To each their own worrisome universe
A friend of my friend has a unique approach to the subject of legacy. He wants to travel like most of us do but his intentions are a bit…
A friend of my friend has a unique approach to the subject of legacy. He wants to travel like most of us do but his intentions are a bit mysterious: he wants to go to as many different places as possible and hide tiny statues of himself in secret locations out there. The statue will have his name and a sufficient description; making it more than obvious where it originally hails from. The idea behind this operation is to plant them in locations where they are least expected to be found anytime soon. He is betting on the future generation, maybe a hundred years later, to find his statues and in the process, make them wonder — “Who the hell is this guy and why did people have his statues in different parts of the world?”
Given a choice between wealth and fame, what would you choose? Think carefully. Your answer would be a function of your inclination to greatness. Do you care about where you scale on the G-score? In a lot of ways, Shakespeare was right: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em. But what about those who doesn’t understand greatness? The skill of marveling escapes them. Such folks lead a life untouched by the allure of being a witness to something uncommonly epic. Even Shakespeare would have agreed that they are plain unlucky.
Friends come and go while friendship keeps changing. What you once felt about your bestest buddy from school may have seen a sea change over time. Today, you have cropped up a new circle and there is nobody at fault here. Time is cruel and we all need companions. However, if given a choice between choosing a friend over another, the task turns gruesome. Let’s put it this way: if ABC and XYZ are your closest friends and both are on fire, who will you pee on?
It’s that time of the year when civic responsibility is at its zenith in India. We start caring about the country and genuinely choose to believe that voting would alleviate our ailments. And in a gush of patriotism — nationalism isn’t the same and will never be the same — we invoke the unprecedented progress of Scandinavian countries. Talk about comparing mangoes and oranges. Those countries don’t carry a colonial yoke the way we do. Their forefathers didn’t go through the kind of shit ours did. They are ages ahead of us in terms of human development not only because of their relatively bright past but also thanks to their continued focus on creating a brighter future. They literally import waste from other countries because they’ve already recycled their own. On the other hand, India is still stuck in its septic past and to make matters worse, we have an exploding population — something none of our leaders have the balls to admit in public — to deal with. We are barely struggling in the 20th century while they seem to be getting a hang of the 22nd century. It’s unfair, if not idiotic, to compare. To give you an example, Finland has one heavy metal band for every 2,000 people. India has barely 7–8 doctors for every 10,000 people. We have a long way to go and the queue is only getting longer.
Hating is never the answer. Especially when it comes to your occupation. You do your job but you don’t become your job — no matter how much you pretend otherwise. Mainly because you are always evolving whereas your job pretty much remains what it was. Sometimes, you might behave like you are indispensable to your organization and nobody else can do justice to your profile. Guess what? You are gravely mistaken. There are thousands of young people who can do it better than you. If you could imprint this factor on your psyche, then you might end up loving your job as much as you love your salary. Despite its monstrous persona, at any given point of time, we need to be occupied. Or else, we’ll drift towards Darth Vader and embrace the Dark Side. Granted life sucks most of the time, there is no reason whatsoever to deny yourself the joy of loving what you do. You might not leave a gigantic dent on the world at large but you are doing your bit in a meaningful way, right? Which is why hatred for your job has more to do with our lack of perspective and less to do with our work. Besides, the trick is to not hate your job. The trick is to find a job that hates you.
Just kidding.
What if you don’t hate your job at all? What if you just hate yourself for doing it? What if you could understand yourself better and end up liking what you do?
In 2017, I recommended Sapiens, a must-read book by Yuval Noah Harari, on this blog. It was much later I learnt that he dedicated that bestseller to his master, a Burmese teacher who taught him how to meditate. Now, personally, I am not against meditation but I am not in its favour either. Despite trying several times, I’ve been terrible at concentrating with my eyes closed. My mind wanders and I feel mentally exhausted. Regardless, I remain optimistic about its benefits. Perhaps meditation is less about meditating and more about learning how to think in the first place. Which takes me back to the Vedic scholars who had a Sanskrit word for meditating (chintan) on a topic. As of today, the Hindi word for worrying (chinta) has diluted the roots of thinking about something deeply. Under all circumstances, worrying is not equal to thinking.
I smile a lot for somebody who is dead from inside. But you should see how much I laugh from inside when I think of a funny situation. For instance, there is a gathering of medical professionals and I am the emcee. “Devi-o aur surgeon-o…” would be my opening line before offended people start leaving the room.
What is home other than a permanent belief of a temporary being? If an African child was born in Asia, she will grow up with a notion of homeliness very distinct from those she shares her skin colour with. She basically moved even before she was born. For the rest of us, migrating during adulthood is a norm. That’s also when we realize we are essentially migrants and that home is everywhere. And so is homelessness.
As a young boy, I troubled my mother a lot by constantly asking silly questions. Although she was always busy, either sewing clothes or doing embroidering work or cooking for money, she entertained my questions. I once asked her where is god. And she replied in Tulu (obviously), “God is in all the good things in the world. If a person is good, god is in him.” So I rebutted, “So, if I am bad, god will never be in me?” Not realizing how tricky my question was, she plainly said, “God will wait for you to turn good.”
There might be several universes. In one of them, Hitler never took birth. In another, we’ve already moved to Mars. In an alternate universe, Tolerance is the fastest growing religion. In one of them, Liverpool hasn’t stopped winning the league title since 1990. So, yeah, several universes. However, I’d like to believe that in each one of them, we somehow end up together. For good or for worse.