An albatross around our neck

An albatross around our neck

For those of you who have not read the rather long poem “The Rime of the ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, or to those who have, but do not remember the jest I shall try to recreate the soul of the poem through my reading of the recent happenings around us.

Remember the Mariner who shot the albatross in spite of the crew thinking that the albatross brought about the south wind that helped the ship steer clear from the ice jam they were stuck in?  All the Babas are being slowly but surely shot out of their perches to be stolid ordinary beings in prison. Never mind they had brought succor to the stupidest amongst us like the crew of the ship who thought the albatross was their lucky charm.

However as the weather clears and the mist disappears the crew of the ship think that the mariner did right by shooting the albatross. Similarly now, when the mist around our babas slowly dissipate we are thankful to the judiciary and the judge for having stowed away the babas for long.

But as soon as they see that the ship has slowly entered unchartered waters near the equator and nothing seems to be moving with their ship seemingly ‘As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean’, they start blaming the mariner for they think it is the wrath of the dead albatross that has brought this upon them.  Likewise those of us who do not believe in babas are rudely jolted back to our senses when things go wrong accepting the wrath of the saints is our undoing.

How often have we argued against the babas and their lot, against the saintly beings on earth who preach to the gullible? How often have we thought out of our rationale streams and decided to ditch these saints for the logical drift. How often have we been driven back thereafter when things don’t add up? Haven’t we been told that what we face is the wrath of our disbelief, of having shunned the holy and unquestionable path? In our plight we realize that there is no succor, but deliverance by the holy and like the crew of the ship we go back to blaming the mariner for having shot the albatross.

Having failed to stay adrift in our new found belief we go back to the path less cumbersome and start swaying to the music of the babas. Like the crew of the ship who cursed all small and slimy creatures at sea we atone for our sins and ask for forgiveness for having taken on the holy with words less pronounced.  We ask for pardon every day when we come face to face with the babas. In the euphoria that builds up we feel like midgets. The crescendo that builds up drowns our words of repentance and we feel fresh and new as an elephant out of the pond.

Failing expectations ordinarily, we are forced to hang the albatross around our neck, for lest we forget its wrath and pile up a heap of misfortune upon ourselves.

Why do we keep going back into the sinkhole, into the whirlpool of disaster when our logical mind tells us that the power to resurrect lies within? Is it simply because we are not tuned to accept disaster as a part of life? Is it because we are not tuned to face failures? Is it because all of us want to live a flawless life? Are we nervous, fidgety or even insecure?

Will we, like the mariner continue telling our stories of woe to generations to come and turn the young ones into believers of our sort? Will the young ones ever learn to disassociate their worries from the monster of tomorrow or will they churn these stories in their little heads and get up in the morning like the wedding guest who listened to the rime of the ancient mariner and wakes up the next morning “a sadder and a wiser man”.

30^th August 2017