The Writer & The Painter - Chapter II: The Task

At last, she met him.

She now understood why the house was the way it was. It was his spirit which embodied it. There was nothing to differentiate the house from the man, and the man from the house.

He gave her a glance of one who has long awaited something & finally sees it fructifying. He started to speak:

“I must go straight to the task for which I have called you here”

“You probably have heard of me as the greatest writer the world has seen. Yes, I have written books of great inspiration. I have provided comfort and joy to millions of people. I have delved deep into the meaning of life, its enjoyment in all forms, its purpose, goals and achievements. I have motivated. I have taught. I have received unstinted praise and admiration for all that I have done. The world has acknowledged me as a benefactor of the human race”

“But they are all wrong”

“I am a sinner. A sinner the scale of which the world has never seen before. I am a sinner worse than the most debauched, murderous & bloodthirsty tyrants seen by mankind. History has had sinners who have plundered, tortured, looted, killed & cheated people. I am a sinner because I have implanted an idea. An idea that is completely untrue.”

“I thought that life is meaningful; that there are things worth working towards, that there are objectives worth achieving; that hope is worth hoping for. I thought I was endowed with a gift – the gift of spreading hope to those who need it. I believed it to be my sacred duty in this world. The juxtaposition of words provided me with the means to do so. People have learnt to hope because of me. People have learnt to work towards making their lives meaningful because of me. I have been their saviour, their messiah. I am the one who has kindled their spirit in order that they may pass with flying colours in the examinations that life presents”

“But Providence, it seems, loves to prove a point”

“I came to know yesterday that I am suffering from a disease. It’s so rare that it has no name. Doctors are completely clueless. They say it’s incurable. They only know that it will keep consuming me. It will defile my body and corrode my spirit. It will make my countenance unbearable for anyone to see. And I will die a very painful death”

“And now you see the point. Was there ever such a fall as mine? One who was once the toast of the world, reduced to such triviality; like the entrails of a dead animal discarded by the roadside, fit only for vultures to feed on! What had I set out to achieve, and what have I been reduced to? Why was I the one chosen to lead when I was to be carried off midway?”

“I have been wrong all along. We seek so much from life. We work so much for it. We think. We feel. We do. And in the end, it all comes to nothing. It’s all gone without a trace. There is nothing that we control. There is nothing that it leads to.”

“There is nothing more inhuman then to have made people believe in an idea which is not true. For when people believe in something, it takes possession of their soul. They live for the idea and are often willing to die for it as well. They shape their reality by the ideas which constitute them. They spend their lifetimes in pursuing it. And when the idea turns out to be false, it destroys them. Nothing remains. Nothing“

“Who could be a bigger sinner than one such as me; one who has committed genocide not of bodies, but of spirits?”

“I am an idea, my friend. I am an idea whose time is over. I am idea which must be uprooted, wrenched out from the minds of everyone on the face of this earth. I must redeem myself”

“Until such time as is available to me, I shall spend on writing a book; but not just any book. It will be a book which tells the tale of despair, of the nought that all journeys must come to in the end. It will haunt and possess everyone who reads it. It will disturb the reader, snatch away his peace of mind and ensure that he does not ever dare to hope again”

“And finally, my destruction must be captured in the book. Nothing shall be left to chance or to imagination. I must be irrevocably decimated in the mind of the reader”

“You are a painter renowned for drawing the veil from the many shades of tragedy in life. Your canvas has been a chaotic splash of paints drawn from the palette of gloom and wretchedness."

"Throughout time, painters have depicted events, people, divinity, nature and abstractions. You, my friend, will depict the demise of an idea. You shall paint my last days on earth; you shall capture my ruin; the undercurrent of the unalterable uselessness of life shall adorn each one your paintings; each sibilant stroke of your brush shall be a nail in my coffin”

“Reality, is perception…”