The Night Of The Wrestler, The Rich Kid And The Crazy Bitch

"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

He never thought he would find himself in such a predicament. He always thought that he was above such petty casualties of life. And most around him believed it too. He always seemed so casual, so at ease with himself and the world around him. He was the centre of all the action, was always a fun guy to be around. He had the way about him like he ruled the earth he was walking on; people somehow had started to think so too. People loved him, and always found reason to be around him. He was a man’s man. Some envied him, most wanted to be him. Women loved him, he loved them back. Each and every single one of them, he never distinguished one from the other. Always spread his love and attention around. But then something happened. Someone happened.

All through his school and college life, he had been conscious of the effect he had on the people around him, especially those of the opposite sex. He was tall, not bad looking but his real trump card was his wit and smile. From as far as he can remember, everyone told him he was going to break some hearts when he was grows old. He took that seriously I guess, always found himself to be living in a bit too many hearts at once, making guest appearances in one too many poor adolescent and some not so young women’s nightly fantasies, each a bit sinister than the last one, each getting weirder and even more paranoid as he progressed along the in years.

Somehow he managed to keep his wits about him and not get too carried away by all this. He kept doing well at school; got all the grades required to get him into a well-reputed architecture school in the capital city. In college too, in spite of all the girls in his class going gaga over his shoulder long hair, which was a craze back then, he still stuck to being his self. He never was lonesome, had the company of the best of people around him wherever he went. The geeks, when he wanted some homework done. The queen bees, when he needed something else done, which they got done using their jock boyfriends. Sometimes a lonely spinster, or even some married, female teacher of the college had a weak spot for this boy and he had his way no matter what.

He had his merry way throughout the first and half way through second year of college. The Christmas holidays were close. He wasn’t going to be able to go home this time, not that he cared too much. But he really hoped to extort some money from his dad to buy him a new car, the old one was getting out of fashion. He was still having a brainstorming session, devising a strategy for this mission, in the dorm lobby when he heard a loud yell from the floor above. He ran upstairs, and found a girl running into toilet at the end of the hallway, sobbing. He also heard noises of footsteps rushing upstairs to the floors above and the slamming of a door.

He spent quite some time outside the toilet, pondering whether he should go in or not. He never before in his life has been at this spot, where he had to choose something for himself. He was always told what was good for him, decisions where always taken for him. And wherever this wasn’t possible he always went along with the crowd and did what they did. He never really thought for himself. And at this moment, he had to. He can either, go back downstairs to his sofa and think of ways to get a brand new car bought from his rich father’s money. Or, he can open this door and find out what really happened here a few minutes ago. Luckily for him, this time again the decision was made for him.

The door suddenly opened, and out came the craziest looking woman he had ever seen. She was almost as tall as he was, but stick thin, had funny eye glasses on which made her eyes look huge. This wasn’t one bit funny because the look in those eyes right then was murderous and that scared the living crap out of him. This was the first time he had looked anyone so angry. He was always used to people being hunky dory around him, de had never known a lousy day in his life and if were there any such day his dad’s riches were always at his disposal to make him feel happy happy again. The girl stormed out of the doorway, right past him hardly noticing him or the slightly perturbed look on his face. A part of him was glad that she was gone, but a part of him was offended by the fact that she was the first female ever in his life who had totally ignored him so offhandedly. And the curiosity got the better of him and he followed this clearly insane character up the stairs to the floor above.

The Apple Tree

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."
- T.E. Lawrence

Right from the humble naked beginnings of our lives, we humans are taught how virtuous and rewarding it is to live life in a righteous, courteous and truthful way. We are taught how it is every human being’s moral and social duty to be an ethical, compassionate and caring member of the civilized society. We are taught to say please when you are asking for something, to say thank you when you have got it, and sorry when you have got it and for some incomprehensible reason broke or misplaced it. We were taught that there is no problem in the face of this all forgiving planet that cannot be solved by just sitting across a table and discussing over it, and not debating over it. We have been taught by the very pillars of our society that we students call teachers, apart from the many other more creative names given to by their loving pupils, about the many dignified personalities in the pages of history who have made their mark on the timeline of this planet through their generosity and humanity.

We are programmed to care.

And for most of our childhood, we sincerely do. We confidently ran around naked in the neighbourhood with our mommy running behind with a diaper in her hands yelling for us to stop, we played with total stranger’s children in the sandbox in the park, smiled at strangers and waved at them. We were are truly amiable. The world was one big happy playground. And then, we become teenagers.

Just like no one knows why Lady Gaga or Himesh’s songs go to the top of the charts every time, no one really knows why teenagers are angry all the time. Back in the 60’s maybe they had lot of reasons, the unnecessary conflict in ‘Nam and then the Cold War and all. Even in the 80’s their anger is understandable may be, anyone would have been driven to the loony bin if they had to withstand those disastrous hairstyles for too long. In the 90’s they probably got pissed because they all couldn’t get enough of the cool new “happening” thing, computers. And now in this millennium probably they are enraged over all these new privacy laws and whatnots have propped all-over facebook, or that they have less likes on that special status they have put up after pondering over it longer than they have ever done with any history paper at school.

Well, seems like teenagers always found a reason to pissed off about, cannot really blame them for that. They have lived all their preteens being the good child, they have just come to know about the good that could from being bad. They get this high on disobeying rules, talking back to their folks at home, do what they feel like and the many other essentials on the to-do list of a regular Devil-May-Care personality. And they stick to this routine for the rest of their teens. But that never lasts too long though. Before you know it you are in your ugly 20’s.

This part of human existence I am all too familiar with, on account of my actually going through it right now. The 20’s is that wonderful period in a person’s life when one of two things can happen, (a) he/she becomes the luckiest person on the planet and doesn’t changes a bit from the naïve brat that he/she was as a teenager, or (b) he/she wises up to his/her responsibility and falls into the deep cesspool of the “real world”. And when this person does start thinking about his future, about what he is going to do with this life of his, he starts dreaming.

The early parts of the 20’s are wonderful. You spend your days dreaming about the possibilities of the future, and you stay up at night to dream some more. The truth of the matter is this part of your life right here, is where you actually are the happiest and the optimistic you will ever be in your life. You will feel invincible. There is nothing and no one that can bring you down and there is nothing that you cannot do and no plaque on which you cannot put your name on. You have a bounce in your walk, you have friends all around you who love you, even your folks back at home begin to forget what a pain you were when you were a teen. The world truly feels like your oyster. And the sad part is you really begin to believe it. As everything that’s good in this planet, this feeling also sadly doesn’t last long.

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!