Praying for yourself
Death fascinates me a lot but I am not suicidal. To me, the inevitability of death makes it overwhelmingly charming. Some of the blame goes to our lack of progress in diagnosing what really happens to our consciousness once we are dead and gone. Granted our physical entity decomposes cell by cell, what happens to you? And that remains the crux of my fascination with this so-called dark topic. The more I read about it — be it in prose or poetry although I prefer the casual mystiqueness of the latter — I become convinced about our species’ ultimate dilemma. We know what to do while we are breathing but we have no clue what to do about the phase when our dear ones stop breathing. Our judges sentence criminals, forgetting how little is the gap between life sentence and death sentence. We are already sentenced to a fate we can’t predict. Speaking of unpredictability, I was recently reading about the last words uttered by people before they die. It’s interesting to learn that a lot of people (especially men) say mother in their respective languages. Maybe in that moment of final departure, they miss the one who brought them to the world the most.
We keep looking for ourselves in the thick forest of nostalgia knowing very well we’ve left that village a long time ago. But we are who we are. Our past is a humble mirror while our future is a proud reflection. And my dad was the proudest when I was a journalist with mid-day. He used to show my byline to whoever bothered to look. The fact that I earned peanuts — and when I say peanuts, I mean it; unlike those who earn north of 40K today and call it peanuts — didn’t bother him one bit. He was my biggest mascot; the fact that his prodigal son quit engineering like a coward barely hazed him. I became re-aware of it while watching a Turkish masterpiece called The Wild Pear Tree (2018). There is a tactile scene which took me back to the earliest parts of this decade: the young protagonist goes through his eccentric dad’s wallet only to find a newspaper clipping of his book review. Later, he almost chokes with tears while informing his dad that he’s the only one he personally knows who read his book.
The key to happiness is often negotiation, either with yourself or others. To some, this word converts to ‘compromise’ due to unreasonable circumstances. On purely commercial terms, what makes you happy today won’t keep you there for long. For instance, your salary. It’s a gift of greed (read: capitalism) that nothing is ever enough and yet, we continue to stay mum. People seldom advise you about the correct financial measures to be taken or share tips on how to secure more with less. One of the many reasons why this chasm exists is because we prefer not to talk publicly about the money we make. It’s a matter of weird secrecy even though you haven’t signed NDA with your employers. Which is, again, strange because people seem/sound extremely open to discussing more shameful topics like religion and politics even in public transport.
Noticed how every third blog post of mine mentions Mangalore in one way or the other? Today, it’s because of a survey from 2017 that ranked my favouritest Indian city above its more celebrated peers on quality of life. There were several factors to be considered here with one being the adherence to general cleanliness. No rocket science why smaller cities in India — Mysore, Indore, Vijaywada, etc. — tend to be tidier. One verb answer: belong. The citizens of smaller cities and upcoming towns behave like the city belongs to them and prefer to own up. They feel strongly about their home ground. Whereas in the bigger cities, the reasons to leave behind a mess are always better than the excuses to clean it up. Bigger city folks act like terrible guests on an extended vacation. If there’s one thing I hate more than lemon pickle, then littering would be it but I’ve learnt with time that one man can only do so much.
Amazing how words can be deceiving. Especially in English. When the imperial bastards couldn’t use the word ‘slaves’ anymore, they coined ‘indentured labourers’ to make themselves sound progressive. This plot twist in terminology is the reason why we have Caribbean names like Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Reepu Persaud and Shridath Ramphal. [Sidenote: Even Nicki Minaj’s second name comes from her dad’s Trinidadian heritage; it corrupted from Maharaj to Maraj.] The indentured labourers from India introduced the locals to cannabis and that’s why we hear the word ‘ganja’—a Sanskrit derivative of ganj meaning hills, where cannabis grow — repeatedly in Jamaican songs today. One small step for vocabulary, one great leap for history.
When in doubt, invent a culprit. That’s what must have happened with probably the oldest running system in the world: the caste system of India. Everybody in the food chain here puts the crown of misdeed on the person one rung below. Brahmins on Kshatriyas… Dalits on Mahadalits… and the train continues to run. Here, again, words, more than actions, play a major role in deciding how things are going to be like. Since the trick is in finding an evil that doesn’t exist, imagination had to be fired up on various fronts. After all, why were the Dalits called untouchables when the Brahmins didn’t want to be touched in the first place?
If you ask me whether I am religious, I would say no. I don’t visit — in organized religions, you attend, not visit — temple or follow any of the subscribed rituals. But as a kid, I followed whatever my amma asked me to. She is 66 now and continues to be a staunch believer in gods and doesn’t miss any of the customs/traditions my grandma once taught her. I remember asking her what to pray for and she said we should always pray for others and never ask anything for ourselves. And so I did. Until February 2002. That’s when she asked me to pray for myself. That’s how important SSC board exams were.
Last year, my favourite question used to be “how happy are you?” and this year, it’s “how many hours do you sleep?” In 2020, the question would be “how are you?” just to spice things up. The week gone by made me acknowledge the necessity of whatever little sleep I get as a double whammy of fever and diarrhea hit me for three straight nights. Turns out you can’t catch a wink when your lower back is gone, your stomach has so much to say and you’re sprinkling sewage water from the wrong end. I am recovering my strength now but I don’t aim to sleep 8 hours uninterrupted anymore. 3-4 is more than enough. Besides, if I sleep for 8 hours straight, the first thing I’ll do on waking up is reach office and put down my papers.
Finally watched Gully Boy (2019) last night. Which also marked the first time I entered a cinema hall since the April of 2016, the month The Jungle Book (2016) released in India. However, there are very few movies that outshine their trailers and Gully Boy is definitely a part of this tiny club. Goes without saying I could relate to it mainly because I come from the slums. I know exactly how it it is out there: people desire change but at the same time, stay very afraid of change. And when Murad (Ranveer Singh) chooses hip-hop to convey his deepest angst, he naturally has very little understanding of how music works, forget the overall impact of his decisions. But by the end, he moves the needle a bit towards the cracks through which light could pour in and illuminate the folks around him. Maybe that is the biggest triumph of this musical beaut.
