Despair

Despair is the most devastating of our emotions. It is not mere absence of happiness or presence of anguish. It is an all pervasive atmosphere of gloom, a thick miasma of despondency, when all that mind's eye can see are blobs of a uniform grey colored mist that stretch till infinity. 

I believe animals can emote too. They can be sad or happy. But only human beings can despair. For despair needs the unique human capability to speculate about future. Despair results from the dense hopelessness, the inability to detect a single source of joy in future. We constantly see ourselves in future. Our minds are capable of extrapolating present circumstances at a future point in time and imagine how these would affect us then. That such ruminations rarely come true has no bearing on our present mood. No other species of animals has this unique capability to live in future. 

Despair has moved poets in a monumental way and has engendered some of the most sublime verses in literature. I quote here two pieces from urdu poetry. A nazm, ख़्वाब बसेरा, by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, and a ghazal, कोई उम्मीद बर नहीं आती, by Mirza Ghalib. Both are ineffably beautiful. How immeasurably poignant are Faiz's words, इस वक़्त तो यूँ लगता है अब कुछ भी नहीं है, and शाख़ों में ख़यालों के घने पेड़ की शायद, अब आ के करेगा न कोई ख़्वाब बसेरा. Ghalib uses words and phrases of everyday language to create a picture of heartbreaking desolation, मरते हैं आरज़ू में मरने की, मौत आती है पर नहीं आती. 

Poetry adds meaning to life. It is ironical that an emotion which seems to make life irredeemably meaningless is also the source of such meaningful creation of the same mind. Mind is truly a baffling endowment of mankind. 

I follow each poem by my interpretation, my transcreation.