The Pidhi.

At another routine day back after the Pujas in the library today, I was staring off into nothingness, looking back at my research of over two years now, mentally restructuring and simultaneously trying to come up with a world-stopping theory, when I realised that for quite some time now I had been looking out of the window at the astrologer sitting on the pavement, complete with his parrot.

Now I had never quite shared the disdain that quite a few of my peers have for him- overt or covert.Rather, I quite like him. His bread is as much an honest living as any one else's. And it is a hard living. Imagine trying to make perfect strangers believe in obscure, inscrutable forces and unfelt energies in the fragmented, disillusioned and marketed world we live in today.

And as I looked at him again, I realised that but for his very, very benign looks,he could have been a terrifying figure.Would I really want to have his well-trained parrot choose a card for me and me come to know of an insipid or perhaps even painful future? Have the knowledge of the yet-to-come shadow my small beautiful moments? Even if the knowledge comes with the assurance of remedy, really, who in their right minds would want it? Because what really, really worries me is the question of whether we have the power to shape our own futures. Of course, over time I have come to understand that unless we look at it theologically, our answers to this would be directly dependent on the measure of success achieved.

But, again as I saw a man sit down on the pidhi  beside the parrot, I reflected that there is, after all a very fine line between foolishness and bravery, and till I manage to find the courage  to  make my way towards the now occupied pidhi, I remain sitting on a fence.

(Posted at 11:28 pm)

When Illness is a Mercy.

There comes a time in the lives of all mediocre people when they are dragged down into their own abysses for no reason in particular. Daily, everyday chores weigh heavy. Tiresome, cumbersome jobs needed to be dispensed with replace what is usually a joy.

In straighter words, you are stuck in a rut.

What do you do to pull yourself out of it?

You find yourself an inspiration. Even if you are talking about dreary, dead places and desert sands of dead habit. Remember. In another time you would not have believed that this was impossible. You would have laughed at the unwillingness of another to make an effort to pull himself out of habit. It wasn't an effort for you. Your spirit jumped into a new adventure everyday. How fast we scorn. You should have measured the amplitude of courage required.

You brush the dust off from old dreams. You convince yourself that they still remain and are not something that was foolishly wanted.

But most importantly, you tell yourself to wipe out that cynical smile that is playing on your lips as you type. Even forcefully if you must. You also remind yourself to stifle the half of your mind from whence originates all cynicism. That is the half on whose sword lingers blood of a mangled quarter of the other half, and Massada should not fall this time.

An illness, a body racked with aches and a fever has a strange way of recalling old determination.

Of The Many Firsts.

Tis' a season for travelogues and train journeys.

Yesterday was the day I traveled, for the first time ever in a local train. It was not a choice and I was out of options.

The station at Garia stank of rotten fish and shit. Small holes broken into the concrete clogged with squishy dirt in water with flies hovering over them. Not a pretty sight. And I had to wait for 45 minutes before I could board a train. I drank in every sight. A portion of the platform was covered in chicken blood and feathers. Killed for food, presumably. The flies were densest there.The food stalls surprisingly had less of them.

People might have seen spirit in people there, waiting for hours under the flimsy shade, mostly with heavy loads, usually goods to be sold, and often of weight capable of bending spines. The will to survive as it were, to fight. People might stand applaud courage they see. Courage to carry on. Carry on in all that misfortune and brokenness .

There are people who write of pain. I myself tried writing of it, and that was the point of realization. We can hardly write of pain without romanticising it. Just like we cannot write of the past without romanticising it. Remember the time you were ostracised in a juniour class? Bet it wasn't as nice then while you went through it than it is now when you write of it. Ruskin Bond did say it: " Looking back on boyhood years/ Even unhappiness acquires a certain glow"
No, you need to have truly fantasised about pain to imagine that it can intoxicate you. You need to have been truly insulated from pain to find it heroic. I envy you. You've felt hurts maybe, and slights also. But pain? I doubt.

The people I saw too did not have a choice. They suffer and endure not in heroism, but in necessity. Their sufferings are not awe-inspiring. Anyone placed in their shoes would find that they could continue to exist. It is the most ancient and primitive law of our existence.

Choice. That key-word.If your Choice to live your life a certain way brings you to hell-holes, I give you a standing ovation. That is why Mother Teresa is her. And indeed, so are countless others, all unsung. If your choice to be a vigilante takes you to our borders, we the people who sleep stoned at night give you another ovation.But if you arrive at our borders to fuel your hearths at home, we know that the day something else guarantees that, we shall no longer sleep safe.

They had to carry on. For the alternative to that is obliteration.

We sit, comfortable in our houses warmed by the heat of their bodies, and then we talk about Art. Literature. Poetry. And oh, we talk about the misfortune of their existence, hoping we could do something to change it. Then the more conscientiousness of us go home, stopping at the local NGO to drop off some notes, hoping to make some difference, as of course, that is all we can do.
And then, there are some people like me, who blog about it, every once in a while as the realization strikes them. Doing so eases a guilty conscience, maybe.

The drunks at the overhead bridge in Park Circus were no Devdases, pining away. That is their way of life, they know no better. They have never known any better.

Never mind, Never mind.


"With great power comes great responsibility" - Uncle Ben.


P.S : I'm not too sure of the point I'm making. Actually, I'm not sure that I'm even making one.
Confused, Confused, Me, Me.

A Thought.

Its often only after the very tiring days that so many little reflections on life hit you. However its not always that you realize that these little nuggets were always there, right behind in the recesses of your mind and that it has just come to the fore in definable clarity and that there is no newness to it after all.


Que Sera Sera : Whatever will be will be.
There was a fly fallen in the ink pot of the Boss.He takes it out from the pot and places it on a fresh piece of blotting paper, to watch it dry itself and prepare itself for flight. But just before it flies off the Boss places another blot onto the fly, so that this time the task of drying itself is more arduous.Yet the fly like all mortals fights for its survival and raises itself for another time before a third blot wipes out its existence.
The fly has no consciousness of the boss and the blots are for it bolts of fate that keeps striking him down, with which he is utterly incapable of fighting, yet he fights unknowing that his existence is being overseen by a stout robust man over him.
We are different. And for us the knowledge that the ink blots shall drop on us are more terrifying than the drops that do eventually fall.
So we live our lives from one blot to another.


Whatever you can do:
There is this thing about your life just starting, you, very much like the fly think that you are responsible for your future and are filled with an overwhelming sense of enthusiasm and drive. You are determined not to make the wrong choices, you are determined not to slack off, you are determined and willing to start putting so many things on the backburner. Then you look around you to the many friends who have already gone off chasing dreams and your resolve turns stronger.

Then what happens??


'Hota wahi hai jo manzoore khuda hota hai.'
(only that which the God shall will will occur.)




P.S : Refernce to the fly taken from a short story by Katherine Mansfield