Through a glass darkly

Existential questions have always intrigued me. The answers are often unanimously dogmatic, with people belonging to different wavelengths of the colourful spectrum of opinions trying to vociferously voice his/her own opinion as the eternal truth. The enigmatic nature of the questions sometimes makes the answers seem equally probable, though it might not be the case in reality. But what is this reality we are trying to define here? Isn’t reality another name given to a product that’s a powerful edifice chiselled by the human mind? The problem with trying to answer existential questions is that, the answers are likely to be dictated by your subconscious. Your thoughts and actions are guided by your beliefs, rationalism plummets to the backseat and your emotions reign supreme. Equivocation becomes the debater’s best friend in times of intellectual oblivion, obfuscation the obvious strategy of the argumentative disputant trying to establish himself as the unquestionable oracle. 

The ones that try to tread on the neutral path, plainly trying to examine the mysterious unknowns with the curiosity of an innocent child asking his dad what exists beyond the sky and the stars are often belittled. You’re likely to be accused of being a chicken not big enough to form an opinion. But these opinionated myopic eyes that disparage you of being indecisive don’t realize the fact that such a cold-eyed stance could actually help you stay at the centre of the spectrum thus enabling you to gape at the titanic beauty of nature which encompasses these talking heads.

A dispassionate stance, one that appreciates the exquisiteness of the phrase “I don’t know” with all the humility in the universe can actually lead to a comprehensive analysis that subtly tries to take the best out of every extremist stance. The study of a mind with such a stance or the study of a work of a person with such an attitude can be extremely fascinating. One such mind is Ingmar Bergman and one such work is “Through the glass darkly” , which tries to investigate diverse perspectives from a birds-eye viewpoint, coincidentally and ironically playing god in the process, though playing or reaching a conclusion about god maybe the last thing on such a person’s mind.

Whether Bergman was an atheist is a debatable question but the pointers seem to be too evident especially in the latter part of his life. There is no explicit confession in his autobiography too, but you’re tempted into conclusion, like in most situations, including the god question. Bergman could have died an atheist but my instincts tell me that Bergman hadn’t formed an opinion when he made this film. He was born into a religious family, his dad being a pastor. He probably started questioning faith during his formative years and “Through the glass darkly” was probably a product that resulted when his mind was witnessing a tumultuous war between his theistic persona that could be attributed to his upbringing and an iconoclastic, inquisitive side that wasn’t willing to ignore the logical loopholes in his beliefs anymore. The convolutions have resulted in one of the best films I have seen, probably the best you are likely to see.

I’d like to share a few interesting things about the movie here. The only female character in this movie, Karin, is shown to be a mentally ill person. She has supernatural visions and is shown to be living in her own sweet world and she seems to enjoy that. Her problem begins the moment the line that separates her perceived world and the real one starts blurring. This probably represents the state of mind of Bergman in his earlier years when he started questioning religious faith. He wouldn’t have had problems being a closet theist but the disastrous nature of the “disease” would have started troubling him the moment his intellect started questioning the veracity of the holy angels close to his heart. Rational questioning and introspection can be assumed to be a disease only by a fanatically raised theist told to be embroiled in his faith, come what may. His atheistic side or the rationalist side should I say, takes over satirically as he takes a dig at revelations and supernatural envisioning by allegorically classifying them as a mental delusion that keeps the victim away from material reality. On the other hand, it was hard to ignore the fact that the other characters in the movie would have appeared to be mentally ill from Karin’s point of view. This is evident from the way she disregards her own husband at the expense of a god that might (MIGHT) make an entrance through a big door in that perceived reality of hers. Bergman probably tries to imply here that the extravagant possibilities and the positives that could arise out of the existence of such an omnipotent god actually drive people into frenzied faith and hope that they exhibit; so much so that they disregard the immaculate material advantages that their faculties could appreciate, like a caring, freethinking and handsome husband in this case.

Another thing that struck me about the characterization of Karin is the degree of sexual exuberance and tension on exhibition, scene after scene, something that’s brave and anachronistic considering the fact that the film was made in the black and white era. The way she goes about happily kissing and embracing her brother with evidently palpable lust, the manner in which she uses subtle occasions to trigger conversations about her brother’s sexual fantasies give us brief glimpses of the free spirit that Karin could be without the societal limitations. The allegories happen to be the dad and her husband for the patriarchal stranglehold the society (she moves about without restrains and converses without inhibitions when her dad and husband are gone) has over women and the supernatural visions for the influence of religion over the freedom of women. The portrayal of incest again appeared to be subtle here. The director must have had all the audacity in the world to choose incest as an abstract representation to convey something. For a promiscuous viewer, it might appear to be blatant proselytism of incest but the brother here probably just represents a non-chauvinistic male community ready to give women their due with respect to sexual freedom.

The movie has a universal theme that is likely to be relevant perpetually. The music (J.S. Bach?) is haunting and extremely appropriate. The film is basically a drama caught in camera but then an intricate study of the camera is likely to reveal something else. The movie as such is extremely talky and the director chooses to go for long shots when he could have gone for close-ups everytime just to give us a taste of the setting and the abstract expressionism on display. The outdoor shots in the movie are exquisite. We often get to see the splendid, calm sea through a window as the characters engage themselves in a serious conversation inside a room. It seemed to be subtle mockery of the behaviour of the human race that is always seriously involved in its own problems, failing to appreciate the beauty to the big, gigantic embodiment of gorgeousness around it.

The dad’s character in the movie makes a good case study again. He’s shown to be in possession of a vacuous emotional drive with the anomalous expressive bursts happening occasionally.       He finds out at one point that life is possibly pointless and even contemplates suicide. He miraculously escapes death and the twist in the tale enamours faith and hope in him again. He develops new found love towards his children and becomes relatively selfless. He drops a tear at the family reunion, the allegorical play that his children stage strikes a chord. He garners the guts to confess his errors and makes an honest attempt to complete his transformation process. The theist in Bergman takes over here as he even makes an explicit statement before the curtains are drawn: “Love is the evidence of god”. The son, Minus, asks a few questions that put his dad in a soup but the dad reassures him that there is hope as long as there is love. The boy appears confused, but is convinced: not because his dad was cogent but because his dad had finally spoken. His dad, his idol, his hero probably, whose ways were unknown to him, his symbol of hope and his personal god that he was ready to trust.

The end

February the 12th was quite an amusing day. I had actually come back from college that very day with a heavy load of books that I had picked up at a fair a week before and I was dying to get my hands on them. It was then that mom instructed me to go to the hospital. I was disappointed, but I didn’t have a choice. Grandpa was ill and there was no one to take care of him. I wasn’t really attached to my grandpa. In fact, I’m not emotionally attached to most people around me.

I had to endure a lot of embarrassing moments that seem to be extremely funny in retrospect. Thaatha( Tamil word for grandpa) seemed to have lost track of reality. He didn’t seem to be aware of the fact that he was actually in a hospital. He thought that he was still in his house. Coincidentally, the room that was allotted to him in the hospital was scarily similar to his living room. His living room has a cot in the centre and a bench alongside. Opposite to his cot, there is a door which leads to the kitchen. Behind his cot is the entrance to his house or what used to be his house rather.

The hospital room had a cot in the centre as well.  Parallel to the cot, there was another cot which had a green bed sheet on it. It was the only hospital in my small town and hence it was crowded outside. My grandpa, according to whom the place we were in was his house, called me closer to him and asked me, “Dai Sudar, why are there so many people outside my house today? What’s happening? “. Aakash, my little cousin who had accompanied me, was grinning while I was pondering over how to answer my thatha’s question.  I gave him a random answer and put him to sleep.  A few moments later, he woke up suddenly and called me closer to him again. This time it was about the cot alongside him. “Dai Sudar, what is this big green banana leaf doing on my bench?” This time I burst out laughing along with my little cousin. I told him that Viji Chithi (Tamil word for aunt) had kept it and will be coming back shortly to take it.

My Thaatha was an independent person all his life. After Paati (Tamil word for grandma) passed away, we asked him to stay along with us. He refused. He held privacy and individual freedom in high regard: both his and ours. So he obviously didn’t prefer being chained to a drips bottle in a hospital room, though it had been hydrating him all along. Once every three minutes, he made a valiant effort to break free from that pipe which had been curtailing his freedom and independence. And every time, we had to disturb our inertia in a bid to stop him from disconnecting that pipe. My Thaatha was a short-tempered man and he saw us as people who were pulling all the stops to prevent him from doing what he wanted. The first two times, when I took his hand away from the pipe, he pinched me hard. Given the state of his body, I could sense that he was giving it his all to stop me.

From the third time, the smarty employed a different strategy. He threatened to spit at me. And I obviously didn’t want to be spat at, though my heart kept telling me that it was a mentally unstable old man living in pseudo-reality. I was helpless and hence did what any sane person would do. I called for help, LOUDLY at that. As soon as the nurse came in, I stepped out along with my cousin and as expected, people in the corridor gave me weird, apparently judgemental looks. Unperturbed, we went to the nearby hotel to get my grandpa some milk to drink.

He had low BP and wasn’t supposed to drink anything hot. But my grandpa had been used to drinking piping hot tea early in the morning. So when I offered lukewarm milk to him, he wasn’t satisfied. His big booming bass voice was heard again. “Dai Sudar, milk is not hot. Boil it again and add some sugar”, he said and pointed to the door in front of him. In his house, it would have been his kitchen door. There, in the hospital, it was the toilet door.

 “What are you staring at, enter the kitchen and boil it?” I stood right there, helpless for a second and went blank. The two most obvious things followed. He threatened to spit at me and I called for help again!

At 4 in the afternoon, Chitapa (Tamil word for Uncle) came to relieve me. As I walked back home, I thought about a lot of things. I started thinking about my relationship with Thaatha, the days when he used to take me to school. But one startling visual memory of my grandpa is this image of him sitting and watching TV alone during the last leg of his life, the one post-Sulochana (my paati’s name). That image will never cease to haunt me, the image of a lonely old man not interested in anything in life watching TV only because he had no other choice or desire. His wife was long gone; sons were busy with their own families and grandsons found him too boring. I didn’t dislike him, I didn’t like him either. It’s just that I never felt anything about him.

I was also pondering about how religious my grandpa was, like most people belonging to his generation. He used to be extremely fit and was a perfectionist. He was a very serious person in life; it’s ironical that he contributed to some hearty unintended laughter on the last day of his life.

I then went back to the hospital. He was sleeping. Chitapa, Appa and Amma had reached by then and we were discussing about the various things that had happened that day. Not a single soul in the room, including Thaatha would have imagined it to be his last night alive on this planet. We were so optimistic that he’d be back home in a couple of days that we didn’t even take him to a city hospital. And Thaatha was a person who loved anything and everything cooked at home. So we saw no point in taking him to a city hospital.

I went back home and had a disturbed sleep. Chitapa and Appa decided to spend the night in the hospital. I woke up hearing Appa scream at half past four the next day. He had called mommy’s phone. Mommy was unusually calm and I could hear Appa panic over the phone. I sensed what was happening and sprinted to the hospital. Unlike city hospitals, anyone can storm into an ICU here in Tiruninravur. Thaatha didn’t like the oxygen mask and he wanted to get rid of it. Appa was trying to hold it tight, in vain. He was obviously not able to watch his dad die in his arms. I took over from my dad and held the mask close to his nostrils. After a while, a nurse took over. I went and stood near my grandpa’s legs and was looking right into his eyes. He was struggling to breathe but was looking right into my eyes. Slowly the eyes started losing focus and started looking upwards. I started screaming at him, I told him to look at me, my eyes. The eyeballs rolled back to their original position again. We were making eye contact again. An eerie 30 seconds followed before my grandpa’s eyeballs looked upwards permanently. The doctor, who was adopting desperate measures towards the end, left the room in despair. My thatha slept that day and never woke up again.

Chithi, my cousins and Amma had arrived by then. All of them were crying and I didn’t make any attempt to console them either. I was just shell shocked; I was plainly staring at my grandpa’s walking stick leaning against a cot in the room. I wasn’t crying, I have never cried after someone’s death. But this death had definitely affected me. It was ironical that at 4.15, when the doctors were in desperate need of an ambulance, not a single vehicle turned up. But at 5.45, the ice box arrived within ten minutes of our call.

A slew of rituals that seemed pointless to me followed. I was under constant siege for being lazy. I am irreligious and I just wasn’t interested in the proceedings.  But I wasn’t lazy here. I wasn’t ready to the question the blissful pseudo-reality that everyone lives in. Each person has his own pseudo-reality and it’s unfair to question it because you’re living in one yourself. The body was then taken to the graveyard. The undertaker apparently charged a whopping 7000 bucks to burn the body. It’s funny how people can be extremely heartless and selfish even in times of extreme grief. My dad was obviously not willing to bargain with the undertaker with his dad’s corpse on his shoulders.

I stood behind the funeral pyre and watched the body burn to ashes. Beyond the raging fire, I saw people cry. I then saw them leave. And after a point, I was alone. The fire was burning faintly. Director Bala’s words struck my mind as I watched it burn. He once said in an interview that he preferred going to a graveyard to a temple. After all, if peace is what they want, what better place than a graveyard. I realized the truth behind that statement. My grandpa had finally reached a state of eternal peace.

I also pondered over his film Pithamagan. I marvelled at the thought process behind the story, the concept of an emotionless orphan drafted into the seemingly beautiful world of emotional give and take only to be stranded in a limbo after his friend’s death. I was more like the protagonist. I didn’t feel anything towards my grand-dad till that last day of his. Why did he have to make me laugh like that and disappear the very next day? God is a sadist!

I also realized how death effortlessly achieves the equality all of us strive for, throughout our lives. It makes us humble, keeps us grounded and tells us with an evil smile on its face that it owns us. And that it owns all the citizens of the world and remains impartial. I wonder if there can be an alternative to death at all! Death after all, is such a beautiful thing.

Wayanad- tour diary

I’m generally against travelling as a group to any place. In fact, I do most things alone. I’m a narcissist and I love to analyse the way my mind behaves every time I set out on an adventure or anything slightly different. The very equanimity I cherish when I travel alone is grossly abused when in a group. My freedom and privacy take a rude beating every time I travel with my family. I wouldn’t blame anyone specifically because I’m a very rigid person and I prefer sticking to myself and cannot bow down to authority or control of any form. My eyes seem to mistake care and excessive love for intrusion into private space and that explains my mom bearing the brunt of my fury and mood swings every time we decide to take a detour from the normal. I have also consistently made it a point to avoid travelling with fellow students, right from school, because such trips usually have a martinet at helm wielding a whip to ensure punctuality. Punctuality is not an issue here; it’s the scant regard for letting the beauty of a particular moment set in and absolute disrespect for man’s most fluent emotion, the tendency to enjoy natural beauty that puts me off. People so often tend to ignore the glorious present in a bid to experience an uncertain future.  These martinets also have their own crude ideas about morals and virtues, thus enforcing serious limitations on the amount of fun one can actually expect to have. And more than anything else, I’m a spendthrift and I consider myself smart enough to maximize on the amount of fun regardless of the quanta of resources available at my disposal.

So when Preetam and Jockey asked me to join them and set out on a trip to Wayanad, the answer I was going to give was quite obvious. It didn't surprise anyone, including myself. Preetam and Jockey had on earlier occasions made it a point to accuse me of being partial towards my friends in Chennai and behaving indifferently with friends back here in college. The unfair accusation was definitely getting on my nerves. In spite of all that, I persisted with my rigid stance before I finally agreed on one fine morning, the rationale behind which seems to be inexplicable at this point of time.

I wasn’t pinning any expectations on the trip. Initially, my ego received a nice pat on the back. It was a diverse, random group I was travelling with. Other than Preetam and Jockey and of course butter, I never really knew anyone properly. The others were having their share of fun and the way they conceived fun seemed to be completely different from the way I did. Preetam and Jockey meanwhile were at their irritating best initially. Jockey especially was such a pest. I plugged in my earphones and played music in full volume. That settled a few issues and for the next few moments, I was in my own sweet world as I experienced myself breeze past the static world outside.

The next day, we set out to conquer Chembara peak, but due to an unfortunate turn of events, we had to postpone our plans of scaling the peak and take a detour to Edakkal caves. There was nothing noteworthy about that place except the unanimous concern for the environment on display there. It was a place that deserved not more than an hour of anyone’s time but unfortunately, thanks to my generation’s obsession with taking photos, we ended up spending a little more than five hours there. By then, I had acclimatized myself to the group’s culture. I had even got myself to play a game of dumb charades with them. But the criminal waste of time in taking photos was something that tingled a murderous rage deep within. The lesser said about the time taken to eat, the better.

I was willing to take into consideration the varying fitness levels among the people who had made it. But in spite of the allowances, the time we wasted was unpardonably high. I wasn’t sure though, if we could actually do anything about it. On our way back, I noticed that a lot of red flags and photographs of communist luminaries were fluttering against the strong winds. It was as if the commies were still in action in Kerala though the UPA is in power there right now. I realized that regardless of the ruling party, the hearts and minds of people were still painted red. Not very surprisingly, the commies had lost only by a margin of 2 seats.

Next we went to a museum, which mostly had insignificant statues in place. But I did manage to find a few interesting things there. For example, I have been told that people traditionally worship lord Shiva in the form of the Linga. But I managed to find a five-headed Shiva, the significance of each of the heads obviously remaining oblivious till date. I also managed to find an idol of a woman dancer wearing the holy thread referred to as poonal in Tamil. I have seen statues of goddesses wearing the same elsewhere, in Haleebedu, Karnataka, if my memory serves me right. In the present day scenario though, the poonal seems to be an exclusivity among the Brahmins though I have seen people belonging to other castes wear it after marriage. But I am dead sure that women of today don’t wear it though I am certain that given a choice, most of them wouldn't want to. It threw light on what seemed to be an ironical possibility to me. The holy thread is considered to be supremely sacred and is worn by the caste right on top of the hierarchy ladder today. But then the image I witnessed the other day projected a dancer woman, probably one belonging to a lower caste and more importantly, a WOMAN wearing the thread, which implies that there could have been a point in time when women and the lower castes of today were on the same platform as the others. The above observations are obviously wild speculations but then I believe that there could be an element of truth behind such extreme imagination. It also lead me to another thought, one in which I was pondering about the absence of women priests in temples. I wondered if women priests wielding the poonal across their torso performed poojas and archanas in temples every Sunday back in those days. I also came across a lot of archaic weapons I had seen in my history books long long ago.

Next, we went to Banasura dam and surveyed the place briefly. We were a little late and after gaping at the exorbitant prices for boating across the vast expanse of fresh water, we settled down at what the locals called the nature park. It had a few swings and I had typical childish fun there, swinging to and fro at crazy speeds. Next we set out to explore the huge circumference of the dam and in the process, we trespassed into private property. We kept moving only to eventually realize that we were short of time and had to go back. Someday, I hope to go back there and complete my mission.

After quite an eventful day, we went back to the hotel. After spectating brief sessions of dancing and taking photos, I hit the sack. The next day, all of rose early in a bid to scale Chembara. A good number was late as I expected and after wasting some more time taking pictures of scenery that would be available in better quality online, we reached the foothills and started ascending one of the largest peaks in Wayanad, 2100 metres to be precise. Jockey and I lead the way and proceeded at breakneck speed until we reached a checkpoint, a heart shaped pond. We were asked to wait there and it was our turn to waste time taking photos, though it wasn’t at the expense of anyone else. We also took a detour and found a heavenly place near the pond. It was an area densely populated with trees and thanks to our speed; we reached the place quite early in the morning, relatively that is. It was around 9.30. The amount of sunlight was just right and the thin rays coherently seeped through the leaves creating an amazingly pleasant feeling inside. Jockey and I were delighted with ourselves for discovering that place and weren’t in any mood to leave it any soon. So we let a lot of people leave ahead of us, people who were mostly ignorant about the existence of the paradise, only to catch up with them later of course.

For me and jockey atleast, the ascent was more about enjoying the subtle intricacies involved in the construction of the humongous masterpiece termed nature. We made it a point to take detours on a regular basis and discover new places of intrigue most likely to be skipped by the others. We took great pleasure in climbing the peak off the beaten track; we seemed to be in love with the process of creating our new path, scripting our own destiny.

A person like me who is heading down the extremely tempting and convenient path of agnosticism, a trek like this can be quite a tease. Have you ever realized that it is almost impossible, ALMOST, to enjoy a composition or a performance without getting to know about its creator? It is as if our mind is designed to sing paeans about the creator of something we enjoyed; it has been like that since time immemorial for me atleast.

But if there was something I really enjoyed about the trek, it was the fact that I was fit enough to do a task involving a certain degree of physical strain with such ease and pace. Mostly, the mountain terrains resembled the description of the steppes I used to find in my 8^th grade geography text book. They looked like huge grasslands until I reached the last leg of the climb where we had to do some steep rock-climbing. After enduring those moments of extreme fun and adventure, I finally reached the top and I have to tell you that it is a feeling that’s likely to be unmatched for a long time to come.

Boring is the word that best describes the descent. There were no expectations and it was as if we had seen everything. The descent is actually tougher than the ascent, for people like me especially. I take huge heavy steps and don’t walk on my toes. So every time I landed with a thud on the rocks, my calf muscles experienced some amount of pain. After we got down, jockey and I ran all the way to the place in which our jeeps were parked. The vehicles were a good 800 metres away and the fact that we were able to run all the way after a demanding trek gave us a feeling of fulfilment about our fitness levels.

We then reached Suchipara falls late in the evening and had a nice refreshing bath before we headed back to college. Overall, it was one of the best trips I have embarked on. It taught me a lot of things about myself. It also taught me that all trips and all people who captain expeditions aren’t the same. It was a pleasure meeting a diverse group of people with different ideologies and ideas. I also discovered that I was capable of exploring alternate methodologies and avenues as far as having fun was concerned. I was extremely satisfied with the way the faculty members who accompanied us made us share responsibilities and remained open-minded throughout. The process of occasionally adjusting to satisfy norms and accommodate other possibilities didn’t seem painful to me this time. In fact, I realized that adjustment was sometimes necessary and could be fun too!

Silly question?? I don’t know

This is not going to be a conventional blog post of mine, one that’s going to bludgeon its way past the 1000-word barrier I usually set for myself and end up breaking habitually. It’s about a thought, a question that breezed past my mind as I watched trains screech to a halt on both sides of the platform; as the sweepers waltzed to and fro delicately holding on to one of those brooms that are characterized by long handles; as I was subconsciously trying to steal the attention of the lovely lass sitting beside me though she had dug deep into that novel of hers; as I laughed deep within because she reminded me of this(she was lanky and had long legs as well) 

I have been reading a lot of history of late and as I sat there in my chair observing the surroundings, thinking about what I had read and also fantasizing about the girl beside me, this fellow PROUDHON’S famous assertion, “property is theft” struck my mind. This Proudhon fella is known to be quite a rebel and a controversial thinker. At this point, I won’t be able to conclude if this statement of his influenced my line of thinking, but I thought this post would be meaningless if I didn’t mention his name. After all, how can I afford to call a post about a thought process complete, without contemplating about the origin of the process?

I have always been fascinated by trains and train journeys. Check this . This time, a simple (silly?) question struck my mind. Why does the person who pays more enjoy greater benefits? How many cases of first generation AC passengers do we see today? People who travel by AC or first class compartments mostly do so only because they’ve been entitled to better resources right from their childhood. In other words, it’s pretty clear that they are not beneficiaries of their own Karma, especially students. So why is not possible to have a first-come first serve system where the person who books the ticket first gets to enjoy better benefits? Its implementation is obviously going to be an arduous process, close to impossible I guess. But it isn’t wrong to dream, is it? Whaddya think?

Enna Koduma Saar Ithu?!?!?!

The following is a narration of an incident that happened last Friday. It’s one of those incidents that usually happens in movies and you tell a friend nearby, “Ithellam padathula mattum thaan da nadakkum” (all these things happen only in movies). But in movies, such an incident usually leads to an even more improbable incident. For instance, a ravishing female foolishly falls in love with the ugly looking hero with unkempt hair, who bathes only once every week because the hero’s attitude is too casual and simple; and something complex yet logically perplexing needs to be done to take the story forward. But since I’m no hero and since I’m in one of the many obscure ABC engineering colleges in India where there are no ravishing females as beautiful or foolish as cine-heroines, the story ends with the first incident.

Coming to the incident, it happened in the first case as a result of my biological clock getting reset. It’s not insomnia for sure because I sleep eternally in class and thus make up for staying up till 5 o clock in the morning on an average. As I had an exam on Friday and wasn’t anywhere close to falling asleep till 2 o clock, I decided to revise a few things before I made a virgin appearance in an examination this semester. I was damn confident that I wouldn’t wake up in the morning if I went to bed as late as that. So I started revision and by the time I was done, it was four o clock. After that, I didn’t see any point in going to bed as I wasn’t feeling sleepy and didn’t want to attend the next day’s exam half asleep. The possibility of me falling asleep in the exam because I didn’t sleep the previous day never struck me and my adrenalin was unusually charged up, pumping and boiling at 4.30 in the morning. So I started doing things that I usually do when I’m bored: played music, started writing, about a friend of mine who has been pestering me to write something about him and put it up on my blog (!?!?). After that I signed into Facebook and started chatting with a friend of mine who currently happens to be somewhere in North America( or so she says). She was the founding member of the vetti society back in school which consisted of her boyfriend Kabalath and herself. (I hope this statement doesn’t anger another friend of mine who proudly embossed the name “SRIGYOSS” on the first page of his 11^th grade physics record.)

As soon as my north American friend pulled the curtains on a highly intellectual conversation that meandered over assigning some degree of meaning to the completely obscure and a deviously abstract display pic of hers (the photograph of a white cloth with a brown dot in the middle) that could be understood only by her and Stephen Hawking, a good friend of hers, I realised that it was six o clock and rushed to the hostel balcony to drink coffee. Soon I realised that I was running out of things to do. The newspaper hadn’t arrived either. After roaming aimlessly and waking up a lot of friends who wanted to study in the morning, I retired to bed with no other choice. It was 7.15 and I went to bed after checking the time on the alarm in my mobile twice: 7.35, it read.

I opened my eyes to a gloomy picture of quite a big mosquito sitting on my nose. I waved my hands over it and watched it fly off as I lazily reached out to my mobile. BLISTERING BARNACLES! The time on the top right corner read 21:58. “Ah, come on”, it can’t be. The sun was beating down hard on face, must be some problem with the clock; guess it tried aping my biological clock I thought. Yet I had a problem on hand. I wasn’t sure of the time and the bell symbol on the phone indicated that the phone alarm was yet to ring.

In a moment characterised by chaos and panic, I got up and put on my clothes and got out of my hostel only to witness a deserted picture of the hostel corridor. It was dark and amidst all the darkness a plump image with a divine aura surrounding it emerged, like a symbol of hope. I almost got my hands together to pray it as its presence reassured that I wasn’t late for the exam after all. As the figure came closer, I found it to be my friend Sibi, who walked up to me with a gleeful smile. I was about to say, “Machi two minutes wait pannu, we’ll go together” when he said those words, the words that shattered all hopes and left me gaping for a while!

 “Machi, exam eppudi da panna?” (How did you do the exam buddy?”) I stood right there, motionless and expressionless with an image of Premji saying “enna koduma sir ithu” flashing across my mind. As soon as my friend realised what had happened, he wasted no time in spreading the message. I explained the story myself to all my friends and watched each of them laugh to their heart’s content. (enna oru villathanam :X )

Today, the world is a different place. After an examination, the almost unavoidable question. “How did it go?” is not a part of my life anymore. It’s been replaced by “dai, exam ezhuthina la?”(Hey, you wrote the exam right?)

I haven’t told this to my mom and I sincerely hope she doesn’t come across this post. She reacts adversely to even the least significant incidents like my toothbrush falling off my cupboard. Mom, if at all you come across this post, I just want to remind you that all is well and my professor has agreed to give me another chance to write the exam.

SRIVIGNESH!

Dai naaye, this article is about you and is exclusively dedicated to you, as you have been pestering me to write one and put it up on my blog, for reasons known only to yourself. I am writing this only because I have nothing else to do, now that I have finished blatantly copying an assignment without much strain. I must thank the brilliant sound output of the JBL speakers on your laptop, Harris Jayaraj and the composer who originally composed HIS song for the same. I would also like to thank you for teaching me FEM today, a subject in which I hope to pass, thanks to you.

You have surely come a long way from the day when I laughed like I never have ever since or before, when you came up with a serious doubt when all of us had dived deep into the sea of applied thermodynamics. How could someone ask, after a semester of engineering studies, if density was the ratio of mass to volume or volume to mass? Others may find this hardly amusing because regardless of the effectiveness of my description, they’re likely to find it a mokka comedy. They’ll never be able to relate to it because: 1. They didn’t see YOU ask that doubt, that silly, characteristic expression on your face. 2. The timing can’t be recreated, not even by the scientists who recently simulated the big-bang!

When I first saw you and observed your reactions in class, I thought that you were one of those hopeless guys who would drop out after the first year. Very much in tune with my thought process, you failed in five of the six subjects in the first periodicals of the first semester (correct me if I am statistically wrong). The density incident only contributed to the Srivignesh-is-dumb thought that had stuck to my mind ever since I saw you. There was big air of mystique surrounding your entry into college. Every single person was talking about the guy who declined a mechanical engineering seat in NIT to join Amrita. My bullying-instincts itching severely, I badly wanted to rag this dumbass who opted for such a deal. And the dumbass was in attendance, right across my room and goodness-me, I was completely oblivious to it for quite some time, mainly because of two reasons: 1. All faces look the same during the first year of college. 2. I was busy with OTHER things.

But I wasted no time once I learnt about your whereabouts. I started bullying you everywhere: in class, in the hostel, in the mess, in the canteen, absolutely everywhere. I even gave you the nickname NIT: In memory of the famous college that you rejected. It became so famous that even Mallu dudes in our class, usually known to stick to themselves and the girls in the campus, started referring to you by that name! My ecstasy was short-lived as the film “saroja” released and people started calling you Bun: a character in the movie that happens to have a physique similar to yours.  After countless bullying and kalaichifying sessions, after becoming good friends, it was time for the spirit of equality to take over; it was time for us to get even. Thanks to some untoward incidents, that now look like sappa matter I came under heavy siege from you. You had successfully learnt to don the mantle of a bully and a kalaichifier, something that you had borrowed from me. The bullying and the teasing brought us closer and made us realise that we were of the same type. Rather, you had become my type. The scared, shy and taciturn bun was long dead by then. The sirripu don in you had taken over by then.

Cut, holidays, second year! We were separated by two floors and other things had kept us busy and we didn’t get much time to discuss things that were happening in each other’s life over a cup of tea in the night canteen. You were every lab in charge’s darling, as there was no one in class who could equal you in terms of submitting records on time after religiously copying them down from scarily long, totally incomprehensible notes. Inspite of repetitive warnings from you about a possible failure in the labs, I stuck on to my pudungi stance that I don’t see a point in chumma copying down stuff from a random notebook. And subsequently and fittingly, I failed in both the labs! REASON: I didn’t submit my records! Thanks for all the hardwork you put in as my lab partner in my absence, as I lazed around discussing about a movie I had seen the night before, mostly with Prahalad!

Cut, holidays, third year. By then, the logic behind you passing in all subjects without an arrear was beyond me! Though you were punctual and worked hard before the exams, I have always felt that you deserved to fail in any of the subjects. In my third year of college, I was spending most of my time in the company of you and your room mates. It was as if I had travelled back in time to the first year of college. Siddarth and Adarsh were missing though. Vijayanand, Arun and you had purchased laptops by then and I busied myself by playing ASHES 09 as you guys slogged it out before the periodicals. We were back to our vettiest best, discussing about pokemon, girls and college. Kulla thev***** had joined us by then and this led to the orchestration of eternally pointless discussions in the last bench of the volleyball court near the hostel. I committed a blunder when I posted a shirtless picture of yours on facebook. You got really angry and that was when I realised that you weren’t as sportive as I expected you to be. You had an emotional side and there was an iota of shyness still persistent. I didn’t let go after that incident though. I posted an image that featured you holding a knockout beer bottle, as if you were advertising the product. Thanks to the presence of your brother and cousins on Facebook, your teetotaller image back home took a serious beating. And I don’t want to apologise for that. I am proud of myself: evil laughter: P Saavu da Pun**

In the fourth year of our association, I am able to witness a significant level of maturity in you: the enthusiasm you displayed when L&T came to our campus to recruit students said it all. You suddenly seem to have let trivial things like vocabulary, aptitude and technical competencies bother you. The innocent, shy bun who struggled to string a few English words together to help a sentence make sense has given way to a new, enhanced Bun 2.0! We have also been lucky and gifted enough to have the one and only Steve koshy Mathew near our room. Ellam seri, but i am yet to understand why you wanted me to write this! But I tell you what; I will definitely treasure this more than you, when I read this ten years down the lane.

I MARCH ON

I generally abstain myself from writing personal posts because I feel no one but me will be able to relate to it. But then, a thought that struck me as I was busy attending nature's call at midnight today. One unassuming look from the third floor balcony of the hostel in which I reside was the reason behind that thought. I discovered that people are always interested in what's happening in others' life than their own. So much so that, their own actions tend to be moulded by the proceedings in the environment. Before I get a little more philosophical and hence, a little more boring, I'd like to issue a statutory warning. This isn't a post about one particular incident, this is just a random assimilation of thoughts, a collection of observations that have been wrecking havoc in my already incapacitated mind (not that I mind ,or care to repair!) And yeah, this isn't about Anna Hazare and his gang either. You're currently reading the mind of a person who is trying hard not to take things seriously and live the same on his own terms. If you are yawning already , fu** off: it's my blog and I have the right to be as authoritative and boring as my ex-girlfriend!
This is the last year of UG college life for me: the second most thought about topic ever since I set foot on this cursed piece of land. First thing, is my convocation day of course: the day they'll shove a worthless piece of paper up my a** and tell me to get the fu** out. I used to speculate a lot about how people would behave when the time to say bye-bye draws closer and closer, I used to gleefully think about it as the year when "equality and fraternity" and a world devoid of discrimination would finally materialize as nerds and free birds (like me) would unanimously hit the cricket ground with the sole ambition of having fun and leaving the field with a beaming smile in tact. I thought of it as a year free of responsibilities (it's always been like that for me though I have hated most things about my college life) for all my classmates. But as usual, my predictions turned out to be wrong.
Projects, placements, GRE, GATE, CAT, IELTS, TOEFL, passports, Visas and the list is long. Suddenly my lame a** friends who were not sure if density is the ratio of mass to volume or volume to mass are busy discussing about the prospects of getting placed in a core company, improving their vocabulary and aptitude. The guys who used to drag me to the ground to play are now busy with their projects. My friends who used to quibble loudly alongside me as we took a walk around the campus sipping a cup of coffee after dinner have chosen to restrain themselves to the four walls of their rooms and rejoice deep within at the prospect of having mugged up another word from the never ending Barron's word list. All of a sudden, the world has become a lonely place. Back home, my best friend is going to the UK in pursuit of bluer skies and another is planning to do his MBA  for reasons best known to himself and the almighty!
One emotion unanimously runs through the spine of every single person that is left with no other choice but to eat the sub-standard food that's being served at our place of residence: fear! The fear of things to come; the fear of the possibility of a neighbour knowing an extra word in the word list because you sleep for five minutes more than him; the fear of a company rejecting you, because there are ONLY 23 more core companies waiting to recruit you on campus and much more off it. The fear that has managed to confine my buddies to the company of the four walls that surround them has made me explore the hostel premises like a nomad, in search of a like-minded liberated soul that'd accompany me for a cup of coffee and a debate that comes with it.
Since I have not had much to do, I have been doing things I am usually sceptical about. Cleaning my room for example. The whole hostel came to a standstill as they didn't want to miss the opportunity of getting to watch a once in a lifetime event. After a few wide-eyed moments, the fiery-eyed monsters buried their heads into Barrons' as usual. And I sighed as usual.
If there's something more depressing than the placements, it's the dull faces and the complaint boxes that one gets to encounter after the knowledge that they haven't made the cut dawns upon the unprivileged! The level of pessimism that fills people's blood can reach dizzy heights, with medical consequences occasionally. I had the privilege of noticing two boys known for their jealousy whose faces had turned blue due to the changes in concentration of the blood elements, which in turn can be attributed to the overdose of pessimism. One boy wanted to file a police complaint against another because he suspects the latter of having frisked away a lucky pen of his deliberately, one that has brought him tremendous luck in his exams. A pessimistic dumbo who has failed in his interview is the worst person you could wish to meet. It's possible to listen to a drunk chauvinist complaining about his girlfriend's infidelity but it's impossible to listen to an industry discard.
When I talk about all this to my fellow friends, they accuse me of being incredibly carefree. Besides, they accuse god of blessing me with such an attitude and a life full of luck and totally devoid of disappointments while all that they have received is a mouth that's always ready to complain and a mind that's depressed by default! I have just one thing to tell them all. Yesterday, I faced the biggest disappointment of my life. I was dropped from my college cricket squad, the only thing I have been serious about after coming to college. It may sound trivial to the big men who are ready to lock horns with the vagaries of life. But for a person like me who still cherishes the good old ways of fun, for a person to whom the big things in life are not so big and the small streaks of happiness are the only ones that matter, whose belief system works on a minuscule span, it was quite a big blow! Still, I believe that I'll walk to the ground everyday to get my daily bit of practice, with my chin up. I am quite sure that an insignificant event like an exclusion from a college squad is not gonna hurt my love for the game which is obviously eternal. I am the same boisterous, exceedingly frank, eccentric, fun loving guy who enjoys attention and making fun of others.
I have my own plans for the future and I am quite optimistic and open about life as usual. I have been speculating about my own life, past failures in that dominion haven't stopped me from moving forth. I maybe wrong as usual and end up being the biggest failure that humanity has ever seen; but I am sure about one thing: nothing's gonna change my attitude. I am pretty sure that if and when a classmate of mine spots me sipping tea in a roadside shop ten years down the line, he'll see me doing it with the same degree of fervour with which I am doing it right now, not to forget a few friends alongside and a delicious debate for mutual company. I have learnt only one lesson in life: there's nothing bigger than momentary happiness and there is absolutely no point slogging temporarily in pursuit of greener pastures down the lane. Different things appear big at different junctures. My tenth and twelfth board exams were dubbed as events of astronomical significance, but now I know that they hardly matter. My dear friends sitting for placements and those taking the 3,4 or 5 capital lettered examinations, this moment will pass and you'll end up somewhere, irrespective of your choices and input. So cut the crap and join me. Lets hit the ground!

The 10 “Oh my god” moments

I have always been a big fan of the small things in life. The big things don’t appeal to me: the big things that dad talks to me about. Career, academics, money, settling in life and the like. He often says “Don’t sacrifice the bigger things in life in pursuit of the smaller things”. The smaller things are street cricket, watching a D/N encounter on the day before the exam blah blah. These small things add a lot of colour to one’s life but there are “other” seemingly small things that irritate a person to the hilt. Things that make one go “oh my god, not again”.

1.       You get into a nice comfortable position on the sofa and start watching an epic encounter unfold between two of your favourite teams as your dad joins you and starts a conversation about the “big” things in life.

2.       You go to a marriage ceremony hoping not to run into a specific group of garrulous old ladies and it turns out that they are the first ones that you get to see as soon as you enter the hall. They start talking about how much you have lost weight and looked much healthier the last time they saw you. ( Ennada kanna, ippadi elashta? Hostel la sappadu nalla illaya? Konjam osanthurka polarkey?)

3.       I haven’t personally experienced the following OMG moment (because I’m not old enough just as yet) but I have heard about it from a lot of people. The amazingly vetti, good-for-nothing chatterboxes (mostly a gang of old ladies who keep complaining about a certain Ranganathan who married out of caste) that turn up for every single marriage that happens in town are the culprits again. The moment they spot a guy or girl of “marriageable” age, they waste no time in telling them that “Next nee than (you are up next)” in front of a group of teenagers lazing around with nothing to do.

4.       As the jobless teens burst out laughing and as you twitch and turn in embarrassment, the unforgiving descendants of Satan come up with another killer comment: “Aiyyo, vekkatha paaru (Ah, look at the shy look on his/her face)” The day these loquacious pests learn that it’s an expression of embarrassment and not shyness, the world would come to an end. But I came across this beautiful sms the other day, the perfect counter for all those evil ladies: just repeat the “next nee than” dialogue to them at funerals. That should shut them up once and for all.

5.       You visit a hotel with a bunch of middle-aged relatives. After a sumptuous banquet, you exorbitantly praise the hotel and the cook. The Maama(uncle) sitting right across your table says, “Enna irunthaalum veetu saapadu pola varaathu (nothing can come close to home-made food any day)”.

6.       You travel with your grandfather on a boring afternoon and plug in your earphones to listen to A.R.R’s latest. As you get mesmerised by the lilting music, your lips accidently start muttering the song. Your grandpa suddenly gets up and says “enna irunthaalum MSV, Bhagavathar paatu mathiri varathu (no musician can ever come close to MSV or Bhagavathar)”

7.       You go to a movie with your girl-friend and specifically ask for the corner seat at the counter. Just for the sake of re-assurance, you get it clarified with the guy at the counter three or four times. The saintly person on the other end gives you a warm smile and the tickets. As you enter the theatre, you find the allotted seats to be right at the centre of the hall, with a group of college boys hooting and whistling around the allotted seats.

8.       You head to Sathyam cinemas to watch your favourite movie on the first day after telling your parents that you want to get some doubts in heat and mass transfer clarified from your friend, only to find your uncle at the theatre. He coolly calls up your dad and tells him “Hey guess what, I’m watching my favourite film with your son.”

9.       You prepare for your exams according to the blueprint prescribed by your teacher and wisely omit a certain portion owing to lack of time. The sly guy comes up with a question paper with majority of the marks allotted to the portion that you omitted.

10.   You sing praises of the almighty for finding yourself opposite to a lovely lass in a reserved compartment. Just as you start Peter uttufying and kadala pottufying, a long lost friend turns up from nowhere and asks for a seat exchange with the girl.

MY FIRST LOVE

Trains have been and will always be an integral part of my life. I wonder what life without trains would have been for me. My dad’s job is of transferable nature, so mom and I have had to travel a lot to meet my dad. Then came the time for me to join a school. I live in a village, so I had to travel about 17 kilometers per day to reach my school< a good school used to be a rarity back then>then I shifted base to the city to study in another school, so I had to travel back by train to enjoy my weekends at my hometown. I’m in the final year of college now and trains have been my tickets to freedom over the past three years. When it comes to freaking out with friends in the city or travelling to destinations across the city, I have not had the misfortune of looking beyond the eternal love of my life. I also embark on trips to various places of interest across the Indian Diaspora every year and the train journeys have made these extra special.

There is something magical about trains. The rhythmic and harmonious sound that’s churned out as a result of the propulsion is music to my ears. The quantum of activity that one gets to witness in a train is unbelievable. The cry babies, the garrulous old men, the irritating girls ceaselessly talking about lipsticks and make-up, the maamas and maamis discussing family problems, the loud businessmen shouting at employees over their phones, the taciturn dude enjoying the evening breeze and music on his I-pod, brainy middle-agers discussing business, politics and cinema, the locallu boys smoking beside the door and discussing something in hushed voices, female vendors spitting paan in between the pointing finger and the middle finger: well a train is definitely not short of characters.

The moment I step inside a train, I make it a point to get myself a seat and observe these characters (any other discerning observer mistakes me to be the taciturn dude type). After I am done with the fun, I get into the groove for some action. I mostly end up joining the brainy uncles discussing economics (banks, fiscal policies, economic reforms, recession etc.), a subject that’ll never cease to fascinate me. I put my hand up for the occasional dumb doubt or giggle at a pun-filled remark. I don’t listen to music when I’m travelling because I’d miss out on fun; I make an exception to the general rule when I travel with my family though.

The aforementioned characters are usually encountered in electric trains in Chennai or when travelling by a reserved compartment in an express train. It’s a different story altogether when I travel by a general unreserved compartment. I prefer travelling by an unreserved compartment any day and I’ve been doing it quite regularly. My friends keep interrogating me about it. Well one main reason is that it’s cheap. And I love the air of unexpectedness that surrounds an unplanned trip. That fizz motivates me! One doesn’t get to see such a variety of characters in a general compartment. In fact, there are only two kinds: the innocent, stupefied person, a common man in the real sense, not the common men the media goes gaga about: his eye sports the glint, the twinkle that you would notice in the eye of a 10-year old when you take him to a planetarium. Not a hint of self-consciousness is noticeable. Next, there is the arrogant transgressor who thinks smoking or drinking in public is cool; a brash youth with coloured hair that doesn’t suit him one bit: the type of guy who plays a petty thief in movies.

I love talking to strangers because it’s a way of making friends and I’d like to slap people who condemn conversations with strangers: every friend of yours was once a stranger idiot! Try striking a conversation with the first kind: its bliss of the highest order. They don’t understand recession, they care a damn about the political scenario, they don’t have to worry about corruption and its consequences, and they mistake you to be abusing them if you mention Anna Hazare or Baba Ramdev. But I have to admit that these people are generally conscious about their religion and caste. They are in love with their place of origin and their surroundings. Love for nature is instinctive. They can give you INTERESTING ten hour lectures (that sets them apart from our lecturers in college) about their kovil thiruvizhas (temple gatherings), oor sandhais(er, temporary malls in villages, not multi-storeyed though  ), riots, relatives, marriages, food and children. They also come up with the occasional wisecrack about cities, culture and this generation. Trust me, these conversations are much more interesting than the “student politics, I’m gonna change the world” discussions. And when it’s time for you to get down, they paint their words with emotion, genuine ones at that!

I usually resort to sleeping when in a reserved compartment during night trips, unless it’s a youngster on the other side, preferably girls. The topic of discussion I’d prefer when I embark on a night time journey with girls is obvious, so I don’t have to fuss about it. With guys, its different, I usually let the other person dictate the course of the conversation; I make it a point to be a good listener and get to know about things I don’t know. Gossip stories in other colleges make for interesting listening as well and it’s preferable to hear it from a girl’s mouth. Girls are good at spicing things up: in kitchens and otherwise.

I recently made my first proper long distance trip in an AC compartment. I hated every bit of it till I got a seat alongside an old fellow on his way to some meeting in Kerala. Apparently, he hasn’t had much education but **maaley! He spoke about everything that makes up the complex cycle of life! By mistake, obviously ignorant about the sea of questions that were to besiege me, I told him that I was pursuing mechanical engineering. And that was it! I am ashamed of the fact that I’m going to be in possession of a b.tech degree in a year’s time!


The writer of this post is also in awe of the MRTS in Chennai and the metro in Delhi. The speed, the grand structures and the network: they’ll never cease to amaze me. He is also eagerly awaiting the arrival of Chennai metro (there is a possibility of monorail making its debut too). But there’s one disturbing thought amidst the ocean of fond memories. I don’t mind the railways treating the AC compartment commuters to spicy food, newspapers, magazines and other privileges. Excusable discrimination. But I think the commuter in the general compartment deserves better sanitation facilities. A parryware toilet in the ac compartments and rusted mugs and soiled toilets for others is definitely unacceptable!

My adventures with the Scooty and the Spikebuster

I had watched quite a lot of movies that week, entertaining ones at that. The moment I finish watching a movie, I feel an insurgent urge to comment on it. My pen, both instinctively and instantaneously, gets to work. But it was one of those rare days when my passion for cinema overcame my passion for writing. The urge to write was kicked downhill by the infinite thrust I experienced to delve into another movie. I had watched quite a few classics and a comment was long overdue. My prolonged abstinence from recollecting the highlights of those works of art by giving them a verbal form proved two things- one, the sheer quality of the movies I had been watching, as they had kept me away from my second greatest passion in life- writing (the first one, like it was for most Indian kids, was cricket). The second thing, a very queer and important fact I must add, is beyond the realms of my memory now! I assure you that the second factor is of supreme importance and that my mind seems to have lost track of the x-factor, though my inner conscience keeps telling me that it is something imperative.

But something stopped me from watching another flick- maybe the tired sub-conscious which was not quite able to appreciate the prospect of sitting in front of the monitor for another 90-150 minutes. So I turned to teen’s best friend in times of a catch-22 situation- the internet! Just when I placed myself comfortably on the couch and started breezing past political commentaries laced with satire and humour, my mom’s outline appeared behind the screen. “Enna maaa?” I said in disgust, extending the last syllable to outrageous limits to make my stance clear. She wanted to take a printout and since my Spikebuster had self-busted, I wasn’t able to connect my modem and printer simultaneously. So I was ORDERED by my dad to hit the streets to get a new Spikebuster. I painstakingly overcame the inertia that had resulted out of long hours in front of the computer. It was one of those exasperating days when I wasn’t able to hit the cricket field as it kept drizzling incessantly and it wasn’t raining hard enough for me to place a chair in front of the grill gate and enjoy it torment the streets. These incomplete things in life, painted with emulsions of deficiency always aggravated me. I love the extremes. The medians and means always end up infuriating me.

And so I took my Scooty out and twisted the throttle with all the ennui in the world as the vehicle zoomed forward. Its sudden jerk killed the intrinsic inertia and incepted a fresh lease of life. Every speck of hair on my hand stood up in response to the small drops of rain as a photoreceptive plant would stand up to the first beams of sunlight that penetrate the earth’s atmosphere. I raced to Nithya electricals and electronics, the only shop of that kind in my neighbourhood. After a brief negotiation regarding the price, an altercation I should say, as negotiation would be a diplomatic term, we zeroed in on a apposite price. I carefully placed the newly-bought object in my dashboard. My face glittered with an aura of pride and satisfaction of having settled a decent deal. The deceased inertia, the newfound zeal and an inherent voice took control over me as I took a detour and went up the incline of the newly constructed bridge instead of heading straight back home. I had always loved the view of the busiest part of my village, which was slowly moving up the ranks. It was now prosperous and portentous enough to be called a town. I could sense the village, ahem, the town, gleaming with all the pride and arrogance in the world. The bridge divides the two distinct parts of my village town- on one side is the market place and the characteristic development indicated by the economic sumptuousness. On the other side is the authentic village- the part which is trying its best to maintain the soul of my place, the identity. The village side has sprawling paddy fields, an old temple, two, no, three of them in fact, scintillating springs that silence your ego, stop you and make you salute the great one who created it and so on. I slowly descended down the bridge and bliss-filled men and women with traits of innocence looming large on their faces welcomed me into the other “world”. Children rode tyres and made strange sounds as I zoomed past. The great banyan tree stood right there, with all the majesty in the world. I paused to look at the fuel-meter. The tank was half full. My mind though, had its tank full. It was over-flowing with all positive thoughts, my mind in perfect confluence with Mother Nature. The rain turbo-charged my mind as I meandered down the shining roads, humming or should I say yelling, my favourite tunes. I presumed that a lot of curious eyes were glaring at me. Only, I was too busy to notice. It was the perfect time to ride, the raindrops rubbed against my arms and the feeling was similar to the one that we experience when the petals of flowers rub against our body. This was even better as it was soft, ideally chill and titillating at the same time.

I started behaving like a madman. I yelled and waved at the children in the street. The children returned the yells and the waves whereas curious looks were all that I got from senior pros. I got a feel of heaven as the Speedo-needle rose up to 40 and the colour green dominated both sides of the road. The visuals, the breeze, the temperature, the rain, everything around me seemed perfect. My typically occupied mind which is forever full of thoughts and ideas went blank. I forgot the vehicle, the surroundings and myself for those few moments. I was enlightened enough to experience those moments that spelt bliss- total, eternal, perpetual and complete bliss! And then the stupid Spikebuster, which I thought I had kept safely in my dashboard wrapped in a cover, slipped out from nowhere. I caught it on the verge of a fall. Some emotion filled my mind as I caught the stupid thing- something that was too mild to be termed anger. The extension of that emotion made me take a u turn. Again, the absence of thought processes and the sheer inability to think of anything, even when thrust upon by deliberation, staggered me. I wasn’t able to think of anything and my mind was devoid of any kind of thought! Suddenly, my Scooty stopped in front of a temple. One of those three I had mentioned. I walked into it and went behind it. There I saw, my gentlemen, one of the greatest sights that my eyes had witnessed. The lake, in all its glory, looked like a sea, an ocean. Waves hit the steps that were constructed on the shore with humongous force. A strong and steady breeze was blowing and there I stood as if I had been stupefied. As if the whole purpose of my life was to stand there and watch the action unwind in front of me. Quite an intimidating sight it was! The rain started intensifying as I regained “consciousness” and moved my hood over my head. I quickly rode back home and as I entered the threshold of my street, I saw my dad sporting a worried expression. He said something as I raced past him. I hadn’t taken my phone along (thankfully) and as expected, he was concerned. He said something as I sped past. I didn’t care to stop and listen because I was quite sure that he would start scolding me the moment he stepped into the house. I saved myself some aural strain and in the process, saved my dad some energy. He came back home and events rolled out one by one just as I expected them to! The Spikebuster was installed, the printout was taken and as is the case always, chaos reigned soon after.

Cultural collaborations for constructive change

“Youth have the power to change the fate of a nation”
“Youth have the power to move unassailable mountains and break impregnable
barriers”

Such mind-numbing philosophies drenched in the waters of over-optimism have been
propagated by highly intellectual luminaries like Swami Vivekananda and also by people
on the other extreme in terms of IQ, like captain Vijaykanth!

How many of us pay the fine instead of bribing the traffic police for breaking a rule?
Very few, if any. How many of us don’t break the queue in a railway station? How many
of us get our driving license without shelling out those “extra” bucks? When it’s the
youth at the centre of all the transgressions happening, how can they be expected be
expected to move masses and smash hurdles?

We need to understand that we live in an age of cynics and opportunists, an age where
we are oft busy with bailing ourselves out of trouble and bettering our standards of
living. Where in the world do we have time for the society?
But if there is one thing that stirs the hearts and minds of every Indian youth, one
thought that sends a chill down every Indian spine, one issue that every Indian has an
opinion on, its religion. And that’s the only way out of the situation.

Unfortunately, the only people who seemed to have realized it are the sly politicos who have been banking
on an extension of the divide-and-rule policy. They have maximized the potential of
religion and have reaped a rich harvest out of the situation to construct a well fortified
political empire creased with corruption and self-centred ideologies.
India has played host to the greatest of seers and the best minds the world has ever
seen. Each and every one of them appreciated the omnipotence of religion in India and
used religion as a tool, as life giving water to quench the burning fire of ignorance that
was prevalent among the masses. But even those great minds couldn’t comprehend
to the fact that they were committing a grave error by transmitting the invaluable
knowledge in the local language. Though they enlightened a whole generation,
they curtailed its growth beyond the realms of that era. Any translated script has its
limitations and the essence and the intricacies of the original script are lost to the
pseudo-obstacles that arise during translation. Scriptures become timeless only when
they are passed on in their original language. Only then will people have the interest to
dig deep and get to know the origin and the true meaning behind every idea.

The whole nation is pondering and quibbling about the ill-effects of the western culture.
If one spares a thought as to why the rate of inheritance of this culture is astounding,
one would realize that the very thoughts and ideologies which pillar the empire of the
western culture were written in English or in languages like Greek or Latin, which are
again, languages that played a vital part in the formulation of the English language as
we know it today. As expected, it’s the financially stable English speaking strata of the
society which is opening up to the western world.
It’s nice to be proud of our culture and our roots, but it’s brainless to dismiss other
ideologies and stay closed to other thoughts. One very good example is the mantras
chanted during Hindu marriages. One, we chant them without knowing their meaning.
Two, some of them are obsolete. Example, there is a mantra which is a call for the lords
to bless the couple with a male child. Heights of male chauvinism! So it’s time for us to
weed out such archaic principles and start looking at alternatives and alterations. We
need to understand that the western works have been devised by equally intelligent
minds, if not better. So what is required is an amalgamation of cultures and thoughts
which would be as revitalizing as fusion music.

How’s this going to change the equation? Every action is driven by ideas, the upbringing
and the people around us and most importantly, our leaders. This is one more facet
that demands a lot of introspection. How many of us really want to vote? How many of
us make an effort to follow politics? Don’t we have to be aware of the current political
scenario just to vote for the right person? Choosing a leader is considered the first step
towards development and where is the question of development when most of us are
crippled with unawareness about our potential leaders? It’s time for us to start following
politics and involving oneself in the same would be better. Better leaders lead to better
culture. Better culture will lead to self-discipline and self-conscience. It’ll make people
think about the smallest mistakes they do, like travelling ticketless, spitting on the road,
littering, smoking in public etc. As youth, we need to understand that certain things
are beyond our control. No one can prohibit or force another guy away from drugs.

No one can compellingly abstain another from smoking or drinking. It’s best to leave it
to his sole discretion. But what can be done by us as responsible citizens is that, we
can warn people against doing it in public. We need to start garnering guts to threaten
people to take things to court in case they caused public nuisance. It’s our duty to drill
some civic sense into the minds that lack the same. Let’s address the smallest of issues
and set high benchmarks. Let’s work towards perfection before we start blaming the
government. Let’s be the change we want to see.