The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express. – Francis Bacon
If you go to Mandrem Beach in Goa, you’ll find the river noiselessly meeting the sea. It slithers through waves of silky sand, bathing in the august afterglow, reflecting the deepest pink, and finds solace in the all-encompassing blue. Viewing and then perceiving this is a religious experience if you don’t go there looking for beauty. You’re left wonderstruck by something you didn’t expect and a ‘transient moksha’ (I call it that because I don’t believe in a thoroughgoing transcendence in this lifetime) liberates you from struggles and conflicts, and floods you with seraphic bliss that raptures you—albeit for a few moments—to another plane where grace delights you with its ethereal allure, clothing you in Solomon’s splendour.
And though what I’ve written sounds idealistic like snippets from a prophetic dream of a sanctified, white-robed throng entering the paradisiacal now beset by waters of life and studded with trees of eternal fruit, I want you to focus on the ‘don’t go there looking for beauty’ bit. In my life, periods of puritanical fervour have assailed me like a swarm of locusts because I’ve acted out of fear and trepidation. Demoralised by the doctrine of a vengeful God seeking to devour me, I’ve knelt and prayed, chastised myself, loathed myself and purged the little wonder that lingered in my soul. Instead of letting God and religion find me, I’ve sought them out of hadephobia. I found no shelter and realised after many dark nights of the soul (forgive me for using a clichéd term) that beauty finds you when you least expect it.
So, after a hellish battle with fatalism and regarding myself as nothing more than a fly who hovers around rotten meat, I’m learning to make choices and love myself for them. I know the task ahead is onerous, plagued with nightmarish apparitions from the past, attempting to drag me back into indolence, a couch potato’s languor, oblivious to the weather, time and season. And I know that it’s difficult to heal from the scars of paternal abuse, which shaped so much of my twenties. I’ve made peace with my father, but have I made peace with myself? I’m also not chasing the will-o’-the-wisp, immersing myself in the pseudo-baptismal waters of creative fecundity and wealth. I’m going to learn to give and understand, to love and accept, and maybe, like the river meeting in the sea in its quiet way, I’ll snake my way into beauty’s blue waters.
God looks on with love
The seasons ever-changing
Time slowly moulds me
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
For dVerse
For earthweal
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Ordinary Person 
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