The Unfillable Void

In every life there exists a void that no other word can ever fill. In every life there is one person whose place can never be taken by anyone else. Some emptiness remains empty until death.

Some rivers dry up yet leave their mark behind; some wounds close yet bear their scars; some people depart from life yet linger in its air. Not everything vanishes completely—the intensity of what remains is unbearable to endure.

How many will come and go through life's narrow lanes, how many will pause a while and move on again, some will even stay. Yet amid all this traffic of arrivals and departures, someone from the past—invisible—will forever shadow your steps. You cannot see them, cannot touch them, and yet you cannot exist without them. They are nowhere, and yet they are everywhere. The invisible presence hounds us ceaselessly!

Some memories are iron—they do not burn easily; some bonds are shadow—they do not release easily. The less one forgets, the less one laughs.

We compose songs and verses, we build histories and traditions, we recite endless tales and novels and epics, and yet we never speak to anyone of this secret, mind-eating person who sits curled in a corner of the brain, consuming it at every moment. We feel their presence, yet we can never bring them into the light.

Some remembered people take root in the chest like an ancient, shadowy banyan tree—they remain for ages and ages. They cannot be uprooted by any means.

What cannot be possessed embeds itself most firmly in the heart. Even after gaining the whole world, the soul somehow lies elsewhere. All of life's achievements fall prostrate at the feet of that one thing never obtained.