Melancholic Hoarders

"We are all beasts of burden..

We are all born with these humongous suitcases inside of us,
that we keep filling up with all sorts of debris of our lives..

Up until one point when we begin to define our lives with the sort of baggage we carry around..

We were all once men of action.. Men of purpose and dignity and intelligence..
When did we all become a sad group of melancholic hoarders?

When did we lose our ability to be truly happy, no conditions applied."

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Love Each Other. Consensually.

Strength has always been so much important in society.

A man is not a man unless he has a taut physique, at least six feet tall, with macho demeanor and chest hair poking out near the top buttons of his shirt. He does dare devil and challenge others without a thought of any harm happening to him. And let’s face it; he is a man, what can ever harm him?!

Don't think we are being partial either. A woman is also very strong. A woman's prowess comes from her strength of compassion, humility, values and affection. We have traditionally been a culture that holds women to such high regards. Almost all of the famous Gods in the epic stories have a strong female counterpart. We worship women and her kind.

A woman is not a woman, unless she is the humble thimble of the family, compassionate enough to do everything at home to keep her family comfortable, keep her values intact such that when the male in the family decides something she never challenges him, and affectionate enough so that she keeps his bed warm even if she is not the mood for any loving.

You see we are a country of strong people. Strong traditions. Strong values. Strong emotions. Strong prejudices.

We are proud of our history and revere our herd mentality. Some may say we are scared that if we don't shove our values down the throats of young people our next generation might forget our rituals and will lead our beautiful land becoming one of lechery and half-nakedness. Some might point out that the biggest champions of our traditions - the politicians and the heads of religions - are now more prone to watching porn in the parliament buildings and to molesting disciples. For them we'd like to point out that they only do so to show the world that they are normal people, one among the masses.

Ah the masses of our country. What can we tell about such wonderful people? No words will suffice to praise their hard work and awareness about what actually is going on in our country. Remember the big uproar of political unrest over widespread corruption in government? Tens of thousands of people on the roads protesting and demonstrating their demand for change. And look now, we now never see a single bureaucrat anywhere in the country be caught in a bribery racket. Right?

That's where we think this Nirbhaya protest went all wrong. You see this is one change where half measures won’t work. Mass revolt against corruption was one thing. But for the Nirbhaya uproar, though there was a big fight. And the politicians did bring in their valuable words of wisdom. But most of the traditional minded people, which still hold very high positions, were still not too entertained about it. After according to them all the women were clearly asking for it. Rape happened only in India and not in their Bharat.

dnaindia.com

You see... I agree with all of you... The protesters and the traditionals...

The protesters weep for the women who got violated so bad that by the end of the turmoil her entrails were dropping out of her privates...

The traditional weep for their idea of cultural living going to ruins... The culture that our country has been living in for centuries... That which is most familiar to them… They do not know any better…

For both people I will just like to point out one thing... Time is different...

The protesters need to remind themselves that while getting on the road, or on social media comment sections reminding everyone else that something needs to be done; does sound like you are doing something about it. In reality you are not.

So… Stop, please stop. Nothing ever gets done that way, who are you kidding? Mass protest worked in an era when countrymen actually believed in belonging to something. Now, patriotism only shows up when Indian cricket team is playing the World Cup. Don’t believe in the popular solution melodrama. Protect your own people. Take care of the women around you. That is the most practical solution I can think of. If every person in this country started looking out for each other, even if only their close ones, don’t you think we’d be covering more ground than spending another decade in making laws that probably won’t ever get enforced in our lifetime? Take care of the women in your life, be there for them. If they are out with someone, don’t be a stalker, but you can at least be aware of the people around her. And you, the people around her, please take care of her. Be a man.

The traditionals need to remind themselves that while yes it might be true that the old traditions are at a risk now. But then we are not the people of the old times... While it is true that women might wear tighter clothes or show more skin than the ladies in your epic stories. That does not in any way mean she is doing that to get some. Women working night shifts to earn her food for her family is not doing so because she has loose morals and is hungry for late night action. A child is a child. You don’t have any right to snatch away her right to a happy childhood just because you have a penis.

We once preached respecting women and elders and children. That was probably my favorite part of our culture. The level of affection we were taught right from a young age by and towards the people around us. Many of my friends from abroad are amazed at how close knit our families are while theirs are torn apart with divorces. I don't know where all that love and respect got lost...

I really do like what we have here. I adore what we had in the past. But I dislike the things for which we stand for now around the globe. Our country is not really that bad. We just have a bad case of inaction, and indecisiveness. More importantly, a sense of empathy at an individual level.

We have survived so many things together. It would be such a waste to be defeated now by our own failing sensibilities. Be kind to each other. Be sensitive of each other’s pain.

Today, and forever, love each other. Consensually.

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Queen of Spades and the Faint of Hearts

“And he hated himself and hated her,too, for the ruin they'd made of each other.” 

- Dennis Lehane

"Phileas. Mr. Phileas Rodriguez? Can you hear me, sir?"

He woke up with a start. Looked around the room like it was the first time he was seeing it. He was not. He had been visiting Dr. Sharma for the past four years now, ever since his first blackout. Though now he was just plain asleep and not blacked out. He sat up straight and rubbed his eyes and face to wake them up. He had a week’s beard on his face, peppered with white here and there. It did give him a sophisticated look, but itched like a flea-ridden mutt’s crotch.

Blackouts were nothing new to him; he knew very well what it felt like. They started a couple of years ago. It was very scary in the beginning. He checked himself into a clinic at his third incident and did all the tests they had there. No one actually came to any conclusion as what was wrong with him. They all wrote it off as a prodrome to something else and just decided to wait and see. So he waited, until a few weeks from his first incident he blacked out behind the wheel while driving back from work. Luckily no was hurt, but it sure did put the fear for his life into him and he started looking out for every possible avenues for help.

A friend suggested he try yoga, didn't help except his back never felt so good thanks to all the stretching. Another suggested him to drink a lot of liquids, that didn't help much either except that he had to get up from his desk more often to visit the restroom earning him a lot of catcalls from his coworkers. Then his younger sister, a physical therapist, suggested maybe his ailment wasn’t anything physical at all. Maybe it was all in his mind. That's how he had ended up in this place where he was presently sprawled on a sofa in the lobby of the shrink’s office.

"I'm sorry. Was working late last night, didn't get enough sleep", he replied to the receptionist who was looking over his computer screen to him smoothing over his flannel shirt and plaid pants. She never understood why this guy had to wear so proper all the time. It's been years she’s been watching him now, and she had never seen him in casual Tees and denims. He was very tall and lanky, would look great in jeans. Anyways, she kept her thoughts to herself and returned back to the social network site she was surfing on while pretending to work on her boss’s letters.

He walked past the receptionist's desk and opened the door to the good doctor's cabin. And as always, he was hit with the strong scent of roses. The room seemed to brimmed with it, there were pictures of rose gardens on the back wall, there were two pots filled with roses near the window, and there was always vase with a few more rose stems on the doctor's desk. His guess was she even doused herself in rose perfume before she leaves for work.

Right now, Dr. Sharma was seated behind her desk writing hurriedly in her diary. She kept one for every patient. She looked up and gave the very slightest of smile and signaled him to take a seat.

Phileas took his usual seat at the corner of the couch, closest to the doctor's chair. He was soft on her, and she knew it. Obviously she did, a woman didn't need a double degree in psychiatry to know if a guy is into her or not. But she was not one to break a doctor-patient relationship. And he was not her type anyway.

She was soon done with her notes, pushed the diary away and stretched while seated in her chair. Sitting all day in a chair all day listening to people’s problems takes its toll on a person’s vertebrae.

She turned to the stack of hardbound diaries kept at one end of his desk and shuffled through them to get to her patient's notes. Now she asked, "So Phileas, how are we doing today?"

"I am well, Ms. Sharma. This has been a good week. The trip to the capital was a much needed break from all the stress." He could never bring himself to call her Dr. Sharma. She looked so young to be called that.

"That's nice. Yes, I remember, you were going to attend an ex colleague’s wedding in Noida. How was function? Was there a lot of people present?" she asked, mildly bringing up Phileas's fear of crowds.

Phileas didn't take the bait, "No no, it was actually a small affair. Got to meet with a few old friends from my time in Amazon and also there was a band and a trip around old Delhi. It was really quite exciting."

"That sounds good. Hope you did not stress yourself out too much, sometimes a rush of old memories and emotions might become too heavy on one's psyche."

"No it really was nothing like that. I actually had a good time...”

Phileas started to fidget in his seat. The doctor could see that he was not saying the whole thing; he was hiding something from her. The fidgeting was his tell; he would be very lousy at poker.  She looked at him for a moment and spoke softly looking down at her dairy writing something, "Take your time, Phileas. There is no hurry."

"I don't think I have been completely honest with you, Ms. Sharma. About my reason, my incessant need to attend this wedding even though I hate public transport... I, um, the bride... Well, we used to be very close for a while. I mean. Uh. We were in love." He shifted his eyes from her and started looking at anywhere but in her direction. The doctor didn't seem to notice the change. She just waited there bowed down to her book pretending to read, waiting for him to continue.

He took a moment of quite, and continued.

"We met in an office party. She was a HR person dealing with recruitment. She was the one who had assisted me during my induction process when I joined the company. I'd never met her since in my nine months of working in the there, until that New Year's Eve bash. I still remember her wearing the beige pantsuit, with a tiny chain made of silver hanging around her neck. She looked beautiful. She was also the biggest klutz, you’ll see. So she was always tumbling over something or shoving to somebody else while passing. Still I liked her all the same, she was cute." Phileas was by now looking absently out the window behind the doctor's chair. His gaze was looking towards a different place a different time. He was opening up far more than he had ever done in the four years he had been her patient, Dr. Sharma was beginning to sense they were at the verge of a breakthrough.

"Somehow when dinner was announced we ended up at the same table; call it what you may, destiny or sub-conscious plotting by my side. But I've never had a better first time conversation with any woman ever. We sat there and spoke for hours, she told me about her life, her aspirations, about her work with a local NGO, and I shared my dreams and troubles with my sister. It was great. Soon it was past midnight and the party was dying. People were starting to leave with their spouses or friends. We both didn't have any so we decided to leave together and share a cab.

“Well one thing led to another, we kissed on the ride back to her place. I was 23, and that was the first kiss I've ever had. I was a very sickly kid when I was younger you see, no girl would come close to me by a ten meter radius. And it showed I think, because soon she was taking the lead in the whole activity. I was naive, and even I could sense that this wasn't her first time snogging in the back of a cab. But I was not complaining anyway, it felt too good to be true as it was."

Your Virtues

“Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.”

- H. Jackson Brown, Jr

The times when we smiled and rejoiced the most, were the times when we were free of all the worries and burdens on our weary shoulders. Each of these carefree memories that we have are the most cherished minuscule tidbits of our life. Our life is made up of gazillions of such anecdotes, but for us some stand out among others for some unfathomable silly reason. These are the moments with which we grade the completeness and true merit of our own lives, the more these are the merrier.

And here too as in every aspect of men’s life, to each their own. Some like spending time cooking or gossiping with friends, some like spending time washing and cleaning the same subset of their material possessions again and again repeatedly, and some absolutely weird ones like me enjoy spending time talking to total strangers in bus stands and parks and railway ticket queues. The sheer novelty of the meeting and of that person gives you such a happy high. The chance to say whatever you want to, be whoever you want to and not make an iota of difference to the personal lives of both the parties gives you a this strange thrill that no skinny dipping in the middle of winter can give.

There was this girl in high school one of my classmates was insanely in “love” with. He usually was capable of finding his true love once or twice each semester. We all thought this one was one such worthless endeavor of our Romeo, and soon would find someone fairer and prettier. And he did do the same in a couple of weeks, without fail. But for now he was busy gawking at this girl from school. He circled her home in the morning like a vulture waiting for his prey to leave home for school and follow her there, when the night comes he haunted her neighborhood to get a glimpse of her through the windows kept open to let the air in warm summer nights. This went on and on for a week or so. In the beginning we, as we always did, were busy pulling his leg and teasing him about his current “true love”. But by the end of the third week he got even us believing that he truly must be serious about this girl.

And when a realization like that cracks into the thick skull of any guy, he goes all out to give a helping hand to his brother in arms, and have no doubt love is war, and in high school they get messy. The problem with us was that none of us had any firsthand experience about a real love affair. We all were completely naïve, and it clearly showed in our suggestions and ideas to get the girl to fall in love with or friend.

What sensible girl would think a bunch of roses thrown at her from a car romantic? It almost seemed like a gangster drive by hit. We even got him to write a letter and put it in her bag, not that bad idea, right? Well trust me it is when you mistake the bag and put it another girl’s bag and she turns out to be the class teacher’s niece. Luckily, he forgot to write his name in the letter, truly Romeoesque.

We were bringing out the most stupid romantic ideas of all time, and mastering this art better than Don Juan or Casanova did. We toiled days, then we all got bored of it and decided to take shifts in accompanying our lover boy in his nightly love trysts. One such night, changed everything.

The trouble with love is that it is contagious. Once one of your friends is in its spell, you have this urge to be in it too. You go around everywhere trying to fall in love with every other girl you see. Sometimes you do fall in love but not more than two hours so, and then the next one comes along. 

The problem was that one night, when he was busy gawking at the now all too familiar window, I was busy staring at another. This one was a few blocks away from the girls home and on the other side of the street so the Romeo didn’t have a clear view of it. But I could, there I saw a huge TV and girl in her pajamas a staring at it, the light of the TV falling on her beautiful face. I did not know this girl then, but after that night I began to notice her all the time when we used to go to school. Her name was Priya Cherian, our heroine. She lived somewhere close to the girl’s home and our school. 

We used to pass each other when we went to school, she went to the same girl’s only school that our lover boy’s girl went to. And that common link caught the eye of our dear friend; he started pushing me talk to her, get to know her. Bloody git.

And I did, well just nods and hi in the beginning then we found common ground in our mutual hate for math and I used it to lengthen our minute long conversation each time before and after school. Soon she started waiting for me at the gate of my school to walk together till the crossroad some blocks away. Now my friends had started to tease me, and oddly it felt awesome to be at the receiving end of it. For the first time in my life I was beginning to feel happy about my ease in talking to strangers. She started talking about stuff other than math too, her hobbies, family, friends etc. I supposed that must be a good thing that she is opening up. It felt good to be confided in, the now familiar high was at its highest then.

The one thing I really didn't notice back then was that our lover boy was also walking along with us. I was too busy gawking at her perfect teeth and long hair, I did not notice the spring in our lover boy’s steps whenever Priya came around the corner. I did not notice the weird excited nervous laugh that guys have when they are around a girl they like. I did not notice the lack of interest he seemed to be having now on the girl from school. The nightly trips to her neighborhood to stalk her neighbor became rarer, while the walks after school more consistent. I even caught them walking off ahead without me a couple of times. Soon in a couple of weeks, they were talking more about each other, to each other than anything me. Soon, they started making plans to meet on weekends and holidays. And I failed to notice this all because, I was distracted by another tall 11^th grader.

School ended, we all went on our own way. The tall 11^th grader was soon forgotten and replaced by equally nameless others, each unique, and oddly each with the best smile ever seen on the face of the planet. But the most savored one probably is Ms. Cherian, who incidentally got engaged last week.

Question: Guess who the guy was? Answer: Our own lover boy. The bloody git.

Moral of the day: It is not always so that you are the only one to profit from your own virtues.

Them Half-Baked Social Workers

“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.”

- Adam Smith

Okay lets see. Today was a fairly normal day.

I was being the usual guy who sits in front of the mapping designer all day dragging objects and coding this and that. You know usual nerd IT stuff. Then this mail comes around lunch time from a colleague. It seemed to be one of those forwards that you get in your inbox from people who themselves got from somebody else, but it being of a huge size (this one was 3MB) you forward it to everyone else you know an rid your inbox of its burden soon after to avoid the out-of-space debacle.

The subject of this specific one was "And we say that we are working hard!!!”

Well well, feeling a tad too sarcastic today aren’t we.

So I opened it, and behold a big picture of a dirty bony kid stood there staring back at me with soiled hands and booger pouring out of his nose. Eww right?

I had figured out the topic of this mail by now. This was going to be another mopey whiny one about malnutrition, orphans or something. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing but love for them, but heck looking at some of the relatives/family one ends up with sometimes makes me feel envious of those buggers.

Anyways, I scroll down to next picture - another shirtless kid (surprised?) with some sort of white dust all over him, maybe concrete.

Unimpressed, I scroll down to the next image - a greasy kid pushing some sort of lathe drill into metal and such

Aha now I see where this is going, lo and behold the next image - a really dark girl smiling and holding a handful of flowers to a car window at a traffic signal.

This was a mail about child labor. I keep scrolling down with back to back images of kids not yet into their teens doing minimum wage work like waiting on tables, cleaning dishes  at a restaurant, picking recyclable plastic garbage at the junkyard etc. There was this one picture of a kid working at a construction site lifting like 5 concrete bricks, each almost as big as his limbs. That I found oddly impressive.

       

Well jokes aside, the pictures were a sad affair and I was especially moved by the one with the little kid picking garbage in the huge almost-mountain of a landfill junkyard. I could only imagine the repulsive odor and disgusting gunk in that place. That child definitely harped on the empathy cord I sadly am born with.