To old failures and newer learnings
2019 seems not very different from 2018. Same old, same old. By any extent of logic, it was obviously stupid to assume that stepping onto a new year of Gregorian calendar would magically deliver us from our past troubles and quibbles. On this blog, we’ve confronted the concept of change many times over and yet nothing has changed. Things evolve with time and by the time a real change occurs, it’s too late to do anything about it.
Exactly one year ago, I adopted some stringent measures to better my health. I cut down heavily on sugar — thanks to a prediabetic scare from the winter of 2017 — and stayed away from the cookies and brownies and scones my wife baked for her friends. Until monsoon, I also upped my physical activities and started working out lightly too. As a result, my weight dropped to 65 from 78. But in the month of July, I decided to go back to sugar, after suffering from bouts of low blood pressure and dizziness spells. Since then, I’ve been moderately entertaining my sweet tooth while keeping my sugar level under check.
The learning from this months-long episode is quite simple: Nothing horrifies you like premature death. Irrespective of how many poems you wrote romanticizing the end, you’ll ultimately ricochet to hide your face in the bosom of life. Despite understanding very well that your existence is a sheer manifestation of mediocrity and you’ve practically given up on your dreams, there exists in you a pull towards the living. Being dead from inside doesn’t mean you’re willing to embrace the unknown. Even when your (bad) health has made you suffer endlessly — in ways you can’t describe to your physician — you want to stay alive. Not because you are sure of celebrating NYE in 3000 AD but because you know you won’t get THIS lucky ever again.
Now that we’ve dealt with death, let’s move to another interesting subject: life. And how year after year, we’ve not only witnessed but also silently approved the massacre of so many lesser beings for food’s sake. A shark killing a surfer or a tigress marauding a tourist is not OK but killing speechless animals and birds is perfectly fine. Moreover, this isn’t a moralistic diatribe because I enjoy meat. Just a question of lens: why do we love to call ourselves non-vegetarians but don’t possess the spine to kill even a chicken?
Well, some things don’t change while a lot of things refuse to evolve either. For instance, we’ve stepped in to an era where we don’t have any kids left from the 20th century — all of them have turned into adults now — and yet we can’t distinguish between fun and funny. Both are welcome to the party but a fun person doesn’t necessarily have to be funny and vice versa. Very rarely do we come across people who embody both these characteristics.
And if you find those who don’t fall in neither categories, don’t let them go. They might be pure and chessphiles. Just kidding. People will continue to leave you and if they don’t, you will. That’s the motion of society. People leave, ending chapters on their own. Just that we don’t realize it happened until it happens to us. Be assured that you’ve left somebody in a manner more despicable than the way fragrance leaves a flower.
Speaking of flowers, we offer flowers to gods in temples thinking that the deity in question would be impressed with his/her/it own creation. After all, we didn’t invent the flowers. But then, that’s the beauty of our relationship with gods. We pray assuming that we know better while gods act upon us as if they’re powerless over us. This constant struggle of impressing each other most probably continues unto eternity. After all, God started our life with the best gift possible — mother — only to fail repeatedly at outperforming the first gift.
Lastly, crimes are embedded in our DNA; some petty, others furiously serious. Skipping a red light might appear trivial but it evolves into a full-blown case when you end up crashing in to a family of 4 killing each one of them on the spot. That’s why rules are there: to avoid infringement of space and time. So, yes, a lot of things won’t change in 2019. Whether you choose to hit-and-run or hit-and-cry, the police vans will reach the crime scene with their sirens blaring.
To keep the criminals from knowing they are reaching the spot, can’t they do their job a bit more discreetly?
To paraphrase this very thought, can’t we live out this year a bit more non-discreetly for a change?
