If you are a regular reader of this irregular blog, you must have noticed that I often muse on the incestuous relationship between villages and cities. How innocence gets traded for modernity, how tar roads lead us to plastic littering, how electricity dims out the stars, and most terribly, how we convince ourselves that we are moving ahead in time. But then, our species has had a rather long history of believing in things that don’t matter in the long run. Whatever we upheld turned out to be banal; whatever we presumed to be the truth revealed our lies.
So, yes, it’s quite fair to suggest that we don’t know what we are doing.
In other terms, none of us know where we are ahead in life.
Granted some/most of us have plans for our future but we can’t really bet on ourselves. Now, can we?
If optimism is your cup of kattan chai, good for you. However, if cynicism drives you, then you are doomed, even before it’s your turn to be doomed.
Speaking of damages, I can’t think of any Indian city that suffered more from words in this century than Bombay (Calcutta belongs to the 20th century.) If you’ve lived in Mumbai, you must know how the municipal corporation continues to put the far in infrastructure. The roads are dug without an iota of planning, thanks to which, they instantly turn into martian craters during monsoon, with our gutters overflowing like mother’s love. That’s standard Mumbai feels for you. To internalise why things haven’t changed much on ground despite economic growth, you’ll have to step back and remember the copy editors who came up with pithy phrases like ‘spirit of Bombay’ and how this city doesn’t sleep. Stuff that creates warriors out of the poor citizens who are hanging onto their lives while traveling by local trains—literally.
Tagore once wrote something to the effect of: every time a child is born, it's a message from the gods that they haven't given up on us yet. Considering the fact that I won’t be having child(ren), I do think about the messages that never get delivered from gods. What happens to them?
In our solitude, we learn that loneliness is a choice. If you work on your social skills, you are bound to foment friendships that will sail you through tough times. There are no hard and fast rules. As impossible as it may seem, your character is not built in stone. You can always step back and introspect and improve. At least that’s what you learn when you are spending too much time with yourself. This theory might be a secret nod to those who order stuff online again and again and again. Sometimes, when least expected, they will accept the possibility that it’s not about the things ordered in the first place. It’s all about that warm cozy feeling of receiving something at your doorstep even though it was paid by you for you. Hello, delivery guy.
Time is relative. It means different thing to different people. 5 minutes to you might mean nothing but to a trader, it might be the difference between gaining 20L and losing 35L. Similarly, 20 years might sound like an arduous prison sentence but to Daniel Day-Lewis, it means appearing in less than 5 movies. This scale varies depending on whom you are seated with. Older folks tend to see time as a bullock cart because life has taught them so many lessons, so many times. Younger people look at time as an impatient jet that can’t afford to stop even if it crashes without any memory.
Being a club football fan is a lifetime commitment. If your club is winning, you are smiling and hearty. If you are on a losing streak, you are venting. One look at any league table and it’s clear that most football fans are depressed already. I don’t know about you but my love for Liverpool—which spans two decades now—is so rooted that I haven’t watched a single live match featuring it since the day Gerrard slipped that fateful afternoon in 2014. Sucks. I know. But superstition is at the core of your love for sports. Heartbreak United would be such a cool name for a football club whose fans are all heartbroken.
Stop comparing with others.
That’s it.
There is no greater mantra worth sharing on the internet. The moment you learn the downside of comparison, you’ll lead a (more) meaningful life. People on social media sell all sorts of snake oil in the name of ambition. Well, there are limits to your limits too. You are meant to achieve some things and you are meant to lose a lot of things. Those are the laws of the universe. Just because A has more than B doesn’t make A content. But who is going to tell this to B if he remains stuck in inside his head?
Life is funny but it doesn’t want you to laugh at her jokes. You will be here on this planet for a little while, hoping to make a lasting difference, but no matter what you accomplish, it will always be a drop. For reasons unknown to you, you will prove lucky and similarly, for reasons unknown to you you will be unhappy. As you pass through the motions of gains and losses, ups and downs, smiles and tears, rights and wrong, you will ultimately reach a point of wisdom. That’s the tallest mountain you’ll ever summit. Atop, you will finally understand why we are the way we are, why some of us find it hard to connect, why there is an imbalance in wants and needs, why nobody is responsible for anything anymore, why the world is a circus of ironies where legends are forgotten only to be remembered once again on the day they die, why a prostitute’s only dream in life is to become a doting mother someday, why we are incapable of love unless we’ve learned the art of gratitude, why we struggle to recollect most of our dreams on waking up, and so much more.
That last paragraph though👍