It is a question that consciously or unconsciously creeps into every mind at the times when a person needs to find out his or her roots. Whatever the life has been, what it could have been and what it is, create an image of what the life should be. In the course of life, we meet lot of people and some of them are the images of our own future. There is a strange similarity between the two lives, running parallel in space but differs only in the time; as if the two lives are at two different ends of the same string of time.
I met or know some such people. My life would sure follow theirs as the time passes by, if I make the choices they have made. And there is every possibility of me making those choices. But none of their lives have been a role model for me, and I can only pray that I don’t end up on those plateaus.
During one of my visits home, I met a person named Kumar, on my way from Delhi to Chandigarh. A carefree look, hippy outfit, inebriated, with two filled bottles of Bombay Safari in his bag – he was a mechanical engineer from a college in AP (so am I). He had worked in Jalandhar for some time and left his job of 3000 rupees some 15 years ago. The reason was that 3000 rupees were not enough to buy him his quota of cigarettes. He left his home and went to Leh and worked in a hotel there for some time. Then he went to Goa and started his own restaurant named ‘Namaste’, which has its branch in Thailand also. He had a Mexican girl friend, a hut in south Goa, a boat, a hammock and a dog. He said he will not marry his girl friend but they are planning to have a child. There was a bitterness of frustration in him about India and Indians, the frustration which comes when you know nothing can be done with the way life is but you cannot live with that. He was a person who knew that he had lost his struggle to the wrong, but he was running away from accepting that. He was running away from life, from the claustrophobia he felt in the world. The kind of outlook I had at that time, I could have very well turned into the same person.
Then there was this person Yoshi in Auroville (Pondicherry) who had come there from Israel after visiting almost every country of the world. One thing he said made an impression in my mind. He said: ‘I traveled across the world. But there wasn’t a place I could call my home. Then finally I came to Auroville and I have been living here since 18 years. I lived here through every situation, from the time when there were no steel utensils or LPG to cook food. I built my home here and now my roots are here. This is where I belong.’
Then during my recent visit home when I was coming back, I met another person. This person had “fifteen” years of experience in IT industry in which he had ‘worked’ (that’s what he said) in “nine” companies, that comes to less than two years per company. From those fifteen years, he had lived five years in the US. After working for fifteen years, he left IT industry and opened his consultancy firm in Delhi. The kind of choices I was about to make after coming back from home would surely have led me to that. But I never could imagine myself being that person.
Then there is my maternal grand father (my mom’s father’s brother) who had left home when he was very young. He went to Bombay and joined Indian Navy in 1960’s. Since then he has been living there and comes back to the village once in a year. Now when he has crossed 70, he returns home searching for his roots. I wonder where he belongs now and what he thinks. Will he be content that he found life away from his home and lived it through, or will he be sad that now when he has reached the end of his journey, he has gone so far that it is impossible to return to his own home, and that he will get annihilated in an alien land, where there is hardly anyone who he can call his own?
I am always left wondering at the end of such thinking sessions that where would my journey end. Where do I belong?
As the weekend dawns, to begin with, a couplet from Bashiir Badr’s ghazal:
Ko.ii haath bhii na milaayegaa, jo gale miloge tapaak se
ye naye mizaaj kaa shahar hai, zaraa faasale se milaa karo |
(If you embrace someone out of the blue, nobody will even shake hands with you. This city is of a different mood; keep a safe distance in meeting others…)
In college we had this course called Probability and Statistics (ProbStat in short). Though I was only able to clinch a safe ‘C’ somehow, yet there was a probability distribution which captured my fancy. It was Normal Distribution or the Gaussian distribution with that characteristic Bell Curve which looked
more like a mountain in paintings of kindergarten students. Whenever the professor drew that curve on board I used to wait for him to draw clouds and sun coming from behind the mountains. But instead of sun, when professor wrote scaring formulae and hypotheses beside that curve, it used to wake me up from my imagination and I scribbled them down for the upcoming test series, which never helped.
It was a few years after accepting my defeat in ProbStat (and subsequently in evens and odds of life) I realized the importance of Normal distribution. Most of the world’s phenomena follow this distribution. Traffic jams, ATM downtime, grading, elections, carbon dating, inflation, geometry of selfish herd, habits – every place where there is a possibility of precision in the crowd comprising of people with similar goals, normal distribution is applicable. Take for example a population of people who are into body building. There are very few John Abraham’s with 6 packs on their stomach and the majority lies in between John and Johnny Lever. Similarly majority lies between Sachin and Agarkar in population of cricketers. Based on this normal distribution I received my ‘C’ in the course because when the professor finally drew that fateful graph of post examination marks, I fell at the ‘C’ side of boundary of ‘D’ and ‘C’.
The point that normal curve proclaims is pretty simple – there are very few extraordinary people (be it on the positive side or the negative side) in this world and majority lies in being an average.
What is the point? Since we all are in one crowd or the other, knowing our position in the normal curve can give us some insight to our life. What about the couplet in the beginning? Well, there lies another crowd and another normal distribution.
Strange thing - we want to earn more and more money to buy certainty but it is not sold anywhere. More we buy more uncertainty we invite in our life. It becomes an endless circle of cause and consequence, where the consequence is the root cause of itself. Delicate feathers of life get buried beneath the misunderstood meanings.
Well yes, uncertainty is the inseparable part of life and we can bring not the ‘certainty’ in it, but ‘stability’ to certain extent. Stability - in the form of a trustworthy layer of discipline and well being, that can define the core of our existence. And it is an endless evolution. There is always a scope of improvement. After all, we don’t have to get sick to get better.
Also, we need to understand that there is a life inside and there is a life outside. Life outside is beyond our control and there is more uncertainty there hence. Life inside can be under our control which can bring stability within ourselves in encountering the life outside. This endless struggle of within and without… there are no answers to it… only witnesses…
World is an endless sphere, and the mind is afraid of horizons. And then mind gets split into tiny storms of thought-'lets'.
How frustrating it is when you cannot make your dearest parent or closest friend understand what you feel, or what you intend to do! What is the strange hesitation that stops you from freely expressing your ideas to the very people who share almost every significant moment of your life. Oh! May be that's the way it is meant to be - a painful, incorrigible irony of life. Or perhaps the intertwined sophistication of collective psychology where an individual loses his or her individuality in a tacit assumption that everything will be understood per se, which never happens.
It is a very common and easily visible phenomenon. Your own people will be the last to understand what you are or what you think and the first to discourage your ideas, talents and potential. Every success story has an ingredient of such phenomenon in it. Einstein could never have made it so big in Germany. Ayn Rand wouldn't be 'Ayn Rand' if she had stayed in Soviet Union. Even Swami Vivekananda's true talent was recognized after Chicago. Benjamin Franklin would have died a newspaper seller had he not moved to Philadelphia and London. Bruce Lee, Maria Sharapova, John Lennon, Johnny Nash, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Javed Akhtar... There is a big list of such people who had to face their own people as the first obstacle in their road to success. May be because they were the first in their cult to break free from the tradition, they were the first to pave way beyond the dead end of already set rules which were supposed to guide their lives... But their feathers were too bright to be imprisoned by the senility of conventions and so they flew away and became what they are known as today!
Oh! Pretense, confusion, hypocrisy, madness... Or perhaps it's just me and my schizophrenia talking to each other, understanding none, just trying to impress the world which stares back, beyond reach! Tch! I am tired of running, searching for a meaningful life. I think I will create it on my own now.
And so it happened that despite the fact that I don’t like drinking anymore, I had to attend a drink gathering thrown by my ‘onsite-returned’ colleagues. Just a day ago, I had thrown and broken the glass (of Whiskey) because I couldn’t take it anymore. Out of anger on myself, my shortcomings and my indiscipline – just after sipping less than half of the drink I threw the glass on the floor and walked out of the room leaving my roommates to clean the broken glasses on the floor. I felt bad later. I shouldn’t have done that.
But just one day passed and I was sitting with my colleagues savoring three different brands of 12 year old scotch, talking senselessly and what not. May be the reason would be that with some people your expectations are extremely high and you cannot see them indulged in such travesties. When you see the talents of these people being raped by pretense and indulgence, you just cannot tolerate that. Whereas with others, you know that they have reached the cul-de-sac of their minds and there is no road ahead for them, and so you are happy that they are at peace (or at least trying to be) with themselves, and there is no harm or hard emotions in being with them for a while.
The place was around 14 kilometers from where I live and the drinks went on till 4 in the morning. Everyone started to sleep when I and one of my colleagues decided to move out, go home and sleep. Everyone was insisting that we stayed there for the night, sleep there and go in the morning. The fear of unknown was thrown upon us in form of dark roads and notorious area, and we were left with choices.
Then I thought - it doesn’t matter to me where I sleep. What matters to me is where I wake up! Everyone in this world goes to sleep with a hope that when they wake up they will find peace, health and happiness. Some sleep after happy celebrations, some after unhappy frustrations, some after working hard the whole day and some after their tiresome journey. There are people sleeping on the sheds where buses stop during the days. There are people sleeping on the stairs of a temple. There are people sleeping in AC chambers in the highest rooms of the tallest towers. But people are not afraid or amused by where they sleep – they are afraid or amused by where they wake up. So I told my colleagues – ‘it is not that I am not comfortable sleeping here, it is just that I am not comfortable waking up here’.
So we two bid farewell to the rest, and started our way back at 4:30 in the morning, after lot of convincing and arguing. After driving with me for around 2 kilometers my colleague went on his way on a diversion and I kept moving at a time when the roads are so deserted that you wonder where the hell so many vehicles come on these roads at the rush hours. I drove my bike at a steady 30 kmph and kept thinking. If somebody asked me ‘what does life mean to you?’ what will I answer?
And then I tried answering myself: ‘Life is a strange struggle, which involves every man into it irrespective of his caste, creed, status or wealth. A man shivering on the footpath, who cannot sleep because he cannot afford a blanket, thinks about the struggle life will bring upon him the next morning. He thinks whether he will be able to get enough to eat or not. Then there is a man who is having dinner in the warmth of his home with his family. He is watching his LCD TV and wondering what surprises the stock market will bring tomorrow morning, how much profit will he make, how much loss he will incur. And there is a man who is wandering in the deserted roads of the city when nine tenth of the city is asleep, thinking all these thoughts.
Then suddenly a man out of nowhere signals me for a lift. Deserted roads, no traffic, and no human being… shall I give him lift or not… but I give. I wonder that ‘trust is a kind of thing which you cannot test without trusting…’ If everyone keeps thinking that I will trust the other person only when he trusts me – then nobody will trust anybody! It is just that without trusting someone, you cannot tell how trustworthy he or she is!
I drop the man on another diversion and reach home repeating my new found idea in my mind – "it doesn’t matter where I go to sleep, what really matters is where I wake up!…"
I got cursed by sidin unwantingly (is there a word like that?). I didn’t want to continue to be the part of curse because I don’t believe in curses and also I don't have a list of eight next victims (euphemism for 'hardly-5-good-people-visit-this-poor-blog'... he he he...) but I thought of giving it a try. I thought it would be a good time killer of sucking weekend (just see the previous post... he he he...). So I copy paste the rules part here:
/Copy Starts...
But before that, as convention demands, I recap the rules of this particular blog leisure activity:
1. Each player starts with 8 random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged, write a blog post about their own 8 random things, and post these rules.
3. At the end of your post you need to tag 8 people and include their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment and tell them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
4. If you fail to do this within eight hours, you will not reach Third Base or attain your most precious goals for at least two more lifetimes.
/Paste Ends...
1. I was a dreamer a few years ago. Then after entering my professional life slowly I grew up to become a failed idealist. When I could not carry the burden of being an idealist I tried being a realist. But reality scared me to death and the very idea of running the blind race brought me to knees. I could not bear its burden either. So now I am afraid that I am gradually turning into a fatalist. Phew!
2. I believe that lunar movements affect my life to a huge extent. Yeah! Might seem creepy but very true. I am at the bottom during no moon days and at the peak when it is full moon. See, today is no moon day and I have caught cold. After fifteen days there is going to be the peak! That brings me to another belief of mine in astrology. I tried to read the subject in a scientific way but I haven’t come across much of a good literature. Whenever I am at home in summer, I spend my nights gazing stars and trying to remember their names. Someday I believe I will be able to decode their secret.
3. Indian Army inspired me a lot during my college years. And to join the army I worked hard. For a year, I ran 4 kilometers every morning. And when I say morning I want you to visualize and feel the mornings of North India in winters when it is freezing outside with fog covering everything. After running those 4 kilometers like there was a rocket in my a$, I took bath with cold water when it used to be 0 degrees outside. (‘Crazy bastard!’ My mates used to call me.) But that much of running has kept me at a steady weight when my mates are now finding ways to reduce their bulky stomachs (he he he…) I even managed to clear CDS but as it turned out to be I became a software engineer! But I am ok (at least trying to be) with that.
4. My teachers used to call me a goon. Once in school, when I had to make a choice between computer classes and basketball I chose… yeah… basketball, though I didn’t make much of a name there (nor could I have made in computers :P…). I regret refusing the proposal of a girl in my secondary school. I could not understand what she saw in me! But now when I understand that it is natural biological attraction, I really feel terrible that I broke the heart of a beautiful girl (who is now married to an Army Major!!!...@#$@#!!!)
5. I regard Metallica and Linkin Park as my guardian angels. Without these two bands I could not have survived the tumult of my initial professional years. I am not a complete music buff who has compartmentalized knowledge of music in his brains, but music has the ability to move me. Jhonny Depp is the only actor of caliber according to me, after AB. And I am looking forward for Shantaram where the two big-shots come together.
6. I started writing diary when I was 10. I used to write what I did every day from shitting to my fights and arguments in school. Then one day I found my mom reading my diary which pissed my arrogant brains off and I burnt every page of that and flushed the ashes in toilet. After that I didn’t write for almost 10 years. On similar capricious note, I deleted the 69 posts which I had been writing in this blog since Jan 2006 in April this year and gave off my five diaries (which contained four years of my life) to the raddiwallah. Damn it! I am a hopeless compulsive arrogant kid at times!
7. In May 2005, I walked 40 kilometers in mountain forests of Shimla in 10 hours of continuous self-destructive journey, just to vent off my frustration. Without enough food and water, fear of animals and dark, when the journey was completed and body recovered from the mindless adventure - a weak boy had turned into a brave man who understood the importance of home and hearth. I thought of giving the idea into discovery channel’s I SHOULDN’T BE ALIVE, but stories there were even more macabre and dangerous. But now I don’t have any more intentions to try myself out in such adventures… he he he…
8. I have heard that we should be careful about making a wish because they often come true. One day I want to return (seems far and impossible) to a village (may be my own village) and live like a farmer. But before that I want to travel as much as I can. These words almost wet my eyes when I am completely in need of them:
Priest: You don’t belong here. Your face tells that your future is bright.
Ashoka: Is it? What is written in my face? That I will become an Emperor?
Priest: No. You destiny will make you even greater than an Emperor.
Ashoka: Who can be greater than an emperor?
Priest: A traveler. A traveler exceeds the fortune of the greatest emperors when his journey comes to an end.
Silence… Peace…
(I recap what I wrote... ) Hmmm... Not bad! Good time pass and gave some time to retrospect!
Now let me see who I can tag though very few bloggers are expected to land here... he he he... DK Sushil Grin Robin Rahul Rashmi Sonia Dave Phew!!! That makes eight of them. Two may get victimized, can't guarantee the rest six... :P...
It pisses me off hard when there is nothing to do on weekends. These two days and three nights have become more of a concern than a joy of retreat from work. Earlier I used to have something to read, but now that urge has started diminishing gradually. Sitting mindlessly in front of the television and watching mindless creativity (if that can be called so) is what happens now. But oh! I cannot sleep. I cannot inspire my mind to keep lying down on bed. When I close my eyes and try to give myself off to the darkness, every time I find a pain in the head, as if something is trying to escape from there.
I have stopped reading paper books. Now I read (if at all) the e-Books. The 50 kg burden of the wealth of my books is now compressed into 1 GB of space in my laptop’s hard disk. And this does not increase the tangible weight I have to carry.
Most of the time, I journey through the internet trying to find something to read. Yesterday, during one such hang out, I found myself a very thought provoking idea of great Punjabi poet Bhai Vir Singh. It said: ‘For understanding different religions, the emphasis is not so much on points of similarity as on uniqueness. There are many things common between a cow and a buffalo; but the cow and the buffalo are not the same.…’
I end this aimless blog post with the following couplet by Mr. Basheer Badr:
Mujhe suku.n Ghane jangalo.n mein milta hai
Main raasto.n se nahin manzilo.n se darta hoon…
The knowledge is not complete until one relinquishes whatever he has learned. Mind is like a glass of water. It cannot hold more than its capacity. Whether it goes to a small pond or to an ocean it cannot fill more than it can hold. The only way it can own everything is by breaking itself and dissolving into the ocean. Sushil's blog says it in hindi here.
Since few days there is this strange fear of death revolving around me. Questions of almost meaningless absurdities are disturbing the peace of mind. Inevitable it is, but I don't want to escape from my fears anymore. After being scared of my fears for sometime now I have started getting intrigued by these questions. What will become of me after I die? Body will feed the earth, but where will I go? What will become of me? What is it that is floating in my head? What am I? Who am I?
Lord Krishna said a lot about this in second chapter of Bhagvad Gita:
Nainam Chhindanti ShastraNi, Nainam dahatii pavakah
Na Chainam kledtyantapoh, na shoshayatii marutah...
&
na jayate mriyate va kadachin nayam bhutva bhavita va na bhuyah
ajo nityah shashvato 'yam puraNo na hanyate hanyamane shariire...
It intrigues me now what this actually means. Just knowing these words is not enough until that fear has subsided from my total existence. My mission has transformed into becoming a person who has overcome all his fears. I want to make my fear fun.
This endless journey - when will it end?
It is a question that consciously or unconsciously creeps into every mind at the times when a person needs to find out his or her roots. Whatever the life has been, what it could have been and what it is, create an image of what the life should be. In the course of life, we meet lot of people and some of them are the images of our own future. There is a strange similarity between the two lives, running parallel in space but differs only in the time; as if the two lives are at two different ends of the same string of time. 
