The Perplexing Paradox Called Life

It is true that we only live once. We get but one life. So, must we do whatever we want to do, and not care about the world?  Should we throw caution to the wind, forget the world, break rules, and not care about a single thing?

Look at it from this point of view. Is our life ours to call our own? Think about it. Did we come into this world of our own accord? Did we learn what we know, ourselves? The answer is no. Our parents brought us into the world. They taught us everything they knew, and more. Every step we took, they walked along. Every time we fumbled and fell, they picked us up. Our life has been their life since the moment they took our whimpering mass in their embrace. Our story has been theirs; our troubles their bane and our happiness their joy.

‘It’s my life and I’ll do what I want to do.’ Does this sound right, then? I mean, are we not thinking at all when we say that?

And it’s not just our parents whose story we’ve been part of. We owe so much to so many people. Everything we do affects people who care about us. How, then, can we be so selfish as to not care about how our actions would affect them? I mean, you just cannot just get up and leave one day; decide that you want to do something and forget about people who love you, while doing it. No man is an island. Our life is a patchwork of stories knitted together at the seams; sometimes overlapping.  If one patch is taken out, the patchwork will be incomplete. There’ll be a gaping hole through which cold air will enter and ruffle all the other patches.

So it’s almost evident that things we do affect others. We owe our lives to others and should think about them when we plan to act. Our life has been granted to us to fulfill certain karmic balances, and fulfill them we must. That does not mean that we should stop living and not do anything that others object to. Of course, they can be wrong too and, anyway, we cannot let others control our life. We must indulge ourselves and make our lives large. The right thing is to find a middle path.  Convince others that something makes us happy and if they care about us, they’ll agree. The world will say a lot of things; we must know what the right thing to do is.

Because doing what we want might be a great way to live our life, but only a life lived for others is a life worth living.

Keeping Thy Chin Up

More often than I’d like, I’ve been told that I view the world through rose-coloured glasses. That life is not all sweet cakes and cotton candy, and that movies and books exist on a totally different dimension from the real world. Yes, I’ve also been called an ignorant fool for believing that everything turns out the way we want in the end, and smiling like a fool while watching totally illogical Utopian movies and reading dreamy novels.  I’ve been told to take reality checks and come down from the cloud I am often found floating on.  Each time I sigh, take off my glasses, take a look around me, suffer emotional trauma, and put my glasses back on; slightly less pink, slightly less thick.

People say don’t trust people easily. They have this negative quality and that flaw. They say don’t believe in them. I say, no man is an island. We were made to live a community living, and so we shall.  And a community works on trust and belief. If people have negative traits, they also have many positive ones.  We must focus on the positive and ignore the negative till it can be ignored. If the negative overpowers the positive, only then must we admit defeat. 

People say life is unfair. They say it’s cruel and tests you till the very last breath. I say, we fall so that we can learn to pick ourselves up again, and learn humility, courage and benevolence in the process. That aside, I've learnt that everything that happens to us at a particular point of time is meant to be. What we don’t have is simply because its time has not yet arrived. And what we truly desire will come running to us when its time comes. Sure, life is trying, but it’s never unfair or unjust.

People say the world is not worth living in: there is so much of misery all around. I say, there may be misery but there is also an equal amount of joy and happiness. That misery is because people believe they are miserable. Once again, focus on the good and keep your chin up. That way, you might fall-many times, maybe-but you’ll get up each time. Colour your glasses bright, and the beauty of life will blind you.

                                           “Duniya mein kitni hain nafratein

Phir bhi dilon mein hai chahatein”

Beautiful lines from a beautiful song of another surreal, illogical, Utopian movie. There may be unimaginable amount of hatred and angst in the world. But as long as there is even a single loving heart, all the odium of the world can be overcome. For the light of the Love contained in a single heart is infinitely brighter than all the darkness of the universe combined. 

Human Parasites

I had a dream last night- a pretty magical one.  It was 21st December, 2012 and the world was crumbling. It was D-day and in the midst of all the chaos, four people-two women, two men- were flown on to gossamer white cloud. Why? Because those four were the ones chosen to live on.  They were the humans chosen to ascend into the new dimension Earth was moving in to.

Now, this may be as unreal as it gets. And I know that the possibility of the world coming to an end less than a month from now is already totally unbelievable, unreal, ridiculous. Add to that the concept of a few chosen individuals ascending to another level, and you get something that invites the worst of insults and swear words from people. But it made me think. It made me ponder the errors of our ways. The reason that our planet is in even remote danger of extinction is because we’ve exploited it so much. We’ve weakened it to the core with our incessant demands and callous, unloving attitude. We’ve made Mother Earth an Old Maid in the process of being cared by her. We’ve taken her for granted and totally forgotten about her.  Our relationship with her has not been symbiotic. We’ve taken and only taken, without giving back even a cent or the least bit acknowledging her.  We’ve deprived her of everything she had to offer and left her to die; and to die slowly, heaving  a burdened, miserable existence as we continue trying to extort even more out of her. We were made humans but, sadly, we’ve become parasites.

The main reason why the concept of a few ‘special’ individuals being chosen to carry on civilization seems unreal to us is because we believe that no person is capable enough and no person is good enough. We were all born with unhinged capacity to do good but, sadly, we’ve lost it all in the process of growing up.  The truth may be that there’s no person on the planet good enough to represent us in a new world. And, true, maybe when the time comes for this planet to fall apart-and sure enough it’ll come with the ways things are going-there’ll be no one chosen to ascend. Maybe that’ll be it. For us. For civilization.

Unless, of course, we change our ways. Now.

Silly, Twisted Life

Egos are bad. And attitudes are also bad, especially when they interfere with the righteousness of our actions. Everybody makes mistakes: by bursting out in anger, by keeping their thoughts to themselves, by pointing people out, by not pointing people out, by accepting what is said without any resistance, by arguing about what is said. There is no right or wrong in life. Everything depends on the 

way we think. What might be the perfect solution to a problem to somebody, might seem like gibberish to somebody else. In the end, it is our happiness that matters. That happiness comes by acceptance and by forgiveness. And that in turn comes by putting aside egos. A unit works its best only when there is harmony on the inside. In this small world, dysfunctional families do exist; but the truth is that their members are unhappy. They live a life choked with the black smoke of misunderstandings. The only way to lead a happy life is to not let any member of our family be stifled by this unfortunate air; by clearing out misunderstandings as soon as they erupt and not letting weeds impregnate our little green garden of joy.

A Burning World

When we say discriminating things, however small their magnitude may be, we sow the seeds of strife; seeds which hatred nurtures into saplings of conflict, trees of turmoil, and little specious flowers of death.

All of us hate conflict, and the strife prevalent between our countries and religions fills our hearts with remorse. All of us, at some point of time, some more often than others, have found ourselves wishing for the brutality of this aggression and bloodshed to be over; but to no avail.  Even as we wish and pray, a soldier dies somewhere in Iran, a bomb explodes in Pakistan, an Indian Muslim is baselessly interrogated in America, and a whole family is shot to death in Jerusalem. Reason and origins? Undocumented; stupidity, aggression, anger, violence: basic traits of human nature.

The world is a delicate place and its people are sensitive. Sensitive and it may seem, increasing intolerant. Any little thing anybody says or does has a net effect. Everything and anything affects eternity. Seems improbable, right? How could your random cursing of the Pakistani cricket team have anything to do with terrorism? Think of it this way. It’s not just one random utterance. It’s thousands and lacs and crores of such prejudiced rantings, narrow-minded facebook statuses, careless tweets, and bigoted memes and caricatures put together, that feed a mind sweltering in the fire of angst and pain, somewhere, someplace, and force it to take an extreme step.

Strife, dissension, and rivalry are everywhere. For instance, there are Pakistani hate pages and groups about India and likewise Indian hate groups about Pakistan. Dare I say, somebody may even accuse me of being discriminating because I mentioned Pakistani hate pages and groups before their Indian counterparts. When something as small and insignificant like this can arouse tension and discord, think what statements that publicly deride sensibilities could lead to. The world is full of feeble-minded people who are like sheep following a herder; people who celebrate and rejoice when a rival nation loses a sports match their country wasn’t even part of. Yes, the world is full of such people, but it is not entirely composed of them. There are people in Pakistan who hate India, which is surprising if they’ve never been to India, but there are also people who would shelter an Indian in times of need. The same applies for India.  Fair and good people may be a minority, but fair and good hearts still form a majority. Thank God for that.

Speaking as an Indian, I just do not understand where the conflict between India and Pakistan stems from. Some people will just deride Pakistan every opportunity they get and call every Pakistani a terrorist. The logic behind this eludes me. Surely, the two nations have seen bad times. But that is a thing of the past. Maybe still their government is criminal and non-cooperating with respect to India, but is the Indian government filled with angels and noble people? The Kashmir issue? Sure, it’s complicated. But we must realize not the whole of Pakistan is behind that, just like the whole of India is not behind the rapes, murders, political scams one sees in India on a day to day basis. It is just a few select people who misuse mob mentality for personal gain.

Most people know this deep down, yet they’ll willingly curse the other nation any time. People’ll say that India is a democracy and every citizen has the right to voice what they think. I say, bullshit. Democracy isn’t about every person having a voice; it’s about every voice having an ear. It’s about every voice being given an opportunity to be heard. So the people who dance to the beat of the ‘India-is-a-Democracy-and-I’ll-say-whatever-I-want-to’ drum, are just actually seeking a constitutional way of being racist, discriminating, whatever.

This is what it comes out to: if we want peace, we must first quieten our minds. Peace will never come, not in a hundred years, not in a hundred millennia, if we keep the fire of prejudice and favouritism burning in our hearts. I don’t ask that we ignore the acts of terrorism that people engage in. I just ask that we don’t form opinions and put the blame on entire nations or specific religions. I know people will disagree with me and maybe brand me a fanatic. But this is what I believe in. I write this in the hope that my words may someday change mindsets. Even if they change one, I’ll be satisfied that my efforts were not in vain. I urge that the next time you are about to mock a country, culture, or religion, be it Pakistan, Sikhism, Islam, Hinduism, darker-complexioned people, and whatnot, take a double take and think again. For every word uttered in scorn acts as fuel to the blazing fire of world dispute, while every statement uttered in Love acts as a gentle drop of rain.

Fallen Angels

What’s the world coming to? Today started out as a bright and sunny day, but got plenty of shades darker as it proceeded. As I got ready to go to class, the unfortunate news of three students of my college passing away, flew along with the gentle wind and breezed through my unsuspecting ears. Apparently, four students had got into a car accident while coming to college this morning; three had died on the spot and one was in critical condition in CMC. All of our morning classes got cancelled out of respect for the deceased, which was obviously a correct, and humanitarian, thing to do. However, what disturbed me more than the gloomy news was the fact that my fellow college mates were more concerned about making sure that their classes had been cancelled.

As you never know what’s true in VIT and what’s false, I got dressed and went to the campus. I had stepped out of the hostel into a sunny day, but stepped into campus under a gloomy sky. A few drops from heaven tinged my skin, and it appeared as if Mother Nature herself was mourning this huge loss. I made my way towards scattered crowds of people milling around. You’d expect some silence and lowered eyes, but what I saw were happy faces and all I heard were students regaling with excitement on getting a free morning.

Now, I am not implying that because some strangers had died, you should make yourself miserable or cry your eyes out. It is great to find light in the darkest situations. But, showing such disrespect and indifference! Was free attendance for a few silly classes really worth the price of three lives? Have we really become so shallow? Can we not feel that haunting sense of loss? If it is so, then civilization, as we know it, is heading towards its doom. 

Feel Alive

Nothing to write. The image, itself, conveys the message so spectacularly. Give it a try. Just put your hand over your heart. I just did it, and feel more alive than ever. Oh, it's so thrilling, feeling all that blood rush through your body!