Why my dad started praying
One of the largest tragedies of humankind is we can have kids whenever we like. There are no fixed seasons or requirements. Babies are born in the hottest of deserts and the coldest of tundra. It’s incredible how much we take this beautiful aspect of nature for granted. Every child is nothing less than a miracle, staring at infinity. After all, the fact you are you and I am me is a matter of a trillion possibilities. Yet, a lot of people treat progeny as a free feature instead of an invaluable paywall. Not saying any of these because I am anti-natalist by persuasion. Saying this because I won’t ever miss having kids but I am sure I am going to miss having grandkids—if I live long enough.
Speaking of unwanted children, there was a beautiful woman who was married to an average looking man. A few years down the line, they ended up as a childless couple and one day, this woman noticed a gorgeous baby in the arms of a neighbour. She befriended this newly moved family and reached a stage of friendship wherein she’d take the baby out for a stroll. Imagine a very good looking lady in sari behind a pram containing a lovely little child. The set arrangement was going fine until it came to the original mother’s attention that the other woman—nice to use the ‘other’ adjective for something that is not at all salacious—also equally awesome is how this woman is the protagonist but is also the ‘other’ woman—was owning compliments from passerbys in the park for the baby. As if it was her own child. In this story, I feel bad for the other woman because she somehow felt that had she married an equally pleasant-looking creature, she’d have definitely delivered a baby as lovely as the one in the pram. Don’t we all live in such illusions?
According to Buddhist beliefs, soul mates do not make your heart race, knees weak and lose your mind. On the contrary, they make you calm, loved and at peace. A splendid piece of theory for all the feckless, pathetic humans out there (all 8 billion of them). But here’s my counterpoint. Problems must arise when a couple have conflicting reactions: she makes him feel calm, love and at peace whereas he makes her heart race, knees weak, and mind scattered.
Have you ever heard of Magico Gonzalez? Me neither, until very recently. I read about his fabulous rise in the football world but as is the case with the bandwidth of mainstream, we can’t have everyone in the gate of glory. Maradona himself called Gonzalez "without a doubt among the greatest 10 players I have ever seen play" but you and I never heard of this El Salvadoran magician. What does this tell us? Two things, mainly. One, our understanding of greatness is limited to a few greats that we already know about. Two, we don’t know shit.
My dad is 73 and walks twice a day despite his bad hip. He wants to stay fit not because he wants to live long. He wants to stay fit because he wants to live an independent life. Even the thought of being dependent on others for the most basic of necessities repels him. Having seen his father develop bedsores, he doesn’t wish to witness repetition of hereditary sorts. Having said so, he wants to die too. Which is strange because for a person who actually takes a lot of care about what he eats, his desire is to retire his body when it can still “walk 7 kilometers a day”. Everyday, he mentions death (saav in Tulu) at least once. For somebody who is not well-versed with the technological side of the world, I find these thoughts ironic but charming. He recently started praying to god and performing rituals as well—I grew up listening to him discourage us from visiting temples—because he wants “somebody up there” (devera in Tulu) to ensure that he doesn’t take a dump in his own bed. Somebody has to take responsibility, no? Clearly, different people reach out to gods for different reasons.
I saw this striking painting on my Twitter feed of a woman seated gracefully, possibly inside a moving bus or a cafe, with her hair tied up and gaze fixated outside the window. As soon as I saw it, my mind raced to a woman I’ve never met and she bears no resemblance whatsoever with the lady in this painting. During such instances, it becomes obvious that we are nothing but a tool of amusement for our mind: it connects what has no connection and disconnects what should have been siamese in the first place.
Now that we’ve sly entered the space of mental health, let this blog reiterate for the nth time that nothing matters more than your peace of mind. Absolutely nothing. Prioritize your mind over everything else. Think of yourself as a paper plane and ask yourself whether you’d be alright with the uncertain trajectory of your flight. If yes, you better learn to enjoy the mad U-turns and V-turns, dancing to the whims of breeze. If not, just wait for the plane to land and stay there until you feel better again. Now unfold the paper plane and write down all the things you are grateful for on one side and then write all the things you are very pissed about on the other side. Done? Now set the paper on fire.
In therapy, the wiser person in the room tries to unravel the truth by excavating all the way into childhood. In our earliest days on this planet lies so many facets that remain mostly unknown and safely hidden inside the locker of time. As I am growing older and getting worse, the role childhood plays is gaining spotlight. For instance, to this day, I know exactly how I felt when I was in the presence of people I came across as a kid. Even their thoughts ignite the same feelings I had back then: my maternal grandma still makes me feel warm and loved and my paternal grandma still makes me feel largely indifferent although both these strong women have been dead for almost two decades now. The point of this paragraph is to highlight how people made us feel when we were younger remains with us till our very end. Even though we forget those people eventually, their place is taken by somebody else but the feelings triggered by them remain the same.
Those who invoke Chanakya in their political discourses nowadays tend to either overlook or stay ignorant of some historic anomalies. Vishnugupta was what the modern education system would call a professor at Taxila University (which is located in today’s Pakistan) and apart from his advisory roles, he was also popular for his radical but practical viewpoints on how a society must function. It’d be unjust to transpose a personality almost 2000 years old to modern realities but he is the same person who equated divorce with moksha (salvation in judeochristian belief system). That is simply a remarkable strain of thought. I wonder what he would have to say about the current state of affairs. My best guess is, he’d roll his eyes and happily go back to the 3rd century.