Emotions generally begin to impress on you at a very tender age. I was fortunate to have developed that appetite up young. Some might call it a curse to understand and feel for the characters of stories so early. But I have always treated wisdom as a blessing.

An amazing story that left an irreparable mark was The Count of Monte Cristo which we read in school. I was specifically bowled over by the tragedy of its lead character Edmond Dantès. So much that I would lose my sleep over his plight.

It was an extremely heart-wrenching thrilling read for me, specifically the part, where he ends up in a hopeless prison fortress called Chateau D’if surrounded by water where he ends up spending 14 years of his life. Back in the day, our rapid readers had pictures to represent the characters, and seeing that long-haired, bearded, despairing man shook me to the core.

He guessed something uncommon was passing among the living; but he had so long ceased to have any intercourse with the world, that he looked upon himself as dead.

The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

If it weren’t for Faria, his beacon of hope, the protagonist might have not survived such a long sentence. It was a relief to find the latter’s presence making Dantes’ punishment less terrible.

I have felt Dantes’ pain so many times that sometimes I feel, I might have unknowingly invited a piece of it into my life. Although my experience wasn’t that of a prison, those three months of being stuck in a room didn’t feel any different. At the end of it, just like him, I ended up becoming a scrawny being, bereft of real food, who only dreamt of eating throughout his sentence, who only dreamt of freedom and wondered what it tasted like.

14 years, a coincidence reflects in Ramayana too which makes me think about Lord Rama a lot. Those 13 years mustn’t have been as punishing as the last one, where he had to bear the agony of the separation from his wife. I often think about the countless thoughts of Sita, devoid of communication, in an alien land surrounded by monsters. I feel the greatest pain lurking in her unsaid imagination around the lines of—if Rama knew about her whereabouts. I feel the pang of Rama failing to see any beauty of the world owing to the tragedy.

I shatter into pieces thinking about it and realize that I am only human. Empathizing with the greatest tragedies in the world is quite natural. Tagging along to those thoughts intended to exhume such feelings means that I have locked into their world to honor them as if saying – “I hear ye”.