The Searcher

The Searcher

That’s enough, I think. Enough. It is 2.43 am when I glance at the ancient clock, ticking away. The room is ridden with dust, home of papers and sheets and ink. Pen and books. 

I have been trying and trying to write since long. It is not that the words have not been coming to me– they come, they ebb and they flow. But they miss something. And I am sure, so sure they miss something. 

I know this because they didn’t miss it when I was a kid. I remember my words having that something, that spark and that shine. They not only ebbed and flowed, but sung and danced and set up for the grandest of plays. 

And it’s not today, I am realizing this. I have been realizing it for a long time indeed. I have been trying to find that thing for weeks– the muse of the stories, the core they hold.

I have tried working in my college’s dorms, in public libraries, in the central park, countless different places at countless different times. I have tried searching for answers in the words of the greats, in the sermons of my professors and nothing worked. 

Nothing works. 

Maybe different, far from this modern life, I think. That is where I will find it. And so I decide to pack my bags and leave for the mountains in the North.

This may seem like I was overdoing it but I was not. I am obsessed– I need, need the words to come. I need to write the perfect story, the immaculate tale, the haunting novella that I have dreamed about since I was a young kid.

~

In my time in the mountains I seldom meet people. I usually spend my time working away under the trees, writing on paper after paper– disappointed, wandering from one corner to another until I reach a village. 

I meet an old woman there, sewing a bamboo hat together for herself. She has wise eyes, unkind face. She looks at me and asks, “What are you looking for, young lad?”

I tell her what I am looking for and ask her if she can help.

She shakes her head. “I am afraid not. I used to paint, you see.”

I ask her, “Used to?”

“Used to,” she confirms. “I don’t anymore. I lost it.”

Lost what? I ask.

She goes on that she used to paint, you see. That she was nearly 40 when she quit and she didn’t really know why but she stopped because the colors were not coming from long now, the muse was long gone. “I suppose it was inevitable,” she says. “I forced it for many years, couldn’t force it for life. I took up crafting then.” She holds up the bamboo hat. 

I ask her if she still feels natural at it. She shrugs, she says she is not sure.

“But I will advise you,” she says. “You won’t find it in people you are looking at.”

I am surprised and I ask, “Then where will I?”

“Ah, I..” she frowns. “I think I saw it in my young son once.”

“Where is he now?”

“Oh you know.” She waves her hand dismissively. “In England, studying.”

~

I leave the mountains soon to head for the rainforest. It is a strange thing, one can think. Why go so far for this? 

But if one thinks that, they won’t truly understand why. 

I believed– have believed from long that if you love something, you must be willing to love it till madness. You must continue to love, to create even if it drives you mad.

And in these moments, I thought, I was nearing a sort of madness. A madness of not men but gods.

In the rainforest, I spend my days by the trees, canopies and bushes. Near the streaming river as the hot sun casted glow on it, making the water sparkle. On the 3rd day, I reach a cabin in the middle of the woods. A man greets me. He is middle-aged and toys with a cigarette in his fingers. He glances at me and says he can tell I am looking for something. “What are you lookin’ for anyway, man?”

I tell him my troubles and he huffs.

“Get that, you won’t find it here,” he says.

“How do you know?” I ask.

“Well, I've been here for years. And I haven’t found it.”

“You are an artist?”

“I used to make music,” says the man and tells me about his life. From the man of city and modern worries to a nomad of forests. 

By the time he’s done and the next morning rolls around, I have left the forests. I wonder to myself what is it that the old lady and he are missing? What is it that we all are missing? 

I continue my search for months to come– like a wayfarer, going from one place to another, searching for what?

I didn’t even know anymore. The muse, was it? Or the inspiration. Perhaps a sort of contentment with what we create, the words that flow– the oomph, the x-factor, or simply the joy?

I do not know anymore.

At last, I come to England and meet the son, who is now about 28. He looks at me with skepticism but that fades away when he hears me talk about his mother. He smiles and sighs, saying he misses her. I tell him about my conversations, my search– and his smile falters.

“I don’t have it anymore,” he says. “I don’t.”

I plead, request him to give me something. By this day, I am tired. Exhausted, beat and at my wits ends. I need something. I am getting madder and madder.

“I am sorry,” he goes on. “I really don’t. I still write. But I just.. It’s gone. It was something which is just gone.”

“When did it slip away so?” I question.

“Perhaps when I was 14,” he answers. “Perhaps older or younger.”

I stare and he laughs. 

“We may never know.”

He offers me a stay in his university, saying we could try working together and I accept. I am tired, hopeless but I accept anyway. Weeks pass and nothing comes together– it’s all the same. The same. 

I leave England in the most desolate mood and by the time I am back in my college, I have given up. I rush to my room and I throw my papers in frustration. The ink bottle is hit and dark blue, nearly black, spills onto the floor. It seeps. 

One last time, I pick the old pages up and the new ones. The new ones are better– the better technique, grammar and they are certainly more intelligent. But it is with one look I can tell that they don’t have the ‘it’ like the old stories do.

~

I gave up on writing years ago and I am married now– I have a beautiful spouse and the sweetest little daughter; my little girl, my joy. 

By the time she is nine, she has found my old trunk from the attic. It has the papers, old and new, crumpled and well kept. Countless stories, finished and not. She reads some of them and later asks me about it. I tell her some of it– about my writings, about how I wrote some of them.

“Why did you stop?” she asks. 

She is a child and I don’t know how to explain. “It was only a hobby,” I say. The words ring as false. It was never only a hobby. I had spent months being driven insane, to the brink of my sanity by it. I had spent years honing it, wearing it as my identity. And then I had let go, being as torn as a lover parting from a beloved.

I come back from the office one day to find her. She has been writing, my spouse tells me. And I find it sad how my first instinct was to discourage deep down. But I do not. Instincts and choices must be kept separate. 

She has been writing in afternoons after school and on one such, I go to her. I ask her about it and she says it is a story about a girl who gets a device to make an infinitely huge chocolate sprinkled with candies and sour bites. I throw my head back and laugh. She keeps writing, uncaring.

I manage a glance at her work and my laughter drains.

My daughter has it.

I see it. I see it all too well. Then I look at her and her big eyes, working with no hint of doubt or hesitation– contentment and I am assured that I am right. She hones it masterfully, all that I had been searching for.

She glances at me and her face falls. She lets go of the pen. “Daddy, are you okay?”

I am nearly pale and I am praying.

Praying, hoping, wishing and begging– for her to not lose it. 

Her words are sloppy, her writing is messy– the grammar horrible and the punctuation painful and yet it is perfect, I know. It is enough, I know. It sparkles, it shines. The words dance and sing and form the grandest of plays. 

She nudges me, worried.

I shake my head and then manage a laugh. “You are a genius, you know that?”

She blinks but then realizes that was a compliment. 

She grins. “Just like you.”

~