Thoughts On Pain: In Retrospect Poem by RAJ NANDY

Thoughts On Pain: In
Retrospect

(I)

When years back I had broken my right
leg's tibia head,
And got confined for months on end,
In an army hospital's orthopaedic bed;
My post-operative pains had become so
intensive,
It had to be supressed with mighty doses
of sedatives!
Those days and at that point of time,
My mind became fully occupied,
With suffering and painful thoughts,
For everything else I had forgot!
And I recall my cabin nurse giving me
The Book of Job!
She felt that after having read about the many
trials, tribulations and sufferings,
By which the Lord decided to test him (Job) :
That I should take some comfort and solace,
And would be better equipped to endure my
present state!
But pain for me had become the basic stimulus,
And I was suffering in silence and praying
to the One, I did always trust!

(II)

Now I realise, when looking back in hind-sight,
That suffering and pain forms the general backdrop
to our lives!
They form the basic stimulus and reality,
With pleasurable hours thrown in,
in between,
Merely as a negative cessation of pain and
suffering;
In our lives full of happenings!
Let us remember that eternal truth, -
That when subjected to painful feelings,
We start to remember the Supreme Being!
Forgetting during our moments of happiness
To stop and thank Him for everything, which we
forever owe to Him!

(III)

I remember seeing a hermit once, sitting on
a mat of spiked nails in trance,
In deep meditation invoking the Gods;
Perhaps seeking moksha, or whatever it was!
Aristotle was perhaps right, when he had said,
The truly worldly-wise, seeks not the pleasures
of this earth, -
Which are all but in vain!
For he truly seeks freedom from suffering and
pain!
I for one really feel, that all our pain and suffering,
Are here with us to stay from the beginning!
Pleasure and happiness are like short-lived merry
notes of interludes,
In our life's somber composition of musical
solitude!
And those happy jovial notes in between, -
Leaping up in joy and ecstasy, to gain as much
height it possibly can,
For it lacks in length and endurance, that pain
has!

(IV)

Yet the tears of happiness which our eyes bring
forth,
And those drops which falls from our suffering
heart,
Get metaporphorised and transformed, into beads
of priceless pearls!
Let us string up our neckless of pearls, by gathering
up all those beads,
To put it round our loved one's neck, to make
this life on earth complete!

- Raj Nandy
New Delhi
12 Apr 08
(My suffering and pain had some positive side,
Which made me to sit on this day and write!)