Love them? Let them know!
Is it possible to be fond of everyone around us? A simple answer is no. The complicated answer is maybe. Every little association requires an ample investment of time and attention. Before you even acknowledge it, you build a degree of familiarity, if not admiration. We soak like a sponge in our daily existence, mostly even without realizing it. For instance, a new colleague joins your team and within a few months or so, that person is influencing the content you consume on Netflix and the choices you make otherwise. Sometimes, you’d notice that you use the phrases that he drops in his conversations. You didn’t plan on any of these assimilation or transformations, now, did you? It’s not necessary that you took to the person immediately. Perhaps you didn’t even find him interesting but over a period of time, your behaviour changed accordingly. Similarly, you don’t like a song at first. You listen to it again and again. You develop a hang of it. I guess this is exactly what happens with people too.
When you think of non-veg food, you might automatically think of chicken or mutton but pork happens to be the most widely consumed meat in the world. Which means pig farming is a big deal in major parts of the world. Spain, USA and Germany are the top-3 pork exporters and this oinky ecosystem thrives on positive marketing. If you read a bit about it, you’ll be amazed by how much money is spent on highlighting the delicious goodness as well as on suppressing the scathing studies from reaching public purview. Not very different from the way Big Pharma operates in uprooting all negative noise around unethical testings and productions, etc. Far, far away from this mess is a lonely — possibly the loneliest — pig on the planet. His name is Khanzir (the Pashto word for pig) and he lives in Kabul, not aware of the title he carries: the only porcine creature in the whole of Afghanistan. He probably doesn’t even know why he is alive though. Just like the rest of us.
Speaking of animals, our species like to take a higher standing solely on the merit of its excesses. No other being exhibits this mindset so darn openly. A blue whale is well aware of its enormity but it doesn’t go around bullying in the ocean. On the contrary, its gentleness is as natural as its tendency to mate in absolute darkness. A human, on the other hand, believes that he is inherently superior and his prime is unbeatable. This attitude reflects in his vocabulary too. But it comes with a heavy dose of irony. Take for example, the Urdu (jaanwar) and Hindi (praani) terms for animals. Both have the strong base of life (jaan/praan) in it, implying that the so-called animals have a life like humans do. However, when it’s time for derision, we employ these very words to imply that animals are, well, animals.
Did you know why Mike Pence, the Veep of America, was entrusted with handling the COVID-19 crisis? Brace up for the height of Trumpism: “He has nothing else to do.” Yes, these were the words the Orange Man uttered during the press conference. To no one’s surprise, I presume. So far, there have been 1.3 million active cases in the US, with over 80,000 people already dead. Imagine the amount of panic — and rightly so — we’d be going through if India showcased similar figures. This when India has over a billion people more than America. There have been many crises during Trump’s era but nothing can beat the ongoing figures. During the 2016 president elections, I remember telling my wife that if Trump becomes the POTUS, the joke would be on American people. Trump won’t be the joke. When you rise to the highest possible chair in democracy, you cease to be a vector of humour. You become something far worse; you turn dangerous. Going by his actions (and inactions), the former reality TV star has long crossed the yellow line of danger.
One year ago, in April of 2019, I completed a Vipasanna meditation course. It was, in all fairness, one of the finest accomplishments of my life. To be there for 10 days and diligently following the meditation techniques was a huge feat against my indifferent nature. Although I haven’t practised much since then, I would recommend the retreat to whoever is looking for some calm. In fact, by the end of it, you’d start appreciating the chaos in your existence and might learn to look at your problems from a different angle. Different individuals pick up different gyaan. Two takeaways from my experience — inside and outside. Inside the meditation hall, the guru keeps repeating “bhavatu sabbe mangalam” — meaning “may all beings be happy” in Pali — and you are bound to look at all living beings in a kinder light. Once you are outside, you will notice your breathing keenly from time to time whether you are bored or upset or happy or lost in thoughts.
When we think of dinosaurs, we tend to think of the Jurassic Age. Steven Spielberg is responsible for this singular perception. Left to libraries, most of us wouldn’t even bother to learn how or when these massive creatures existed. Nobody is to be blamed. We are perennially lazy beings who prefer little to zero efforts and it’s not Hollywood’s fault to make the most of their imagination. Anyway, coming back to scientific reality, a lot about these dinosaur movies are inaccurate. There is no way we’d be seeing tall trees instead of taller mushrooms; mushrooms dominated the planet in those days. In the same vein, a majority of the dinosaurs were vegetarians. Which is so unlike the murderous T-Rex image printed on our collective conscience. Again, nobody is at fault here as entertainment doesn’t seek the approval of paleontologists. However, the greatest lesson dinosaurs taught us was, whether there are trees or mushrooms, whether one is vegetarian or not, when our time is out, everybody is packing up.
Who you pay respect to with your time is your call. And there is no obeisance more sacred than attention. When you consume content by a particular person, it doesn’t matter whether you like or dislike that person, the content creator had already won. If you didn’t understand this equation earlier, please welcome to the Information Age. In the olden simpler days, if you didn’t agree with somebody, you ignored and moved on. Not anymore. Nowadays, you’ll spend your most precious gift — which is time if you haven’t learnt already — on stuff that doesn’t nourish you in any way. That’s how you become a troll; active or passive is an earned distinction. In one word, this trend is disturbing and in another, it’s plain crazy. I am all for cohesion of thoughts but I have a red boundary in place. Once you strike out in my book, you are out for good. You will never find me hearing anything Arnab Goswami or Sudhir Chaudhary have to say. Never enjoyed TV news, not missing anything. Similarly, I wouldn’t care to spend as much as two minutes on what the erstwhile Dilli Durbari cabal has to write. Followed those people during my younger days before realizing that they aren’t objective enough. Insofar, what’s the point of listening to what Sadhguru or Arundhati have to say about critical issues? What exactly are their qualifications apart from drawing narrow conclusions from their gilded cages? As an individual, you choose your crooners for yourself. They are busy selling a side of a story — not even an entire story — and it’s up to us whether we want to stay charmed by their storytelling or go on a personal quest to learn and understand much more.
There were some scenes in Silicon Valley where references to immortality were made. Rose-eyed folks from the tech world fiddling with the idea of overcoming the ageing process somehow. Well, I don’t know whether to believe Harari as he prophesied new frontiers of medical science or to keep my head down and accept the helplessness coronavirus has exposed us to. Yes, when you break it down to basics, COVID-19 belongs to a family of flu but that doesn’t discount the fact that there have been close to 300,000 casualties in less than 5 months. For all our talks about becoming Methuselahs from this century, we are yet to find a cure for COVID-19.
When you love someone, let them know. Whether they are your parents, siblings, friends, neighbours, strangers, etc. Protocols don’t matter. Just let them know. FYI. No conditions attached. Just let them know the way sun lets us know that Gurgaon summer sucks hotballs. What this would do is lessen the undue burden of knowledge on your shoulders. It’s only after you set this extra load of information free that you find yourself free. The response you’ll receive — if you receive at all — isn’t your headache. Consider it a bonus.
Last week, I turned 34 and also completed four years of marital bliss. Yes, I got married on my birthday. Being a visionary, I decided beforehand to lessen one date from memory. My day was normal, quarantined and foodish. On the other hand, as is the case with social media every passing year, people were supernice and shared lots of heartwarming messages, particularly on Twitter and Instagram. It definitely made my day but at the same time, they added a layer of responsibility. Turns out I’ve built a place in their heart already and an unwritten social contract dictates that I continue to churn content. Which made me think, what if I stop tomorrow and quit all these platforms at once? What happens to my place in their hearts then? After all, you can’t invite me to a place I don’t belong to and then accuse me of being lost, no?
