High up in the mountains, the sun rose elegantly, but looking up at it was the crying face of the scientist Sasidharan Nair. He couldn’t sleep properly last night. His mind was wandering all night. But why was he looking at the sun and crying? And why can’t he stop crying? His eyes were pointing towards the sky. He was now weeping over the pain inflicted by interplanetary travel on the calmness that existed in the sky. All was silent and peaceful in the skies, but now like an uninvited bird someone has invaded its privacy. The beautiful, mystical place it was, has now had its share of invasion by men and soon enough the whole place will become polluted. He fearfully looks on.
Even though he’s crying with his door closed, if anyone was to see him like this, they’ll think that he’s got some mental problems, or else they’ll just call him mad. But that’s not the case. To be exact, the reason for his crying is several. He wept on as he opened his computer, and sent long messages to his girlfriends in different parts of the world hoping for an escape from the sadness.
A group of TV channel reporters had come to his house in the morning, hoping for an interview. They knocked on the door, and Sasi let them in. He had no idea why they were there. He wondered if he had won some award or something. The reporters kept leering into his face and captured every emotion that left Sasi’s face. One of them spoke then “Sir, we need an interview with you, we need some answers on what is going on with you. We were informed by people in your house this morning that you were crying abnormally. What is the real reason for your weeping?”
The whole inside of Sasidharan’s body went insane hearing the question. Sasidharan deduced that his mother may have heard him crying in the morning when she was on her way off to the temple. He knew his mother didn’t dare enter his room as it was known to give out explosions and weird noises occasionally while Sasi was at work. But now all that could be heard from inside that room was crying. Thinking about the whole thing only deepened his sadness which resulted in more crying. The one who was capable of making planets spin on his fingertips, was now left crying in his room all alone. The sound of his crying had almost a weird rhythm to it which made it feel like a song.
The T V reporters were now getting slightly irritated. They understood that if they were to get to the bottom of this, the only way possible was to get direct to the point. And so, they did. They asked if the cause of his crying had something to do with any problems in his family, or if not, whether he was a victim to any unexpected betrayal from friends or whatnot. But Sasi responded that those things had nothing to do with his sadness.
The reporters now felt that the cause had to have been some social problems going on around in his state and asked if it had anything to do with the woeful condition of farmers in Kerala which had resulted in more and more suicides, or if the government’s attitude of giving jobs only to the rich and ignoring the poor, had anything to do with it.
Sasi nodded as if to say Yes, and went on to say that all those murders going on in the world, the harassment faced by women, the attitude of political parties, the corruption, the mistreatment, were all reasons for his sadness.
Sasi pointed towards the sky and wept. He then went on to say that the same fate as the Earth awaits the other planets in the sky, and that it’ll just be a matter of time before they all get dug up. “Even I’m a part of this, and it kills me to see this place like this, deprived of all its glory, deprived of all the happiness and peace that came with it, and now it’s just a shade of what it used to be, and on seeing all this how am I supposed to do anything but cry?”- Sasi said.
The reporters now felt at ease, and listened carefully to each word that left the scientist’s mouth. Sasi felt that it may just be his guilt that was making him cry so much.
Sasi then continued his little speech “On the day I was born, I welcomed everyone into my little life with nothing but crying. As lucky as I may have felt that day, for being given a chance at life courtesy of my mother’s womb, I still chose to cry my heart out as a way to declare my becoming. I grew up and up, and I cried more and more. I learned everything they called historical, and graduated with flying colours. And then I tried my hand at teaching, which didn’t exactly work out – as almost all my students had no sense of respect towards teachers. And now those students are leading from the front-lines in the mission to destroy planets, and the others had engaged in the destruction of societies as a whole. Just as Jesus was betrayed for 30 silver coins, now the same fate awaits the society and the people living in it, with the promise of 30 silver coins making betrayal sound like the norm. There isn’t a thing out there that that 30 silver coins couldn’t buy, it seems.”
We shouldn’t ignore this matter. Sasi’s crying is not just his own, it’s each of ours. His sadness is not just his own, it’s each of ours. We’re all connected and together in this.
His whole life, he had a choice of showing his sadness to the world. He chose to show a smiling face instead. But he couldn’t do that anymore. He was tired from all the pretending, and wanted to be left alone to let out his sadness.
So let him cry to his heart’s desire.
The reporters walked outside to leave, as they felt that the least, they could do was to let the man cry in peace.
