Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Fear

I must say a word about fear. It is life`s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, distinguished in the grab of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reasons comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapon technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ear goes deaf. Your muscle begins to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

Quickly you make a rash decision. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you`ve defeated yourself. Fear which is but an impression has triumphed over you.

The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you might find hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don`t, if your fear becomes the wordlessly darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

-An extract from 'THE LIFE OF PI' by Yann Martel

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

kya fart hai saale! jake kaam kar...poore lnt ka bhavishya tere kandhon pe hai, aur tu baith ke yahan blogging kar raha hai :P

on a more serious note, gud excerpt...especially the last para is stud!!! but if possible, remove the 2nd para, the one describing abt the physical effects of fear...it put me to sleep :D

Siddharth Chaudhari said...

for those you though that the art of fiction was moribund, yann martel is a compelling read -washington post

for those who thought plagiarism on blogs is moribund, vamsi's blog is a compelling read - sidkc :)) :p

starting padh ke socha aap to bahut hi stud likhte ho aur kya deep thoughts hai, only to realise that its from a book... really nice excerpt though...

waise life of pi stud kitab hai, thanks for reminding me of it, padh lunga jaldi hi agar time mila to...

Unknown said...

:D........hey look at the positive side of it. It inspired you to read it though:))

Ali Asgher Zakir said...

abe kya daya hain yeh...
itni saari angreji :(
please agli baar kuch hindi mein likhna :)

Piyush Prahladka said...

main soch raha tha vamsi ko kya ho gaya .. aise stuf kabse likhne laga .. actually first 2 lines pad ke chhod diya tha ..

abhi last line pad liya to sab chamak gaya ..

Piyush Prahladka said...

oye ... woh photu kahan gaya ???

Anonymous said...

abe seriously yaar main bhi shuru ki ek do line padne ke baad continue nahi kar paaya :D...lekin sahi hai roomie sahi jaa rahe ho :)

Anonymous said...

abe seriously yaar main bhi shuru ki ek do line padne ke baad continue nahi kar paaya :D...lekin sahi hai roomie sahi jaa rahe ho :)

kray said...

long time no post! wats up vams?!!