The Remembrance Quotient

"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”

- Chuck Palahniuk

I was in high school when I first read the Bible. There in the first few chapters, after creation, it was said that God hadn’t really put death into people’s lives as we see these days. Man could live on for centuries. There were people who were 300, 400 years old. Then when He noticed that the planet is getting too populated, as we procreated at a much faster rate than we died. He introduced death by illness, old age etc. This way the Bible said that, God could be closer to His favorite child sooner. That death was just another strange way of God showing His love for us. Pretty much the same was written in Gita, Koran and all the other religious books. That life is a test and that at death those who have lived righteously and are worthy will go to heaven. That life and death is just a cycle, an infinite loop that keeps repeating itself forever. Science while having no definition for life, it always mysteriously proved incapable of defining the good things, defines death as the state reached by a life form after its gradual but inevitable erosion of health and immunity. No matter how much they romanticize or rationalize death, I am still very much scared of it.

I am not really scared of the actual thing itself, not completely. But what it represents. It represents the end of the known and a sudden plunge into the unknown. There are many religious texts and romanticized fiction desperately trying to make sense of this unknown part of our existence. Because thats what it really is, part of our existence. It is very much a part of our time on this planet. We are born, and then we die. Its a rule. The trouble is that we have been programmed by our culture and civilization, the books and the media, to be mortally afraid of death. There is something really odd in the way that we are ready to accept everything that nature has given gratefully but when it comes to death we are so disgusted. We never actually are ready to accept it, even when deep in our hearts we know it cannot be put off; even we somehow expect to die sooner or later, when it actually happens we are shell shocked.

I read this article on the random Wiki News links the other day. A guy has a heart attack while on the metro. He dies right there, on his seat and stays unnoticed for two complete round trips. People, all around him, boarded and left the metro. Some sat on the seats beside him and didn’t even notice that they have a dead guy amongst them until some guy prodded him for getting that seat for his pregnant wife. Imagine the shock they and the rest of the cabin were in when the guy’s body slumped on the floor, eyes wide open and tongue out. The lady probably did not sleep well for many months to come. Probably still lies on the couch at her shrink’s office and recalls that event with a cold sweat running through her body. It was enough to give anybody the chills.

When I showed this article to the guys they all were fixated on the lack of humanity in the city dwellers, the lack of metro personnel to oversee the trains, one even started to comment on the effects of such an incident on the health of the baby in the woman’s womb. While they were busy with that, my mind was still stuck on the dead guy. He probably had a family, a bunch of office friends he went to the bars with, a whole lot of friends from school and college who were probably planning for a reunion, a wife who was back at home waiting for him to come home with the groceries from the supermarket. He had a life, which now has come abruptly to an end, in a busy, crowded, noisy metro train. And he lies there unnoticed, forgotten, neglected for nearly an hour!

I am, maybe more scared of the chance of being forgotten, unnoticed. People oddly have a grading scheme for this process, probably unconsciously built-in by their own mind to keep itself from breaking to pieces at every recurring loss of  another loved one in their lives. The grading scheme goes from the closer circle of spouse, children, parents, friends, their families, relatives etc. The circle moves outwards and the farther you are placed in somebody’s circle the more sooner you are likely to be forgotten by that person. And being forgotten might hurt anyone, dead or alive. People have a very short memory when it comes to remembering the ones that had passed away, especially the ones that you aren’t too close to. Soon you become that guy who died of leukemia. Somehow, sometimes they seem at loss to put a name to that guy. Then they soon forget that person completely except in family functions or college reunions when somebody who has no idea of his passing away comes up to you and asks whatever happened to that guy from Mumbai? This probably is for the best at times. It helps to ease the pain for the ones left behind and it helps them to move on with their lives.

The best thing we can do in our time here on this planet, is not earn a billion bucks and buy an exotic island, we don’t remember half of them after they are gone. What we really need to be doing is win a million hearts. Do things that might change people’s life for the better. People might forget the hand with the heavy wallet after sometime, but they will always remember the hand that helped them up. That’s any human being’s real wealth. Your remembrance quotient. Any guy that you have a warm memory of has more chances to be remembered than anyone else. To have that, you need to get to the inner circle of people’s life. Their lives must be incomplete without your presence in it. You must be there in each of their happier moments in life, more often as the reason for it. You should be so valuable to them, that they must always be compelled to keep you close to their hearts. And the people who reach there are never forgotten, they live on for all eternity. The rest most definitely will be. Out of sight, out of mind.

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The Invisible Man In The Sky

“Okay, let's look at the logic. You create man. Man suffers enormous amounts of pain. Man dies. Maybe you should have had just a few more brainstorming sessions prior to creation. You rested on the seventh day. Maybe you should've spent that day on compassion.”

- Patch Adams (1998)

Show me one human being who doesn’t have problems in his life. Show me one person who doesn’t have issues. Show me one person who doesn’t have some skeleton in his closet that he/she trying desperately to forget. Everybody has their own reason to be pissed at the Creator for the way things are going on in their life and around them. We all have scores to settle with Him. We all have questions that we hope to ask Him when we reach the pearly gates up top. Why should we just blindly trust in Him when He was the same guy who created the all this pain and suffering in the first place?

Recently I had this pack of relatives visiting us, the whole array of quintessential variety of familial bliss. The whole house was filled with their bags and clothes and jabber. This guy became the VP of so-and-so company. This guy’s kid got employed in so-and-so MNC. This guy’s experimental procedure worked and his tumor got removed. This guy celebrated his 93 birthday on a beach. This guy died and left that woman a huge fortune. This guy divorced his wife for his neighbor. That family had to move to another city because of debt. That couple had to move to another state because of an alleged affair of the guy with the neighbor’s wife. That woman’s children are fighting for the family estate while she is on her death bed. And on and on went on their “this-just-in” news telecast of our huge far-reaching family tree for our own private pleasure - Familial bliss.

Then suddenly some genius brought up the topic of going Shirdi, to a temple there. I was not averse to that trip, I had gone there a couple time before and liked the place. I said I’d come along too, regretted it the very next instant. The whole woman folk of our household were the only ready to go the trip and they being true their species got into a navigational frenzy and put a gazillion places on the list that we could visit cause it comes “on our way”. Most of these places were temples which I thought went with our trip to the Shirdi. But I still till today don’t understand the reason of three malls and five shopping centers and God-only-knows-how-many roadside shops that we stopped that seem to pop up “on our way”.

I don’t say that I hate going to temples or anything. But too much of anything makes me weirdly grouchy. We visited nearly eight crowded, noisy temples til it was time for lunch. And that definitely put me on the edge. I started to pick up fights with my sister for the lamest of things (read shotgun). I even created a huge ruckus with one shopkeeper over the price of a leather wallet (I still think that Rs. 2500 is too much to pay for a wallet!). To add to the wonderful mood I was in, I was in a car with women all jabbering away about the most inane things, and on the wonderful roads that we have here in our country, filled with as many holes in it as people practically living on the roads. The crowds, the noise and the pollution, the jabbering and exhaustion, what more do need to get pissed off!

By six in the evening, I had somehow completed most of the temple-hopping for the day. We would start for Shirdi on the next day. Only the one last stop of the day was left, the grand finale of sorts, the ISKCON Radhe Krishna Temple. I was looking forward to this one the whole day long. Not cause I wanted to visit this place so bad, but cause I really wanted to get this day done with. Even the anger in me had succumbed to desperate tiredness in my bones now. When we finally reached the place, I could barely lift my behind from the bucket seat of the car. I dragged myself through the bag check, the metal detector frisking (all the more reason to pissed off at Kasab and his lot), took off my footwear, washed my hands and feet. And then I entered Heaven.

Or maybe it was just a good replica of it. The whole temple was made of white marble-like stone. The dome was gold, the pedestal was gold, the idols themselves of pure while were clad in silk and doused in gold jewels. The place was filled “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna” chants, that seemed to come from the walls (probably from the hidden speakers). In an odd state of mind I joined the line moving towards the idol. Followed it as if in a trance and did the whole ritual myself, the washing of the palms, collecting the diya, all the while moving towards the idol. When I reached the mob myself, it was surreal. The whole mob was moving as one with the chants, some chanting themselves. I reached the first pedestal, the first pair of idols, then the next, then the next. They were for some reason very distracting. When you see one, you have these feeling that its seeing you alone and none other from the mob around you (probably sounds nuts, but I swear that Radhaji’s smiled at me! ). Then the line kept moving forward and I was suddenly out of the mob. I put the diya in front of another idol and came onto the courtyard. That’s where I saw the most memorable part of the night, that lady in white.

She was a foreigner, probably 60. There were lots of foreigners here, and like most foreigners who come here, was wearing a sari. But she was wearing the plain white ones that widows wear, that’s what that caught my eye, and the expression in her face. She probably was a widow, probably still in mourning. Here, in India, to escape all the sad faces back home, trying to get back her lost self. In this temple to get some answers from God. She probably came here with a lot of anger, anguish and pain. She came here with a heart filled with sorrows that she could not say to people around for fear of making them sad too like her. But you could never say any of that by the expression on her face. It was content, peace maybe. She was smiling with tears in her eyes, the oddest of expressions on the human face, the rarest one. She did not have any more grudges with God. She got what she came for.

Maybe that’s just exactly why we have religions and beliefs. All this unflagging faith that we have in this invisible man in the sky, is probably to be just able to have this one person who you can trust to have all the answers for your questions. To be able to talk to, when there’s no one around that would understand the things that you want to say. To talk to when there aren’t enough words to express what you want to say. God is probably just another you, the better you, who knows you better than you know yourself. The one who can make sense of everything that’s happening or has happened to you and around you. He knows. And you live trusting that He knows, and find solace in that. And when you die you go to His open arms, greet Him like old friends..

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The Kid

“Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises;
And oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits.”
- William Shakespeare

I have always had a nagging feeling that I am still not doing all that I can. I am still not using the whole of my potential. It sure seems like that sometimes. People seem to expect a lot from me. And I am very much sure that people are disappointed when I don’t come through. I might have been the same if I were in their place. After they see this guy in front of him as a confident, funny and outgoing person who is smarter the average bear and not without some stuff between his ears. But mostly they just stay within that outside appearance itself and in their own irritatingly stubborn way demand excellence from you. As if you are born on this planet to do this and this alone. To shoot for the stars, be on the top of the heap and be like those uptight pompous pricks who are there already and gloat about it. I am sure there are many others out there like me. Who have at some point or other felt this immense pressure on themselves. Not being able to be who they want to be and to do what they enjoy doing!

I knew someone like that. A very good decent kid who had never done anything wrong or every wronged anybody. The kind of kid who doesn’t sit on the first benches among the toppers who have the answers for every question the teacher asks and shameless kiss their asses and are proud about. These toppers are the ones who in future take the place of these highly knowledgeable teachers as they rarely are the ones that have the guts or the talent to make it out there. My friend never sat in the last benches either. That was the place for the sleepers and mockers and the jocks of the class. The kids who are funny, naughty and rarely are very good in the marks department. These are ones that become politicians or actors or some big entrepreneur. These are the ones that do something in their life. Then there is the middle benches, that’s where our friend sat. This is the place where those kids usually sit who never were very smart but are very hard working. They never were very uptight or selfish, but were very good hearted. The followed around the smart kids but secretly were jealous of them. They stayed away from the back benchers but secretly wanted to be like them, wanted to enjoy their life a little more they were. He sat among such sad confused souls.

This kid always was the target many jokes around the class. He was from a remote village in Gujarat. He had this weird funny accent when he spoke in any language other than his mother tongue. Especially when he spoke in English he used to goof up in a lot of words and put a lot of ‘d’s and ‘t’s around the words he spoke. We made a lot of fun of him. And he never really took any of to heart. He also laughed along. I liked him for that. It takes guts to own up to your drawbacks and still be able to laugh about it. He did not have a bad bone in his body. He used to help me in math (I never too good at it!). He used stay after class to help me with it, though he never really had to. He always brought a lot of snacks when we went to the playground on weekends to play cricket. He never got pissed at anyone, never had a grudge with anybody in his life. I was always amazed how anybody could be so calm and peaceful. He always walked away when a argument would arise. Back then I used to think it as cowardly, now I realise it was the wise move!

The Night Of The Chase

I have learnt many things in my life things that I expect to learn more about when I get older. I have seen so many things that I aint ever going to forget. I have also seen many things that I so much wish to forget. I have done so many things that I am ashamed that I did. And so few at things thing that I am proud of. And weird strange stuff that always seems to happen to me some way or the other. Among those few things is the thing that I had done that summer.

It was a raining bad that night. My friend Prabhu and I were returning from another bad day at the tuitions. The teacher, Manivannan was a real pain in the wrong place. He cannot keep his nose out of other people’s business. Today again he insulted another girl on how thin she is or how a boy’s attention towards a fellow female classmate was bringing his marks down. Why the hell does he care about the diet of that girl or even the romantic aspect of a boy? Was he jealous that the girl was able to stay thin while he had a belly almost ready to burst? Or was he jealous that the person finally had some attention from a good-looking girl while he was stuck with a pig for wife. His wife Laxmi, a pig by all means. A real mean pig at that. She treated all others like shit. He never gave a damn about anyone. Nor did she care about anyone other than herself. She was an uptight prick, proud that her husband had a fat wallet.

We were talking about these all too familiar topic on our way to the bus stop. Tonight as always, we stop on our way at a stall to buy some steam peanuts. That night classes had finished early because Mani had to get home early for dinner. Yeah right! That is what I hate bout these delicate geniuses. They can change the timetable, as they want. They want us to change our time so that we can fit into theirs. And if we ever failed to do that, he would yell as if we had violated the Ten Commandments. All of them. At the same time. We cannot talk to consult them about some help that they can offer because it was their field of expertise, unless we were in the confines of their office. Take doctors and therapist for instance. If you make an appointment, you better be there on time. While they can dump you and go schmoozing with whomever they wanted doing whatever they wanted. Hate them for it.

Oh sorry! Where was I? Oh yeah. We were on our way to the bus stop. We stopped to buy that steam peanuts. We were at the stall when we saw that a girl come out of the restaurant at the corner of the street. She was with two other boys. Clearly, she was drunk. So were the boys that were with her. She was skimpily clothed. She was wearing a black spaghetti top with a Metallica logo printed on it. And she wore tight jean shorts. And high Latin heel shoes. We were gawking at her curves. With mouth wide, open. My eyes were all over her. And my mind was wandering someplace else. By the look on Prabhu’s face, I knew immediately what he was thinking. Well, you cannot possibly blame us. We were adolescents with raging hormones. The trio were crossing the road the boys were doing all the talking. She was laughing loudly. We could hear her high-pitched liquor induced laughter. She was smoking hot and stinking drunk.

The Simplest Love

"I am certainly not an authority on love because there are no authorities on love, just those who've had luck with it, and those who haven't."

- Bill Cosby

Recently, a friend of mine said love is nothing but a bunch of lies and promises that were never kept.
She says there is no other outcome to it other than hurt and pain and a broken heart. She sounded knowledgeable and pretty sure about it, I was sure from the serious look on her face she actually believed in what she said. What is more surprising that she like me was just nineteen, a very very young age to have such dark thoughts on something that most people think is a basic necessity for a happy life.

Many people would agree with her, I personally know a lot of such cynics. Maybe I am one of them too. I knew for sure that I was one of them, until I met someone who said something very contradictory and made me think otherwise.

I was coming from my tuition classes at the usual time minus a usual friend who used to come along with me those days, he skipped class today. Lucky brat, the class was torture anyway. Too much calculus can rot anybody’s brain. Ours was just about half way there. But there wasn't much you could do about it, except verbally abuse mankind for being so intelligent to make up something this complicated, and torture us innocent students. He and I usually cursed our math teacher together but since he was not with today I was doing it by myself in my head, hoping my telepathic powers could somehow blow the teacher’s head apart. And wished dearly that I wouldn't have to go jail for that. I would plead that the crime was committed for the good of all humanity. I was also beginning to think up arguments to my defence.

That was when I saw him first. At the depot, where the bus for Ganapathy, the number 3, halts. He was wearing his usual gray uniform of a peon or janitor with the name tag & emblem of a local state-run hospital. I had seen him before in the stand. Like me he too went on the number 3 bus daily. What caught my eye was that he was talking animatedly to someone on his mobile phone. God! Here even an aging ancient janitor has a mobile, and here I have been nagging and badgering my dad to get me one for months. The bus arrived and I was still fuming over this newly discovered injustice, how everything was wrong in the universe. I somehow blindly under auto-plot boarded the empty bus succumbing to the crowd's push and shove . The emptiness of a bus doesn’t matter to us Indians, we simply just have to push and shove collectively at the doors. After that inevitable ruckus ceased I got inside, spotted a vacant seat and quickly sat there before the guy with heavy trunk could reach it. He in turn cursed under his breath and pushed the heavy trunk forward to find another seat. Sorry mister, no manners and etiquettes when it comes to the bus seat. Rejoicing at my success in getting a seat for myself, and smugly looked around to see the disappointed faces of the ones left standing who did not get a seat.

Thats when I saw the janitor next, he had just boarded the bus quite leisurely taking his time after the rush had decreased still talking on his phone. What a loser. Now he’d have to stand the whole time. The bus was filled with passengers, there is now way he could have got a seat coming in this slow. Considering our reputation with regards to population, this was inevitable. The bus finally started. Driver shifts the gear and the bus moved forward. By the time the first two halts had been completed the conductor had come near me I bought the ticket. The conductor noticed the janitor while I bought the ticket. The conductor smiled at the janitor who in turn grinned at him.

“The wife?” he asked.

“Who else?” the janitor mouthed, rolling his eyes.

The Truth About Lies

“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
- Khaled Hosseini

I have always thought that truth and lies are always interlinked to each other. Each cannot survive without the other. They both are nothing but the two sides of the same old rusted coin. Truth is usually overrated, but then so are the lies. People think that the truth might liberate their soul, which is all nothing but a pile of rotten horsecrap. People want to always know everything. And hear nothing but the truth. What is the point anyways? More often than not we never like the truth any more than the lie. The truth only makes it all the more difficult. It’s so much easier sometimes to just say a lie and get it over with than bring out the whole big fiasco of a truth to light which needs a much longer explanation.

And explanations aren’t foolproof. There are times when the explanations get so complex and twisted and turned such a way that you yourself have got no idea what was it that got you into this mess you are in.

I think that the main reason for lying is our loss of the most precious human qualities, our ability to forgive. We are afraid of each other. We are scared witless that the other person might not understand our helplessness or the conditions and the pressures that we were under at that precise moment which led to the choices or actions we had undertaken. The choices and decisions that got us in the trouble we are in. If we knew that they would understand and forgive us. We would have no hesitation in plainly saying the truth as it was.

I am sure that our mistakes aren’t as grave as crucifying Christ. And even He asked for forgiveness to the culprits who did that to him. No, none of us are Christ. I don’t actually expect anyone to walk on water (would have been pretty cool though). And I probably don’t expect anyone to crucify anybody except their college profs may be (y'all know you want to). If He can manage to forgive at the last moment of his life. Why can not we do that? They say to walk on the path of the Almighty. Then why don’t they do the same. Why can’t they forgive? Why does everything have to be done according to their norm? Why can’t they forgive us if we stray from their path? Is it so unbearable for them to see us defy them? Why can’t they let us be? Judging us and condescending us is not going to help us in any way. When are they going to realize that?

We are young. We are meant to make mistakes. Loads of them. We are meant to learn from them. We have to fall first to learn how to walk straight. Humans did not learn to stand without falling for the first dozen hundreds of years. If you had patience then. Where is that patience now? If you could tolerate and forgive mistakes way back when you were just like a chimpanzee, why can’t you do that now when you are supposed to be the smartest living creature on this planet? May be if you could forgive, we wouldn’t be so darn scared of the truth.

So now that it is quite obvious that not forgiving is not helping much. Why not try forgiving?

Hope it doesn’t take another bunch of centuries to better ourselves this time…

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My Story

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”
- Niccolò Machiavelli,
  'The Prince'

People think that they have the vaguest idea of me and what I am but that, unfortunately, cannot be more further from the truth. I’ve been called secretive, secluded and even hostile at times. And at sometimes I am called very outgoing and a very center-of-all-the-good-times kind of person.

Contradictory? Yes. I think so too.

How can a single person be so many things to so many people at so many different situations? May be that’s it, the situations are the ones that make us be different at different times to different people. Some people make us let go of all the boundaries and limits that we make ourselves restricted to. We just cannot seem to stay reserved and secluded from them for long like we do with the rest of mankind.

It probably is a universal problem. I am sure there are more like me. I am not really surprised at that notion. Because. There is never enough of anything. Never. We as a specie always need more.

Need. Funny word isn’t it. We think we need this pricey little shoe that is probably worth a week’s meal for a family in Africa. We think we need this immaculate vintage Jag that can probably fill that same family’s hungry stomach for a year or more. We think we need that. But we never actually do. I think what we actually lack in life we make up by wishing for stuff. Dreaming of it. Working our butts of day-in-day-out that a day will come along when we actually get to have all these oh-so-lovely stuff that we need so bad. But that is what they are. Stuff. Good for nothing stuff. I don’t wish for them. I am darn proud that I am not that materialistic. Not that shallow.

I wish for experiences. Yes, experiences. Experiences like Polo had. Experiences like those kids of the houses with a big hall with crystal chandeliers and swimming pools. Experiences like the lowly thug who has had some self-claimed, exaggerated and glorified tales to tell. I’d like to have some like them. I’d like to have some experiences to call me own. Some stories that I can tell around a bonfire as my own experiences. Some story where I was a character of importance. Some play in which I am the lead and not among the audiences. Some movie based on a true story.

My story.

Wish I had one. Hope for one. Dream of one.

I am waiting for it to come around. Working, waiting for my story to begin…

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