Story of stuff

Thank you, Asha.

Meankind

I think the sole purpose of our existence on earth is to destroy everything in sight.

Forget Satan, I think humans are the opposite of God. God’s the ultimate creator, and Man, the ultimate destroyer. God creates things out of nothing. We create things by destroying or cannibalising his creations.

We consume forests to make paper. We tear the ozone layer as we create faster modes of transportation or refrigeration. We pollute the sea in our quest for fuel. We destroy reefs to feed our own kind. We damage the ecosystem to satisfy our avarice. We destroy God’s architecture to make room for our own.

Yes, we’re the destroyers. And we seem to have accepted it as a fact.

We ask for a warranty card on everything we buy. We might not be sure if we really need a particular product but we’re very particular about how many years’ warranty we should get on it.

Come to think of it, we insist on a bill too so that we can pin the blame on someone. As if that is not enough, we insist on a list of after-sales service centres.

So there you go; we are subconsciously sure that we are extremely capable and very likely to put things out of commission, sooner or later.

Everything we buy breaks down at some point, which is usually exactly a week after its warranty period ends. But we sometimes fool ourselves by believing that a product is unbreakable. It’s usually a sales tactic used by entrepreneurs, who I’m sure must be laughing to themselves as they use it.

We might know a few well-to-do divorce lawyers but when it comes to a priest for a wedding, we might need to make a few phone calls.

Year on year, we pay hefty premiums towards our health and life insurance policies.

We buy insurance for our car at the same time we buy the car itself. We might not be sure if we’ll make any fatal mistakes but we can almost guarantee that someone of our kind will do them for us.

We insure our homes and build fire exits because we know that either we or someone is bound to be stupid enough to bring it down someday soon. Interestingly, we sometimes agonise over the safety of our worldly possessions more than that of our loved ones. Life is up to God but material things? Oh, some of us are sure to destroy it one of these days.

We buy spares of everything we possibly can.

We back-up data on our computer’s hard-drive, store the same on an external hard-drive and also have a collection of back-up CDs & DVDs. We’re sure that, if not us, our creation – the computer - will definitely royally screw up things for us.

There you go. I just destroyed this blog post and possibly your peace of mind. Mindless destruction, I say.

Anyway, I got to perorate now lest my comp gives up on me.

Love on hold

Gifts ungiven.
Flowers unsent.

Messages unreplied.
Phones unanswered.

Words unsaid.
Thoughts unexpressed.

Letters unwritten.
Poems unpenned.

Moments unenjoyed.
Memories unetched.

Company undesired.
Solitude unsought.

Feelings unreturned.
Agony unbridled.

Mind unwon.
Heart undone.

Girl unimpressed.
Love unrequited.

Broken compass

It’s the glass of the window that keeps the yearning window-shopper from touching the mannequin and, in effect, making his pangs consume him.

It’s the glass of an hourglass. Sands of intense feelings trickle, recklessly and irrevocably, from one recess into the other, one painful grain at a time.

It’s the glass of a television that separates two worlds – the unalterable past and the uncertain and at times unthinkable future.

It’s the glass of a photo frame that has imprisoned a life, frozen in the confines of its own past. Touchable, but unchangeable, indelible.

It’s the glass of a one-way mirror. From his side, he sees his glorious future. But from her side, she sees a hurtful resemblance of her past.

It’s the glass of a life support system shackling a being nay dividing the surviving from the living. Free it from its vice-grip and it just might succumb.

It’s the presence; the glass that separates them.

So close yet so far.

Each passing day tells him she is the one.

Each passing day tells him he is not the one.

After all, it takes a diamond to cut glass.

Michael Bublé - Everything

Michael Bublé - Lost

Michael Bublé - It Had Better Be Tonight (Meglio Stasera)

When do you say you are in Love?

Answer, if you dare.

Memories like fingerprints...

Of all the things I remember trying, forgetting is the toughest. Quite impossible, in fact.

My memory doesn’t just serve me right, it’s a downright slave to me. Fetches me every little thing at the slightest.

Guess I am a pachyderm by one more thing besides size.

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The Lost Key

He was back in the corridor. Locked out. For he had lost the key. And not just any key.

The key opened many doors. Doors that opened to love, happiness, enthusiasm, energy, strength, passion, tenderness, humbleness, self-respect, appreciation, ambition, laughter, understanding, caring, enlightenment and, most importantly, hope. All the good things. In fact, everything that he was looking for and would ever look for.

But he had lost the key and was back in the corridor. The corridor was familiar. It had to be for he had paced up and down it for 2 long years. The overwhelming stench of alcohol and cigarettes; the stale air; the stained walls; the cob-webbed corners; the depressing lights; the distant voices. Echoes of recent past. It all came rushing to him, like long lost friends. Friends you had made an effort to lose.

That was before he had found the key and started living again.

Should he look for another key? What if it did not open the right doors? What if it did not open any doors at all? And, even if he did find another key, would he not try to have it carved like the one he had lost? Also, what if some wrong person found his key? What if that person overlooked all the nice things within those doors? Is it his problem? Should he be concerned? Then again, can he ever stop being concerned about its fate? His heart won’t let him, will it now? Lots to agonise over.

The tubelights buzz ominously.

Hmmm...

Giving someone something when you have everything is nothing. Giving someone everything when you have nothing; now that's something.

(I think I made this up myself. Not sure if I'm quoting from memory.)

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Only time will tell?

Can the authenticity, intensity or the very existence of love be measured by time? Is there a set amount of time you have to have spent with someone for you to fall in love with them?

Is it possible to fall hopelessly in love with someone in a short period of time because you had a clear idea what you were looking for even before you met them?

Or is there a meter? 2-4 Days – Attraction, 2-4 Weeks – Infatuation, 2-4 Months – Puppy Love, 2-4 Years – Real Love?

Also, is the amount of time you will take to get over someone always directly proportional to the amount of time you’ve spent in a relationship with them?

Let me illustrate my query with The T-shirt Theory

a) You are on your way to a friend’s place or discotheque or restaurant or wherever. You see a T-shirt displayed in a shop on your way. You take a great liking to it. You walk in and get it.

b) You’ve been looking for this particular style or brand of T-shirts. You’ve looked all over and even surfed the net. Then, one day, you see it on display in a shop. You walk in and get it.

c) You have this T-shirt lying in your almirah. Your mom or dad or bro or sis or friend got it for you but you don’t like it much or don’t fit into it. After years, you try it. It fits. You love it.

Which T-shirt are you most likely to wear till it disintegrates?

“It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and, unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.” – Kahlil Gibran

Gnawing

Whoever said "It's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all" was never loved before he/she lost all.

The balancing act

Tucked amidst Hinduism’s overabundance of wisdoms is an existential gem.

“Every person is born with a fixed quota of joys and sorrows.”

Let’s measure joy and sorrow with the unit of ‘hours’. Say you are born with 150 hours of happiness and 75 hours of sadness in your life.

So if you’re happy, good for you. Enjoy it. You deserve it. But remember how grief feels. And be sensitive to those who are not as happy as you right now. But if you’re sad, angry or unhappy, try to find solace in the fact that your quota of sorrows will be diminishing by as many hours as you grieve. Look forward to the happiness that’s waiting at the end of your sorrow. You deserve sorrow too but just so that you appreciate happiness more the next time it visits.

It’s like light and darkness. Darkness does not exist physically; it’s merely the complete absence of light. Bask in the sun, sleep off the darkness. You’ll wake up all sparky when it’s light.

So the next time you are sad, annoyed or angry, try to think happy thoughts. Smile at your boss, throw a biscuit at the neighbour’s noisy mutt, take your work for a walk, smile at complete strangers, smile at co-commuters who jab their elbows in your side, give someone a hug, swim a few laps, send flowers to that girl who broke your heart, listen to music, watch a sunset, throw a punch at a cushion and, hey, go get wet in the rain.

The quest

At midnight, he was back at the sea. He was hoping to find answers to some questions.

He had looked under a creaking ceiling fan, on a yielding armchair, through the pages of a book, between the notes of music, through the crowd on a bus, around one unforgiving concrete bench, in the throes of textual intercourse, between the seats of a movie theatre, in a pair of bottomless sleepy smoky dark eyes, down soft flowy silky hair, along glazed milky irresistibly smooth skin, through rivulets of tobacco smoke, in the haze of night clubs, behind the stroke of midnight, in the corner of a glass cabin, at the bottom of many cups of coffee, down a railway line, and even on his person. But he didn’t find any.

He had consulted silence, solitude, darkness, sleep and alcohol. They entertained him for hours but they had no answers.

He was hoping the sea would answer his questions, like it had before.

He was one of the last few in line. The queue of devotees ran down various ages, and many life-stages.

It was quite late when he went up to speak to it. But the sea did not wish to. In fact, it withdrew its waves. As the waves receded, they laid bare the jagged doorstep of the sea. The rocks looked like they were there to protect the sea from whoever it deemed undeserving of its wisdom. The rocks were the ‘unwelcome’ mat of the sea.

He left it alone. Waiting all these hours had amounted to naught. He decided he would consult alcohol one more time.

Just a thought

Some say I'm a man's man because I lust after gadgets and gizmos and trip on technology. But, in reality, I simply compensate for the happiness I cannot get from life with material pleasures. I guess at some point in life or another, at some level or another, we all do the same. Or maybe, it's just me.

Darkness descends

Apart from being absolutely beautiful, this satellite photograph is historic too. It was, apparently, taken by the crew on board the Columbia Space Shuttle during its tragic mission.

The picture is of Europe and Africa, on a cloudless day/night. Half of the earth is in various stages of night and the other half is enjoying various degrees of daylight.

The bright dots you see are lights in various cities, towns and villages.

The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert. Note that the lights are already on in Holland, Paris, and Barcelona, and that it's still daylight in Dublin, London, Lisbon, and Madrid.

The sun is still shining on the Strait of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean Sea, however, is already in darkness.

In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the Azores Islands. Below them, to their right are the Madeira Islands. A little below them are the Canary Islands. And further south, close to the farthest western point of Africa, are the Cape Verde Islands.

To the top-left, totally frozen, is Greenland.

Note that the Sahara is huge and can be seen clearly during both, day and night.

Spaced Out

I love the ocean.

I love its vastness, its strength and its allure. It made living in Sri Lanka a great pleasure for me. Especially, in times of loneliness.

The cool evening beach sand is perfect to calm your soul. The rhythmic sounds of waves unbeknownst to you normalise your breathing. The soothing breeze evens your temper, relaxes your mind. The slant rays of the setting sun colour your world with optimistic hues, though only briefly.

I had always believed that the sea really has the power to make you see your problems from a different perspective, and thus, make you find a solution. So I used to spend my evenings at the beach, every chance I got.

All had gone swimmingly well for so many years. Until just the other day. I was speaking to the resplendent, frequently-blinking friend of mine I had mentioned earlier, about my love for the ocean. She said something very thought-provoking. "The sea, or for that matter the mountains or the earth itself, does not solve your problems. It expands your soul. Its enormity makes you think of yourself as quite insignificant, and your problems even more so."

She couldn’t have been more right. Here’s why:












(First published on Bhéjaa Fry. Read comments by readers here.)

Cradle to the grave

We've got some very smart people running our country. No, really.

India has a disconcerting sex ratio of 933 females per 1000 males. The government is aware of the fact that the reason behind this dilemma is the general indignant attitude of the society towards the girl-child and the resultant uncontrolled & increasing instances of female foeticide. So far, so good.

Guess what! The government has a great solution to this problem – set up cradle services all over India. Instead of killing the girl-child when she's just a foetus, parents can then simply 'deposit' their newborn daughter at one of these government-run cradle services. Wow. The government will take good care of them. You bet. Yes, you're right.

Some fools, like you & I, did tell the government that the scheme might (or might not) decrease foeticide but it will certainly do nothing to curb discrimination against women in India. In fact, it will certify it and, consequently, encourage more families to abandon their daughters.

The powers-that-be say sagely, "It doesn't matter. It is better than killing them."

Such thoughtful people, no? When God was handing out brains, we turned up with sieves, didn't we? But the politicians, they're so intelligent and concerned. They are absolutely right. It is better that those girls live and suffer in those government-run cradle services. They'll be robbed of their futures the same, but at least they will know what they have been really robbed of and who were the perpetrators.

No, no. This one's no hot air. The government is sure to implement this scheme. They must, for a project of such gargantuan magnitude and humanitarian attitude is sure to earn them some brownie points in the next elections.

Before the end of their tenure, they will set up cradle services all over rural India. Then, they will use it to get votes.

If they win, they will promptly appoint some NGOs to take care of the cradle services. (We've been over how nice those NGOs of ours are.)

If they lose, then it becomes the new government's headache. Simple.

You're right, again. Why not reinforce such measures as educating people to treat girls as equals, punishing foeticide practitioners harshly and securing the rights of the girl-child?

Firstly, such long-term solutions will take much longer than the government's tenure in office. And, secondly, such solutions are wimpy. They don't help win elections, now do they?

(First published on Bhéjaa Fry. Read comments by readers here.)

The afternoon of realisation

On a dull Sunday afternoon, after a shopping spree that failed to become one, I was returning home in a cab. At a traffic signal, a mid-sized car pulled up next to my cab. Instinctively, I looked in its direction. There was a young guy at its wheel and a young girl sitting in the front passenger's seat. The girl had her face dug in her hands. Seeing a hint of a paper napkin in her hands, I assumed it might be a routine mascara accident she's remedying.

The car's windows were up. Just when I was about to look away, the girl raised her head and the guy promptly slapped her across the face. She shouted something at him and he slapped her again. She returned to mopping her tears with the napkin. None of my business but I was shocked and, unbeknownst to me, had made it apparent. I had uttered something to the effect of or actually the words, "What the fuck?"

The cab driver had seen the entire episode too. He said, "That is just wrong, you should never hit a woman. Shout at them, argue with them but never hit a woman." I was gladdened. I had half-expected him to have an opinion let alone a good opinion about the subject.

I thought to myself, "The guy in the car is obviously well-off but look at the way he treats women. And look at this cab driver. He must work really hard to make ends meet. But his views about women are so nice and…" But before I could pin a medal of honour on the cab driver's khaki lapel, he continued. "When you hit women, it pushes them over the edge. Then they will sit on your head. They will start dominating you. They will make your life hell by telling you to do this, that and the other. You should never let them dominate you. You should show them their place – next to your shoes."

As the signal turned green, the cab driver, thankfully, shut up. And I started realising why a majority of women have such colourful opinions about men, in general. Their opinions fit most men to the T.

Until I went to Sri Lanka, I used to think that while this disparity exists across the world, it is more prominent in India because ours is a patriarchal society. Here men are expected to be men. They can get away with murder. But, no matter how 'liberal' the new generations become, daughters are treated as the substandard offspring. Parents have their hopes pinned on the son, regardless of how prodigal he might be or how promising their daughter might be. Opinions are neatly divided as to what is becoming of a man (which is 'everything') and what is unbecoming of a woman (which, again, is 'everything'). Scarily, the attitude has been so deeply engraved on people's brains that even women consider it the correct way, even the ones in no danger of incurring society's wrath for having an opinion.

The situation across the Palk Strait isn't any different. The Sri Lankan Burghers (descendants of the resident Dutch, Portuguese and British) are the most liberal among the island's races. In fact, so liberal are they that their women are considered 'loose' (in other words, 'easy' or 'fast'), by others, and their men have more bail receipts than educational degrees by the time they turn 20.

The boys are allowed to do whatever they can think of right from 12 years of age. They can have many girlfriends (sometimes, even boyfriends), drive drunk, go to jail, smoke weed and be proper louts. In fact, a couple of my male colleagues there told me, amid bouts of laughter, how their mothers had caught them doing weed and let them off with almost no admonition. Men will be men, you know.

The girls are no less either. They are allowed to have boyfriends once they are 14, they are allowed to drink and be out partying till the DJs come home.

Materialism, divorces, neglect, apathy and almost total absence of emotions, logic and sense are the order of the day. Here's the ace. Theirs is a matriarchal society.

Then again, why should I be bothered? I am a man. Well, that's exactly why. It affects me because, given their upbringing and maybe past experience, most women come pre-programmed as to what to typically expect of me. And then, the relationship becomes a circus where I have to demonstrate how I am not what they had been expecting of ordinary men.

Conservative or liberal, veiled or open-minded, whatever the society we live in, the discrimination exists. This is, probably, the only area humans have not developed in at all.

But is it just society? Do we owe it to the way we are brought up? Or could it be genetic?

(First published on Bhéjaa Fry. Read comments by readers here.)