The Truth Beckons

I came back with the wrenched heart with so many philosophical questions. When I first read about Gautam Buddha’s tryst with philosophy on witnessing the travails of old age, the understanding could not permeate me. As they say examples are better than precept and I add they are bitter than precept, especially when you see it in real life.

I took a train to Kashi to meet him. He was my first encounter in life to strength, power and authority. Everybody was scared of him. He stood like a banyan tree giving shades to all of us. There had been complaints that he could never see anyone above him but I reject them as small weeds in his shade. I love to have pillars around me. I love holding them dance around them, the way I did as a kid. You grow up and you are suddenly thrown in this sea where you keep swimming. Those pillars become hindsight. The heart is relieved to let the fleeting memories get washed away with time but the scar which entrenches in the personality constantly reminds of the aches. His seventy five years old frame of 71 inches lying on the dilapidated bed, the orangish yellow eye opened as I touched his feet. He smiled and to me that moment meant the world. I could not control the sudden rush of salty liquid from my eyes. Yet I managed to hide it somehow. I wanted to hug him and cry my heart out. It was my pillar falling infront of my eyes and I was helpless. The first encounter of strength in my life is my latest rendezvous with the fragility and weakness. I could not see the coin reversing. He tried being as normal as he could but I felt his pain in my heart, soul and mind and my eyes were refusing to obey my brain. He kept smiling and slept.

His frame is still so formidable. In this frailty, he commands that respect which none other in that room can ever; the way he did in his youth, when he would jump from the boat in the mid of Ganges just because his instinct would ask him to swim the other half of the river. Now also, he was ordering everybody about how he should be fed and how his pillow is supposed to be kept. The love for his empire could not take a back seat even now. He had been sorting out all the matters related to money in that one stroke of pen and whisper.

I know what Buddha must have felt that moment when he questioned the beauty of life while seeing the senescence. It’s Karna’s lines from Mahabharata which reverberates inside my head, I see it now, this world is swiftly passing.

P.S. This post is dedicated to my grandfather who passed away thirteen days after I wrote this post. Incidentally it was my birthday that day and it ceases to be happy ever.

Diary of a Technically Retarded

I like coming back to catharsis to think aloud, when I get really pressurised and choked to behave in a certain way and guard my feelings in the shell. I like it here because I am not moderated.

I have been feeling quite frustrated with the technology of late. Well that has been the case since the very begining of my life. When I was two and a half, I peed on the speaker of a music system because I wanted it to shut up and it refused to.  I feel glad to declare myself a technically retarded person at 27 when I see half of tech savvy  friends glued to their laptops all the time. Nevertheless I must confess that I too at some level is so mesmerised by technology that I dont prefer to write on paper anymore. I am so much addicted to my laptop. It hurts me deep down when I rely on services of things which 'technically' I detest but we all fall for convenience at one level or the another. What a pity!

My childhood remains special to me for number of reasons. I was brought up in a close knit community of uncle and aunts who constituted our neighborhood. Well, they were not my relatives, my parents chose their friends wisely. That is why the bonding was so natural and nothing came as an effort but out of spontaneity. Whenever my father introduced me to someone, he would make sure that I know something special about that person. This gave me a choice to reject or accept the social capital which he offered to me in legacy. The simple things which my  mother did; inviting neighbors to home for dinner atleast twice in a month, the card games happening throughoout the night at our home, the movie sessions where whole community would go in a mini bus to watch it, just because they wanted to do things together. There was never a dearth of people around me. Uncle, aunts, bhaiyas, didis. I dont remember anyone who was younger to me. Whenever I go home my parents still give me updates on whereabouts of their friends. He has his friends who are there with him for past forty years.This is when people of his generation prefer to restrict their internet uses for professional reasons most of the time. I find the fact amusing.

Here I come back to my life. My social capital of 27 years. The fleeting one. My parents friends' kids who I was supposed to be friends with. Frankly speaking I have been unable to keep them for this long. We know each other, meet when required but definetly would not like to hang around with each other, the way our parents did. Then came the teenage when I started exercisng some choices to decide on my social capital. Those intermittent crushes who were like candies to the eye in school. Like lot many, even I would make an attempt to get closer to them. No social networking site existed then, so it was a physical attempt to stand and wait at a point where you can actually meet rather see him.Those rambles with the female friends where we would discuss endlessly about everything happening in our lives, from guys to extra curricular activities to studies. Our bicycle  rides in the evening for which we could die for, the badminton sessions, the number of durga pujas and many more. We all wanted to be together for these moments. We valued the moments and the ineveitability of each other in creating them.In my 20s, I had a new vision for my life, I met so many good people who were never very comforting but would help me in unleashing a new dimension in my life. I guess my heart took a back seat.

Every morning, I open my facebook account to wish people on their birthdays and aniversaries. It's just once in a year that I have to do this ritual. I don't care if they exist otherwise for rest part of the year. I would not have even wished them on their birthdays, if facebook would not have flashed it. Recently, I saw a flurry of b'day wishes  on the facebook wall of an acquaintance who passed away last year. I bothered to visit her wall and saw the number of condolence messages which made me write something to stop people wishing her who probably were unaware about it. As a follow up, I received lot of querries on my fb inbox about how her death happened. They all claimed to be her friends. I always was her acquaintance and told them how clueless I am. Irony is that her 'friends' were asking accquaintances about the details. All I rememeberd of that acquaintance was her beautiful smile and was deeply saddened at her untimely death.  I have close to 550 friends in my list yet I dont even feel connected to them at any level. This includes all of my socialcapital.

Every evening I come back from office, my only friends are the dinner cooked by me, workout and a novel. This is the point where I have brought down my expectation level too. Emotions are no longer the driving force. In the quest of financial capital, we have probably changed the identity of our social capital. It hurts me  but I am happy till the time I become 'numb'.