There are days when I’m startled by all the overwhelming beauty of this world. Other days, I am taken aback at its cruelty. I read a poem today. It was about a two-headed calf-

“tonight he is alive and in the north

field with his mother. It is a perfect

summer evening: the moon rising over

the orchard, the wind in the grass, And

as he stares into the sky, there are

twice as many stars as usual.”

Laura Gilpin. I read this poem and my heart would not stop hurting.

There are times when the world seems a cruel joke. Life being put on earth to die. And unbearably, little lives. Children and tiny animals and tiny animal children. I remember one year when a neighbourhood dog had pups and someone killed them all. These two little pups who we look after, now. They were part of a large litter, and they were the only two who survived, and at least thrice I feared having lost them for good. At least once, by the conscious effort of men.

The very fact that we, each of us, in ourselves, hold a capacity for unfathomable, unspeakable cruelty. To live with the burden of being human. To need to kill, some way or the other. And yet, I cannot be impeccable.

I took years off writing and I spent it trying to figure out how to think right, to be right. There is no radically corrective scope for redemption. To live, with inconstancy and imperfection. But how much imperfection is just that, just a matter of fact of life, and not more- not an engulfing discrediting of life itself?