Calling me back to my home...

Dear blog,

Almost 5 months have past since I last went to my home. And I am growing home sick like never before. Coming from a joint family has its own share of disadvantages. You get pampered. Not to luxury, but emotional security.

I have a really big family. I have 'em all. To start with, a very religious and ever blessing pious soul, my grandmother. The lady of practical wisdom who introduced me to the world of numbers through her 'pahadas' ie, the multiplication tables, that she still remembers. She is the gentlest creature I have ever seen. At least to me.
She doubts whether she will live long enough to see me getting married. So whenever I sit beside her, she starts singing the traditional marriage lokgeets with me being the groom. And I listen to it all. Its not that I am even slightly interested in my marriage prospects. I just like listening to it when she sings.
And she sings to her heart's content before going back to her daily worship  bhajans.
Sometimes I feel like recording her singing for me. Maybe this vacation I will.

Then my chronically unhealthy but really wise grandfather. He is THE man for me. The sole savior of my entire family tree, when it needed him the most. Had he not come in Patna to accept the clerk job and retire as the 'Bada babu' of the energy deptt., Govt. of Bihar, I would have never reached where I, and my family are right now. We might have been just another farmer in the small village at the Jahanabad- Nalanda border. Or may be worse. And though he knows I am more interested in doing an MBA, he still continues to inspire me to become and IAS. I know he means it when he says that he has envied Govt. high ranking officials all life long.
Though he suffers from constant stomach ailments, he just can not stop eating fish - the root of it all.
My grandfather will never change. And I know it. That's why I enjoy eating fish - with thick mustard paste rich curry, sitting just beside him. Over the years, even I have developed this strong relish for Fish. Its my grandfather's dominant trait, after all. :)

My mother. Do I need to write about her? Doesn't being a mother to me explain it all? She is the root from where my soul has grown. She has treated me like a king. Always. I had always been the thin - frail kid, shorter and weaker than almost all others of my class. And still if I can find one reason why I was able to be the star of the school, the topper among the toppers, the one who had the guts to represent the whole class in front of any teacher, the one who was the district topper with 97% in CBSE Boards, the one who never accepted any other rival's reign... was because I knew my mother believed in me. She said that there was  no connection between being physically weak and being emotionally weak. She believed that there was nothing I could not do. And she has been right, I guess. :)

My father. Oh, he is my idol when it comes to public speaking. Being a successful entrepreneur after having failed as a university lecturer, my father knows how to do business. But more importantly, he knows how to deal with people. Whenever he and I sit beside the bookshop counter, he tells me how dealing with people is the most important trait of a successful businessman, and a successful person. He has this strange quality of recognising the region and the local ethnicity of any arbitrary man through the accent of hindi he uses.
An expressive master of spoken hindi dialects. That's my father.

Then come my siblings. My elder sister. I know I have fought a lot with her. Over petty issues. My first 12-14 years of life have gone busy fighting with her. Now whenever we meet, we remember our old play days and laugh about it. She has matured now. Doesn't speak to me much, But is very much attached to the family, and is one important part of it. She likes to watch regular K-serials, worships Shahid, Hrithik and Shahrukh, and is deeply religious. And yes, she cooks real good. She knows I am the biggest fan of her cooking skills.

My younger brother. Amit. He is the style icon. Is way more smart and good looking than me ( average looks), knows what's in vogue, sports an updated hairstyle, and perhaps has a girl friend too. But from inside, I know he's a kid. And a lovely one. He is so loyal. Worships me. Has full faith in my abilities. Never fails to boast about my academic achievements, amongst his friends.
In my last vacation, a lizard was squashed between the jambs of our study room window - the room where me and Amit sleep. I almost vomited seeing the innards hanging loosely of the poor lizard. Ran short of guts to touch it even with a wooden stick. And then Amit came to my rescue. He pushed away the Lizard using the stick.
And we both discovered rather nauseatingly that the poor lizard was still alive. I knew I could do everything save poking that lizard with that stick. And Amit took the baton from me, literally. :)

And then come my two uncles... my aunts... their kids... I miss them all. My youngest cousin sister, Meethi has just joined her KG classes. When she sports that pony tail (sometimes double), she becomes the cutest creature on this whole earth.
Man, I miss her a lot.
Once I told her that I will give her whatever she wanted as her birthday gift. She told me to get the title track of 'Don'. :)
 Loves Shahrukh Khan more than any worldly stuff. Till now. :P

I miss them. I miss them all. I want to leave this internship right here. I want to get back. Get back to my roots. Get back to the people to whom I belong. Go to my village and lay on the low-lying mango branch as I always used to do in my childhood. Go to my bookshop and help my father in dealing with the customers. Sit beside my grandmother and listen to her folksongs, with me being the hero. Sit beside my grandfather and eat fish curry- full of thick mustard paste.

Here I feel very lonely. Every person seems like a stranger. I can not stand my loneliness anymore. Have to get revitalised.

But I guess I have to complete another month of my internship before i go back.
Sad, but true.


Alok K.
May 11th 2010

 

To Death.

Recently some near one of mine lost one of her dear ones to death.

And I again felt the same black hollow feeling of nothingness. The one that I felt when my cat had died. All I could do was to watch the cat lie lifeless with eyes that still shone with the brightness once bestowed by life.
Why do we use 'life' as a positive term in literature?
Why do we hugely undermine and ignore the ever lasting quality of deception that this 'life' so shamelessly sports and slaps on each one's face at the final moment of one's ... err... well, life?

Thinkers and philosophers have always thought upon this. Meaning of life, aim of life and all.
I haven't. I ain't no philosopher. Have only heard and read people thinking their thoughts loudly about life and death.
And have appreciated and condemned many thoughts wandering in the space.

Let me think about it, now.

We hear, life and death are the ultimate antonym sets of this mortal world. Well, thinking again, are they?
Its a no brainer that death is the absence of life. As simple this axiom may seem, but this has a big impact on people who'd try to follow my train of thoughts.
Death being the absence of life denies the very existence of death as a separate entity. Either you are alive, or not. There is nothing we can call 'death'. This leads us to rethink another 'axiom'.
The principle of duality.
Light- Darkness..
Positive - Negative

Matter- Antimatter ?...

Does every magnetic pole need to have an opposite magnetic pole for the validation of its own existence?

Indeed life is the only truth that we know of. Or the absence of it. Everything else is propagation of our own self comforting beliefs, that we believe to be true. 
I know it sounds kinda rebellious, but even the axiom of 'family' appears superficial to me sometimes. When Arundhati Roy refers the two egg twins (brother and sister) in 'The God of small things' as strangers who had a chance encounter, I can do nothing but admire the truth.

Yes. We all are alone. One by one, the whole mass is alone. Every single soul wanders with only itself as the journey pal.

In the childhood, when I read about a Siddharth leaving his family to become a Buddha, or a Vivekananda becoming a wandering monk, leaving his family for some greater cause, I used to feel bad.

Now, I don't. Its not that I too plan to leave my family some day. No. I love my joint family and every single member of it. But I have just realized that what made Siddhartha and Vivekananda, and many other thinkers and philosophers to leave something good for something better was this.
Management of the mortal span of life that one has been bestowed with. They might have believed in afterlife, but surely none of them would have been sure of it. That's why they left their loved ones for some worthier cause before their life ended. (read, before their death arrived.)
That effectively means that life is a non renewable resource which needs heavy and diligent resource management. And that demands for a serious set of priority lists.
May be that's the origin of the eternal question... "What do I want out of my life?"
I dunno. I ain't even in the position to know. But would definitely like to know.
But wait, would I? To give it a second thought, If I know what I want out of my life, wouldn't it end all the uncertainties of life I so dearly cherish? Wouldn't it be like working in a chemistry lab, then?
*Aim of the Experiment:
*Materials:
*Theory...
*Procedure...
*Precautions:...

It frightens me and disheartens me at the same time. And I know why.
Life, as we see it, is humane because we have got limited controls over it. I might know that I have 'x' amount of money in my bank balance, I might know that I like a girl; I may also know that the girl also likes me to an equal degree, but still I don't know many truths. Let alone controlling them. I don't know whether I would live long enough to enjoy my life with the bank balance I have. I don't know whether the girl I like would be as reciprocating in the future as well...
And a truth can not be controlled anyways. It can only be known. And told.
But again, even if I were told the truth, would it actually help me? I would find newer questions. And newer answers. And newer-er questions.

If I know for sure what I want out of my life, I know I would be overdriven to achieve it. I would bend hell to fight for it. In some slight but non ignorable probability, I might achieve it too.
Then what?

Life would still end, and take with itself all my successes, all my failures, all my pains, all the smiles that I had on my lips and on others' because of me, all the knowledge that I gained every time I stumbled upon some presumed notion of having known it all, the blessings of every good act I did, the curse of every sin I committed... life would end with itself the whole drama of life. The paraphernalia. Gone.

And an even hard hitting truth awaits for its disclosure now. Whatever I wanted out of my life would be taken away from me. Like a strange delusion. I wanted an alarm clock. I got loads of shiny bright alarm clocks around me in my dream. I woke up. Gone. every single one of them.
So, if having an alarm clock in a dream doesn't count, why should achieving some worthy goal in one's life count?
 They are all gonna be snatched anyways. Family, love, life, deeds... alarm clocks...

The touch of death scene touches me hard. It makes everything look futile. A strange sense of non-association creeps in. It feels all hollow. Every goal seems not worth pursuing. It all turns grey.

And then a strange thought infects me. I smile. Because every goal that I had ever wanted to achieve would have given me nothing more, but smile. Money? Yes, only to be gone. Sense of success? Yes, Only to be overtaken by some worthier goal to be pursued and succeeded in. 
But a smile, like an entire lifetime would bloom, so thanklessly in my mind. A sense of satisfaction not for achieving anything, but just for the sake of nothingness. 


A pure, white smile.
Death, you can take life away ( For argument's sake, I bestow you a separate entity. But I would take it back.) But you can do nothing to a smile. You can not take a smile away because it was not physical anyways. You can rot the lips, but what about the strange sense of unadulterated satisfaction that the smile gave to none but the one who smiled? 
He would take that ethereal smile with himself, wherever he goes.
Before death. After death.

To Death: You can not take a smile away.

Monday, May 03, 2010
Alok K.

( Image courtesy: DHRRA Malaysia)