Long streaks and short lives
If you concentrate on pain, you’ll miss out on life. A new mantra I’ve created for myself, something I keep telling myself throughout the day. Because I am not normal. I am not like you. I live too little but I feel too much. I am never OK. I neither abuse my body nor do I exercise. However, some part of me is always hurting and if it’s not hurting, it’s crying for attention. Earlier, my assumption was based on the fact that I’ve cross the river called 30 but, no, that isn’t the case. It’s just me. Nobody else in my age category is facing any of the sordidly pathetic issues like I do on a daily basis. I am tired of my body. I can’t wait to squeeze the soul of me. Sorry for being melodramatic here but my recent tryst with dental surgery hasn’t gone down too well. It’s been over 5 days but the stitches are nowhere close to comfort. The only pleasant outcome to have emerged out of this ordeal is my brief return to bad poetry:
Is the pain in me?
Or am I in pain?
It hurts.
Oh, it hurts!
Like a suture should
– wet, sensitive and dark.
For a toothache is worse than a heartache.
Hurts when I swallow.
Hurts when I sneeze.
Hurts when I yawn.
Hurts when I breathe.
Hurts when I move my neck at ease.
Hurts when I eat.
Hurts when I drink.
Hurts when I sleep.
Hurts when I begin.
No painkiller can relieve me.
No doctor can help.
I have to walk through this.
And grow to become a stronger man.
Cows are a fascinating piece of India’s culture. The ignorants would like you to assume — served with a strong dose of modernity — that they are merely a figment of our reality. Yet, that’s far from the truth. They are much more than that because they’ve always been much more than that. Apart from the economic value they held in society, their rural association brought a sense of divinity to the family that raised them. Even today, if you observe them carefully, it’s easy to understand why they are synonymous with motherhood. Left to their own devices, they will be slower than a sloth. But when it comes to their calves, they will spring to life and will chase the van that steals their young ones. Yes, it goes without saying that all mothers, irrespective of whether they are sapiens or not, are attached to their kids but this animal manages to transcend its set personality so drastically that it makes you wonder. On one hand, she is the epitome of innocence while on another, she is producing methane to ensure we all die soon.
At what age are you supposed to parent your parents? When they get swayed by the invisible hand of WhatsApp and share something outrageously false? Or when they utter something that could have marginally made sense in 1967? I believe the answers lie in your equation with them. Chances are they will never grow up old enough to be your children again.
In the corporate world, there is tiny money and then there is big money. A majority of the people in the world fall in the first category. Only a minority gets to taste the latter. This is so because of a very simple construct in place: it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. The question hasn’t been the want of will or the lack of skill. The arithmetic here is rather convoluted; so complex that only an excel sheet can hide its inaccuracies. To raise above the rest, you’ll have to prove that you are already the best. Being better won’t be enough. You are the product first and foremost. Sell hard. Sell well. Such is the intensity here, your only way forward is upward. And that’s why corporations pays you big — not for what you did but what you can do.
As a kid you thought life is what happened to others. A little later in life, you got your hint. Maybe it happened when that pussy pimple showed up on your morning mirror. Or maybe it happened when you had wet dreams against your control. Anyhow, it happened and it started happening again and again. Until you reached a point where you were like — “My life sucks!” One of the many advantages of being an adult is you aren’t answerable to your childhood. When you were younger, you were answerable to your future version, which led to parental questions like — “What kind of a man will you become?”
Nothing allows me greater joy than seeing people’s jaws drop. I achieve this spectacle by dropping trivia bombs on unsuspecting colleagues and ilk. It’s amazing how little we truly know about the world we inhabit and the roaring gap of knowledge there is left to be filled. Internet is awesome but how much has it helped in arresting ignorance or the spread of disinformation? As a fallback, I go in to my preach mode often. It’s disgusting to notice fellow human beings haven’t brushed up their basics yet. You can’t come to the table to have lunch (read: discuss caste) and then be mindblown that there are upper castes and lower castes amongst desi Muslims, Christians and Sikhs. Some of the fault lines exist because of our indifference but most of them will continue to stay solely because we read too little and assumed too much.
George Constanza has become my spirit animal. Having watched so many TV series over the years, I am yet to come across a character who personifies my insecurities and paranoia so aptly. Here is a fellow who detests himself as strongly as he loves the idea of being in love (or affection). Barring his sexist/misogynistic tendencies of the ’90s, he is pretty much like me. He is always thinking a lot and doing a lot little. Good luck is never on his side and if at all he finds some, it turns bad faster than the milk in our fridge. I am not balding yet but I am greying at supersonic rate so I won’t be highly bothered if I start showing my pate. I don’t care anymore. Like me, he is harmless except to himself. And to top it all, he is immune to evolution. Give him 9 seasons and yet he remains exactly the same while the rest of the protagonists reveal symptoms of maturity.
Not very long ago, out of the 25 classical games I played, I won 20. A remarkable streak at my level as I cracked in to the 1000 point club. Following which, I lost some easy games due to silly errors and am currently stuck at 1038. I presumed my form to propel me towards 1100. But not happening anytime soon. Sick as it is, I grow overwhelmed by my own genius sometimes. Particularly when I make a brilliant move and keep thinking— “How the hell did I think of it? Am I a hidden talent? A late bloomer?” — only to stumble in the following moves. Serves me right.
Can there be a country out there that craves a parallel as much as ours does? I am yet to come across a ‘national narrative’ so steeped in seeking resonance that it makes you wonder whether we’ll ever be enough. Much of the blame for this inferiority complex can be placed on the colonial crowns that ruled us for centuries. But for how long? Still, I feel there is a stronger need to pull ourselves up and own our stories. We don’t necessarily have to repeat history, so to cliche, because our stories are unique. Our circumstances, be it the Raj or the Partition or the Emergency, were unique. If we keep looking for parallels — whether it’s Dalit struggle vis-à-vis the Black Power movement or the Muslim lynching vis-à-vis the Tutsi mass murder — we’ll lose out on the essence of nuance. And before we can grasp the situation, we’ll turn into a vessel filled with empty sounds that lead us nowhere.
Nothing should scare you more than the possibility of becoming a relic of the past. Nostalgia is cool. Irrelevance isn’t. Find a balance between the two as soon as possible. By design, humans ponder and pander where there is no call for either. Old ideas are here for a purpose: to make us think anew. They are like seeds for tomorrow, their fruits aren’t supposed to be same. They must change with time without any condition. Except for the core ideas of our civilization — planting paddy or milking a goat — almost everything adapted to the wind of newness to stay relevant.
While walking back to my seat after lunch in office, I had a fabulous idea. However, by the time I reached my spot, I couldn’t remember what it was. Perhaps it was a premise for a short story about a child who looks out of the window, hoping against hope, that the world would be fine if she keeps looking out. Or maybe it was a tweet about my intense desire to burn down the world before Trump succeeds at it. Perhaps it was a rather late comeback for a joke that I must have heard earlier. Whatever it was, I lost it in transit as I went to the washroom before talking to a colleague about how much my swollen jaw and dental stitches bother me. Lesson learnt: Write it down before you pee it out.
Somebody I know recently laid out all his clothes and other worldly belongings on his bed and left for the beach. His master plan was to drown in the sea but a few hours later, he came back shivering and informed his mother that the weather isn’t suitable for suicide.
