And for some reason i believe all this - the near atheism, boring prayers, unbelief in heaven and hell alike,not-so-strong-god-following that i'm attributed with (most of it at family reunions) has got something to do with a man i don't know. I met him some eleven years back. I was nine then. On board an Indian Airlines flight from Mumbai (Bombay it was back then) to Mangalore, me and my cousin were more than delighted when this man, gentleman, offered to swap his window seat for our adjoining seats. It was view to watch. We loved it. It must have been like the third time we were flying, but at nine, we loved every bit of that, every single time!
Getting back to the man, i guess we should name him for convenience sakes. Lets call him,Annoying Bob. Annoying Bob was this middle-ages man, spectacled,moustached,short and maybe a little overweight. Thats as far as i can recall Annoying Bob. He was one of the interfering types, i recall him, pooping in every short while, asking us if we needed anything! Man, at times i wished he just disappeared. Being nice is good, being extra nice, is perennially "enough". I wish now, for some strange reason, that i had yelled that at him. Atleast, he would not have asked what he did! But he was indeed a nice man. Guess he saw us as two less than tens, 32000 feet above the sea level all by themselves and must have thought he ought to take care. At 32000 feet its really annoying if your "single-serving friends" get stuck up in your face. I mean its bad enough that you must stay glued to a seat for hours together ( i believe if aint gonna take hours, then theres no point flying) and then, just when you cant move, you come to learn you cant escape as well !!
Back to the screenplay. We were seated in the first row, only the cockpit to stare at after getting bored of continuously watching the clouds come and go, one after the other, higher than the previous ones. Milky white they were, oh what a sight! And for a second i started searching for the Gods, i was told that high above the skies they lived. Where the apsaras danced and there was all happiness. This was to be heaven. I thought. I was told, and so i believed. It must have crossed my mind(its hard to recall what i must have thought 11 years ago, but i try to; vaguely). And then, the air-hostess came serving. I picked up as many chocolates as i could in my right palm. Then, the other. I was out of my thoughts, and could see the airtight doors in between our seats and the cockpits. Munching on them, Annoying Bob seemingly in his sleep, got up and looked at the two of us literally feasting on the chocolates. He was silent,for the best part of first 25-30 mins of the flight, he was not. Then, once again, the silence was broken and Annoying Bob spoke.He spoke like a wise sage teaching his most loved disciple. He said something that etched forever in my mind, cant be sure to how large an impact immediately, but an impact it did and a striking one that too!
Annoying Bob : Whats your name?
Me : Rutesh
Annoying Bob : How old are you?
Me : Nine.
Annoying Bob : Have you heard 'bout God?Heaven?Angels?
Me(with a "who hasn't" look on my face) : Yes!
answering to the point has been one of my most annoying characteristics, which i sometimes(even more annoyingly)tend to over-compensate!!
Annoying Bob : Well, has anyone ever told you that heaven is above the blue sky we see from beneath? That the Gods live there. That the Gods have beautiful apsaras dancing for them and that heaven is beautiful.
Me : Yes, ive heard of it.
Annoying Bob : We are so high above the seas and i cant see any of those things. We've been this high for quite sometime now and yet i don't recollect seeing any today. Ive traveled so often, yet have'nt seen any even once. Well, where are they? I dont think they exist. Heaven does not exist. And if heaven doesnt, then how can hell?!!
At nine, you are usually left dumbfounded by questions like these. I had no idea what to say, and so i went back munching on my chocolates, but not before atleast once looking outside the windows and searching for Them. Every once i a while i would peep out the window yearning to sight them and show Annoying Bob and point to him and yell at him, in his ears and tell him, "Look, there you go! There they are, you...you..." (for innocence, my vocabulary was much restricted then). I could'nt find any. I felt like i had lost, Annoying Bob had won! Thats what i remember vaguely from my conversation 'bout 11 years back. I recall it - well not like yesterday, but most certainly - like the day before.
This took away from me things in a flash. I had not understood it then, but i do now. Now, looking back and trying to correlate one event to another, i see the seeds that Annoying Bob had sown. With that went everything. Soon Christmases were boring, other religious festivals were a mere get together, and myself coming from a not-so-religious dad meant that that was the last thing i wanted to know. At nine i was successfully told how all that, the heaven and hell, God and Evil, were all lies. Lies manifested to make us believe and (now i feel) eventually surrender to a power higher and much stronger than us where none existed. Santa Claus i came to know was a lie. Carols were just another songs sang in a Christian school. Every Dec 25 when the peon would wear a Santa outfit and come and throw the chocolates, i knew it was'nt him. It was'nt Santa. i dint know who it was, but i knew who it was not. I believed that i had been to the place where everyone said Gods lived. I searched and i found none. Now, i dont believe that i managed to understand and totally grasp what it meant when he said, "no heaven-hell", the way i do now, but what i knew was i was being lied. It hurt. There were no Gods. Soon, the cries were all by themselves. The traditional prayers alongwith the childish pains went away. I figured, if God was'nt there to hear it, then why pray? Religious ceremonies were a compelled ritual. Now i attend them to meet cousins and others. Soon the temples became uninteresting and i stopped being afraid of being doomed as i grew up. Who's there to forsake me after all?
I'm not an out and out atheist, i dont think so, but i just have no clue as to why i just dont care 'bout it all anymore. I'm really indifferent to this, heaven and hell, God and the Satan. It feels numb, but well, as it would, who cares?
Thinking of Titan are you? So was i. Staring down at my wrist all i could think of was how once my mat finished "Fast Track" watch was now an old, "i-should-scrap this" watch. I could have been flaunting an Armani instead, but thats another story. Then i think of the latest from Titan, the Aviator series, and how awesome that collection would be! Now, with the ones that i've got. Tick. Tick. And so goes my Armani. Oh!Its beautiful. That jade-like dial, diamond studded number-stones, its a joy to watch, pun not intended, but used! I used to sport a Titan before,now, i long for a Vacheron Constantin. Every time i look at my Armani i get lost within its beauty. Its enchanting, and then, all of a sudden, i recover. Stop adoring it and see whats really happening. All of a sudden i see the metaphors. Do you? Have you? I am losing a second at a time. Its very different in the sense that i'm snapping from one reality to another.
Have you ever thought about it? Looked at every second of your life tick away? With every tick of the watch that adorns your wrist, you ARE getting older. You are about 2 minutes older than you were when you started reading this. Now, you are 3! Apply this thought to everything you do, you want to do, you have and you wonder the worth of what you do. Made me wonder why i did that. Do you ask yourself (have you started) that whether what you did was worth every second it took off of your life? Decaying further more. All the time we are getting older, nearing the end, closing-in on death. Are we all, but, running out of time?
We love doing a few things say hangout with friends, watch whatever, do whatever, we just do so many things. But seldom do we realise that everything we do is using up that time of our life, one we have limited, not sure how much though. Would you then feel the urge to do things that are worth it? Would you, then, stop lazying around the house, get up earlier on sundays as well, spend more time with your special ones?
Most of us flow with time. we live one day at a time. A week at the best when we've got big plans shaping up at a weekend, beyond that, not much. We take life as it comes, get out of our teens and think we've become big. Look to make something of ourselves so as to occupy ourselves with for the rest of our lives. Try to get as many luxuries as we can. Dream big really. Its like finding something that can keep us busy and get us what we want till we are. We accept death as the destination of this journey called life. We've accepted it so much so that now everyone knows that they're going to lose the ones they love. If we're all born with a clean slate, then how can each one of us, in our lifetime, understand and accept death. The thing really is, we've only accepted it and to my mind this acceptance on our part and so on the part of the posterity has a lot to do with the failure of those before us to unlock the mystery that surrounds death. We've given up hope that we can live forever, so we then want to live as long as we can, dont we?
I do not understand the concept of death. It works in strange ways, akin to life, really. It might happen expectedly or without a notice. It could be by you for quite sometime and finally embrace you, or it could take you by a storm. You might be down with illness for 6-7 months, try hard, battle it out and finally die, or you could go for an evening stroll and next thing (you dont know) an astronaut falls from the blue above and lands on you! Obviously, you die. Death, they say comes to everyone and in many (many) strange ways. We have accepted it. I guess it does sound practical. I mean, if none of us died, where would we all live? At 6 Bn+ we're already into deforestation, at even more so, where would we be? Besides, to live on forever, is that not boring? And then, what would happen of those who are now immortals only because they're dead? We'd never have them. How would we understand the beauty that life is, if we never knew that we could lose it any moment?
Venturing into myths, Achilles wanted to die as well. He just must have got tired of killing everyone. He understood, perhaps, the tranquility that death brought and the constant fight for survival life had become. He, like Alexander, chose death over life. They died young, both. Alexander idolised Achilles. What is it 'bout dying young that these men understood? Was it the time? Was it the life they lived? What was it? Did they see what we have not? Is it just a matter of time then? People ailing with ailments chose death over life as well. Maybe life is not all that beautiful to everyone as we can think. Maybe life does become a pain for many. Are we just lucky then? Is life all but a matter of luck? A point of view? We all try to fill our life with moments that last a lifetime. Sure, we all want to. We all want to life a "full life", dont we? But what does it imply? Does it mean living longer? What does life mean?
Hard to know, too complex to figure out ourselves, too vague to be preached. Whatever it is, we are closing in on death. A tick at time. Who knows how many (ticks) i have left. How many have you?
Now, since u know a little bit 'bout my internet conquests...a little more bout me!
As of now, a simple 20 yr old who you cannot make out from the rest of the crowd. An illusionist, in the sense that people would think that i'm a loner, a "keeps-to-himself" person, only if they knew better, only if i cared more!
This is about "me" ; "myself" and "the internet" will come up later on. Well, where do i start from? I wonder, i mean, ive always wondered what is it, what has been the urge to let people know who we really are. I still cant figure that out as ironic as it may seem. But im an irony unto myself. Guess everyone feels pretty much the same way. We all think we are special, we are; maybe.
I used to be the nice boy, inextricably lost in his books and daily routine that was nothing short of a hectic life. Get up at 5, reach college by 7, and then travel 85-90 odd kms everyday to attend classes. Life was becoming an adventure i never bargained for! And in the midst of all of this, was springing up a boy, a man who would be carving out a mould for himself to fulfill his "must-haves".
All of a sudden, u realise that for a change, you control your life. Its nice to feel that way. The thing with control is that, it is as much an illusion as it is a delusion. Anything beyond that is purely beyond my intellectual abilities to comprehend! Coming back to "me", it felt nice. Life was heading and i seemed to enjoy it! Every step of the way--though i have to say, lifes never been as great as it is now, but somehow, experience teaches you a lot of things--everything that i like. It does'nt get much better.
It is like getting everything that u've ever wanted. Hang out with friends' just seemed to keep getting better. On the academic front i was still very much the same "has'nt proved till yet" boy! Its very frustrating to be that, guess most of you would know!! When these things happen to you and you think that you control life (finally!!), you really dont! All that means is that life is happening too fast, much too fast for you to realise what is happening, and in this moment you live it, and miss out on moments, some of which are the best you might possibly ever have, and then come back to your senses once its all over! Once you've lost it all. Its perhaps similar to a hang-over, i cant be sure though, never had one, luckily or otherwise.
Thats as much about me as im ready to divulge right now, thats as much about me as is necessary for you to correlate my posts to one another. However, must you know more, all i shall say is that, now, looking back and looking down i see myself much better than i ever was. I love the idea of not being in control, letting-it-rip (if you will), "let(ting) the chips fall where they may"....its simply nice. Its so much more nice to know what you want and surrender to it, rather than not know what you want and be illusory that you control everything around you, isnt it?
You know, for a long time i think now, for nearly 2 yrs that ive had internet (without any disruptions) at my place i never realised how far into "it" i really was. It was only after that the net got unexpectedly disconnected (and for 3 weeks that too) when i realised the condition, so to speak.
It made me feel restless, initially. I don't really know why or how the restlessness subsided. Guess it was because i always knew that it would get connected one day, uncertain as to when though. It was a matter of when and not if. Finally it has been "resurrected". I feel alive again, i feel connected, i feel like now, somehow, all of a sudden, im there, out there with the rest of you. Until a few hours back, i was not.
Internet had become a part of ennui. Everyday, i'd wake up, drink tea and log in! Every night, i'd come home tired, but it was never a problem to log in, and stay that way till i lost sense of what i was doing, till i would sit there stare at the monitor and wonder where the f**k the others had gone. Then, i would log out, only to log in less than quarter a day later. I became addicted to it, and i never knew that. All the while for the last two years ive been getting addicted to it, more today than yesterday, more tomorrow than today.
It is when you stop realising what you do, and you stop, all of a sudden one day, take a look around and realise that you dont understand what has become of you! All this while when my internet was like a passport to the rest of the world, while getting to meet new people, i guess i failed to see that those around me, i was drifting away from them. Parents would see, when i entered the house (at 'bout 9 in the night) and then when i left ('bout 10 am). That was as much. My bedroom was my "room". This had become my world, to think that the internet had nothing to do with it, is absolutely incorrect. It was the net that transformed my bedroom into my world. I was proud of it.
Now, without the internet, life became boring. As much as i wanted to get it sorted out (the net) i could not as i had little time left in the day..all other measures were tried, tested and failed. So i get back to cursing, praying that it got sorted out somehow. It now became clearer to me, that all this while, all the net sessions, all the late night staying up, all the surfing, all the.....u get the idea right?...it was all just because i could. I realised that as time went on, the need to have it subsided. But, it was a bit unnerving to lose "my world",lose contact, slip into forced hibernation.
As much as my survival, existence or pleasures did not depend on it, it was irritating not to be able to get "in" whenever i wanted. But soon as i could connect, i would. As i have now.
