Sunday, 4 July 2021

The Lightening Bolt Scar


Harry Potter's lightening bolt shaped scar has always caught my attention in the entire series. I have always wondered why represent a failed curse with a scar? Even Dumbledore refused to wipe it off stating scars come in handy!

The curiosity behind the metaphorical meaning of the scar has led to this blog post. Remember how everybody recognizes Harry Potter in the first book with his scar? How the scar arose Mrs. Weasley's maternal instincts stating the poor boy was all on his own entering the Wizarding World without anybody to help him out? It's because the scar is a souvenir of the pain he had undergone as a child and everybody knew of his childhood tragedy because the scar enunciates his story.

What if we had something similar in our lives? Before you judge me as insane, let me clarify my thought process.

Not every person is good with communicating what he/she is going through. For some, the grief or the pain itself is self-consuming while some people shut down because that's the only way they know how to survive. Some do not want to appear weak and some people have history of trust issues to deal with. In the whole process, the suffering sometimes takes toll on the person and yet people who might care about you really have no idea about what you are dealing with alone. No wonder, we are a generation grappling with depression and insomnia.

For long, I have believed that uttering things out would make me emotionally weak. So when I write that people find it difficult to communicate their pain, I speak out of experience. What if there was a way out?

For every pain that we undergo, a physical manifestation of the pain appears in form of a scar on our body. Had a breakup - a gash appears on your cheek. Your pet dies - a deep cut appears on your neck. Your best friend left you forever - a cross appears on your arm. A deep red wound appears right on your forehead for loss of a parent.

So when you walk through a mall, instead of noticing somebody for her fat nose you notice her deep red wound on the forehead and feel your empathy rising towards her when you touch your own forehead and notice a similar wound. In place of giving out idiotic and unwanted advice to a relative you met at a wedding, you'd give him a hug on noticing a deep cut around his neck and tell him that you know that it hurts but it will get better. When you see such cuts and scars on X's body while he works out in a gym, you feel the pain of troubled childhood emanating from him and his corpulence would be overlooked.

So my point is that the sound of scars on our bodies is ugly as long as we link it to looks and beauty. For example, we judge a lot of people even for their acne problem and I am campaigning here for having scars! Let me enumerate a few benefits of the theory -

1. Each one of us has some trauma or the other so each one is going to have a scar and so it would be as normal as having a mole. Having said that, if you can SEE somebody's pain written right on their faces, you are likely not to be judgmental on basis of their looks.

2. People are less likely to slip into depression and commit suicides because they would be spelling out their pain on their faces and help would always be available for them in form of people having similar scars.

3. It would lead to meaningful bonds between people if they share the stories behind their scars and experiences of coping up with the pain associated with it.

4. Two people might come closer and realise they have the remedies for each other's scars and it might wipe off their scars completely!


To be precise, दाग़ लगने  से कुछ  अच्छा  होता है, तो  दाग़ अच्छे हैं !

Just a little something to ponder upon to make us a better person, more lovable friend, more understanding partner and most importantly a more emphatic human being.