Now or neverland
Humour can be found in the most trivial of objects and lucky are those eyes that see them. Most of the time, what happens is we get so enthralled by what’s happening in front of us that we don’t have the gumption to wonder what could have happened behind the stage. Laughter generally takes place in the grey area called what-could-have. Over the past weekend, my colleague-turned-friend-turned-flatmate Vivek and I were walking to a nearby convenience store when a squirrel tried to cross the road, before deciding to abandon the plan halfway. At this point, Vivek looked straight at me and said, “Squirrels always act like they just remembered that they’ve forgotten to turn off their stove at home.” The new year might be young but this particular observation takes the cake for now.
India is a lot of things but it’s not the land where places of education are desecrated. In fact, our civilization bows to the building that houses teachers as much as it bows to the teachers themselves. Of course, we can’t live in the past but there is a reason why vidya and mandir are synonymous when it comes to the concept of school. Yet, the recent attacks on the students and staff of JNU makes you second-guess what would be left of our future if the present is soaked in the blood of blind hatred. Going by the political equations here, common sense will take longer than usual to prevail.
Almost everything about a workplace is perfunctory except the friendships we manage to build (sometimes). Even the Monday morning conversations are banal because of unedited repetition. Not very long ago, we used to ask each other, feigning absolute interest, how our weekends went by. Nowadays, such questions are more communal — a word that is similar to another of my favourite Gurgaon word, dust — because they mean opposite things at the same time — communal can be together as well as conflicted, just like dust can mean accumulating dust as well as removing dust — as we have uniform weekends that are safely spent on streaming content and staying indoor as much as possible. Venturing out is risky (pollution alert), hence the last couple of years were effectively aimed at obliterating what our school teachers once called ‘hobbies’.
I can’t stand (or sit) award functions and Golden Globes is no different. However, Ricky Gervais’s impertinent jokes on Hollywood are the kind of stuff worth appreciating for their teeth. True to his style, he didn’t spare anyone in the room. The lack of preachiness is the best part about his words; he wasn’t there to change the status quo. He simply wanted to be a laughing mirror with a glass of beer with British accent. There aren’t many like him in comedy today and for obvious reasons: he neither cares nor cares whether we care. It’d be a treat to see him host Oscars but we know that is never going to take place.
Speaking of inevitable events, Joaquin Phoenix has come a long way. And by that, I mean — to the award galleries. From being somebody who famously equated the Academy Awards with a carrot dangling in front of actors, he graciously accepts the honour nowadays. Yet, his reformed self was very persuasive in his acceptance speech this morning when he received the Best Actor gong for Joker (2019) — deservedly so. More than the thespian, it was the believer in him that shone so brightly. He thanked the organizers for providing plant-based food on the menu and went a step further by requesting the hoity-toity folks in the audience to “make sacrifices” to fight against climate change. If you don’t know what he means by that, you are part of the problem too. For the record, he turned vegan at the age of three and knows what he’s talking about.
No matter what you do, there are some things you’ll never be good at. For instance, I’ve realized over time how I can never dance simply because my body misses rhythm as badly as our government is missing logic. Similarly, I’ve noticed certain characteristics that come in the way of the development of traits. Somebody who is a bad listener is bound to make a terrible communicator, even if he speaks well. Moreover, there are so many people around us, both online and offline, who read too much but study too little. They see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. Thus, complete package is a lie. Nobody mortal can possess everything one needs. You get something, you don’t get a lot. That’s how it works. Jerry Seinfeld might be the finest observational comedian in the world but he is also one of the all-time worst actors. Lucky Ali’s ballads are timeless, as they touch your heart wherever and whenever you hear them, but he has aged awfully.
In 2020, my ultimate aim is to be so freaking fit that I can lift my emotional baggage without anybody’s help. So, how am I going to achieve this long-pending goal? I don’t know. Like the unpredictable weather, I am quite uncertain about stuff that directly impact my health. If I put my mind to it, I can go the distance though— no pun intended — but my running shoes haven’t ran in a long while. Well, like my boss loves to say, baby steps. Need to pick up smaller targets and then hope to hit the goal eventually. Can’t start out by aiming for washboard abs right away. My body has grown so lethargic since my northward move that it’s hard to say that I am the same guy who used to chase local trains in Mumbai before 2015. Today, I am that old man who suffers from headrush every time he picks up something from the floor. According to a study, an average person in possession of a smartphone spends about 5 miles a year scrolling. Sad as it is, I didn’t even run a mile in 2019. But then, baby steps await.
What is it about the world coming to an end with an infernal fire? The ongoing bushfire in Australia has to be the most horrific natural disaster that I’ve seen on record. Yes, the tsunami on Indian ocean was gigantic but that didn’t last for days on end. All those burning and burnt images coming out of Down Under fills you with a deep sense of helplessness. Somewhere inside you is a person who wants the Creator to push the restart button but then, there is also somebody inside you who wants to save the planet. It’s now or never.
The dictionary defines ‘penmanship’ as the art or skill of writing by hand. Although we spend close to two decades learning how to write and then perfect how to write, we are currently on the timeline of obsoletes. Imagine how many of us are going to continue to write in 2035. In my view, there are many good that came out of MS Word but its finest contribution was it made everybody’s handwriting similar. Obviously, this is bad news for those who write like a dream; the ones blessed with pearl-like handwriting. Overall, it would be a pity if the future witnesses the demise of penmanship, let alone, calligraphy.
I am no social media maven but if you are keen on experiencing the wonders of the world on Instagram, do yourself a favour and follow nature-centric accounts like NatGeo, Discovery, Earth, etc. They will help remind you how important the so-called animals and birds are to our ecosystem. Also, they are pure and delightful and a lot more fun to see than filtered selfies of people you meet over the weekend anyway.
