The life is long, and the journey is the destination

[To All My Friends Who Couldn't Make it During First Few Days of Placements]

I guess misery does love company, and trust me, the companions are harsh. Even the Doubting Thomases would swear by the name of virgin Mary that self doubt, beyond any other, is the worst form of al human emotions, when the clouds seem to hover over your consciousness and seem to destroy everything that you have gained, and when the world seems to be a place unacquainted, a place where you do not belong.

Even the best of us are haunted by the clouds of self doubt, when life seems to be consumed by shadows, swallowed by darkness whole. A time comes when every life goes off course, and in these moments of desperation, you must choose your direction. Sometimes you fight to stay on your path while others tell you your path, sometimes you succumb and allow life to take its course, and sometimes, you embark upon a new journey and embrace a new path.

Every morning we decide to move forward or simply give up. But remember, once in a while we push to something just beyond the pain of suffering, something beyond the quite realization of a dream. Because only when put through a test do we realize who we are, and only when put through a test do we realize who we can be. Only if you decide to hang on for one more day, things might change. All of us are good enough to make it; sometimes we just forget to believe in it. Ayn Rand wrote, “Do not let the fire go out, spark by the irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not quite, the not yet and the not at all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in the lonely frustration of life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists. It is real. It is possible. It is yours.” And believe me, it is true.

Constricted Lives

It was a day of epic proportions. Seldom had I witnessed such rapid transition of emotions, from the ecstasies of being accepted to the agonies of being abandoned, all in a spate of few minutes. The bright future that they had dreamt of, once again proved be castles built in the air, flattering to deceive, yet leaving nothing but void. While departing from the premises of the school building where their children had finally been admitted after a series of contemptuous rejections, I couldn’t help but notice the childish grin that adorned their countenance. An hour later, when I bade adieu to the people of Maninagar after witnessing feebly their improvised shelters made of bamboo sticks and plastic bags being reduced to dusts, a smile was still there, a shabby little flash of teeth, more as a sign of resignation to their fate, as if saying to me, “no matter how much you try, this is our destiny, and this is our destination”.

The atrocities of AMC and police that followed two days later is not something that can be summarized or even explained at any logical level, but can only bee seen, and felt, and regretted upon. All that can be presented is facts. An old woman, down with scorching fever with nothing to hide her from the wrath of sun, only because her possessions have been confiscated by some reprobates who call themselves public servants. A man who is desperately trying to retrieve his belongings, carrying with him a broken arm that bears testimony to the harshness that these people have been subjected to, in order to subjugate them. And many more such realities, which when chronicled, would be sufficient to draw compassion from the most stubborn of hearts.

Promises have been made to them, and nothing but promises. They have been promised homes, but they exist only on paper. They have been promised access to basic amenities of life, but they remain only in pipeline. And even as this vicious cycle of making and breaking of promises by the authorities is continued, there are hundreds of lives who battle through life, spending their lives in making life a possibility, and waiting eternally for death to overpower them someday. They have no hopes, no ambitions, and these are mere words for them, words that have no meaning and no existence. George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire; the other is to gain it”. People of Maninagar slums have seen them both.

To You Ma......

I went through the movie Koi Mil Gaya for the first time today, and although the movie didn’t seem very special to me, one scene, it seems, has been taken right out of my life. Perhaps now I can understand the quandary Mom would have been in, when she took the decision that changed my life. If not for her, I could have been one of those outcasts, a seven year old in the body of a full grown adult, another one subjected to the mockery of this pitiless world, another incapable and unwanted entity. I can’t imagine from where she mustered the courage to send me into an eight hour long operation, with only 10 percent chance of survival, facing bravely the wrath of the entire kin. I was eight months old then, and she must have been my age. Her life could have been a living hell had I not survived. And yet, she took everything in her stride, just to provide me with a life of respect and dignity.

Today, even as I think, this very thought is a gift of hers. The courage and patience she displays in even the most demanding of circumstances fills me with a sense of respect for the divine virtues of female form. In these testing times, when clouds of self doubt have left no stone unturned in trying to petrify me, it’s her faith in me that has kept me going. I know I will overcome these bulwarks, as I did back then. I know I have said things I shouldn’t have, I know there have been times when I hurt her. I have never told her, or anyone else, how much she means to me. Perhaps the strong and emotionally bereft creature that I pretend to be, I never will. And yet, I know whenever I am down in the doldrums, she will always be there to rescue me, like she did, 21 years ago. I guess that is what makes mothers divine.

Why I got underway....

It’s been a long time, about eleven days since I last wrote anything. Thoughts are there, they hover, coax, coerce, and when I sit down for an attempt at chronicling, they turn into a miasma. And when this miasma settles, everything is gone, and it’s time to sleep. I have been trying to figure out why regular bloggers of our super senior batch have stopped posting of late (the likes of Vivek Pabari and Bhavesh). Most of their blogs haven’t been touched since mid-2006, the time around which they bade adieu. It makes me wonder if I should get over my apprehension for blogging, and if it be so, why not now, and where I stand.