Every cloud has a silver lining

A couple sat in their physics tuition, clinging their fingers together. A gush of wind blew through the window. The sound of tin cans clattering somewhere in the nearby apartments echoed in the air. A stroke of lightning illumined the milieu. A loud thunder followed… and with that a bizarre silence. Another wild raft of wind blew the girl’s hair on the boys face. It begun to drizzle… timid and romantic at first and then it came down harder, harder… till a heavy downpour followed.

By the time the class ended, the storm had calmed down. The two walked down the path… the drizzles made the romance more compulsive.. The girl paused for a moment and looked into the boy’s eyes, “Baby, let’s forget whatever we went through. I love you.”

The boy didn’t utter a word. He came forward and they clung together. There was a low rumble, and then there were only pleasant winds.

A few yards away, the tinned roof of Rajan’s little shop had been blown away by the storm. Little Karan’s father was trapped in a car under the heavy branches of a fallen tree, suffocating… waiting to be rescued. In the midst of Kolkata, traffic had gone abnormally high. An ambulance stood motionless, its siren breaking through the stormy night. It was what Tennyson had painted nature “red with tooth and claw”.  Now only it could be realized why Shelley invoked that power to help him spread his iconoclastic ideas all over the world to build and regenerate it.

However, the rains brought solace to all people high and low, young and old, by bringing down the temperature. A nature’s blessing indeed! Every cloud has a silver lining, isn't it?

In fact, human is a mingled thread of joy and sorrow. Every sorrow has a spark of joy behind, every adversity provides an opportunity for the greater flowering of manhood, every disappointment sharpens man’s resolve to conquer adverse forces. Who could sum up this truth more succinctly than Shakespeare has done in the following lines:

“Sweet are the uses of adversity

 Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.”

These lines were spoken by the banished Duke in the Forest of Arden in As You Like It, while spending the days of exile under the open sky. He, who once commanded the pomp and power, was now a homeless fugitive, seeking shelter and solace in the lap of nature. But this taste of adversity had its own advantage. It made him a wiser being and opened new windows into his mind and heart and he could find

“Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

 Sermons in stones and good in everything.’’

 Though the Duke’s utterance may sound idyllic, being cast as it is in a pastoral background yet it embodies a world of truth. Misfortunes constitute the true test of one’s character. The story of Pandavas illustrate how they had to face misfortunes in their lives and how every difficulty equipped them with added courage to face greater buffets of outrageous fortune. The story of Harishchandra suggests how the fearless devotee of truth cheerfully faced sufferings for the sake of his ideals. If Rana Pratap was great before the battle of Haldighati in challenging the might of the likes of Akbar, he was greater while undergoing the hardship of life in the hills of Aravalli, with the Moghals always at his heels.

As the scripture says, human life is an atonement for the original sin committed by Adam and Eve. We have to experience sufferings because of that. To Shakespeare this life appears to be “such stuff as dreams are made of”, and to Thomas Hardy “happiness is but an occasional episode in the general drama of pain”.

© Aritra Ghosh