“We are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be”
The monsoon sky is usually a murky, frenzied blue. The clouds are weary and the mist, fuzzy. The rivers exhale with a murmurous purr of satisfaction. It is 9:00 am; the vociferous downpour has blurred my vision of the distant horizon. “Take a cab, will you? I don’t want you to get wet,” exclaimed my aunt. The rains were a day shy of a one-month delay. I took the elevator to the ground floor, and no sooner had the doors opened, than the gusto of the wind threw the tie over my shoulder and ruffled my neatly done hair. I walked out of the gates and saw a couple of black and yellows. Across the street and onto the sidewalk I stepped, when I happened to realise the presence of an umbrella in my right hand. The cabs were flashing, almost ready to take off and try their luck at another destination. I had a choice. A choice to sit inside a box and shield myself from the smell of the deluge — a comfortable and effortless journey. Quick and smooth. Or walk to the local train station, strolling on the cobblestone as the wind energised my body, taking a hit or two from the downpour should it intensify further and find its way under the umbrella. That, and a few minutes is what separated the two. I chose the latter — despite the potential hurdles. I knew I’d have to watch my step at every moment. Any instant of a potential fall had to be tactfully maneuvered. To be dead honest, I was beginning to have second thoughts about my decision. I had given up the cushy ride for a bunch of obstacles I knew I could have easily avoided. By the time I made it to the train and positioned myself between the door of the compartment, something that I have always cherished, I felt a sigh of relief. I was in motion, and as I passed the suburbs of the city, I could feel I was becoming more placid. The sound of the rain no longer felt distorted. The pressure seemed to have subsided. The sight of hundreds of commuters walking on the road fostered in me a sense of gratitude; the litany of complains seemed to be fading away. The fatigue was giving way to a sort of cheer; the sight of the slums narrowed the frown on my face. The glimpse of kids bearing no cover made me realise that nothing could trump the simple pleasures of chasing a football. Aboard the same coach stood a young boy, who, from the scars on his forearm and the roughness of the skin at the foot of his fingers, seemed like a cargo deliverer. Having extracted a nearly dilapidated handset from the left pocket of his unkempt pair of trousers, he dialled a number. I watched the rains; set off in anxiety and trepidation, I was observing the intricacies of the surroundings, trying to chart out patterns now that I had parted with the self-created, disordered tumult. The boy had positioned himself beside me. He spoke for two more stops. “You know the best part about the train journey, sir”, he asked me, his smile tinged with a delicate verve. “I’m afraid this is only the second time I’m on board”, I said. “What is it?”
“Speaking to her before my day starts, sir”, he shouted, as he scampered to the opposite door and made his way outside the compartment and onto the platform. I smiled. I knew how I was going to commute to work everyday. A journey that had begun in strife had evolved into an instant of awakening. A sense of realisation had dawned upon me. I seemed to have made the right choice.
How often have you been in a situation where there are two roads diverging into the wood ? When you are in high school, you have the choice between pursuing career paths. There are some that demand little effort beyond the established, conventional protocol. You can tread on these and experience the mainstream. Good name, good money. The bar of satisfaction doesn’t get to you. Your parents’ voices do instead. Failing to adhere to norms is a crime.
And then there are others where you must take the leap of faith. Venture beyond the realm of the prevalent and widely asserted. Those that require the investment of that extra mile — the ones that resemble the journey aboard the train. These are the choices that lead us to superior discovery. These are the choices that enable us to locate the truth between our thoughts. There is a thin line in between, and going across only needs a little push. But you’ve got to realise that even if the entire cosmos were to boil down and show you the light, it is you who must take the leap of faith. Nobody else has the green button. You do.
Influence is an inevitable element of life. When you grow up, you encounter a wide array of people, each singing his or her own melody. There’s two kinds of people out there — one in pursuit of purpose, others, not. The latter form a majority of our universe. How frequently are we drawn into doing something because of someone else ? Our perception often submits to that of the other. We end up doing without giving much thought. Our actions are a derivative of social trends, peer pressure and misconceptions about being the so called ‘stud’. We hated the geeks with round frames at school. We disliked history lessons; we were told to focus on Physics, Chemistry and Math only because the cohort had one characteristic in common — our admissions. We bunked classes not because we hated the calculus, but because we thought sitting in class was too mainstream. We spiked up our hair because our classmate caught the eye of the girl in the neighbouring class. We started listening to EDM and gothic metal not because we disliked Bryan Adams or the Backstreet Boys, but because we were tugged into believing they were feminine. Do you remember your first sips from your Buds and your Carlsbergs ? You hated the taste, don’t you ? Yet you gulped a 6 pack on a game night under the guardianship of the people around.
You act for others. You’re made to slip under the rug of social pressure. What you unknowingly break alliances with is your own identity. The evil takes over and you’re pulled into the vicious cycle of wrong-doings. Little do people realise that here too was a choice — a choice to drift away from the toxic groove and steer yourself clear of the vices. At every stage, you have a choice to hone your intellect and follow your passion no matter how bizarre it appears to the distant folk. You possess the ability to run without a shield because you know you’ve left the battlefield. You don’t get to choose whether the company you keep will stick around for a lifetime, but you certainly have a say in who makes your company. You have your Harvey Specters and Roger Federers, Barney Stinsons and Walter Whites — there’s a score of them. You pick up some idols from the field, some from the books, others from bad-ass flicks. But you’ve got to remember one thing — there is no bigger ‘stud’ than the one living up to his own identity. You wonder if its worth it. Whether venturing beyond conformity will do you harm. What you must remember is there’s no greater cowardice than the one where you cease to be yourself. They will laugh at you because you are different. You can laugh at them because they are all the same.
Going with the flow is one thing. Letting the flow decide for you is another. We’ve all been great warriors — all our lives. Battling against hatred, dislike and evil. Sometimes we fight our enemies, sometimes even our own. We provide some people the opportunity to hurt us. And we make ourselves gullible to the decisions of those people. Between you and your soul lies a barricade that prevents the entry of opposing forces; the first couple of layers are like jelly — penetrated and disintegrated without herculean effort. The next few are metallic — it needs a fair share of smelting to get past. And then there is your last bit. This last line of defence is a choice — a choice to decide if the opposing force has the strength to decimate you. We’re usually caught amidst the belief that the magnitude of this force is beyond our understanding. And that is where we’re wrong. It is you who decides the magnitude. No matter how strong, you choose between giving it the go, or not. And if you don’t give it the strength, you’re good. You put the killing between your teeth, but you don’t give it the power to do its killing. Its a metaphor, you see.
We are all mistaken sometimes; sometimes we do wrong things, things that have bad consequences. But it does not mean we are evil, or that we cannot be trusted ever afterward. On the other hand, we love with our hearts. We accept no less than a smoothly aligned stream of happiness and trust. We open ourselves to the warmth of that person and give him/her the power to cause us pain. We love until we break. And then we’re lost. We fail to accept the pain. No — the line musn’t curve. We are beings so disciplined and oriented we place ‘hurt’ beyond our cognisance. We can’t accept hurt from the ones we opened ourselves to. First we choose not to believe. Then we discover the challenge in pardoning. We take the blame and conjure ourselves into believing we made the wrong choice. There is an element of doubt.
You connive with yourself and fight for it once more. You choose your mind over your heart — perhaps you’re thinking about the well-being of the other — perhaps your sacrifice is the shield around you — you want to give it a chance. Don’t we all long for the pain to go away ! The more we try, the further it slips. Our threshold drops down to the ground. We plead and pray things turn around. But our love is an object so precious we can’t let it go. Its like your first dress, you know. You sew every corner that tears apart. You conceal every cut, for it is your one and only. But soon you realise the sewn slits are visible to the rest of the world. Your dress is tearing apart. You don’t know why all this is happening in the first place. The only thing you feel is fatigue; the sight of no shore — you left the land long ago. You feel like falling on your knees and begging. And then the begging feels futile too; the beating seems incessant. You’re going to feel it over and over again. Perhaps you’ll be good after reading this; perhaps you’ll feel enlightened and courageous about yourself for a while after this passage ends, but you are going in circles — you will temporarily circumvent the torment until you land at the same point. And for all you know, there is no cause.
Unfortunately, we chose non-acceptance. We were scarred so badly by the only person who had the ability to affect us. We found ourselves incapable of loving again; we lost faith in the very existence of love. We are in the middle of the ocean — clueless as to where the current will lead us. The pain started years ago, but we’ve lived with it for so long at that point we accept it as an inevitable part of ourselves. Suffering was caused by desire, we’d learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When we stop wishing things wouldn’t fall apart, we stop suffering when they do. And when you stop suffering, you realise that there too, was a choice — a choice between non-acceptance and forgiveness.
When you forgive someone you certainly release them from judgment, but without true change, no real relationship can be established. Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive. But should they finally confess and repent, you will discover a miracle in your own heart that allows you to reach out and begin to build between you a bridge of reconciliation. Forgiveness does not excuse anything. You may have to declare your forgiveness a hundred times the first day and the second day, but the third day will be less and each day after, until one day you will realise that you have forgiven completely. And then one day you will pray for its wholeness. And that will be the day when you realize you no longer recollect what had happened. Because you’ve forgotten. And there lies your answer — that the pain demanded to be felt. And now it demands to go away. You have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love. And somewhere, in the middle of that boat, the crests on the wave are subsiding. You have made it to the shore. You have forgotten. Because unless forgotten, it isn’t forgiven.
It seems simple now. You feel strong now. The coil has untwined. You don’t remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened. You are now free of the sin. You have forgiven, because you have returned to normalcy. You have chosen to love again. Yours was a story to forget.
….You have grown. Your old self has a fringe of grey hair around your mottled scalp. You have a wizened face and a back slightly hunched. With each movement there is the creak of old bones. You have the resigned look of one who knows that at your age life has stopped giving and only takes away. Now you go down memory lane and wonder what you remember from the journey. Its funny, how selective our memories are engineered to be. Most of it fails you, sir. But when you pull out all those chapters from the rusty attic, the one thing that you remember is…
“We don’t fall in love with people whose thoughts are in line with ours. We keep looking, until we end up choosing the ones that hurt us. Because when they do, is when we realise who has the power to affect us.” — Tanay
Wm. Paul Young, Liam O’ Flynn, John Green, Robert Frost, Heath Ledger, Alison Croggon, Criss Jami, Nikki Sixx, Ashley D. Wallis, Jocelyn Soriano, Buddha, Mother Teresa
Email me when Tanay Desai publishes or recommends stories