just another day

In the lanes of an unforgiving world

Leaving my job, clothes and the comfort of my home… I had hopped on a train to Delhi.

Centuries ago Chinese students would sit in the dim corners of reeking rooms with melting candles waiting upon them. For becoming civil servants, they had to learn innumerable complex Chinese characters and then pray to god that they get lucky in the exam. The same thing happens in India nowadays.

Amongst the hordes of those willing to put their careers and possibly life at stake, I was one. I had come, but with a vague sense of what I had come for… and why I had come.

A strange sense of fear gripped me the moment my friend asked me what I had come to do in Delhi. It was like he caught me red handed in something I feared I would eventually get caught. There was tension and there was considerable fear. Poof, he pressed the button and all the mental anxieties tumbled out.

For the longest time I couldn’t say anything… but then, when I did…. It was so unexpected that I often think that this is destiny’s voice speaking….

Here goes my rant……..

So who is afraid of the big bad wolf. Everyone is, as a matter of fact. There is somethings in your life that define you, stay with you. These are more permanent especially if you are young and haven’t yet proved your mettle. The mental pressure to do is to say the least, enormous.

But then, what is life if not an adventure. What is life, if there are no challenges in it? (put a question mark in the previous sentence too) and how boring would it be if the monotonously stretching waters of the placid lake of tranquility was all that your life boat had to cross through. Throw in some icebergs, a couple of storms, a few sea monsters, pretty mermaids, drowning damsels and a mission to accomplish and hee-haw you have a nice blockbuster right there.

Who is afraid of the big bad wolf? Everyone is, and that is the exciting part. When you are able to take the pressure, consider your options, form a strategy and execute it properly…. The wolf would have no option but to back off. That is the spirit of man that asserts itself over any and all troubles. If you go whimpering about and then get killed in the end.. not only does it make for a lousy life story, the wolf too gets bored of putting up with such a sloppy hero.

So, who is afraid of the big bad wolf? I am.

But then, I will make it an adventure to be remembered.

Thoreau Kardashian

As the blatant commercialization of every known entity in the universe continues, emotions too have fallen in the cauldron of modernity.

If not then why do people now go out to seek happiness as if it was a commodity to be bought? Perhaps such a mentality has indeed developed.

Today we might be able to neatly package, gift wrap and adorn every other thing known to mankind. Would emotions also fall prey to our zeal for marketing? The story of a patient who was depressed for a very long time comes to the mind. In spite of the treatments when she wasn't able to recover, what she finally did was to go for an operation that implanted an electrical simulator in her brain. A device that made her ‘feel’ happy whenever she turned it on.

That might be, perhaps the only thing that we want… when we go out to shops aimlessly for purchasing something that could solve our insatiable desire for stimulation, something that would rouse us from the boredom of our existence.

It isn’t strange then that millions of us line outside apple stores as some sell their kidneys and buy happiness contained in that small screen. Perhaps we like purchasing luxury items for the purpose of showing to our fellow humans that we too have an intrinsic value comparable to the item that we are carrying around. More importantly, perhaps we want others to know that we have the resources to be able to afford the items on our hands. External validation vs internal insecurity?

I don't think that man searched for happiness so intensely ever before. Singled out of the bouquet of emotions that attack our senses every living second, we want only happiness to last. In the past years when money appeared and we could buy amazing things form a piece of paper and not barter and exchange that the tendency to hoard begin. Can we thus hoard happiness…..? Well we have the means to get the basic human requirements fulfilled and yes we have the means to get things that add to the clutter.. do they give us happiness?

Thoreau had once remarked that it’s not we who possess, rather our possessions possess us. They bind us to them and strip the humans of their carefree, giving, happy nature. We become zealous guardians of our hoards, which each one of us keeps hidden in the most secret part of the world so that no one… no one, not even we ourselves can get to it.

Keeping up with Johnsons, or the Kardashians lately has been the sole purpose of many a lives. We want faster pc’s, cars, better accessories, bigger homes. These very desires take over our psyche and as we slavishly follow the glitter of the brightest screen available in the markets. A donkey might tire of chasing the carrot around, but keep on replacing the carrot with a cucumber and you’ll get a perpetual motion donkey.

Moth'er of all lusts

                                                     One Last Flight

Light, even the artificial one can attract thousands of moths hovering all over it. Sometimes, it seems that moths want nothing else except to spend their lifetime obsessed with the solitary, insignificant bulb. Thousands of them would die if you switch off that single bulb. Perhaps they are heartbroken, or dorsal tube broken if you consider their lack of a heart. In any case, moths line up the streets in what seems to be a post apocalypse scene.

Several others I’m sure would hover incessantly towards the sky, hurtling themselves against every opposition to reach the sun. In a desperate attempt to reach the un-achievable, these tiny insects spend their lifetimes. Some of the lucky ones get to be burned alive in the fires or insect killing lamps. For the rest, it’s a long drawn, exhaustive death of incessant flapping and then some more flapping.

So, what is the logic behind their fatalistic society? Their tiny brains cannot separate the two different kinds of lights present. The real light that eventually guides them and helps them to complete their lifecycle and the artificial one, which eventually burns them out and results in a massacre every time the bulb is switched off.

With our greater mental capacity, we have the overview of the game going on in the midst of the moths. We can see its futile attempts and the suicidal ones too. I wish someone could whisper in their ears, the buzzing sound which would awaken them from their stupidity.

On second thoughts, why bother. Perhaps we too are, at this very moment in a kind of suicidal mission, hurtling towards the artificial aims that have gripped us powerfully. We spend lifetimes chasing after trendy goods, bigger flats, faster cars… perhaps to sit alone in the end with the accumulated waste of a lifetime, and no one to cherish it with. Obviously even we cannot discriminate the real ones from the fake ones.

The glitter and chicanery involved with money does attract thousands of people towards its ephermal shine. A hope of eternal happiness keeps them in the orbit, incessantly flapping their last bits away into the bottomless void into which they must eventually sink before the glorious sunshine would expose their lives or rather the futility of it.

Many religions believe in resurrection and the day of reckoning. For the moths, every new day is the day of reckoning. The moths which can resist the tempting fires, glittering L.E.Ds and the multifarious bright lights of market eventually do get to see the sun, the glorious father of all bulbs, the real light and the only one which would see them through. For the rest, their short lives are spent in the pursuit of fluorescent lights is ended with the deep sigh of regret as they see the sun rising and the last drops of their life blood ebb away.

Perhaps the moths too know about the truth of their fruitless strivation. But then, if we can’t resist the well lit advertisement boards can they?

flower on a wire

As the summer’s first sun blazed through the sky, the chill that had stubbornly permeated the valley

gave some lease to its golden foe. Flowers that had so far shied away so far, now shook their tender

sapling and friends into awakening. They had begun to come out to see if the winter’s coat was lifted

or if another trickery was being played.

The winters are cruel in this part of the world, whether nature’s adversity is considered or man’s

traversity, this vale is a cup of sorrow filled with tales to tell. This is Kashmir and this photograph

shows a solitary flower on one of its innumerable fences that dots its façade. A single resolute

flower, which if properly categorized would probably have to make do under the categorisation of

some kind of a weed, the most common type of flower to find. It’s the first flower of spring, first

perhaps because of its tenacity and hope that there is still a better world outside and its worthwhile

to come out rather that perish underground.

The courage that is needed to break the final few millimetres of the top soil , the courage to take a

chance that winters are finally gone and gone for good, the courage to blossom amongst the bullets,

bloods and the rusted iron. That is what this simple flower symbolises.

Living in the very heart of Kashmir where thousands of saplings have been crushed under the

merciless cavalcade of bodies being carried to their graves, this flower perhaps represents the

collective conscience of the place where it drew from and it wants to give living another chance.

To finally let go of the ghosts of winter, this is a photograph of the first flower of Kashmir. This is a

flower on the wire.