तरकश

हमारे शौक़ कि ये इन्तिहा थी
क़दम रक्खा कि मंज़िल रास्ता थी

जावेद अख्तर

T A R K A S H

"hamaare shauq kee yeh intehaa thee
qadam rakkhaa kee manzil raastaa thee"

I saw a film called ‘Blow Up’ in early seventies. I have only hazy recollection of the film. It was about a photographer who, while developing a picture of a park, discovers a fuzzy spot in it. When he blows it up he discovers a hazy profile of a corpse. The rest of the film was about his quest to search meaning of that picture with lot of symbolism. I remember the fascinating climax in which the protagonist approaches a tennis match played with a fictitious ball and a crowd in stands watching with rapt attention. While the players seriously played out the game with imaginary ball and the spectators following the movement of the imaginary ball our hero looks on bewildered. Suddenly a player hits a skewed shot which apparently ejects it out of the court. The camera follows the trajectory of imaginary ball sailing over the fence, it’s bouncing of the turf, rolling slowly and coming to stop near the photographer. Both the players as well as the spectators look at him expectedly. For a while he looked bewildered then picks up the nonexistent ball, chucks it in to the arena. The film ends at the commencement of the game again. Honestly, the entire film simple went over my head yet I was mesmerized by this surrealistic poetry on the celluloid.

When I read ‘The Trial’ and “The Castle’ by Franz Kafka, I had no idea what was going on. In fact lengthy monologues produced reading fatigue despite that there was some kind of magical appeal in the text, which prodded me to go on and complete it not understanding any of the cryptic symbolism. Later when I was told that both the novels were allegorical in the sense that Kafka was in fact in confrontation with his father’s mind. The ‘Castle’ which he wanted to penetrate was his fathers ‘Mind’ and the ‘Trial’ without any charge was actually exploration of Kafka to understand his father. Now I wonder if I had known about the allegorical nature of the novels whether I would have enjoyed them at all.

The point I am making is that work of art need not ‘always’ be interpreted. What is most fascinating about poetry? The esoteric meaning it conjures or appeal of words strung together in aesthetic fashion? I like poetry both at face value and if needed, to explore its meaning. Good poetry just happens therefore even the poet wouldn’t know what he has created. This is prime example of that creation. I would interpret it this way:

I am intensely passionate and that is my undoing. The moment I embark on an objective I am distracted by its loss of appeal. Something else lures me.

But take your pick, nobody can help you there.