What are you sure about?
The oldest running war continues to be between men and women. Both the parties have been at it for ages without any conclusive result. They can’t stand each other and yet somehow find a way to settle down too. One side looks at the other with mistrust while the other side can’t hide its condescension. It’s quite a sight. The underlying tension and the oozing (passive) aggression, the application of unkind words and cruel silence, the monkey-balancing act overall—it’s like two countries trying to establish a diplomatic relationship without knowing one another’s languages. Yet, there is entertainment guaranteed when it comes to this particular war. The tragedy is that men are mostly hopeless and women are mostly hopeful about all the wrong men.
As a kid, I thought differently about the word ‘romantic’ because my worldly understanding was coloured heavily by Bollywoodic persuasion. Romance was what conspired between the leading characters (male and female) and that’s about it. Otherwise, the concept was totally absent from my life. My parents weren’t visibly affectionate with each other or to us kids, and thus physical display of love was an alien practice. In such a scenario, it’s natural for a boy to assume that the R-word is best left to the big screen. My little glassy world cracked a bit while watching an episode of Lonely Planet on Discovery Channel. Ian Wright described a mountain as romantic and I was trying to figure out how was that even possible. This fellow was certainly alone when he said that. It wasn’t even a case of transferred epithet. So, how can a mountain be romantic? Took years to crack the code here.
Whatever you are right now, however you feel about waking up in the morning, only one question matters is when it’s time to leave this planet: why would anyone miss you? If you have managed to touch people’s lives in a positive manner, then you’ve already made it. We may sing songs of solitude and peace of mind and whatnot but we can’t do without others. These so-called ‘others’ make life worth our breaths. And the least that we can do is play our part well and shed some light on them. For all the darkness that we embody inside our head, our souls are fully capable of brightening it up by being kind, decent and nice. In a way, that’s our single greatest superpower.
Gambling is illegal in a lot of countries (including India) and yet, almost everything associated with human beings is a form of betting. It all boils down to choice: from job offers you pick to the partner you choose for yourself to pinpointing a neighbourhood for your children and so on. Yes, somebody’s got to choose. 10 years ago, nobody could predict Elon Musk’s interest in cryptocurrency or Donald Trump’s tryst with democracy or Leicester winning the EPL. Things happen and we are surprised and then we move on only to be surprised again and again. That’s the nature of gambling. We place our bets on certain odds and hope for the best, be it a job or a relationship or even the decision to not take an umbrella when the clouds are turning grey outside.
Speaking of untold future, who are we to assume that what is an unwelcome place today won’t be a tourist destination tomorrow?
“Which country do you want to visit?”
“Yemen.”
“Why?”
“It has the potential to be a lovely place someday.”
A man’s infatuation with breasts goes much beyond time and poetry. So much has been felt (no pun intended) and written and drawn about this subject. And yet, to this day, we are yet to fully understand where this attraction stems from. Of course, one can trail it back to childhood necessity of milk but it still doesn’t solve the mystery of lifelong hypnosis. What would you do with them? What is it that a man really wants? I don’t know about you but my best guess is, he just wants to bury his face in there and fall asleep in its incredible warmth.
Every few weeks, this blog returns to the topic of addiction and takes a dump on alcohol. My teetotaler ass enjoys doing this mainly because, deep inside, I am concerned that I’d grow old someday and then peek back at my sobriety with regrets. In all fairness, who cares whether you drink for leisure or grief? It’s a personal agreement between your lips and the liquid served. That said, it’s interesting to note that I grew up with people—starting with my father—who were smitten by the taste of the spirit. I simply decided for myself that I won’t do anything out of beer pressure. That’s where it started. And I often ask myself if any of these principles are worth it but then, I reckon the possibility that alcohol is not the perfect antidote for sleeplessness. Some of us are drunk on life while others are like pen-tailed tree shrews. They feed on alcoholic nectar but never get drunk.
On Instagram, young folks reach out to me to address their relationship problems. They conveniently assume that I might be an expert of some sort. Yes, me. A guy with a grand total of one relationship in his whole life. They tell me about their “problems” in life: how their love interest has no interest in them, how their soulmate is about to turn into an ex, how religion and caste have gotten in the way of their happily-ever-after, etc. These are template problems in our society but they don’t have template solutions. The trick is to rise above the situation and paint the bigger picture. A healthy relationship is the one where you grow with your SO. If not, it’s less of a relationship and more of a quagmire. Which is why I find it funny when a 20-something person messages me to update me that they have found someone new. I smile. When that happens, the whole equation changes: your ex becomes your past, your partner becomes your future and you become the present.
Do you cry? Or do you bawl? Whatever you do, you are absolutely doing fine. For the longest time, weeping had been relegated to the dustbin of weakness. Or worse, cowardice. When the reality is starkly different. Even the biggest macho man in the room wants to cry from time to time, from situation to situation. That’s not his fault. That’s what lacrimal glands are for. Weak people cry not because they are weak but because they have accepted the fact that strength doesn’t last long enough. Also, life is short only for those who are fully alive. Or else, it’s quite a long dry spell.
There are some words in some languages that are best not translated. They are meant to be in their original form. That’s where the magic lies. And then there are some sentences that retain their soul only in the language they were first thought of. Let me share some Hindi lines that sprouted in my wetware and don’t make a lot of sense if translated to English:
Kiraaye ke makaan mein raho ya kudh ke, ghar ko ghar rakhna padta hai.
Hum dono ke beech kuch chal raha hai aur chale hi jaa raha hai, kahin pohonch nahi raha.
Mujhe dhoop bilkul pasand nahi siwaay tum pe.
Subah subah apne aap se ubarne mein thoda waqt toh lagta hai.
Iss shehar mein sab victimhood ke pyaase hai.
Neend bas jaa rahi hai, aa nahi rahi.
A vase is basically a coffin in progress. Just a matter of time and perspective. When you put your earphones on, the music playing in your ears can make up for the lack of background score in your life, can’t it? Claiming to know a person is like claiming to know every single room in a building that has tons of storeys. Why? Because every person is a building filled with hundreds of rooms depending on which one needs to be opened under a given circumstance. Similarly, what is a brand new t-shirt today can be demoted to makeshift doormat down the line. You never know. What we sense today is solely based on the power of now. We aren’t clairvoyant enough to predict the future. In fact, most of us can’t even predict our past properly and struggle with basic hints of memory. Yes, time is volatile and perspective can be pathetic.