This beautiful song “आधा है चन्द्रमा” begins with the protagonist expressing fear that the conversation with his muse will remain incomplete. To this, his muse goes on to expound how pervasive and beautiful incompleteness really is. As I was lying sick and tired from COVID last week, I had started thinking about all the work which I had left incomplete. Indeed incompleteness is an inexplicable part of modern life. We busy ourselves with innumerable duties and jobs with every moment of leisure seeming like an insurmountable mountain. It is as if we are borrowing incessantly from a time bank where defaulting is the only possible outcome. Does it need to be so? I don’t know but nevertheless leaving things incomplete earns you a bad name however unavoidable it is.
When one thinks of the ‘incomplete’, one imagines someone trying to burden himself beyond their means. Indeed my tall stack of incomplete papers, unwritten stories and unread books establishes my greed unarguably. I hope to manage this incompleteness within my lifetime however incompleteness is more often than not, not a conscious choice. Many years ago, I used to argue with a friend incessantly while walking her to the bus stop. The bus would come and the argument would be left incomplete. This bothered me a lot because I was intellectually invested in it and wanted to see it to its end. To my friend, it was the natural course of such things and perhaps (like the muse from the song) a beautiful feature of our conversation. Fast forward to the present and we see that conversations with another dear friend of mine is frequently incomplete. While this terrorises my friend to no end, I find it a natural state of affairs among people who have a lot to talk about. Wouldn’t it be a shame to finish all conversations?
A close cousin of the incomplete is the much more romantic “unsaid”. The “unsaid” could be something understood without the need for explicit mention or it could be something which has been hidden consciously. A famous instance of the latter comes from Mahabharata. During the great war, when Dronacharya goes to ask the righteous Yudhishthir about the state of his son Ashwathama, Yudhishthir answers that “Ashwathama is dead, the elephant…” The part where Yudhishthir mentions that it is Ashwathama the elephant who has died is lost in the celebratory din. This marks Dronacharya’s exit from the war. While one may argue whether or not Yudhishthir acted rightfully the story goes that his chariot, which till then floated above the ground, falls back to earth. While the “unsaid” seems rather benign, it can be gravely consequential. Okay that doesn’t sound romantic at all. Switching back, a lot remains unsaid in every relationship. This “unsaid” when well-understood between a couple is beautiful and measures the depth of ones love. Don’t we all yearn for the “unsaid”.
There are other forms of incompleteness. The inevitable incompleteness of mathematical theory for instance is established by Godel’s incompleteness theorem. This (and many may disagree) only makes the subject much more beautiful. It says (in a simplified but essentially flawed manner) that any reasonable system of assumptions will always leave out statements beyond the realm of wrong and right. On the other hand all incompleteness is not pretty. For instance I cannot imagine a circumstance where an incomplete cake will be very useful. After all what would one do with an unbaked mixture of flour, eggs, sugar and cream? On the other hand incomplete trips can be quite a treat.
About 10 years ago, I had climbed the Panaroma ridge by the beautiful Garibaldi lake with the intention of camping by the Sphinx hut on the other side. This was a reconnaissance trip with the intention of finding a viable summer route to the hut. However it had already been a gruelling hike by our usual standards and I decided it was enough for a fellow friend. In posterity it was a very mature decision of what turned out to be 40 kilometres of a crazy ascent and descent. Yes, we didn’t reach the Sphinx but we saw some spectacular scenery (which we wouldn’t have seen otherwise) and survived to see another day.
A couple of years later while roaming the Chilean altiplanos I came upon a plan to solo-climb a high altitude mountain. This wasn’t such a great plan because I had barely any high altitude experience but I wasn’t off my rockers because I was starting at the third highest village of the world called Parinacota and had only 900 metres to climb to get to the easiest peak in the neighbourhood. If I have ever felt solitude and loneliness it was during this climb. For miles and miles there was no sign of civilisation. Drugged up on a healthy diet of coca leaves I kept pushing up until suddenly I was hit by head searing pain and dropdown fatigue. I decided to take a break and right around then I was visited by a kind little fox. This is when I decided that as much as I like wildlife I didn’t want to become food that afternoon and turned back. I now realise that I had all the signs of altitude sickness and could have killed myself there. There was the disappointment of leaving the trip incomplete for sure but also the happiness of having taken a very mature decision. I felt more ready for life after that.
The Tumbling of Rocks near the Mountain Top Oh Wayfarer! Do you hear me rumble, I have been waiting here for a long time For your faltering steps to set me free So that I may speak Of the valley which is beautiful and deep And the mountains which are steep, Not just for your tired limbs Or your laborious breath But also for your caution and rest For your journey is not just to the top.
There are other mountains I refused to climb completely. I remember starting on Mein Kampf and deciding midway that I just did not have the context to truly understand what Hitler was talking about or Love in the time for Cholera which felt like a far cry from the puritan form of love which I was used to up until then. While I see why we are constantly pushed to finish what we began, I don’t see the point of pushing myself beyond a point. How much can I use the strong character I would build this way over personal health and sanity?
While my job requires me to continuously struggle against things which I do not understand and sometimes have no hopes of solving, I make a conscious effort nowadays to not let it percolate into every tract of my life. And thus, to me, incompleteness is not just a necessary evil, a beautiful feature of life but also a safety net for my sanity and health.
And of course there is some incompleteness which remains with us forever.
The unsaid & the incomplete By the sea, among the tall fir trees, A song floated in the breeze Of youthful, carefree, innocent love Buried in the late summer sun. It wasn’t meant to be! It wasn’t meant to be— Was the cold rationale of this eventuality, But they still creep in from the mound of regret Words unsaid and words incomplete. And if you were to find the sea, the trees and the summer breeze You will find vivid blooms of all that could have been, And perhaps a tiny heart which is still alive Caged in the canopy of hopes and dreams.
Having spent all this time with the incompleteness, it would be characteristic to finish my thoughts without completing them. But I will avoid that cliché and tell you why incompleteness doesn’t bother me any longer. It is perhaps that my perspective has changed. The conversations and the journeys are, after all, as complete as they are meant to be.
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