In a contemplative mood…. At 12 am

It has happened to me innumerable times, when I have woken up in the dead of the night with some long forgotten song reeling in my head, in loops. The worst part is when you can’t get it out of your head and you are humming that song all day long. Now it doesn’t matter if it’s a hit song, but it is from some obscure B grade movie, then you are met with furtive glances.

This time it wasn’t a song, it was a thought. And it was the first time I felt an urgent need to spill it out, so I penned it down before I could post an entry. I can’t say it came in my head out of the blue. On my birthday, I was in a rather pensive mood. No, my friends had called me up dutifully at 12 am to wish me, but not before reminding me that I have grown up. I had to hear ‘Now you have turned twenty years old’ with unusual emphasis on old over hundred times that day. One of my good friends, lets call him Alias (because he has two names, real names I mean because of some goof-up in his birth certificate.), ringed me up to wish me. ‘What have I done in the last twenty years?’ is not something I should be asking on my birthday, but I needed an answer. He tried to brush away my thoughts but when I persisted, there was an uncomfortable silence over the line. I tried listing out things that I thought were worth mentioning. It made me feel a little better (it’s not that tough to silence your conscience), but oblivious to me, a few kilometers away, Alias was mulling over the same question at four in the morning.

Today while I wait for electricity to be restored (load shedding at ten at night, MSEB sucks), I am again trying to find an answer to that question. Sania Mirza, Sharapova, Nadal are close to my age and look at what they have achieved. I don’t want to be famous and I certainly don’t look up to them as my idols, but it does make me think about the kind of life I am leading. Or for that case, we ALL are leading.For years we have been taught that we need to work hard to achieve success and happiness. Sure, it’s true. But landing up a good job and earning big bucks isn’t the only way you become happy. We all have been trying so hard all these years to be the perfect human being that we have failed to realize that being imperfect is part of being human.

In human evolution the most radical change was phasing out the organs from our system which are of no use to us. That’s why we have the appendix, which was used to digest raw meat, lying in a state of disuse in our body and we call it ‘vestigial organ’. But do you know what crushing pain and trauma it causes when it starts troubling us? So what do we do then? We remove that thing from our body that causes us so much of suffering.

We often become so conscious of what other people think about us, we stop short of doing things that we enjoy so much. And it is not just fear of the society that holds us back. There is this little monster of self-doubt inside us that washes away all traces of confidence and courage. It is this monster that has stopped me from involving myself in social work. ‘Will I be able to give enough time?’, ‘Will I be able to manage my studies?’, and ‘Will I be able to continue?’, these questions start creeping in my mind until I am so muddles up that I give up my urge to do something altogether. I have missed out on so much just because I have failed to push myself to do the thing that makes me happy. We all wish for happiness and success, but very few are ready to face the dark times that come with it. I don’t want to be a coward anymore. I now realize that the fear of society is just a crutch on which I used to support my willpower. My willpower was never weak, it was lying unused. I need to exercise it much often so that it doesn’t become vestigial and give me pain later. Instead I need to flush out the toxins of apprehension and self-doubt from my system and come out clean. I am aware I will be resisted, for change is a scary thing for some people, but it needs to be realized that you have got just one life and you got to lead that on your own terms. I don’t know whether this has answered my question, I don’t even know if whatever I have written is relevant. But now I have accepted my shortcomings and found a new purpose in life, to overcome them and that, my friend, has made all the difference in the world.

PUNE CHRONICLES

Going to Pune was an on-the-spur decision. I hardly got enough time to think how much time I am going to stay at my relatives’ place. So I stuffed some clothes and took my faithful college bag because it’s my dumping ground and has every necessary and not-so-necessary thing in it. Though it is yet to be ascertained as to why I need to carry medicines well past their expiry date.

My brother and I caught the early morning bus, which was the best thing we could have done. The weather was cool and breezy which seems to have lifted up the driver’s spirit because we were in grave danger of being thrown off the road. Thankfully nothing of that sort happened. But as the bus snaked through the ghats, motion sickness seemed to set in some folks. I just looked out of the window praying hard that no one pukes in front of me. That sight just makes me so queasy. We reached Lonavla soon and almost the entire bus emptied. I had a brief temptation to check out the chikkis, but better sense prevailed when I had a look at my slight paunch. Hehe.

I soon reached my relative’s place but I had no idea about what places to visit in Pune. The problem with Pune is that it has got an absolutely pathetic public transport system (compared to Mumbai) and I had to rely on my cousins to take me sight seeing. And since they are office going people, they could only take me out in the evening and on weekends.

First day I went to see my cousin’s under construction flat near the airport. I initially thought the area must be noisy. But since the commercial flights are allowed only for particular time duration and the airport is mainly used for military purposes, noise wasn’t much of an issue. We spotted an airplane on the runway and waited and waited and waited for it to take off. Finally it did, and I could bring myself to say nothing else but a ‘wow’ when it soared into infinity. Absolutely breath-taking.

The roads are really good. There is so much of construction work going on that I doubt if they will be able to complete it before its starts raining heavily(it hasn’t yet actually started raining out there). But unlike here in Mumbai where you see debris at every random spot, the one thing I noticed about Pune folks is that they always talk in terms of kilometers. It is quite unlike Mumbai where we talk in terms of minutes. Queer.

Pune has got such fabulous gardens; it can put Mumbai to shame. By saying gardens I don’t mean the places in which a few trees are grown haphazardly; I actually mean a garden- scenic and relaxing. I also visited the snake garden, though there were less snakes and more of other animals to be seen. For a change, the animals weren’t sluggish or inactive. I saw the white eyed buzzard(that's a bird in case you were wondering), star tortoise and really cute peacocks. But the best part was watching two leopards play amongst themselves, quite oblivious of the crowd.
Absolutely amazing sight. I had just started clicking pictures on my cell phone when a man yelled out “excuse me, photography is not allowed”. For the rest of my time, I looked around for some sign prohibiting photography. By the time I left, I couldn’t spot even one warning. Cursing the idiot, I left the snake garden.

Damn, I got bullied again.