The pursuit of magic
When you don’t succeed, you don’t always fail. Sometimes, you learn how to not to fail again. Which could also convert in to your greatest learning ever. And that bit is invaluable. Like, years ago, you learned how touching fire is not an advisable act to repeat. Many a time, we don’t acknowledge what we have learned and confuse our mistakes for our weaknesses. Let’s say, if you set out for a month-long goal and manage to drag yourself through it with flourishing results, you’d consider yourself a success. However, if you fail to stay committed to the original plan, you’d easily deem yourself a failure. With such a binary vision, nobody can see whether it was a mistake to assume that month is a good enough timeframe to start an experiment on. Why not a day? Or two? Or a week? Why go for 4 weeks at once, huh?
Reading is my favourite pastime. In fact, I’d rate it higher than consuming cinema. The difference between the two is that I can read fast but it’s impossible to watch quickly. Although speed can not be the common denominator here, I wish things were different. With practice, reading can get faster and you can become competitive: you might take a minute to read a page while I’d finish it within a few seconds. Similarly, I type really fast too. There are people in my life who can vouch that I am in such a hurry to finish what I’ve got to say that it doesn’t matter to me whether others understand what I’ve said. I eat visibly fast, especially if I am alone. All these characteristics point towards the crux of my problem: I want to get done with things. Which begs a million dollar question — am I getting things done properly?
For the largest part of my life, I’ve held a longing to write a book. 33 summers have surpassed by and I am nowhere close to the starting line. The root of this desire lies in my childhood when somebody wise in our chawl told me about the power of words. Now, after procrastinating and making excuses after excuses, for years, I can safely conclude that in your lifetime, a lot of books will happen to you but you can only happen to those books you manage to write.
My Pakistani friend is one of the sweetest souls on this planet but will say the darndest things in the most convincing manner. She recently took my case for not visiting the dentist for tooth extraction. As a matter of principle, I don’t argue online but readily make an exception with her. Apparently, I want to be in pain because I don’t trust those from the medical field. To be fair, this is not entirely true. In my experience, I haven’t been able to find doctors/dentist in my adulthood who could match the brilliance of those gentlemen from my childhood. There’s a tragic thread of nostalgia attached here. So, the trust is missing. As myopic as it may sound, I have a strong feeling that I won’t come out ‘cured’ from the impending dental surgery required inside my mouth. So, my friend tells me how I am pushing time unnecessarily when I can just go through the process once and for all. Maybe she is correct. Or maybe I was right when I told her — “Ajeeb qism ka pyaar ho gaya hai iss wisdom tooth se.”
First thing first, there is no such thing as an ‘idea of India’. And if you think there is, then you are being narrow-minded. Plain and simple. India is too vast and diverse and chaotic and overwhelming to be encapsulated within an idea. In all probability, there are various ideas of India. And each one of them can be factually legit. Yet, none one of them have the heart or the soul to respect the human rights of transgenders in the country. There are over 2 million of them, effectively making them a minority, but they continue to struggle for the most basic of needs. With hardly any political representation, they finally earned the right to vote in 1994 but it wasn’t until 2014 — when the Supreme Court institutionalized the concept of ‘Third Gender’ — they could get into a position to exercise their enfranchisement. Even today, despite so much information available to quell the misinformation around them, our society continues to mistreat them in ways much beneath the codes of humanity. Come to think of it, at least in urban India where people don’t care about the caste of the person sitting next to them in public transportation, the hijras are the real untouchables of our times.
Different people nurture different passions. One can be zealous about identifying birds from their cries while others can find solace in capturing the changing shades of the evening sky. Fortunately, I am surrounded by people who are rather unique in their pursuit of satisfaction. Last weekend, one such friend flew all the way down to Chennai, drove up to Sriharikota, to witness ISRO’s much-awaited Chandrayaan-2. To his colossal dismay, the lunar mission was called off due to technical snag. Imagine his disappointment. Anyway, he can do good with the fact that he witnessed something he wouldn’t have otherwise: 5000+ people sighing in unison as soon as the announcement was made.
As we are getting more and more comfortable in our comfort zone, we tend to boost the volume of our echo chambers. And we become so obsessed with ourselves that we just don’t want to hear the other side’s story. In case we don’t correct this disorder, it would lead to severe consequences. After a while, we can start suffering from the worst form of God Complex: Save Mode. Despite having evidence to the contrary, we’d believe that we are going to create an impact like never before. If only we could pause and see how history repeats itself, particularly when it comes to non-authentic struggles. Are we really naive enough to assume that the Tibetans’ fight for self-determination can be dictated by non-Tibetans? Or for that matter, the Kurds and the Rohingyas and the Yazidis and the Palestinians and the Balochis an the Kashmiris (both at home and in exile) and the natives of several lands spread far and wide? The same lens can be used to question, how can any of them ever grab justice without them actively deciding for themselves on how the narrative is going to be like?
The world is fast changing and nobody is to be blamed anymore. Thanks to which, it’s always been difficult for the older generation to keep up with the young blood. Turns out even the youth is finding it incredibly hard to stay updated nowadays. Once upon a time, people felt deep sadness when something they loved left them. For what it’s worth, we’ve reached an era where we leave the things we love so frequently that we don’t remember anymore what is it that we loved in the first place. Was it a trend? Was it a fashion? Or was it the sheer horror of not being part of the circle? After all, nobody wants to be alone, particularly when it’s safer to be alone together.
At the beginning of 2019, I wrote how I wanted to be a paragon of positivity, the patron saint of sanguine thoughts, and an epitome of all things nice and warm about being alive. Spoiler: None of that shit happened. I am still a negative person who gets uncomfortable when people sound too optimistic about tomorrow. Not that I like this feature but I genuinely hope to see a change soon. From my experience, and not others’ tales of faith, I’ve learnt that there is room for magic in this world — with terms and conditions: a person has to be hopeful under all circumstances. There is magic only in hope. Nothing else comes close. For instance, a single mother doing 4 jobs to ensure her child has a better future has her foundation built on hope. And she can’t afford to be negative about anything in her life. If that isn’t magical, what is?
