The season of love
Most things happen to you while some people happen to you. You may not understand in the very beginning but you build your gist as you mature. Speaking of ‘things’, every incident in your life is a work of motion. You either collide into something or something collides into you. Either way, the aim is to reach a destination somehow. Similarly, people are primarily vectors of your story. They carry you from one point to another. In Urdu, there is a beautiful word called rifaaqat — which technically means companionship — but it encompasses all those who help you grow by staying in your orbit. In essence, they help you bide time but on closer inspection, they do much more than that. They show you how to live better. And in all fairness, you must learn to be grateful to them for not abandoning you sooner than necessary. Speaking of folks who nourish you without making a sound, I must admit that I have quite a few in my circle. I cherish them for the way they are: kind, humourous, insightful, quiet, loud and most importantly, tolerant. Being a difficult person who doesn’t gel in with the set social conventions, I’ve got no choice but to appreciate those around me. If it weren’t for these embodiments of rifaaqat, I wonder where I would have been today. In our daily conversations — filled with internal jokes and references, lame wordplay, discussions of previous night’s dreams, exchange of memes, songs and website links — we draw closer to each other, filling a gap which would have been sore otherwise.
You might be familiar with Pranav and his brilliant puns on social media. He is calm and composed under any situation. Moreover, this Delhi-represent fellow is much more than his pitch-and-land-perfect jox. Every once in a while, he’ll make subtle observations that will leave you dumbfounded. Last week, during office lunch, he brought to light the insane concept behind ‘expiry date’ on animal products. Imagine getting killed twice because the food (be it fish, meat, etc.) transitioned from one date to another; first being the day it got killed and second being the date it’s supposed to be eaten before by. Double whammy of the worst kind.
There are some dialogues that we, the anti-septic lot, living in an urban bubble, remain vaccinated against. The sort of words that we never get to hear in real-life. Not that we aren’t familiar with them at all, mainly because art survives thanks to such bare realities. Granted they are left to cinema and literature, still it’s important we become acquainted with such stories too. The only reason we don’t break this brown ceiling (for lack of a better phrase) is we rarely show interest in knowing their side of existence.
Akshar: [to the laundry boy] “Are you Pratap’s son?”
Boy: “No. Pratap is my uncle.”
Akshar: “Where is your father then?”
Boy: “Oh, he is in jail.”
Akshar: “Why?”
Boy: “He killed my mother.”
On one hand, we enjoy generalizing everything under the sun. From objectifying women to calling them bad drivers to assuming that techies are boring to genuinely believing that all politicians are corrupt — a major chunk of our daily verbiage would be empty without broad-brushing. On the other hand, we don’t prefer being generalized. We demand a microscopic outlook regarding cause-and-effect, circumstances, human error, etc. This stark difference in looking outside and being looked in tells us a lot about who we truly are. At the risk of generalizing our species, aren’t we freaking cute?
Somebody asked me recently whether I believe in everything I write/type/post. Particularly the one-liners I post on Twitter and Instagram. The answer is, for the record, rich in context. Believing is synonymous with caring and I admit my threshold for caring is quite low. If I am writing something now, the current timeline is the only stamp worth taking into account. When you write, you are screaming silently. And as is the case with noise generally, it’s always best to retrospect. As far as I understand myself, my craft is attuned to seeking discourse, not closure. Nothing, in my book, is final. What is true today might be false tomorrow and what is false today might turn true tomorrow — owing to new information and perspectives. So, the idea is to continue to push our horizons. Or in the wise words of Paris Hilton, stop being poor in context.
There are people we resent for no reason. Just something about them, their vibe perhaps, that annoy you. You see them going about their day, with little to no acknowledgement of each other’s existence, but deep down, you aren’t alright with them. You know you are being ridiculously petty for disliking the way they carry a smug face around, or laugh with a high-pitch, or roll eyes, etc. Here’s my latent theory for why this could be so: it must be a balance system for all those people you like for no reason. Just something about them, their presence maybe, that elates you. You see them going about their day and it doesn’t matter to you that they don’t even know that you exist.
Palla and I have spoken about the stage when Ranga will get furlessly old and pass away. As sorry as we would be, if and when this happens, we like to think that we are prepared for it. The so-called pets are wonderful as they provide us a speechless chance at loving a foreign species. Yes, it’s a limited arrangement as most of them have shorter lifespan than us but in the larger scheme of things, they add more to our lives than the other way around. Also, I’ve seen grieving humans who find it very hard to move on from their beloved dogs, cats and rabbits. And I’ve also seen those who immediately give themselves a second chance by adopting a new pet — something you try to do with humans but seldom succeed.
Since we are on the topic of pets, I remember vividly how our pet cat scratched open my amma’s eyelid — no pun intended — as she was being overprotective about her kitten. That day was spent with a hurried visit to the hospital and whatnot. However, what struck me was the manner in which she vigorously defended her attacker. According to her, she was merely doing a mother’s job of protecting her children. This defense, in my personal experience, is yet to be upstaged. The close second position goes to my amma-in-law defending her pressure cooker that almost blasted in her face. Her clinching comment, “Aye, it’s a good cooker. Has been loyal to me for 13 years.”
Chivalry might be dead but compliment isn’t. It goes a long, long, long way in letting you validate others as well as yourself at the same time. One of the most memorable compliments that I can share with you concerns a friend from Chennai. He called his friend the best of everything that he is, especially the best dad that he has seen in his life. Why? Because these two will have a good time on Friday night till 2 in the morning but one of them will make sure that he is sober enough to drop his kids to school. Although I neither drink nor know how to drive, I truly admire this compliment the most. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that patriarchy is criticized (deservedly so) for its evil but fatherhood is rarely celebrated in popular culture.
My interest in law was triggered by a movie called Philadelphia (1993). Before watching it, I don’t remember being fascinated by the power of words. Poetry is powerful but it’s not binding on the people of a land. Law is. Of course, as usual, to grasp the genesis of law is a tricky territory. After all, laws are generally written by older men with descended testicles. Other genders don’t enjoy equal space at the table. But then, we can very well be heading towards the second phase of Enlightenment soon. And by law, we must reach there soon enough before things get gloomier.
Everybody talks about success. Nobody bothers to harp on failure. The former is a princess with countless chambermaids. The latter is a doorman whose name nobody bothers to know. Such is the state of affairs that discussing one’s failure becomes a symptom of weakness whereas boasting about one’s success is a sign of trust. A soiree, if you may, of platitudes that do so little for any of the present guests. So, to curb this nonsensical attitude, we ought to have more books, and other creative outlets, shedding light on our failures. That way, we’ll not only learn how to succeed more but also acknowledge that failure is a necessary stepping stone. There is no need to be afraid of it. In a success-obsessed world, it’s high time we had more people flaunting the commandments of their despair.
Not all of us can deliver on our promises. Some of us are cursed to be promising. It’s a cross nobody should carry but by the time you see it for what it is, there’s not much to be done either. The word ‘promising’ is a constant battle against time. If the chess grandmaster Alireza Firouzja is promising today at the age of 16, he’d be expected to reach the top within the next couple of years. Failing which, he’d be seen in an unfavourable light. In football, you see that happen all the time. An upcoming kid will be labelled the ‘next Messi’ or the ‘next Ronaldo and the sheer burden of those names will wear him out before he finds himself. Tennis is already seeing youngsters (men, mostly) burn themselves out too soon because of the pressure of having to deal with the Trimurti (Nadal-Djokovic-Federer). In all fairness, it’d be nicer if we let the young be young for a while. They will get old later anyway.
Humans are the messiest creatures this planet has ever seen. Wherever we go, we leave behind a shameful footprint. Conversely, birds and animals know how to clean up after themselves. Embarrassing as it is, we, the potty-trained species, are yet to master this art form. We litter and make places untidy within minutes as naturally as the clouds make the sky lookworthy. The most tragic part is we are equally ungrateful in life as well as death. If only we could leave behind a sweet smell! As a case study, list out all the birds and animals you have noticed around you in the past 5 years. Now list out all the birds and animals whose dead bodies you have noticed in the past 5 years. Apart from the ‘domesticated’ ones, you will find it difficult to fill the second list.
Since we talked a lot about love today, let’s sign off with something on why love could indeed be the answer to a lot of our unasked questions. One doesn’t have to be a romantic at heart to feel it. One doesn’t have to be a crooner to transmit it. One doesn’t have to be a light soul to absorb it. Love is universal. In fact, it’s the only factor that unites every living being. Even if you separate humans from the rest of the ecosystem, love remains special. After all, everything that happens to us — good or bad or normal — is a sign that we are still alive (capable of love and being loved) and free from the clutches of death (cold, decaying and nothing else).
