Weekly World News

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The goddess, the beer and me

It's one of those evenings which threaten to ruin a perfectly good day. When reality tackles you with the subtlety of a football player and demolishes the exhilaration of a touchdown on the field of happiness. When to be a philosopher is to be a fool. When the mind runs in circles, like a dog barking at its own tail. When the censure of a lover seems like the toll of a death knell. It's not happy, I know. Why do you think I call myself 'the Happiness Seeker'?

I open up my drawing book -- an assortment of cheap toned construction paper -- and pull out my new pastels. It feels like blue in my head. Blue and red. The face of the Goddess Kali looms.

"Want a beer?" says the loved one.

If I ever wanted a beer, it's now. I've always hated the taste of beer, and believed there are "highs" one can have being perfectly sober. But at this moment, there is a need to silence the ravings of a self-flagellating neural pattern. And a pint of Guinness Extra Stout can do that. So I run to grab that bottle of bitter salvation. And sit back at my drawing, cherishing the Tostitos and salsa that serve to dispel the beer taste.

Wait a minute. It's the Goddess Kali that I'm drawing. And I'm drinking? The vestigeal Hindu in me stands up in dissent.

It's just a drawing, I tell him. But the symbolism, he retorts, what does it say about you? My hands, flying over the paper, pause for a minute in mid-air.

I sit back, finish my beer while the loved one reads to me passages from Jhumpa Lahiri's 'The Namesake' (She thinks it says a lot about my own state of mind). Then I go back to the drawing, and finish it. It comes out fine considering my lack of experience with pastels and fear of color. It even looks scary in the dark, the blue, black and red creating an ominous mood.

The loved one looks up. "So, why did you call on Kali?"

"She's a source of obvious power," I say, "good to think of in times of powerlessness." I look at my drawing, and feel the familiar satisfaction of accomplishment. It is a pacifier to the screaming mind-baby, and the beer is a lullaby.

For what it's worth, I'm whole again.