Say What You Need To Say

“The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”

-    Stephen King

     'Different Seasons'

Mrinal was having a yucky day. And cleaning bedpans the old age home where he worked was not helping brightening his day by any measure.

It's been almost a year of him working here, and it still baffled him how the whole place constantly reeked of urine no matter how many people were hired cleaning and scrubbing the place all day. Every nook and corner of the place stank, even the dinning hall. People were only expected to eat there for pete's sake! He and eight other orderlies were by their job description responsible for keeping the 'inmates' comfortable, how were they supposed to that if they themselves didn't know how to be so. Dr. Gupta had banished that word being used within the compound (so let's just keep this as our secret for Mrinal's sake, shall we?)

Why shouldn't these people be called by their real title anyway? Is this place any better than Tihar jail or Sing Sing? Sure this place is more colorful and has lots of comfy sofas and beds, lush landscaped lawns, people hanging around you all day to keep you in prompt accordance of your medication and all. You don't need to worry about a thing. Well, that's what they'd want you to think anyway.

In many ways this place is much worse than either of those establishments. In that place at least you'd know why you are there. Rape, murder, armed robbery, arson, burglary, jay-walking, anything. You do something, the courts sentence you to a period of time, you go to prison, spend your time in your cell with your cellmates who very well could be like the overly friendly T-Bag in Prison Break. But you knew your cause and its effect, and more importantly you knew that all of this had a deadline, either the one the courts sentenced you for or the one till your master plan to jump the prison walls gets materialized.

In an old age home, you don't have that option. There is a deadline yes, but when you reach it there's is no loved ones or fellow gang-members standing there on the other side of the gate to take you home. Once you reach the deadline to get out of here, well, that means you are dead. Any sane, and most of the insane ones also probably, would want to avoid that by any means possible. Even if that means you have to spend those last years of your life on this planet confined to a wheel chair or a bed, and you need other people to do your basic human functions for you, or that you need someone to remember where your things are and when you are to take your next diabetes pills, even if you don't recall the name of your great-granddaughter when she comes to visit you once an year on your birthday.

The life here could be tough on anyone. Both kaidis/retirees and their guards/caretakers equally. Mrinal knew what he was getting into when he started here; at least he thought he did. This was to be a temporary thing till his scriptwriting gig kicks off, which is yet to happen and by the look of things may very well never happen at all. When you look at Mumbai from outside in, it looks so fast, happening and brimming with possibilities especially when you look at all those big name studios and you dream of being on their payroll for doing something that you like doing the most in life, writing. But this past year has been an eye-opener; Mumbai had lost all its charm that it held in the eyes of an innocent recent English graduate from Gujarat. This city is tough, unkind and too-fast-for-its-own-good. This place once might've been really quite something, but now it is anything but that.

In the past one year here, he had met some really wonderful people in this compound though. Some of these old-timers have lived, by that we mean really lived. Not the kind of nine-to-five existence that most of us do now. There is a circus manager, ex-army vet, ex-politician, ex-IAS, ex-tech guru. There is a whole bunch of ex-some bodies here. Each with their own histories. Each with their own treasure chests brimming with memories of the bygone golden era. They all have done something that they have proud of. They have all seen some really exciting time. Mrinal was part of the Hazare fuss too; he thought that was going to be 'the happening time' of his generation, he is not now too confident about that either.

The new generation has missed out on lot things. Maybe the most that he thinks we've lost is our capability to empathize. And this place really drives that emotion home. Especially on that day in July where it rained all day...

The Doomsday can still come! The world, as we know it, can still come to an END!!

"Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us. And the Prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison."

- Heinreich Heine,

  "Lutetia; or, Paris" Augsberg Gazette, 1842

I did not know who Heine was at that time, nor did I know why he said that. But in light of recent events I am not sure if anything else would be more appropriate here.

There are times when pop culture, with all of its cliches and overdramatic urban legends, comes out with something so logically convincing and outright bizarrer that the whole world mankind unwillingly (or willingly as an escape from reality) ends up believing it.

21, December, 2012 was one such legend.

People were falling prey to it everywhere. Dozens for documentaries were made, hundreds of websites and forums created to bring together people of this cult to prepare for the "end of time" conflicts, thousands of bunkers and strongholds built in basements and high hills where people shut themselves up for most of the second half of the year. Millions spend on a high budget ($200mto be precise) Roland Emmerich movie on it, which also incidentally earned its maker millions ($770m!)

So clearly, this was a big deal. Or so everyone thought until the day actually came.

It came and it went. Nothing of grave importance occured. It was just another day for most of the planet.

World did not end. Buildings did not crumble like sand castles. Cities did not slid into the ocean. Hot lava did not pour out of the mound in the park.

All that happened was that I missed the bus to work.

Nothing new there even.

We are back where we are. Right?

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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