About the Author
Mallikarjun B. Mulimani is a versatile writer. He writes novellas, novels, long and short poems including haikus. His books and style of writing, where brevity is the hallmark, influenced by his engineering background, are unique and highly acclaimed. His writings are crisp, carrying a theme and a message making them highly readable. So far, he has twenty-four books to his credit. They revolve around diverse themes: psychology of humans and their milieu, God, love, sex, religion, realization of self, life and death. They often touch the metaphysical domain.
Books by the Author
- Whimsical Dice (Olympia Publishers, London, 2021)
- Predator & Prey (Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2021)
- Rivers (Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2021)
- Demystifying God, Eros and Bacchus (Olympia Publishers, London, 2020)
- Life Unshackled – From Darkness to Light (Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2020)
- Approaching Death (Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2019)
- A Mariachi & A Philosopher On Wheels – A Poem (Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2019)
- A Writer’s Zen (Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2018)
- Selene – A Poem (Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2017)
- Poems For Us (Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2017)
- Poems To Myself (Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2017)
- Alternative Haikus (Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2017)
- Buddha In A Mercedes (Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2017)
- Politics – A love Story (Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2016)
- Bhakti Sans Religion – Dilemmas in the Search of One’s True Inner Self (Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2016)
- Star Ride to Nirvana (Leadstart Publishing Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai, 2015)
- Dams across the Flow (Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2015)
- Victims Incorporated – Circles of Sub-consciousness (Current Publications, Agra, 2013)
- What Happened to My Creativity (CreateSpace, USA, 2013)
- Operation Epiphany – God’s Journey on Earth (Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2012)
- The Holy Plumber and Other Stories (Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2009)
- Abstractions (Writers Workshop, Kolkata, 2007) (with digital art)
Acknowledgements
As always, I am indebted to my parents, who have the right to think that they are the creators of the poem below, as I myself am their creation:
Pure
If blue water you stare in is pure
Be sure
You will in it dissolve
And stare at a reflection of above
Encompassing the empty blue sky
Without even a white cloud which at emptiness shouts fie
What then is to say of grey area clouds
In which humankind wallows
Dissolve in emptiness son
That not even the universe will be able to identify your sun
This book could not have been written without the constant encouragement, support, and guidance of Selene, who is in a constant state of endeavour to make me realize the other side of the coin:
Selene
What keeps me energized every morning
Are your messages which keep me striving
For that God you believe in
And in whom I don’t have trust in
What kind of a paradox am I stuck in?
Can I be released from my within?
Author’s Note
In the red
I bled
To nightmares forget
And youthful dreams resurrect
Death of a Philosopher, DOAP, began as an exercise in a different domain of creativity. After writing twenty-two books, I was tired of writing, and with passing age, I began to look back fondly towards my childhood days where I absolutely loved sketching and painting. One fine day, I decided to be an exuberant kid again, and rediscover the creativity associated with pictures, but alas, my hand could not sketch or paint anymore; however, during my engineering days, I had dabbled with quite some measure of success in Computer Art, and that period of time obviously being closer to my present, I decided to pick up Computer Art once more. So, using Paint, available in Microsoft Windows, and images freely available on the Internet, I began creating comic strips, which portrayed my philosophy with a brevity which surpassed its predecessors in the books I had written till then, and created around one hundred and sixty of them; however, there were no takers for my new art. I was tired, and decided to take a break from my creativity. I found myself in Goa, completely relaxing, and then, as creativity would have it, my love for writing came rushing back to me on the crests of waves kissing the beach. I began to write DOAP right there and then, drawing from the Computer Art I had created at home, and continued writing long after I came back.
On a different note, this is my twenty-third book, and the reason for me picking up a discarded manuscript of mine, and completing it, can hopefully be found in DOAP’s Epilogue. Many questions about my lifetime’s work will be answered after my twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth books are published.
I have used the word, ‘Creativity’, many times, so, what exactly is creativity according to me? Creativity is no one thing, and nothing else in this universe is just one thing too. Creativity, as understood by me, can be:
Creativity is the blossom blooming on the tree of effort in spring. The blossom, creativity, is not permanent, does not last after spring, but the tree, effort, should remain almost constant, relaxing only in spring, so that the blossom blossom without any more effort. Constancy, as in every other sphere of life, including life itself, is impossible in creativity. It is the age-old principle of ‘Hold fast and let go’, which works miracles for creativity, as it does for everything else in life.
Everything is contained within us, for ultimately, there is no true objectivity, but only subjectivity, and creativity too is contained entirely within us. Superconsciousness is not external, but internal. It is our unconscious, subconscious, and consciousness working together in sync. It is this superconsciousness that we should tap into to find true creativity, which bursts in bursts.
Creativity is not even being yourself.
But, since an external superconsciousness obviously does not exist, creativity does not flow from it through a hollow bamboo and reach your consciousness.
Creativity is what you free yourself from and it comes into being.
You are not creativity and neither is creativity you. It just exists in the multiverse free from those who strive for it.
Stop trying to be creative, and you are, but, mark it, it is never yours, as nothing else in the multiverse is. Open the palm of your hand, and the whimsical butterfly of creativity alights to mesmerize you.
Be in love, and that is the greatest creativity, for nothing can capture or define it.
You are either in love or you aren’t.
Preface
It was difficult to write a Preface for this book as it is but a collection of staccato bursts of philosophy; however, I have tried, as it has become a habit of mine nowadays to use brief, symmetrical, and rhyming poems, whenever possible, to convey my message, to write this Preface using poems.
What Happy felt throughout DOAP:
Life Again, Damn
Life being
What am I living
At myself staring
If but I could
Understand myself as I should
Life lived be would
If in a mirror
I stare at another
Who is me, brother
Lies discarded
Truths amalgamated
Born is eternity discarded
For in this moment
With my complementary parent
My life is well spent
Winner
When you stare
At death in its face bare
It averts its gaze
And you are out of the maze
In which life put you in the first place
And you will have found your place
No more will you have to apologize
For mistakes which cut others down to size
Why worry
When others lowly have to be sorry
You are free
Don’t you see
None can control you
Be you
For it is your life
Be without strife
Love
If love
Is my dove
Above
What others consider above
Their stupidity in stow
And in nonsense below
I with you my love
Will fly over heavens above
The last two poems of Happy, after he had happily settled on the mainland, which he wrote sitting by a pristine blue lake surrounded by lush green mango trees bearing vibrant yellow mangoes:
Lake Kelgeri
On these banks
Containing joy beyond World Banks
Youth to me is returned best
With added interest
Here springs poetry
Which needs no chemical entry
I am finally free
To be
Mango Tree
King of fruits
King of solitude
Gather
Together
Koels coo
For me too
And I realize
In the summer fragrance
That life is beautiful
And I am too
Blurb
Philosophy
Cannot be
On a stomach empty
Life, love, and philosophy
Form an unholy trinity
All cannot exist in harmony
The holy
Who cry celibacy
Know not what a woman can be
And above all is money