volcano, light sleeping in coal’s breast for millions of years. Where a tender sky will be born, I cannot say—yet stumbling often, knees scraped, I search on.
In Search of the Untroubled
Wealth holds no joy—the bird in the golden cage forgets its song; the more beautiful the cage, the more silent the bird. Love contains no satisfaction—satisfaction comes, and love falls asleep; the full moon begins to wane. Belief has no taste—untested faith is green fruit, it catches the teeth, puckers the mouth. However lovely the beloved’s love, salt water cannot quench thirst—the more salt, the deeper the thirst. Spend one night in fame’s palace and you understand—the walls are full of echoes, you cannot hear your own voice, only the echo returns, and no echo ever matches the original song.
These are not divine—I seek untroubled wealth, what rust cannot touch, what thieves cannot take, whose value no market can set. I want boundless growth of the soul—I want liberated consciousness, a sky that remains blue even when clouds come, blue always above the clouds; unshaken even in the storm, not like a mountain but like wind—wind cannot be broken. To keep beauty’s virtue intact amid a thousand corruptions—this alone is salvation, this alone is the center of gravity.
The Opposite Name of Solitude
I am never alone—I do not say this loud, but in silent certainty, as the river knows it will reach the sea. A household nested in the thick branches of cedar—on leaf after leaf the dialogue of light and shadow runs endless, a language only patient ears hear, only still eyes perceive. Winter comes spreading snow’s quilt, then leaves, promising spring in its wake—each departure inscribes the address of an arrival. Hidden in infinity’s sky lies another sky—within each person another, whom they do not know, whom they meet in mirrors, yet never speak with.
The bird flies—its flight itself is proof that gravity is not the final truth, the wing speaks in protest. By the riverbank dwells a happiness needing no proof—who knows is silent; who is silent knows, silence is knowledge’s final step. Grass wakes piercing the soil—each blade a small rebellion against the immovable, a soft revolution, a green flag. The horizon dissolves beyond all borders, dew’s anklet jingles on the leaves—in fragrance, in touch, in echoes moment by moment the breast swells with such fullness as is possible only in solitude, yet not in loneliness—solitude and loneliness speak different tongues, inhabit different lands.