Unattended victims of nostalgia
According to a recent study, friendship is relatively more essential than clean air. When you smoke a cigarette, you are depriving your lungs of clean air. Similarly, when you don’t have friends, you are depriving yourself of joy. At least that’s what the study posits. It even goes to the extent of suggesting that having no friends can be as extreme as contracting lung cancer. To be very frank, I don’t trust all these studies. One week, you’ll read that some scientists in Australia have found that broccoli is good for your testicles. The very next week, you’ll read that some scientists in Argentina have concluded that broccoli turns you into Lance Armstrong. So, yeah, it’s easy to trust science but quite difficult to trust scientists.
According to a popular koan, you can’t attain zen just because you want to attain zen. In all possibility, zen shall attain you when it has to. There are people around us who had their epiphanies at the strangest of moments. For example, an engineering fellow was about to catch a flight for Frankfurt when he realized at the airport, waiting for his plane, that he doesn’t really want to continue working for a tech giant anymore. For reasons best known to him, he wanted to end his days as a faceless-nameless techie and wanted to do something more grounded. He took a cab, returned to his apartment, booked a flight to Chennai, and is now working in the field (no pun intended) of organic farming. Maybe zen truly attained this guy.
Speaking of zen, I think Rudra was correct when he reiterated the age old wisdom behind place and people. No matter where you go, nothing changes and then you wonder why. The reason is right there staring at you in the mirror: you. Wherever you go, you carry yourself with you. Even if you climb the tallest mountain looking for peace, but if you aren’t peaceful inside, you aren’t going to find calmness at the summit. That’s the paradox of mind. Which is why that iconic question from Chuck Palahniuk’s book — which later became Fight Club (1999) — resonates in the 21st century as well: If you wake up at a different time in a different place, could you wake up as a different person? Having completed a month today in Mangalore, I can answer it for you: No.
This blog has been arguing for an education system in our country for several years now. Not that it makes any difference to anyone, let alone the policymakers who anyway don’t read my blog, but it’s a pursuit worth chasing. There is a massive distinction between literacy and education. The former helps you read the lines whereas the latter enables you to read between the lines. However, we must also take into consideration the helplessness of those who call themselves educated but are barely literate. They stopped reading the day college ended and got themselves into the rat race of making money. Books? That’s for shelves. Newspapers? Boring. Hobbies? What. Republic TV? Arnab can scream louder.
Now that I work in the edtech space for an admirable small company called Kyt, I can vouch for the necessity of extracurricular learning during this pandemic. Kids need to reclaim their childhood and if that means spending an extra hour in front of their laptops, so be it. Anytime better than focusing only on ROI-based academic pursuits. Besides, we must not forget that our education system — sorry, I meant, the literacy system — doesn’t believe much in teaching. It’s more invested in testing your capacity to learn. That’s how rote-ing became a thing in this part of the world. And it’s only when you escape the system that you fully benefit from this archaic method.
What makes a democracy a democracy? Of course, there is an exhaustive list out there to accommodate such an existential question. Yet, for our limited understanding, let’s assume that democracy is a real thing, not some European myth. Once you do that, you’ll also have to factor in several terms and conditions that a diverse country like India can’t fulfill. If you thought the USA was a robust democracy, then you are again being blind. The monolithic white identity is so damn blaring that it’s hard to imagine electoral democracy holding a sway when the demographics alter eventually. Closer home, desi democracy has always been about basic arithmetic, not basic rights or amenities. Nope. Never. Belgium once went without a functioning government for almost 23 months. Can you imagine that happening in America, let alone India? That difference is what makes a democracy a democracy.
Although my stint as an entertainment barely lasted four winters, I was fortunate enough to interact with and interview some of the most fascinating individuals from the world of cinema, theatre, music, literature and arts. It’d be dishonest to suggest that I miss waiting for others (read: famous) to show up on time — their time was somehow more valuable than mine — but it’d be criminal to imply that they weren’t worth waiting at all. For instance, when I spoke to Bhanu Athaiya at her dimly lit house, she wasn’t in the best of her health but that didn’t stop her from being funny. Similarly, when I phone-interviewed Mrinal Sen (Kolkata) and Farooque Shaikh (Dubai), I didn’t realize at that time that I was perhaps the last journalist they will be talking to. To this day, I have their numbers saved on my phone; couldn’t find the temerity to delete. So, in conclusion, I have more to cherish than regret. But then, that’s the case with a lot of the stuff that are lost in the cyclone of yesterdays.
Now that we are on a boat called nostalgia, I recently spoke to a friend of mine from my childhood days. We both grew up in the same slum, facing the same issues, enjoying the same taste of destitution, lapping up the same dose of hope. Regardless, during our conversation, it became apparent that he isn’t strong in details. He doesn’t even remember some of our neighbours, forget (again, no pun intended) their names. Whereas I am like a cardinal saint of nostalgia — able to recollect what happened when and where. People generally look forward to their future. I look backward because I am stuck in the past. I remember everything. Well, almost everything. I watch dreams featuring fellow chaali-wallahs, with their many colours and drops. There is no cure for this disease, I fear.
People are the same everywhere. Point at any landmass on the map and people are the same everywhere. We might dress differently and talk weirdly but deep inside, we feel the same mirth and gloom and envy and distress and scorn. We love in the same way we hate: passionately. We are humans and there is no way we can trace that out of our system. However, we keep trying to build artificial barriers through channels like culture, religion, history, nation and whatnot. Not successfully though. There are over 8 billion humans on this planet and at any given point of discourse, a mighty majority would wish to live in a world where anybody can just go anywhere they like. For instance, I may want to visit Sargodha (not Gurgaon) of all places but in this universe, it’s not at all possible. Maybe in an alternate universe, it’s the most normal event.
