Taking care and giving love
There is a beautiful yet mysterious bond between humans, even utter strangers, because we connect at a spiritual level. On the surface, we…
There is a beautiful yet mysterious bond between humans, even utter strangers, because we connect at a spiritual level. On the surface, we smile at each other and when we cry silently, we get what’s going on. This is not unique in the animal kingdom as the so-called wild species understand each other pretty well despite distinct geographies. A penguin from Argentina has nothing but goodwill and curiosity for her cousins from Antarctica. Birds and animals have been migratory for thousands of years and their continuous motion brought them closer to each other (as a unit) as well as to nature itself. We, on the other hand, are perched on a Babel of distinguishing languages and cultures. Our mutual misunderstandings can outweigh our mutual understandings. Still, we manage to rule whatever we like to call ‘ours’ on this planet. Which is nothing less than a nasty miracle.
India had its last major reform in its education policy 34 years ago. Tells you a lot about our priorities. On one hand, we know for a fact that we don’t have a education system — it’s a literacy system; we want more and more to read and write, not learn — in place while at the same time, we are wary of a change. Toxic relationship at its best. The proposed change, National Education Policy (NEP), took six years to reach the public. Which means, the implementation will take a considerable amount of time as well. I personally hope this reform strengthens our collective desire to think and not rote. Moreover, it’d be interesting to see if NEP manages to boost (the declining) regional languages as much as it intends to. My bet is on what it actually does for (the declined) Sanskrit. Every year, we come closer to the funeral of this great language. I just hope we end up delaying it to a larger extent.
Speaking of dead languages, did you know that the word ‘kaand’ is of Sanskrit origin? Me neither. I thought it was a Bombaiya word meant to describe a worrying chain of events. Kaand ho gaya. In other words, something has happened which shouldn’t have happened in the first place. Turns out ‘kaand’ in Sanskrit refers to a piece of land where something important is going on. Yes, you immediately thought of Uttarakhand and you aren’t off the chart here. It’s funny you thought of that hilly place because Sanskrit is the second official language (after Hindi) in this north Indian state.
Do you ever land up in dreams not knowing what the fuck is going on? And what makes it crazier is that everybody else acts like they know exactly what’s going on. As if you are the only who doesn’t have the script in hand. You are there wondering why somebody is behaving in a certain manner and saying this or that, while you are trying your best to fit in. At one point, you even ask yourself whether you are dreaming but then, you look at others and you convince yourself that it’s real. Such dreams are wonderful for their oddities and you can always bet on one thing here: you’ll never know what happens in the end. But then, who does anyway?
Our dog, Ranga, is, like us, getting older at an exponential rate. He has negligible front teeth and greying fur already. He spends most of his time lying on the floor pretending to be a rug. We’ve known him for over four years and we’ve never seen him show any passion for anything other than food and sleep. Bitches? No, thanks. He might be seven or eight years old but acts like he’s over a decade. I admire this personality because I myself feel old all the time. There are very few canine characteristics as helplessly cute as a dog who doesn’t know how to be manipulative. Ranga really doesn’t know how to express affection although he tries his best by licking my face (sometimes) and rubbing his head against my knees (always). And we are least interested in teaching him new tricks. He is fine just the way he is. One of the many benefits of growing old with an old dog is there are very expectations that separate you two.
Have you watched the Nordic show Norsemen (2016) on Netflix yet? If yes, you’ll relate to this paragraph. If not, you’ve still got time to binge watch this peculiar genre of ancient-modern comedy. The third season released recently. Throughout, you’ll hear dissemination of millennial phrases that don’t mean anything anymore but we, the people of the 21st century, use it to emphasize stuff that doesn’t deserve emphasis: in a way, slapstick served with a Scandinavian accent. You’ll either love Norsemen or meh it. If I were a writer on this show, I’d have inserted one silly “sure thing” joke because if you think about it, there is a strong hint of a sexual innuendo in this phrase.
“Can I get it?”
“Sure thing.”
In an everyday conversation, it reveals how hollow English can feel despite owning the largest repository of synonyms.
It’s Rakshabandhan and this takes me back to my innocent days when girls from our classroom used to tie rakhi on my wrist and by the time, I returned home from school, the series of rakhis would almost touch both my elbows. Like I said, innocent days. Since I had a brother and no sister of my own, I was always fascinated by the amount of attention I received on this particular day. However, without knowing the details of this deal, I somehow promised to protect them back then. I don’t know where any of my ‘sisters’ are today but I am sure they are doing fine as strong, independent women are supposed to and won’t need anybody to protect them. Wishing them a happy rakshabandhan and the best life has to offer.
Fortunately, I work in a creative space with extremely talented individuals who are in tune with the mission of the organisation we work for. As a result, our battles are with our company’s competitors, not with each other. Our team accepts feedback as a stepping stone for improvement, not as a public itch. This mindset (read: culture) has helped us stay competitive without reducing ourselves to guinea pigs. We iterate, not imitate; and our uniqueness can’t be compromised. The principle behind this approach is in contrast with what’s going on in the world at a large scale. Creativity, laced with ego, harms the essence of competition. If you truly wish to grow, challenge your own notions first. Others aren’t going anywhere.
If you look around, the warriors and the warlords from various fields have made competition their prime motive. At least at an individual level. Sometimes, basic etiquette go missing. Ronaldo is 35 and Messi is 33 but the stat gurus can’t get enough of their fight for greatness. Even countries and entities can’t stop being ultra-competitive. For instance, China won’t stop until it avenges its ‘the century of humiliation’ by establishing a never-seen-before hegemony across the globe. Similarly, the USA won’t stop until it crumbles fighting the rise of China, just like many powers in the past did. The religious competition is so intense that the Church won’t stop at nothing less than employing its very best towards proselytizing the so-called uncultured lot. On the other hand, the Islamists won’t stop until there are mosques built of snow blocks by the Eskimos. The Right won’t stop with its current wave before it exposes its void of new ideas. The Left won’t stop until it finally strikes a balance between reality and idealism. These ceaseless (read: shameless) contests are going to be painful but those who orchestrate are going to tell the masses that it’s necessary. Which makes you wonder how agony comes the Greek ‘agonia’ which basically means contest, referring to the extremes Greeks went in the name of perfection — be it in warfare or at Olympics.
My childhood friends had some of the strangest stories to share with me and being an idiot, I believed most of them. A lot of them pertained to ghosts. To this day, I can’t watch horror movies thanks to the amount of faith I invested in those stories. Too real. To balance it out, there were some real-life stories too that have stayed with me for over 25 years now. In one of them, my friend’s dad, apparently a stuntman, did dangerous stuff for a living. His “office” used to be RK Studio (Chembur) but the nature of his job meant he had to be on the field. Literally and figuratively. One day, he performed a fire stunt for a movie despite the protests of his family. But that’s not the main story. He did it because his friend needed the cash as his mother was seriously ill and hospitalized. Back then, I felt nothing but admiration for this man. As of today, I have an equal amount of respect for the payment process in place. After all, stuntmen shouldn’t risk their lives for a 30-day pay cycle.
Words are weird. Words can be deceiving. But without words, we might be more lost than we are already. Some of us say “take care” whereas others don’t say anything but continue to take care of the other person. Some of us say ‘love you’ while others say “you aren’t getting rid of me.” Different vocabulary for different folks. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that we don’t always get to communicate what we want to convey. To give you an example, the Hindi word for a maid/help is naukrani. If you break it down, it stands for ‘queen of work’. A royal touch to menial tasks. Given how poorly this lot is treated in urban India — at the lowest of monthly pay, with no weekend off, and zero health benefits — one can easily doubt the very matrix of language.
Nothing works like a deadline, right? Wrong (again). Sometimes, it’s the only thing that is keeping you from getting things done. And at other times, it can be the much needed boost to your creative/industrious juice. One of my favourite anecdotes collected from my journalism days came from Javed Akhtar. He was supposed to come up with a song for the film 1942: A Love Story (1994) and was on his way to meet RD Burman, not knowing that it was going to be the latter’s last film project as a music composer. As is often the case with creative folks, Akhtar saab didn’t have the lyrics written but luckily enough, when his car stopped due to traffic, he noticed a beautiful woman emerging out of a store or something on the roadside. That’s when ‘Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga’ took birth and then he drove to met Burman and shared the lyrics as if he had been working on it for days! Welcome to the serendipitous nature of creativity.