Reading Kundera has ever been a self-discovering experience for me. Excuse me for talking more about myself, while the title, bears the name of one of the greatest philosophers ever lived and gives the impression of a discussion about his style of writing and other artistic and humane virtues.
I should say that it has been more of self-reflective in nature than a discovery by itself. I am the same human being, I was before reading Kundera. SO it is more of a self-reflective experience. Being listened is a very individualistic desire in every human being, I believe. Sadness occurs when one is not heard or listened to, by anyone around him/her.
Life has taken me to a new environment; New human beings, new culture and strange things happening around…The mortal bindings of love has made it impossible to talk with the loved ones, many of the bare truths of life. It might take many years, till I gain the familiarity of human beings in my new habitat, who would listen to me and whom I would listen to. The desire to talk my heart out, has been growing, with increasing pressure. The world around me has diversified and the people have changed; their needs have changed; many among who had been in my life are busy traversing in the new realms of their life. The world is running in time, and ideas which don’t talk about euphoria, development and success, are generally not heard. Nevertheless I can’t blame anyone for not listening to me! It is a very helpless situation.
There came Kundera to my rescue. When I read him, I read my mind; a conversation with myself.. a very slow conversation without any haste, or constraints of time..a conversation well listened to, properly interpreted, so as to obtain maximum satisfaction..
In this process, I discover a similitude of thought process between mine and Kundera's. As for any human being, I too started getting the satisfaction that many of what I have been thinking about were all not mere waste of time and thoughts; but that there had been many immortals who wrote, sung and played with the thoughts similar in emotion to mine, though of obvious superiority and strength in quality.
I discovered that the negative qualities like pessimism, sadness, etc have their significance and the whole world is shadowed in the so called positive qualities, while in reality, it is immersed in sadness. That is the truth. Yes, Kundera helped me see and feel the bare truths of life; which often, we human beings neglect to acknowledge.
I have never seen any other writing as strong as his (you can count on my limited familiarity to world literature). His is the writing that redefines the concepts of morality, which is often a man-made set of rules, created for his own convenience to simultaneously practice immorality and preach morality. He explores the meaning of love, which is invisibly binded to the mortal pleasures of human consciousness. His writings are the truth incarnated. The truth in its total nudity…this truth is bold..it is the strongest atom bomb, I believe... It can break apart anything, a relationship; a culture; a race...
Still my desire for being listened continues with its fullest pressure. It may make me do the strangest things in my life. Quite recently I have discovered music to be incapable of helping in an explicit communication with the souls around us, with whom we wish to communicate. Music has many limitations like religion, rules, culture and tradition, which arrests its degrees of freedom….
To be contd…
