The Lonely Wanderer

Numerous golden shapes were shimmering under the bright midday sun, the white specks sparkling like a queen covered from head to toe with clear diamonds mined from the deepest caves and polished for a thousand years by a mother’s loving hands. The images faltered momentarily before a surge of concentration brought them back to focus again. Tiny drops of sweat formed on his forehead, lingering there for a few uncertain moments before falling down on the ground in a torrent of washed up emotions. His dirty grey robe was soaked all over and gleaming pitifully under an unforgiving sun while his silver hair and beard swayed rhythmically in a tangled, unkempt mess, hypnotized by the gentle breeze, giving him an appearance of one burdened with immense wisdom and unbounded grief. Oblivious to his immediate surroundings and unconcerned with the dull, throbbing pain in his legs, The Lonely Wanderer gazed hungrily through the crystal which he held in steady hands over his glistening eyes.

The herd of deer in the distance grazed over the green, fertile land, slowly fading away to transparency and then suddenly turning opaque, borrowing their lost colours from the surrounding space as if continuously being jerked awake from a surreal, animal dream; all the time unaware of the unwavering, longing gaze of the sad eyes moistened by nostalgic dreams and remembrance of childhood images. The Lonely Wanderer stretched his hand as if trying to grasp a part of the existence of those innocent creatures, to tuck it away safely only to bring it out on those lonely, moonlit nights when deprivation from the compassionate presence of another life broke his frail heart into a hundred pieces. As if suddenly aware of the invisible presence of the hand grasping towards their being, the alert animals evaporated within the blink of an eye, retiring back to the magical kingdom from which they had transiently materialized. A surge of sweeping despair hit The Lonely Wanderer as he realized that another thread maintaining his tenuous grasp on reality had snapped, leaving him more vulnerable than ever before. He would have been disappointed, but he was long past the point where it held any meaning for him; he would have felt a sense of lonely helplessness, but his solitary wanderings had pushed him to a point where even the memory of acquaintances from his past had started fading, a life now transformed into a bundle of memories of unnatural companionships and bittersweet emotions. And helplessness is a luxury afforded only by people for whom the possibility of help is not just an abstract concept.

With considerable effort, he brought his mind back from the wistful memories and into the present. Knee high grass swept in ghostlike, circular motion around him forming thousands of whirlpools of comatose green, each one capable of dragging him back into the recesses of his memory from where it was getting progressively harder to escape; as far as eyes could see. Presently he became aware of the dull, throbbing pain in his legs reminding him of the countless miles he had walked over a dead landscape since he was so inexplicably banished from the world of men. More painful was the understanding that there will be countless miles under his feet before he finds his previous life again, if he ever does. The Lonely Wanderer turned the crystal around in his hands cautiously, inspecting it from every angle and periodically polishing it with a torn end of his robe; all the while humming a melancholy tune, the words to which he had forgotten long ago. Finally satisfied, he carefully placed it inside the pouch which he had fashioned out of an old piece of cotton, for that very purpose. Numerous times he had wondered why he kept that rock on his person at all times and drew weary comfort from it when it was that cursed thing which had lifted him out of his previous life of contentment and dropped him into a desolate existence, the loneliness of which was inconceivable to any sentient being and probably to the gods themselves. Lost in thoughts, he turned around and witnessed the slow, agonizing birth of a mountain. Without a moment’s hesitation, he started walking towards the mountain, hoping to be enveloped by its gigantic embrace, to be assimilated in the surge of an inanimate life form, the meaning of whose existence only the most pitiful of beings could fathom; the multitude of green whirlpools swaying all around him.

Panting and heaving, he reached to the top of the newborn mountains, after what seemed like ages of steep climbing, right to the point where it reached out to the sun and the clouds as if crying out to them to take it in their heavenly embrace. He was sure that if he jumped off now, he would fall into the sky and forever escape the burden of his painful existence and the demands of his sad destiny; but in face of the frowning gazes of the imposing, cirrus behemoths above his head, the idea seemed foolhardy. Dizzy due to the penetrating gaze of the yellow monster of the sky, he entered a cave which he had just noticed opening a small distance away; the dark womb, warm and cosy. Even though it seemed absurd and impossible, he was sure he had been there before, though he could not remember when or why. Maybe, he had traversed every bit of land from ocean to ocean and there was nowhere for him to go, although it was more likely that old lands die out with the plants and animals on it and new lands are born from their ashes, thereby condemning him to an endless life of solitary travelling and searching; death is bliss, immortality a curse. Absently, he pulled out a piece of charcoal from his pocket, whose presence was unknown to him and yet which he expected to find, and started drawing on the wall in front of him.

It was a frustrating task; as soon as he drew the shapes, they would fade away within moments. The next time he would try harder, the outlines would be darker, but still the figures would show him no mercy and disappear. He pleaded with them, cursed them, promised them eternal life and unsurpassed beauty, but to no avail; his creations would pay him no heed, sneering at him before dissolving in the air. He felt an image from his past wafting in with the breeze and grabbed it before it could blow past him into the unknown depths of the cave, lost to him forever. He saw a face, a sweet, innocent face; no doubt a loved one. As if in a dream, he lifted his hand which had flopped to his side, and started copying the image on the wall. The contours flowed gracefully, the outlines sharp and bold; a beautiful face started emerging; the face of a baby, wide-eyed and innocent with chubby cheeks and a warm smile. Tears of joy welled up inside him as he drew back to admire his work, a contended smile on his face which turned to an expression of worthlessness and self-loathing as the baby turned its gazed at its creator with cold hatred, lips parted in a snarl, accusing him of snatching away its freedom and condemning it to a chained existence, only to fulfil his selfish desire of companionship. The cold stare burned The Lonely Wanderer’s skin and before long, he was writhing in self-contempt. He could endure no more and erased the face from the wall. He came rushing out of the cave to fill his lungs to the brink with the fresh mountain air till they could hold no more, and burst in a flash of desperate glory, obliterating his presence from the face of the earth; for he could see the memories from his past rushing out to him to haunt him again and for evermore.


‘I was a young man, who lived by the pond; a content man, a man of sunny, cheery disposition. I was strong and smart, one of the many young lads in my village who made the old folk swell with pride; one of those who gave a silent, unspoken assurance to everyone that all is going well and the future of our tribe is secure, and our village will flourish; a proud messenger of a glorious future. Though I had no family, I had no worries; everyone in the village liked me and cared for me, we had no fear of starvation, of strife or of illness. Ours was a village of peace, prosperity and plenitude.

And yes, I had a girl; the most beautiful girl of my tribe, a mountain flower under the warm, summer sun. She was young and loved me with all her heart, she trusted me and confided in me, and laughed with childish delight when she was with me. We promised ourselves that we would be at each other’s side forever; we felt our fates were linked somehow and hope would desert us if we ever part ways; a couple of hopelessly entangled vines racing up the tree of life.

We would play for hours under the warmth of the summer days, we would playfully tease each other under the shade of the big tree right outside my hut, and we would lie for hours in each other’s embrace under the silver light of the starry nights, talking about our future and of the unknown wonders which lay beyond the horizon, all of which we would someday discover together. We would hold hands and play in the pond beside my home, skipping lightly over the surface, our feet barely touching the crystal water before we would be in the air again with a graceful leap. We were complete together, oblivious to everything else; I was sure she would take my hand and guide me to the land of eternal bliss; until the day of the discovery.

I was walking alone by the river one day when a shiny stone on the ground caught my eye. I picked it up and absentmindedly glanced through it. To my amazement, everything came nearer to me and became clearer, though my field of vision contracted. I could stretch my hand and grab a fistful of dirt from the mountain which had previously seemed so far away as to be unreachable in a lifetime of journeying. I could feel the breath of the birds perched on the distant trees, on my neck, hear the swoosh of water parting as the fish glided gracefully through it; I felt a sense of camaraderie with my brethren, the trees and the clouds, the birds and the fishes, the mountain and the river. For the first time in my life I felt invincible, for I could listen to the music of existence, a powerful undercurrent running under the material surface of everything there is, binding everything with a common thread, their destinies irrevocably interdependent; the breath of a great cosmic sentient being. As I tore my gaze away reluctantly from the crystal panorama, I felt as if someone had ripped a part of my being away from me, a part which is essential and irreplaceable. Then I looked around me and noticed that everything had shrunk back farther than before, as if terrified of my new found powers. Discarding it as a figment of my imagination, I put the crystal back in my pocket and danced back to my village, all the while whistling a merry tune.

Everything is a blur from then on. Slowly and imperceptibly, everything around me changed. Like a snake shedding its old skin and donning a new one, I felt the world twisting and turning around me, being ripped out of existence while a new, sinister world simultaneously grew around and over me. People, who were warm and caring before, turned cold and distant. The birds which chirped merrily before now turned a suspicious eye towards me every time I walked past. The river which shone bright under the summer sun lost its lustre and turned sickly green. The glorious mountain in the distance which had filled me with awe and wonder every time I gazed upon its lofty peak, was gradually decaying, infested with weeds and vermin; a pitiful reminder of its glorious history. And worst of all was the metamorphosis of my love, the girl whose smiling face was the elixir which had protected me from the darkness in my heart, saving me from dissolving into nothingness, leaving out an empty shell.

I could not bear to even glance at her, for my young heart, which, in poetic innocence, had transformed her into the most beautiful creation god had ever envisioned, was corrupted beyond redemption by the prismatic light filtered through the cursed crystal. It was an irony of epic proportions that light, which washes everything it touches to purity, was the weapon which was used to turn my love into a gargantua of misery.’


Bones sad and weary, he walked away from the memories who followed him at a glacial pace in the knowledge that he had nowhere to run. Out of the misty depths of his memories, he heard a voice, a voice of his ancestors, passing down the wisdom garnered in trickles, through blood and sweat, and tears, by generations long turned to dust.

Death is a place which you would like to pass by but never stop at. But it is precisely this place which you remember when you reminiscent about the journey taken long ago. The dead deserve our pity for they are stuck in a moment which keeps repeating itself for eternity. But we are jealous of them because they have a look of someone who knows something which we try to find out our whole lives with a great desperation which comes from the knowledge that we will never find it.

How he envied the dead. Laughing at him, mocking him from the cold comfort of their graves, content in the knowledge that their history is already written in stone. They looked at him with cold, unblinking eyes devoid of any sorrow or fear, for they had no hope. What is there to be afraid of, if you have no hope?

A Prometheus without fire, The Lonely Wanderer walked into the dusk of the setting sun. It was not the end, but the beginning of a new future of terrible loneliness and desolation, and he was the pioneer, the harbinger of gloom which would envelope the world for countless generations. Unaware of what he had wrought, he walked and walked for ages, until he reached the lands where morning never penetrated, where eternal night ruled the lonely and feeble hearts. And then he rested.