Are you there yet?

The clock is ticking. When you look back, your childhood days look eons behind, you look into the mirror your face looks a lot different, your body almost sags and aches. All of a sudden you start feeling old. When you look ahead you don’t know where you are going. Yet you run. You run from your past. You run towards your future. You run from everything you have known till date. You want everything around you to change which hasn’t changed in years. You don’t know what you are chasing yet you feel something is chasing you. What is it?

You want to stop it and you “Take a break”. Yet you do not know what your break is all about, only to feel that the entire world has left you behind. Are they actually running? You don’t know, yet you think you HAVE to run. You run with full steam pushing and shoving people around as if they will never catch up with you. You don’t have time to explain to anyone. Coz you know you cannot Stop coz they are still chasing you. Who are they? You still don’t know.

You look at the clock it’s still ticking. You feel when you reach THERE you will get a better view- It will all be OK. You don’t know what it looks like yet you want to reach there. You have left most of them behind now or rather derailed them. But you still aren’t there. You only know you are somewhere close to THERE. So you start compromising. You start compromising saying it will all come back to me. You want it all to come to you. You start hatching new schemes to reach there with people you never knew before. Coz now you cannot stop Running. You are hooked on to it.

When you reach THERE you find the view is not what you expected it to be. Now you want to see more since you see the clock is still ticking. Now you want a NEW THERE. So you run again. This time with all your past and self confessed learning and wisdom. You no more want to be with the people you were with before. Every time you want a new costume and a new stage.
With lots of wear and tear you reach the NEW THERE. It’s good but not appealing as the next THERE. So you compromise & run again with the same people you hatched schemes with. This continues till you reach a spot where you see that people are no longer the same. All of them want to OWN the new THERE. So you fight this time with all your might only to find that you have been pushed and shoved around this time. So you go back to the OLD THERE since you find yourself incapable of moving ahead.

The OLD THERE no longer exists. Shattered you go back to on a reverse Trail to find all your OLD THERE. With much anguish you muster all your courage and go back to the OLD THERE only to be disappointed again. You still run. Finally you reach a terrain that looks familiar. You see familiarly unfamiliar faces. You feel you know them yet you do not know them. What kind of ambivalence is this? Finally you find a mirror that beckons you. You look into and this time you see a perfect stranger standing in front of you. You almost scream with tears rolling down your eyes. Everything comes back to you in a flash.

You hear a distant voice. Someone is shaking you. You wake up and find the same mirror in front of you. You look a little old, some wrinkles are there on your face, you have put on weight, you tummy shows, you sag. You look positively ghastly. But when you look around you find some questioning eyes? It’s your family. You feel relieved & jump out of joy. You smile & hug every one of them only to realize that you had a nightmare.

You continue on your routine and this time you don’t run. You sprint with joy coz you don’t need any more nightmares to tell you how to reach THERE coz You are already THERE.

That thing called Love

L.O.V.E- This 4 lettered word can mean so many things to so many people. She definitely is not easy to find these days in the purest of forms. Everything has gotten commercialized.

Was speaking to some colleagues today. One was dead against love marriages and had surrendered to his family to get married to a girl of their choice. On the other side of the spectrum was this friend, who was marrying the man of her dreams, but had very clear cues from her family that they might not be able to come to her rescue if something goes wrong with it, since it was a love marriage. I do not have much of an opinion about marriages or love. But should one deprive oneself of such beautiful feelings or should a cost benefit analysis be done before getting on this adventurous path?

On speaking to this fellow I understood that he must have been madly in love considering the kind of fun loving and adorable person he is. God Bless him & may he find what he wants. But then why these restrictions? People talk about all kinds or crap like short term and long term view but isn’t love and marriage more about your commitment, faith and trust in your partner, that no matter what comes they’ll always be there for you?

With the little bit of knowledge I have I am assuming that it’s going to be one in a million case if one finds their sweetheart in their own community. If people cannot cross that boundary called family’s happiness or society’s view (Samaj) or have the gut that they would be able to maintain that fine balance, then why do they fall in love? May be that feeling is so alluring, blessed, complete and fulfilling that in that one moment one is ready to forget their own existence and give into that moment. It’s tempting or sheer peer pressure.

Is it just the experiment that they like to try and see if they get favorable results and make it to the finishing line called Marriage or satisfaction? How many of them get to the finishing line with the blessings of their families?

At the end of this life all of us want to look back and see that we have spent a life well lived with someone who has made it much easier for us, than we ever thought it could be. Then why these doubts when you find that eternal part of yours which the supreme power separated from you in the beginning and tested if you could find that part of yours in this lifetime.

Days at the Doc's

A doctor’s clinic is the last place anybody would want to be. The smell, the stench, sick people and the injections.OMG. But at times the greatest of joys are found in the ugliest of places.

My breathing had been laborious all through the day. In order to put an end to it, I visited my doctor after a span of 4 months. As I waited for my turn to come, I found that some small changes had been made at the doctor’s. The clinic used to have a self-numbering system handled by the patients themselves, in order to visit the doctor. During my earlier days, I had found it amazing that so much of discipline existed amongst all of us. I thought it was very civil on everybody’s part to play such a role without being supervised. But after this change, I assumed that the Doc must have met with some unpalatable experiences, when he decided to introduce this system. Hmmn.

The new system consisted of a 10-year old, sitting outside the doc’s room with some small number tokens in his hand with a register alongside, where the patients would write their names, as is done in many other clinics. Aaah the pressure of compliance. When I spoke to the kid I found him very shy, who tried real hard to assert himself, when certain pushy patients tried to jump the line. Nevertheless, he did a good job of holding the fort all by himself.
Once done with the registering process, I found that I had forgotten to carry a book to read. But my guardian angels were at work and then came in 2 little rascals-a little girl and a little boy. It was love at first sight.

The boy was entirely in his own world. The mother looked exhausted but his antics were good supplements to boost her up. The young fellow was around 5 years of age and was already making a very good attempt at impersonating Superman with his handkerchief tied around his neck ,serving as his robe, which hardly reached his shoulders, but who cares he was already flying high. He was not the one to go easy on the sound effects and was now throwing his robe, ehhh , his handkerchief violently up and down and tried catching it with his face. In this process he swept the windows, the doors, the floor and sometimes even his mother’s face. But nobody cared because the kid was happy & jubilant. He even made an attempt to jump from a foot tall bench on to another bench which was around 10 feet away, which even his grandfather wouldn’t have been able to jump. But reality was far away from his mind. He jumped, rolled, twisted, circled and just did everything a 5 year old ought to do.

After losing interest from the handkerchief, the boy concentrated on his mother. Her dupatta, her legs, her purse, her cell phone, nothing was spared. Tired as the mother was, she gave him the usual dose, all mothers provide their kids from time to time. This weapon in the armor of Mothers is called “The fear of Injections”. She requested the 10-year old supervisor to get a huge injection, specially invented for her son. The effect was instant silencing of the once noisy child. I remember my mother using such scare tactics on me. She would go to the extent of telling me that somebody named Umachi( Synonym:: God) would come and poke me in the eye during night time, if I didn’t finish my meals. I still do not know where Umachi is & how many eyes he has poked till now. But trust me, I do finish my meals completely till date.

Meanwhile the elder one had started indulging in what we call voyeuristic pleasure these days. She found it amusing to look from the glass windows which were poorly designed and one could peep inside the doctor’s room. This is what we would have called conflict of interest in the adult world. The peeping had put our young supervisor at dis-ease and he tried to reassert that he was the man in the room & everybody got to listen to him. But alas, girls always know how to get their ways.

Now it was my turn to be scrutinized. After few smile-exchanges the girl who was now bored of peeping found some interest in me and enquired my name. I asked hers and she said it was “Niyati” and added that her brother’s name was “Nishit”. Then she stressed upon the fact that “Both of us have NI in our names”. I nodded and praised her for being very observant. Kids say all kinds of things, don’t they? I had read somewhere that God provides an unborn child with all the knowledge of the world. But before entering the world, he signs a pact with them by saying shhh and puts his finger on their lips, saying it’s their little secret. This is how all of us get the indentation mark on our lips. Anyway, the only thing I am wondering now is what all darn things I had told people when I was young. Gawd help them.

Nowadays my braces have gotten me attention from some very unusual guests. This 3 year old, was unbelievably talkative and had a curious bent of mind. She was attracted by the cover of the book I was reading and wanted to know which page I was reading. I handed over the book to her. This small act had gotten the eyeballs of the entire audience in the room. The little one didn’t disappoint me. She flipped through the pages and on due prompting from her mother returned the same to me. Then she put her finger on her teeth and asked me what was that thing in my mouth when I smiled. I said those were called Braces. Assuming that I was in pain she asked me one question, “Why don’t you brush, it will go away?”. The room was filled with laugher.

It only left me wondering, kids have such a simple way of looking at life. Nothing is complicated. They ask the most simplest of questions, do the simplest of acts and derive the greatest of pleasures from things ,whose existence we have long forgotten. They may not be realistic, but they are hugely optimistic. All these kids have made my visits to the doctors extremely enriching & memorable. I am looking forward to meet many more such little geniuses, who bring truck loads of unbridled joy in the lives of all they know and do not know. Well, have you met any little rascals lately?