Sunday, December 30, 2012

It happens. Happens somewhere.But, it happens


The dal was just right or maybe it needed more salt. She fiddled with the spoon and thought for some time. How did it matter? He was going to foul mouth her anyway. She wished he changed what he said; it was the same every time that started with her food and went to her family.

 She had tried to vent it out to people she knew and reply was ‘office pressure’. Maybe it was, but she could not be too sure. What would she know? She had left work two years ago. She had loved her work. The financial freedom that came with it gave her the satisfaction. Her double degree seemed to be justified but she had to give it up because he didn’t like it. He didn’t want her to stress and get pressurized in the nasty office politics. He had emphasized that it was a bad world.

Euphemism was his greatest weapon and she couldn’t retort to it. He would run to his family and his mother would halt at their place. Blackmails would happen in pretext of advise and eventually she would give in. Like she agreed that it was the right time for the baby. She didn’t know if it was but everyone wanted it. She had pushed away the idea that society was like that but couldn’t ignore. The feeling was amplified by her relatives pressurizing her parents. Sometime, or most of the times she wondered if she lived in this century.

She poured the dal from the stove into a vessel. Her thoughts were somewhere else.The dal she had eaten at Mrs Sasi’s place tasted well. She yearned to go there often but there was no time. That is the reason she had given to Sasi. It came naturally to her, that lies, because she didn’t want another drama over anything. She had stopped talking to people, not that they were concerned either. She gave up on interacting because gossips flew and husbands suspect. Her parents had advised to stay on good books. Didn’t she do that for 22 years? Staying on their good books? Listened to them when they asked her not to go to parties or movies with friends? Is it a life time commitment of listening to someone you bound to? She had many questions but never asked them except in the altar of Gods.

She moved out of her Kitchen and switched on the TV. There was news of rape victim in Delhi. She empathized helplessly. She was a coward, she knew it. One who obeyed her husband and served him. Maybe everyone claimed that being a housewife was the toughest but she didn’t like it. Didn’t that matter? Shouldn’t she be the one to decide the ways of her life? At least the things that were trivial? Anger brewed in her.

He snatched the remote from her, like he snatched everything else. Her thoughts and emotions. But it didn’t matter because the norms were set. Maybe it was the safest and best for her.

The news anchor screeched about the atrocity of the incident. She prayed for the victim. Prayed for herself for she was a victim of another kind. 

Friday, December 21, 2012

World is a tragic comedy


Among the millions that rush through the stream, one sperm makes it. Technically, 999999 of them failed. Cliché as a beginning of an article but then, cliché is in. The heroes always saved the day and villains made us hate them. Women are fussy and men don’t like nagging. Cliché is indisputable. 

In the marathon called life, we follow the cliché. We go to school, college, office, marry, have kids, have grand children and retire. In this cinched race, we have always been taught that it is about what happens in the end that matters. At every junction in life, something mattered or someone did.

What does it mean to live for oneself? What is a life with a “you”? Can you wipe the polish that stained deep into skin from the time you were born? The religion you followed, the place you lived, the books that taught, the language that you uttered, the ambience that surrounded; everything absorbed in the system as you moved in phases of life. Can you suck out the ingredients that made you? You simply can’t tear away the materials that actually sculpted that you see in the reflection.

What am I babbling all the way? I am trying to point the most radical idea that failed to strike and deliberately dodged away from the senses. I am trying to pen down that things that surrounded actually made you. You are the salt that is dissolved in the system like every other person. Invariably and obviously, the entire system in which you exist is actually yours.

Everything in this universe is an opportunity; the light that flickers through the window sill to the dust that settled on the top of the book. If everything is here for you, why do you still hang on to what you didn’t get? Why does a single failure bog everything you believed in?

Success is a particle that makes more than the universe. Mankind has been turning it to a classified and quantifiable object. Marks, money, designation, assets and people; these in unison might make success, but what makes failure?

In literal sense, a “non” of the above should make a failure. So, what happens when someone fails? How much less is failure? Is failing supposed to make one sad?

Why didn’t someone teach us that negativity actually helped us more than success? Failure is like your father of introspection. It hits you, wakes you and unclogs the blocks that you failed to notice. It creates a sense of awareness of self and the environment.

I failed. Not in terms of money or matter but I failed to do anything at all and I wonder why it bothers me? I am very confident that I am not alone. There are many others who feel the same. They feel when the world is running ahead and they are stuck somewhere in the loops and strings of mediocrity. They believe they have not accumulated the money, assets, the fame or the person they wanted. They feel useless in the cycle of material.

Time is erosion and is corroding away. We are reminded of this again and again all our lives. In this short term of hyper activity, we chase against time to make what we claim ‘the success’. Don’t count what you achieve as success. Nobody has been able to define it anyway. Enjoy the proceeds and embrace the results, be it success or failure. There are only two signs of probability in life, black and the white. Yes, no grey shades as everyone told you.

Stop being cynical about your self. There are no fast and hard truths about when you should attain success. When everything in this world is yours and every single grain is an opportunity, why do you think failure should stop you?

When you don’t get what you want, it simply wasn’t your fault. It was nobody’s fault. It was a roll of a die that showed up a zero.

Next time, when you lose a seat in one of the prestigious colleges or don’t get someone you loved or work seems impossible or any situation that you define failure arises, understand you were made for greater purpose than you think. You are to be made into someone that you never knew existed. The force of the universe is going to help you achieve it. You will attain what you term as success. Embrace this period of negativity; it is going to turn things for real.

Like the 999999 sperms, we were made for a purpose. God works in his ways, the sperms dissolve away into the system. But we always get another chance. Maybe, not immediately but our time will come. Stay alert. 

At 35 - Replying to a post from 10 years ago

 Hellos!  Is anyone interested anymore? Is anyone reading other people's lives or has Twitter taken over? Is anyone blogging? Is it stil...