Getting in mood: Some reflections from Dancing to Death (Poems) by Gopilal Acharya

Mood swings are common and our pets are a testimony to this phenomenon called ‘mood’. We humans have this tender tendency of fluctuating mood-mood swings. Yet the ‘fairer- gender’ considering themselves compassionate and tender more than the ‘lesser gender’ is an irony of life. That mood swings are more common in the fairer gender, if you know what I mean! 

Considering the human tendency, mood is the tour de force of all the activities and undertakings. Consider this, I love reading books of whatever sort and genre but at times I don’t have that urge from the inside to touch one. This is simply because I don’t want to do something different but mood is off. Had it been otherwise, I would have delved into imagination and digested hordes of chapters all at once. 

So how do we get ourselves in mood for doing whatever we like to do, often? Of course, there’s no one single remedy to get us into mood and it perfectly differs from individual to individual. For me getting in mood has to be triggered by some beer. Even this very write-up or you may say a review was triggered by a few bottles of the mood-swinger. May be this is the very reason why so many journalist friends of mine drink to kill their stress. Believe me journalism is a stressful job. An idea will take ages to write it down and it would take even longer to write a proper sentence. For me, I suppose I have found not a good remedy but it helps for now at the cost of my internal organs going astray. I am not suggesting you to experiment with my mood swinger but I hope that someday perhaps you too will come across a mood swinger that will turn you on. It can be a woman, drink, cigarette, an evening walk, a morning jog, an afternoon siesta, a shower, an object, a painting, some music, a coffee, you name it! 

But all in all we do have mood shifts and this undefined feeling of mood is immortalized in a poem by our own Bhutanese poet, Gopilal Acharya. The poem I am referring to is “Getting in Mood” from the book “Dancing to death” by Gopilal Acharya.  Just see if it stirs your imagination.

Getting in Mood

It has been an average life so far

And I don’t feel great about it

 There are times when I feel

I have done my bit, though

 But guilt persists

Like the hair on your body

 I gues it was designed thus, this life

To be pretty futile and average

 But I get in mood to live more when the

Evening comes bringing darkness along

 Tonight, too, I can be a fugitive again

And live my at an average pace

Unseen, unheard, unknown