Mayhem. Disarray. Chaos. Bedlam. Pandemonium.

These are some words, which you once read, dissolve your comfort and leave you feeling uneasy. But, what if I were to tell you that the feelings that these words convey, are something that we experience every minute?

You want to give alms to that lady sitting on the road, but you know it’ll solve only the immediate problems for her, and do no good in her alleviation. But we are taught to be benevolent.

You know you are not almighty. And then comes the concept of God residing in every single one of us and acting through us. If that is what it is, why would gruesome murders and thievery be so prevalent in society? If god resides within us, then why can’t we punish these criminals?

India is westernising. Some of us are embracing the possibility of India’s conservative culture taking the backseat, while the others are screaming about the plight of Kaliyuga.

Satyamev Jayate (Truth alone triumphs), they say. But, if the truth is going to hurt someone, it is better to lie.

What?!

How come that every last one of our childhood lessons has a living contradiction? How did such a situation even come to be? Why aren’t there any set rules as to how to be a good person in life? Be good, do good; sounds simple to hear, but is not as simple to practice. It’s told to us to go with the flow. But they have impressed upon us pretty well, that the way of our life is at the hands of Gods.

Death is an eventuality. We all know it. Then why is it that people want to live some more when they are minutes from their departure?

If life is so short, why do we waste most of it doing things that we don’t love, and loving things that we don’t do?

Baffling? Here’s more.

Why are we all so fond of ‘Carpe diem’, yet live in our past, thinking about that one choice that changed our lives? Or preparing for our future, which we don’t even know for a certainty, exists?

The most stunning fact about all these ambiguities is that all of us have, at some point of time, chosen to be on both the sides of the conundrum. It has become so normal and such an integral part of us that we only realise the differences in our choices on retrospection. All of us have come to rely upon this — the ambiguity of the choices we make in life.

We have forgotten how to stick with the one choice we make, and keep fluctuating, considering the plethora of options we have, both, to change our belief periodically, and to justify the change.

While the above written lines may have gotten you thinking, they helped me sift through my thoughts and, finally, finally make sense of them. We are engineers. In our (amazing) curriculum, we have always come across exceptions. Be it the Hund’s rule in Class XI Chemistry or that one misleading name of a plant species in biology. Exceptions and ambiguities are always going to be there. No matter how thin you beat a coin, it’s always going to have two sides. This ideology can be applied in real life as well. How many ever generalisations we make, there will undoubtedly be exceptions to the same.

It’s no news that each person’s experiences and ordeals are unique and hence, perceptions are bound to be equally unique as well.

So, is it that there is no conclusion that can be drawn from all the mentioned and the innumerable unmentioned conundra? No.

One thing that’s common in all our actions, words and anything we do for that matter is that we want to and try to do the right thing, at the end of the day. And not the easy thing. (Rephrasing Dumbledore)

That is the only constant I could find. If you find another way to spread the ambiguities, the door to spread the word is always open.

— This article was written for Festember: The Renaissance by Nandini Ranganathan