Grief can lead to less grief
The term ‘rough book’ must be a subcontinental concept — if not extremely Indian — concept in the course of education. My earliest memory of it goes back to my first day in primary school. Believe it or not, I remember my very first day of first standard. And the reason being, my amma got me a completely plain notebook. She took the name too seriously and thought “rough book” meant “no printed lines on them”. I was the only one in the classroom who was holding a book filled with blank pages. 6 years years later, I received a foolscap rough book for the first time. Again, I remember this day very clearly because of the wise thoughts printed on the last page. At the top was the quote “The art of living is to avoid pain” said by Mr. Anonymous. That particular sentence remains etched in my memory, simply because I’ve learned over the years that it is true only as long as you avoid pain. Otherwise, the art of living is to focus on things that don’t have the power to hurt you.
We are here for many reasons but the one that stands out is our ability to fill our voids somehow. As a case study, let’s say you are aiming for that fancy car as you genuinely believe that it’s going to make you feel better about yourself. There is an emptiness in you that can only be filled by that automobile. Similarly, we aim for several such material as well as non-material accomplishments to fulfill ourselves. Sometimes, we succeed. Most of the time, we don’t. This endless game called void-filling has beckoned us since time immemorial. It forms, in all probability, the very basis of our many civilizations. By sheer accident, we’ve come a long way seeking what can’t be achieved (spirituality) and achieving what can’t be sought (technology) in the first place. However, we are bound to decline further when we let our void replace who we are.
There is a beauty in everything a living being does. Whether it’s the way in which one eats or preens or hunts or mates or sleeps — movement gives rise to a constant stage of painting. Various strokes, various patterns. We might belong to different species and race but we live pretty much similarly. On closer inspection, we can notice how all beings share so much in common: two birds building a nest is not very different from a human couple prioritizing their kid; a lion pretending to be in agony when his cub bites him (to teach the young one the laws of the jungle) resembles your father telling you when you were younger that stealing is not cool. Our similarities outrun our differences. Yet, we strut around acting as if the world begins and ends with humans alone. Never before has the need to connect with nature been more pronounced than right now.
A language takes centuries to build. And many a time, it grows at such a pace that it becomes impossible for its students to keep up with it. This seems to be the case with acronym-based communication in the online world. Just when we evolved enough to unanimously acknowledge that SMS lingo isn’t a step-up for our species, we dragged ourselves down to the unsaid (read: typed) codes of urban dictionary. NGL but it’s laughable how we presume to have saved time by misering on the correct spellings. What are we trying to prove anyway? LMK WDYT ABT DIS, BFF.
Speaking of languages, syntax rules don’t always apply to everything. A prime example of this exception is grief. In other words, we all grieve in our own ways. Some of us scream. Some of us don’t utter a word. Some cry all day long. In this process, we find a common ground, not with others but with ourselves. In our grief, we weep a lot but through our tears, we see ourselves for what we are made up of. In our normal life, we end up living like each other. We do copy each other’s moves all the time. But when it comes to special scenarios like loss and betrayal, we magically turn into us and grieve uniquely.
Like a good rumour, one epic word can give birth to so many more. Take for instance, the Persian word ‘gard’. It means dust in Farsi. But it doesn’t stop there. It is the womb for several other words that you might be familiar with. I am sure I am missing out on a lot of them but just top of my head, let me share some etymological wonders. Beginning with ‘gardish’ which means motion, just like dust in our universe is always moving. Another common word ‘gardi’ meaning crowd — dust participles are always crowded too, no? And before I forgot, what about gardullah? An addict covered in smoke. Can a word get more universal than gard?
When we watch a movie to escape our realities, does it make us the escape artist or should we call cinema that here? Think about it. I thought about this distinction while watching the Tamil movie K.D. (Karuppudurai) on Netflix. Goes without highlighting that it’s a must-watch, the story circles around an old man (KD) and his friendship with an orphan boy (Kutty). Throughout, you’ll notice how cute and smart the kid is, complemented by the affable oldie. There are many episodal sub-plots in there; my favourite was the one when KD (re)connects with his childhood love. One can only wonder how many such stories die without an ending everyday. Anyway, both the protagonists aren’t trying to settle as they seem to be on a random journey. But the truth is they are trying to escape. Which is interesting in a lot of ways: they aren’t alone in this. Maybe four parties are trying to do so — the kid, the oldie, the cinema and the audience.
I don’t admit this openly or as frequently as I should but I absolutely love my job. Been at it for close to 5 years (will touch 5 in 2 weeks) and I must admit that of all the three jobs that I’ve held in my life so far, this has been the most effective. It’s one thing to do something and it’s quite another to actually see the change happening in front of you. Perhaps a lot of the credit goes to the culture our organization imbibes and the ethos it has enshrined. That said, it can be stressful at times because if you aren’t attentive, you are basically shirking your responsibilities. And this can lead to environs of stress-induced moments. But again, the catch here is once you’re used to doing things in a certain way, then you want the uncertain things to be done in a certain way too. The struggle is to stay above the scent of stress and think thoroughly. When you manage to do that, you feel alive. Yes, there are ‘chilled out’ options in the market but the question is, what will I do without feeling impactful?
If
You
Started
At
The
Bottom,
When
The
Fuck
Are
You
Going
To
Stop
Talking
About
The
Top?
If you’ve read me for a while, you must have noticed that I write heavily against materialism. Not because I care a lot about our planet (which I do) but because I want to emphasize that I care about you (which I don’t). With few stuff (what an apt word designed for our generation!), we not only live lighter but also breathe deeper. Our worldly desires are only good at entangling us to unnecessary worries. Anyway, I recently bought a black table lamp and right now, it’s my most precious possession. Thanks to its presence on the table, I bask in the glory of nocturnal reading and writing down notes (one-liner, blog paragraph ideas, work-related lists, etc.) and feel like I am moving closer to finally becoming the writer that I knew was hidden in me.
OK.
I am getting ahead of myself but retail therapy indeed works wonders — at least temporarily methinks.
I’ve got a lot of respect for people who bullshit without knowing that they are bullshitting. It’s those who are aware of the difference who get my goat. In an era where everybody has an opinion on everything under the sun — incredible how nobody has an opinion on nothingness anymore — it’s important to draw the line between foolery and fuckery. The first category falls under foolery. The second category is evil and enjoys fucking with others. If you are well read and open to ideas, you are safe from both of them. You better keep reading, absorbing all the possible angles and directions, and stay away from them because their Grade A nonsense is best left to their tribe.
Heroes live amongst us. They aren’t restricted to the mental prison of comic books. These individuals make our world a safer and sweeter place just by their presence. Doesn’t matter who they are serving and what for, the end result is others are reaping the fruits of their love. We don’t read much about them in our news headlines because good news is equal to no news in these times. It’s up to you to dig and reach out to these folks and learn a thing or two from them. They turn deserts into forests, neglected villages into hopeful places, hunger into sustainability, amongst other things. Sometimes, the government read their names somewhere and tries to rub off their glory by awarding them state honours. You, in your personal experience, must have heard and read about a few of these individuals. I hope you continue to know them; always remember know news is good news. And if you look around, there is always a dearth of helping hands — you might very well be the person who you’re raring to be inspired from. For instance, my maternal grandmother, widowed at 31, raised 5 kids on her own. Although she herself never learned how to read or write, she made sure each one of them went to school. She did her bit bravely and left behind a positive change. We need more such examples.
Childhood is filled with fables. At a very young age, we are taught that the world belongs to the adults and they get to sign our norms. We are supposed to follow what they say. Small wonder why we grow up with several strange assumptions. Apparently, we are fed misinformation for our own sake. As a kid, even at the age of 12 or 13, I thought a couple can’t have kids without getting married first. Irrespective of which faith they belonged to, marriage was compulsory for a man and woman to conceive. My imaginative mind quickly concocted god’s direct intervention in the conception of a baby. Imagine my disappointment when I learned that god doesn’t give a damn about our species. In fact, we are one of the few creatures who have sex for pleasure and can have kids throughout the year.
There are many ills associated with our culture and wrongly so. One of the worst predicaments being it actively discourages us from loving our body. Backed by some sinister logic of humility, we are supposed to be unsatisfied with the way we were born: your skin isn’t fair enough; your nose could have been longer, your hair could have been denser, and so on. Obviously, our culture is a mutation of so many events that unfolded over the past several centuries but if there is one-point solution to this condition, then it’d be hidden somewhere in our quest for physical perfection. This, despite knowing that the moon is imperfect and so are the mighty mountains and all other creatures in the world — and yet they appear to be in awe of themselves; some of the creatures are constantly licking themselves. Which begs the question, who the hell are we to hate our body?
