Lost and waiting to be found

I’m walking down this road which is so long that I can’t see what’s at its end.

There are so many people around me and plenty of roads that criss-cross my road which momentarily bring some people onto my road only to drift them away from me pretty soon.

Sometimes this road is taking me through wonderful places, but some bits of the road are tough.

Was I chased down this road? or did I start walking down this road on my own? I don’t remember. I have walked too far down this road for it to matter anymore.

But for what will I go back now? All directions are the same. Going ahead is just as good and bad as going back now. There is no point in running. The harder I run the sooner I stop.

No one knows where I should be going, so let them keep their answers to themselves.

I’m lost, and I will keep walking until I find myself who’s waiting to be found. Until then let the world wait.

Broken, yet not so broken

Bright Blue vase holds daffodils in it.

It looks all so shiny on the surface.

The cracks have been developing inside, but it hasn’t shown up on the surface yet.

I look at it and say, it’s perfect; no cracks on the surface.

Bright Blue vase holds Peruvian lilies in it

It looks all so shiny on the surface.

The water leaks from the vase, yet still no sign of a crack on the surface.

I look at it and say, it’s alright; no cracks on the surface.

Bright Blue vase holds Gladiolus in it.

It looks all shiny but now with a slight hint of a crack at the bottom.

I look at it and say, it’s not so bad, it’s just a crack on the surface.

Bright Blue vase holds Tulips in it.

Its still shiny but cracks have grown

I look at it and say, it is ok; its not broken yet.

Bright Blue vase no longer holds anything in it

It looks so shiny lying broken as thousand pieces on the floor

I look at it and say, it is really broken.

Bright Red vase holds Roses in it

I look at it and say, I wish I had noticed the cracks sooner.

#Mental Health

It dark around

Its dark around.

Pitch black darkness.

I have no idea where I’m going. But I couldn’t bother much as I don’t have any place in particular in mind to go to.

But the very nature of this darkness is discomforting.

It reduces in the mornings, but still doesn’t go away completely. The days go on cycling between lighter and darker shades of darkness.

Occasionally someone comes by holding a small kernel of light, but that too will flicker and go out soon. Even when they last, the thought of the impending darkness stands in the way of feeling the warmth of the light.

How is this going to end?

They told me not to worry

They told me covid is not real, so I should not worry.

I tried not to worry, until I got infected.

They told me not to worry, because I’m too young for Covid.

I did not worry, when my body started an inferno of a fever.

When I lost the sense of smell, but the evil Covid left me the sense of taste to suffer the bitter aftertaste of sickness perennially in the mouth; I did not worry.

I did not worry, when every muscle in the body ached to mark their attendance.

I did not worry, until the air around me became dense; breathing became a chore and lungs wanted to take some rest.

They told me not to worry, because I’m too young to die from Covid.

Now I can’t stop worrying, because if it can get this bad for someone who need not worry about it, how bad does it get to those who should really worry.

Do we all really have the same amount of Time in a day?

Whenever someone starts talking about Time Management, more often than not they will quote that, “Everyone from Bill Gates, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to the homeless sick old man sleeping in the platform has got the same amount of time in a day”. But is that really so? If we all have the same amount of time in a day how does Elon Musk can afford to aspire to go live in Mars in the next 5 years, when I couldn’t even fathom getting to buy myself a decent home in a posh neighbourhood in any given city in the same time period. Why is there a glass ceiling, an untold threshold to what each one of could achieve in a given day?

My first argument is that even though each one of us has got the same amount of time before the clock resets, we all don’t get to have equal access to all that time. A mother of a newborn who also has got a full time job as a software engineer, doesn’t really have the same amount of time as her unmarried colleague who doesn’t have the responsibility of taking care of and rising a newborn, who lives in a studio apartment, who can afford to wear the same jeans for a month and wake up everyday, brush their teeth and get to work. There are millions of cases like this where one has got some duties and reasons to do extra work which in a sense doesn’t propel us in the direction that we desire to progress in. No matter how efficient you are in doing that job, still you got to spend at least one second on that job more than someone who doesn’t have to do it at all in the first place. These responsibilities are not universal so we all don’t have the same amount of time in a day.

But still it’s not that I have got to spend a few hours a day towards my unavoidable responsibilities is creating this gargantuan difference in my potential from attempting to live in Mars to scraping the bottom of the wallet to buy a home. There is one more myth that we can’t buy time, not even borrow or lend it. This is said in a sense that no amount of money can make us time travel back like in a sci-fi movie and go to a earlier instance in time. There is no disputing this claim. But when we wish that if we had had more time or if we want to relive the past so that we could have some things differently, are we really wishing for the time to be back or do we want a different outcome for that spent time? When I wish that, if only I could go back to the time before my board exams, I would put my head down and study well so that I would get better marks than what I got now and get into that top rated college. When it is possible to buy your way into the same top college through capitation and management quota seats without having to travel back in time and correcting the wrongs, is that not buying back time with your money? When you don’t have to spend one more year preparing for that entrance exam and buy yourself a seat in that same college right now with your mediocre marks, is that not one year earned?

When you don’t have to wait in the line to get something just because you are the son/daughter of a person of power, whose power was bestowed on them by virtue of the governmental position they are holding or due to their social status attained by being part of the dominant group in the societal hierarchy. Does this not constitute adding more time to our day than others? All forms of social privilege we are enjoying are in a way adding more time to our day which is being taken away from others who are oppressed by the systemic social mechanisms.

Even if we manage to get the same amount of time as everyone else, still the output of that time is not going to be the same. There may be some inherent limitations to how much work we can get done through no mistake of ours or of others. You could solve only so many math problems in a minute even with extensive practice and training and may be that could be less than a prodigy who out performs us without breaking a sweat. But most often this is not the reason for the difference. The time of a black person and a white person are not the same, the time of the privileged and unprivileged are not that same, the time of people of different countries are not the same, of different faiths are not that same, of people coming from different neighbourhoods are not the same, of people speaking different languages are not the same, the time of people of different socio-economic groups are not the same. Indeed some people get to have an head start due to a multitude of factors and some get disadvantaged due to a number of reasons. This may be unfair, but is unavoidable.

Though always a different leverage is applied to our time and some get head starts, we should notice that our finish lines need not be the same always. I need not have to go to the Mars, or even buy a house within the next year. What the socially set standard of success and happiness is and what really brings us joy and what we really want to do in life could be polar opposites. Our times are not the same, but we are all given the same opportunity to choose to run or not to run the same race as everyone else, where the odds are not uniformly stacked. But when we are determined to run this race, when it is our own choice, do these differences in time really going to affect us?

For the small things in life

Lying down, chasing that elusive sleep which never surrenders without putting up a good fight; I ponder about things big and small. Like a wash-basin drain, no matter where I begin all topics always spiral in and end up in one particular question, “What next in life?” for which I have a lot of ideal answers but none so simple to put an end to this question once and for all. So, when these night thoughts want to pull in someone to take the blame and the usual victim is my past self, who has to take the brunt of the all the judgement I pass onto myself and the stupidness of my past decisions. Had I done this or done that things would have been better now. There is no denying that things would have been different, but I don’t think it would have been any better and even if it did, I don’t know whether it would be worth it.

Until I finished college, life has been like that water-slide which goes round and round with its twists and turns in an amusement park. This ride called education is the compulsory first ride. You may either enjoy every second of this ride or dread it and scream all the way through, you have to go through it and you pretty much have no control over it. You can try and eject out of this ride midway, but it most often than not ends in a crash landing, and too few stick the landing and end up successful to consider that option seriously as an alternative route. Of course a lot of people don’t get to take this ride. That’s a totally different story, I complaining about the privileges I have got may sound insensitive and ignorant. But a broken leg and sprained ankle will rank very differently in the scale of pain, but still both pains and both deserves a remedy and a cure.

In the journey of life, there are certain time-worn milestones or the big things in life as I like to call it, exists. Everyone’s culture and society may offer a slightly different variants of these but, in their core everything is the same. Stripping them down to their essence they are; get respected, earn money, gain power, get a life partner, procreate, invest into the progeny. It’s basically these things combined with context becomes a big milestone in a normal person’s life. Achieving these are supposed to make us happy in this life or after it.

This undulating journey of life is a pursuit of a source of an eternal high, a state of unending happiness or so I believe. Once you achieve one milestone, it is replaced with the another. In this peregrination, we are asked not to waste our time on the small things in life saying that they are too trivial and short lived to be the meaning of life, to be the purpose of our existence. But, my experiences show that those big and important things in life are also impermanent and are not always a source of happiness. What good is life if we don’t get have a little fun on the way without any precious purpose assigned to it, take detours away from the run of the mill things, meet new people without thinking about how they are going to be of help in the future, marvel at the trivialities, and be consumed by the present. Life is too long to wait for the payoff at the end of it and too short to get second chances.

There is no denying that these big things in life are the things which keep us going and not be broke at the very first mile of the journey, they provide the fuel to go further. But, it’s these small things which make the journey bearable and makes us to go do all the way through. I’m not saying that I’m going to enjoy a trivial life, but that these small things are ascribed a meaning worthy of them when placed in the midst of these big things. So, for the small things I love, I choose to put up with the drudgery of the big things in life.

Deleting Histories

Do you remember what dress you were wearing twelve days ago, what food you ate for breakfast last week, what was the first word you said to your co-worker sitting next to you in office a couple of days ago? Human memory is amazingly short-lived and it’s capacity small enough that it demands us to remember only the important things. Human ingenuity has come up with solutions to solve this deficiency by categorizing and assigning identification tags to similar things. So, we no longer need to remember the colour of every single elephant, but just remember that all elephants are black. But, a problem arises when this logic is applied in reverse. Not everything which is black and big are elephants and more often than not people are unconsciously using this faulty logic and are not willing to question it.

I feel this system of classification is doing more harm than good, historically and also more so in our present day. When people ask me which college I studied in, which place I’m from or what my parent’s are doing, they are trying to use their prejudice and classify and put me into one of their boxes. These are like the modern day equivalents of asking people what their caste is. But to be honest people still ask and look for signs of what caste others belong to largely even today. There is nothing wrong in asking people about their college in an attempt to know about their college, but when the college serves as a measure to gauge the person; I’m disappointed.

Every single moment we are tagged with our past which may or may not represent our true self. We are not judged by what we want to do and where we want to be in the future, but by what we were and where we are from in the past. With the improvements in technology these classifications and predictions based on these classifications are becoming more widespread and very generalised. So, statistically if a person with similar attributes as me didn’t do well in life, now this system is going to put me in the same bin as them and is going to deny me the fair opportunity I deserve. Nowadays, the job applications are increasingly being scrutinized by machines than by humans and this is a growing trend in other domains as well.

This growing sense of insecurity forces me to be wary of my history. This is a long persisting social issue which happens to be aggravated by the advent of technology. I wish to delete my history and become a nobody for the fear of being classified into the wrong group. It’s high time we should start acknowledging that all that glitters are not gold.

I met god in the bypass road

Even when the world appears to be coming to an end, for the people in Sales and Marketing March months being the end of the financial year doesn’t lose any of its importance. This day (A Tuesday in the second week of March) was supposed to be my last customer meet of the month as the people were now only slowly starting to realize the seriousness of the situation and are slowly announcing office closures and work from homes owing to the rapid spread of the Coronavirus. I was a little scared to travel during then in public or shared transports. Normally I would have taken a cab to make this travel of about 30 Kms, but in this extraordinary circumstance my odds of catching the infection by travelling in a cab from near the airport was too high. I just can’t afford to take that risk. But since this was the last one for the month I wanted to get done with it and also a lot of other things depended on the outcome of this meeting. My destination was Ambattur and I was in Tambaram. So, I borrowed my friend’s bike to go to Ambattur. When he gave the bike to me he said that the fuel was low, and asked me to fill up on the way. He also added that there must be enough juice in the tank to take me to the next petrol bunk. I took his words a little differently than what he had meant it to be.

From the place where I took my friend’s bike there was a petrol bunk in about half Km if I go in the road on the right side. But, google maps said that there is less traffic in the road on the left side and that I could save 4 minutes by taking this route. Wanting to be smart, I took the road on the left and thought that there will be a plenty of petrol bunks on the way and I can fuel up in the first one on the way. This route indeed was the fastest, since it requires me to take the NH32 for the most part of the journey. I have been on this road a handful of times before and I had failed to notice one key thing about this road. This stretch of road between Tambaram and Red hills did not have a single U-turn anywhere and once we enter the NH the very next exit comes only after about 9 Kms near Porur. And, more importantly there is only one petrol bunk on this stretch and that also is on the opposite lane and to reach there it would require me to travel 9 Kms forward, take an U turn at the exit under the bridge near Porur and travel about 5 Kms back. I had to learn all this the hard way.

I had come over 4 Kms into the Highway and I saw that Petrol bunk on the opposite and lane and thought that I would take the next U turn and come get some fuel. But after going a little further I ran out of fuel. I was marooned in the middle of that by pass road. This is when I pulled the Google Maps out and surveyed the area and got all those knowledge about the road which I was explaining a little while ago. This was totally a dumb thing for me to do. Pushing the bike to the next nearest Petrol bunk was not really a good idea as the next one was about 10 Kms away and also the Sun was high in the sky and scorching me with 37 deg Cs of Chennai’s Humid hotness. Out of options I wanted to book a cab to pick me from where I was, go to the next petrol bunk, get some petrol in a bottle and come back to where I have left the bike and refuel it and take the bike and be on my way to Ambattur. But as an extension of my misfortune for that day I could find no cabs in that area. I tried everything from Ola, Uber and even rapido, but for no good.

I found a petrol bunk on the map about 3 Kms away from the highway, but the problem was that there was no gap in the barricade on the side of the road and I have to leave the bike on the road, jump over the barricade and walk and get the fuel. This wasn’t such a bad idea since I have nothing better. I started pushing the bike and I wouldn’t have come a few metres away from where I ran out of fuel, I heard a voice behind me asking me, “Have you run out of Petrol, Boss?”. I was thrilled to see someone stop by and check on me. He didn’t even wait for my reply, he offered to tow me to the next petrol bunk. This was an offer I can’t refuse. I readily accepted his kindness. I didn’t know how to thank him. This was even more remarkable because I didn’t even ask him for help. He came out of his way to help me. He started pushing my bike from behind sitting on his bike. He asked me where I was going and he towed me till the nearest petrol bunk in that route. When the petrol bunk came near, he just told me that the bunk is on the left and he took his legs of my bike and went on his way showing a thumbs up to me. He didn’t even wait for my thanks. At that moment I would have built a Burj Khalifa itself for him for the help he has rendered me. He pretty much saved my life that day. I would have done anything that day for him, but he didn’t even want a thanks. I know nothing about him except that he rides a blue Bajaj Discover whose back left indicator was broken and was dangling by a wire.

I’m really amazed by this unconditional help rendered to me by a stranger. I’m not sure whether I would have done this to anyone. All along the time while I was being towed I was wondering about what this man would want in return for the help he is doing to me. I couldn’t even intuitively understand the idea of helping someone seeking nothing in return. One would at least expect gratitude in return, but this man didn’t even wait for that. This was like god had come to help me. But, actually I don’t know whether god would be coming to help people like this. A man in the by pass road came to help me and he was one kind MAN.

Escaping Reality

If there is one unifying thing which we would all agree upon then that would be that the reality sucks. No matter how nice and rosy others think that your reality is, it always sucks for you. We try very hard to prove it otherwise, but resistance is futile. This is a universal truth, no one can ever escape it absolutely. But, there are ways to find short-lived solaces. There are a lot of ways to take our mind away from the grueling reality; Art, books, music, cinema, drugs, sports, games, friends, people. But none of them seem to give a good return on investment and also with everything at last the bill comes due and we are back in reality. The pursuit for an eternal high, is this going to be an unremitting voyage?

Being the odd man out

My appetite for novelty has been quenched or atleast seems to have been diminished after a month long in an alien land. Now I seem to wish for something familiar to break this monotony of unusual experiences. This city is amazing. Though I seem to use a lot of not so positive words to describe it, I don’t mean to demean it in anyway. The city operates in a totally different scale and I’m marvelled by it. The city is not perfect in any way, but it is very efficient in its own way. The people I met here have been wonderfully warm to me. They happen to be very considerate of me but still I feel something missing.

Once there was a time when I longed for new experiences and wanted everyday to be fresh and out of the usual. And now I seem to be living that dream, but I’m not contended. Though every thing is new, every experience fresh and not from my Book of I have done that before, something is stopping me from experiencing it to the fullest. I’m an odd man in every situation. Though people don’t intentionally treat me like that, I seem to feel like I don’t belong. I appear to carry an wall with me everywhere I go and have to climb over it everytime I need to interact with anyone. This wall is my lack of proficiency in the language these people speak. It’s been almost a month since I set foot in this new city and I don’t think that I have had more than an handful of conversations which goes beyond the usual pleasantries. Though people seem to know English over here, they are not very comfortable in speaking it over extended periods of time. And the moment they switch over to their native tongue I’m totally lost in the woods. But I don’t want to keep asking them to translate what they said every single time as I myself find it annoying as well as I don’t want to take the cliche that, “What they just said isn’t important enough for me to know”. I pretty much have been relying on non verbal signals and the very little vocabulary I picked up of the local tongue to wade through this last month. This has made it very difficult for me to make meaningful relationships. But I’m glad that I could find at least a few people with whom I could connect and get closer to a level that I could offend, get offended, fight and then reconcile with in this short span of time and that too with my patchy mode of communication. I wish I could have created better relationships with these people had I know their language, but I wish it more that these people were comfortable in a language which I already knew so that they could have known what they are missing from me, which they would have seen had we broken the wall of the communication gap between us.