Dear Reader,
Today I have decided to overthink grief. By virtue of being raised in a music-loving Tamil family, I have been bestowed with the curse of tying every emotion I experience to an A.R. Rahman or Ilaiyaraaja song.
For me, grief is the song "Mazhai Kuruvi," sung by A.R. Rahman himself. I had listened to this song a million times before losing my cat, Loco. But the night I lost Loco, when I listened to this song, I knew I had made it my horcrux.
You see, a horcrux in the wizarding world, is a sinister vessel crafted through murder to contain a fragment of one's soul. It becomes an inviolable tether, a sinister anchor forestalling one's journey into the great beyond.
In my case, however, "Mazhai Kuruvi" became an inadvertent horcrux birthed not through malice, but wrenched from the throes of profound anguish. As the song reverberated through my shattered being on that night, I experienced a metaphysical sundering where a fragile sliver of my spirit was cloven from the whole. I continue to find my soul bound to the all-consuming dissonance of bereavement everytime I listen to it.
The lyrics talk about a man revelling in nature's splendour, the green meadows, the beautiful horizon. His gaze falls upon a sparrow perched serenely in the meadows soaking in the simple joys of existence, not unlike him. The sparrow's lilting call of "keechu keech" beckons him inward, an invitation to draw nearer and bask in that transcendent moment.
Very soon, tempestuous clouds gather unleashing a torrential deluge that shatters the idyllic scene. As the poet extends an anguished gaze skyward, he catches the sparrow as it takes flight on wind-tossed wings. He laments like there's no tomorrow - Where is his friend? Has the rain's implacable onslaught weighed down those fragile wings? Is he okay by himself? Will my friend ever find safe harbor from the nature's assault?
The song promptly takes my perspective outward from this arboreal prison, an alternative narrative emerges - one of unfettered emancipation. The sparrow, having cast off the shackles of its "cage," revels uninhibited amid the rejuvenating monsoon downpour. He is, as the kids say, chilling.
And there, rooted within the forest's confines, stands the poet - eyes clouded by sorrow's cataracts, riven by the sparrow's perceived "abandonment." His myopic frailties render him incapable of transcending the perspectival shackles. He remains sequestered from the life unfolding around him, entombed within bereavement and separation.
Each time the opening notes of "Mazhai Kuruvi" spill from my headphones into my ears, I become that hapless poet - perceptions sullied by my anguish. I'm condemned to be tormented by the sparrow's (Loco's) "abandonment", just as the poet remains consumed by the sparrow's absence. All the while, the emancipated essence my cat has become is possibly chilling somewhere?
It's been a year and a half since I lost my Loco, my first son (technically). I have come to accept that it is my cross to bear, an Ixionian orbit of torment from which I cannot be delivered - not until the dissonant horcrux that is "Mazhai Kuruvi" relinquishes its tenacious grip and permits my spirit's reconstitution. Until then, I am possibly doomed to remain shackled within the confines of my melancholy - forever pining for the "return" of one who has transcended.
