Daughter

Today is my daughter’s wedding.

But neither was she blessed as much to get into the mandap after touching my feet, nor was I blessed as much to run around shouldering the responsibilities of arranging the logistics of the event they call the grand Indian wedding. Will she be knowing the pain of a father, who is unable to hold his daughter’s hand and give it to the groom, the pain of a father who is seeing the wedding sitting undistinguished as one among the hundreds of guests? I doubt it. There would be other, much more pleasant thoughts racing through her mind right now.

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College life is special for everyone. The memories never fade, the day it dies is the day you cease to exist. Memories could be sweet, bitter or a blend of two in arbitrary proportion. Possibly the first impression almost everyone has is the apprehension he/she has when he/she goes to attend class on the first day.

It was that day I saw her first. She was in the same batch as I was, but we differed in our majors. I was majoring in Chemistry, and she was into Mathematics. I can’t recollect how or when it happened that we became close. I guess it is that inevitable process that occurs so commonly – acquaintances through mutual friends, friends through mutual acquaintances, buddies through passage of time and then it somewhere unknowingly, that threshold too was crossed. Sharing some subjects did their bit as well, we grew a lot cozier over those late night study sessions in library and the campus canteens.

There were a lot of instances. Campus life is always enriched with instances. We had so different tastes when it came to food but inevitably we used to end up going to canteen together and we used to enjoy sharing food with each other a lot. In one such instance, I was reading a book while she was eating from my plate after she had finished hers. Suddenly, out of the blue, she asked me, “Which raga is love in?”. I was taken aback, I was absolutely ignorant about the nuances of Carnatic music. “Hmm… I guess Shriranjini”, I retorted back with a mischievous grin. The truth was, that was one of the handful of ragas I knew about. “No, you’re wrong”, she replied. “It’s Mohanakalyani.” I remembered the peculiar look in her eyes when she said this. And she disappeared fast feigning the excuse that she had a class for the hour. I the dumb could not decipher it. Another time she asked me what my favorite color was. Green I said it was. For the next week or so she wore a green tinted salwar suit. It did send me some signals, but I was perplexed. I always believed (or maybe I liked to believe?) that all those craziness was a part of the friendship between us.

On one other occasion, we were sitting in the library, I was immersed in a magazine. I concede she did have the knack of taking me by surprise. And she didn’t fall from the standards she set herself when she asked me, “What does a woman, take me as an example. What do you think I desire most in my life?” That did catch me unawares. As usual, I was ignorant and ended up guessing a lot of answers. “Good job with a comfortable salary”, “being a good and loyal wife”, “a well-off and caring husband”, “professional glory”…. She looked disappointed with my answers. In fact, she actually looked hurt that I stopped the misadventure abruptly. She never bothered to give an answer to that question. Though I was curious, her reaction when she heard my answers prevented me from bringing up the topic again.

I didn’t realize when I crossed over from the realm of friendship. It just happened. There is no hard-and-fast rule for that. The boundaries are where you define them. Looking back, I think she had erased the lines from her side quite a while back. Or rather, she attempted to erase them. It was me who never really caught on the signals. Can’t say I’ve grown any wiser today but the fact that I am able to understand why she did what she did on a lot of occasions which at that time, seemed out of place to me, did make me feel a bit more intellectually mature after all these years. I’ve tried unsuccessfully a lot of times to recollect when and where it was that I started having feelings for her, but the crux was definitely that I started having feelings for her. Her role in my life graduated from that of a very special friend of mine, to being that very special someone in everyone’s life.

Everybody perceives campus life to whiz past at a pace you don't realize. It was the same in our case. We had our falls and springs in our lives, as any other pairs you’d find in any random campus landscape. Romance, fights, reconciliations, then again back to romance…. The wheel was never any different. Our relationship grew stronger over the years. As they say about college life, one has got all the time in the world, but one never has sufficient clunk in his pockets. We enjoyed each other’s company, lavishly in time and frugally in economics. We became inseparable.

Towards the end of final year in college, we started getting worried. We knew that a separation was on the cards, but either of us were unwilling and unprepared to confront it. We started spending more time with each other, and often times, periods of silence started overcoming periods of chatter. The whole thing was depressing. It was unfair, we never really spent enough time with each other. What would happen after college? I would have to go and search for a job in a big city. What about her..? It was those times were girls were typically married off early, as soon as possible after graduation. Both of us were engulfed in those depressing lines of thought.

The final exams were on the cards. Torn between the desire to spend maximum time with each other and the necessity to prepare for the examinations, we started studying together. Initially, the venues were the college library, cafeterias and other places inside the college campus. I stayed with a couple of my batch mates outside the college campus and occasionally she used to come there and we used to study till late hours. What was between us was known to my roommates and so they never had any problem with accommodating her.

“The End”. That was the last line I wrote before I handed over my answer sheet to my invigilator one final time from the portals of my college building. I can’t precisely remember what went through my mind while I was handing that paper out to the invigilator, but looking back a couple of decades with my not-so-highly-rated memory, I am reasonably sure my eyes would have been moist. But I distinctly remember me walking with her from the examination hall to the college canteen. The same walk which we used to do at least twice a day for better part of two years, that ever so familiar route seemed to detach away from us. For the college, the buildings, the halls, the labs, the campus, the canteens, nothing would change. An x would be replaced by a y. That would be about it. Every year she sees off a hundred students walking away from her, never to return back and the she welcomes a new set of a hundred fresh-faced eager and enthusiastic group into her fold, only to see them off the same way after three years.

We sat in the canteen silently, over a cup of tea. We had done that a thousand times before when we were never short of things to talk. A wide array of topics used to occupy our canteen time, from hostel gossips to astronomical discoveries, from the relevance of Leninist ideology to the price increase of beeda we used to have at the shop outside the college gate. That was the usual case, today was a world unusual. We spent the day roaming around the campus, reliving memories. Talk was sparing and sentimental. Neither of us could fathom that we had actually finished our degree, that we’ll have to move out, possibly to separate cities.

It was a full moon night. The clouds obstructed the view of the stars but the moon was present and bright. Lying beside each other on the basketball court, we were seeing the same moon. We were seeing the same dream. We didn’t speak a word but we both knew that the same thoughts were going through each other’s mind.

We got up. I looked at her to find her looking at me. I could read her eyes. I suppose she could read mine as well. I’m sure both of us knew what we were thinking was far from ethical. There are times when even the most rational of individual shelve ethics and morality, when fundamental human instincts trump everything else. That full moon night, technically the last day in college, was the night when I felt the magnetic power of my feelings overshadow every sense of right I had.

My roommates were partying, I knew that. That’s the first thing they plan when the examination schedule is put out. The night after the last examination is something every college student invariably looks forward to. The rhetoric may be different, the celebrations may wildly differ, but the anticipation is palpably same. So was the case with my roommates. Over the past couple of years, it had become a ritual of theirs to go the bar far in town and get drunk to the fullest. So much that the guys at the bar had a copy of the examination schedule every time. Both of us knew my room was empty. We walked the long walk.

We knew it was going to be wrong. We knew it was going to be irreversible. But I needed it. And she also needed it. It was as if we were challenging whoever constructed the framework of ethics for human beings. Sometime in the dead of night, when most of the world around slept, and most of our batch mates were exploring varying levels of alcohol-induced mental highs, we shared each other.

The following days in my memory, remain fuzzy. She did not tell me when she vacated her hostel room and left for her hometown. I enquired with her friends, but they didn’t have much information to help me. I just knew her hometown, I didn’t know her home address. Nonetheless, I went there and inquired around. A guy looking for a girl doesn’t generally go down well in southern Indian towns and the case here was no different. Not only was I unsuccessful in getting any info, but things reached a point where I started to get threatening vibes from some of the locals. Tired and dejected, I took the bus back home. I prayed that things be well for her. That’s the least I could do for her. In those moments, that was the most I could do for myself.

The societal pressures of economics and conventionalism caught up with me in due course of time. As was the case with a lot of my contemporaries, there was this period of my life where I searched for a job and then I got a job. And then, before I realized it, I was married to a girl half a decade younger to me by age. I settled into the rhythm of a conventional, uneventful yet happy life. All the while she occupied my mind, but as they say time is a great healer and the passage of time, tightly coupled with pressures of life, did a fair amount of work in ebbing my thoughts about her. I had never told my wife anything about her, I really couldn’t ever come around to look in her and eyes and tell her that her husband was not as pious as a wife would expect her husband to be. Never had the guts to tell that, so I never told.

Until that day. Almost six years after I stepped out the last time from my college, she came back for me. Magically. One summer morning, I open the doors of my house to a knock and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw her standing in front of me. Such a thought never occurred to me in the wildest of my imaginations, but there she was, standing in front of me, in flesh and blood. A charming young girl wearing a polka dress and ponytailed hair was shyly holding her hand and throwing glances at me. I invited her in, introduced her as a classmate of mine to my wife. It took a good deal of composure to introduce the two women to each other, and looking back, I am surprised about how I was able to do it. Thankfully for me, both the women took a liking to each other and they quickly became friends.

Over the course of next few days, she told us her story. She had married an army jawan immediately after college. Just over a year after their marriage, he was killed in action along the Indo – Pak border in Kashmir. As a result of that, she had got a job in a nationalized bank. After working for a few years outside the state, she got transferred here to my town. And she and her daughter Sreelakshmi moved here. I did not ask her any details about when the marriage happened and so on. Though I wanted to know about it, I thought it might make things between us awkward. Plus the presence of my wife warranted my restraint from asking too many questions.

Years rolled by. Barring a few transfers lasting few months, she and I ended up staying in the same town. Sreelakshmi grew up into a fine young girl. Over time, I felt an increasingly lot of similarities between she and her mother as she grew up. I saw her going to school the day before yesterday, inter college yesterday and today, I saw her going to degree college… time flew. So fast that I was shocked when her mother told me that she was starting to consider marriage proposals for Sreelakshmi.

One day she came up to my office. Said she wanted to talk to me. In the confines of our guest lobby, when the whole world rumbled along like any other day, she said, “I can’t keep it anymore. I can’t keep it from you any more. I am imploding within myself, I need to tell this to someone, and I can’t tell it to Sreelakshmi….” Her voice trailed off in the muffles of her light sobs.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“I’ve lied to the world. I lied to Sreelakshmi, I lied to everyone. I lied to you. I was married to a jawan, but at the time of my marriage, I was carrying Sreelakhsmi.” Saying that, she burst into tears.

I was shell shocked. I sat there, speechless. My mind raced back to that night after exam. And her quietly disappearance from college. Lack of information regarding her with any of her classmates. I perfectly understood everything now. Everything was crystal clear.

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As I sat there and pondered, the marriage ceremony was over. Sreelakshmi was now married. My daughter was now married.

Fundamental Duties : A Rethink

At the outset, let me state that I am not a very big fan of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). I do hold the opinion that none of the parties in India are secular (and possibly can’t ever be), and the BJP is possibly the biggest one to openly admit that they are not entirely secular. But irrespective of party lines, I do respect individuals who I personally feel, deserve to be respected. Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee is a person who I hold in the greatest respect from the party. To me, he is someone who transcended the line of a politician and grew to the stature of a statesman. I candidly admit that till a few months before, I did not have a very positive opinion about Mr. Narendra Modi. Even during the heights of the campaign for general election of India this year, Mr. Modi, in my opinion, exuded hope for the people, but courtesy of the often disappointing political class of India, I mentally had a block of skepticism towards Mr. Modi and the party he represented. And to most other political parties and individuals in the fray. But his words and deeds since forming the Union Cabinet of India three months ago (from the date of this post), seem to me, to be statesmanlike.

The biggest contribution to that change of image of Mr. Narendra Modi in my mind, was the speech he made from the ramparts of the Red Fort, on the occasion of the sixty eighth Independence Day of the Republic of India. That speech reminded everyone of one great aspect for every citizen – that the Government needs me, you and everyone else to build and strengthen India. My respect for Mr. Modi shot up a few notches when, in an era of government sponsored freebies and goodies, he stressed that it was not, and should not always be a one way traffic, from the government of the day to the people. There have been many aspects of that speech that have been analyzed in detail by the media in India and worldwide, but this specific aspect made me to pen down my thoughts.

I am no expert in history but I assume the notion of “Me doing something for the state, not expecting much in return” would've been one of the platforms of India’s struggle for independence. And after attaining independence, the Constitutional Assembly authored the Constitution of India, a document to the newly formed state that was expected to be the Bible. The Constitution promised every citizen a number of fundamental rights. The rights were supposed to be equal to every citizen of India, and there have been famous court judgments that have criticized the governments or punished the culprits on instances of violation of fundamental rights of an individual (or an ethnic or religious group) by someone or the government of the day. In fact, Mr. Modi himself has been dragged to court over litigation on these. But among the clamor and commotion over the rights guaranteed to me by the Constitution, somewhere as decades passed post-independence, I conveniently forgot about another aspect – fundamental duties.

The Constitution of India mentions a total of eleven fundamental duties of every citizen of India. To quote a few, they obligate all Indians to promote a spirit of brotherhood, protect public property, abjure violence, respect the national symbols of India, and so on. However, fundamental duties are non-justifiable. The Constitution merely exhorts every citizen to follow this, but there is no legal sanction on non-compliance of any of these. And that, I have come to believe, is where the convenient forgetfulness of the Indian citizen started. He forgot that he was supposed to promote a spirit of camaraderie with his co-citizens, and he became narrow minded. Protection of public property became much less of a priority for him. All those and much more, because yes, he knew he was duty bound, but somewhere his attitude became “If my neighbor can do it, I can also do it. And if I stop doing it, will it change the schema of things in this country?”

To add to fuel to the fire, the political class migrated as well. Jawaharlal Nehru used to stress upon the role of every citizen in building the India he dreamt of. Somewhere, his posterity turned the tables around. Somewhere along our progression as a nation, the “leaders of the masses” starting downgrading the importance of this and increasingly started stressing on the aspect of the state giving to its people. The political class of the country pledged more and more to the citizens and mentioned less and less about what the citizens are obliged to give to the state.

Get it right – no government can take care of the needs (and often greeds) of over a billion people. It is against all theories of economics, ethics and pragmatism. In my opinion, every citizen is morally obligated to give back to the state in a degree he or she can. There could be a lot of arguments about how to give, what to give and so on, but I wish to stress upon only two examples here. They are, by no means, exhaustive, but to me, each one points to a unique aspect of the concept of India which was great at the time our founding fathers proposed it, but which, as a result of constant and blatant misuse, is in dire need of revision after more than six decades of their proposal and implementation. The two examples are that of subsidy on petroleum products and the concept of reservation based on caste. I would like to present a brief case on how I, as an individual, could put in my two cents to these issues, as my fundamental duty.

India has been subsidizing the petroleum products her citizens’ use, possibly since Independence. I do not know if the subsidies extend beyond Petrol, Diesel, Kerosene and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), but I’ll confine the discussion to this four. India was conceived as an economy which was supposed to be a mixed bag of capitalist and communist ideologies. And around the time of independence, the people dependent on the heavily agricultural economy were poor in majority, most of them would’ve struggled to make their ends meet. At that point of time, when there were a large majority of people deserving it, and subsidy on petroleum products would directly impact every household in the country. Imagine the impact of diesel subsidy on a farmer, who could save a lot of money on the tractor – for both tilling his land, and for transporting his produce to the nearby market or to a storage location. And when India en masse started switching over from inefficient wood to efficient LPG in her kitchens, LPG subsidy would’ve gone a long way in incentivizing and economizing her kitchen expenses. But we have come a long way from those days. One big difference between then and now is the emergence of a salaried class. A lot of them in fact, came from agricultural families. True, there still are the farmers, peasants and the marginalized classes of people (the proletarians, as they call them in Communist ideology) who might be in majority, but the salaried class (including people working in public and private sector) has emerged as a significant player like never before. And I argue that these people are the unnecessary beneficiaries of the subsidy regime. For a daily wage laborer or peasant who earns hardly Rs. 100 a day, subsidy for petrol and LPG is necessary and warranted. But for someone who earns upwards of, say, Rs. 30,000 a month (a totally imaginary figure), it is morally incorrect and unjustified to roll out subsidies. I can understand if someone on a simple motorbike, commuting to work gets subsidized fuel, but I, for all my brains, fail to understand when a chap in a Harley Davidson motorbike or in a sedan car enjoy the same benefit.

This is where I would argue that fundamental duty should come in. If I fall in the upper tax bracket, I should consider it a fundamental duty of mine that I should voluntarily give up LPG subsidy. That sense of voluntariness will not come by default. As I mentioned earlier in the article, various factors have made us forget our duties, and we would need a bit of coercion to move in that direction. An interesting article recently by Mr. Ishwari Bajpai, a senior journalist at NDTV, hits the nail right on the head when he mentions how the establishment can filter out the “affordable class” from the subsidy list. That is a bit stringent in the measures it proposes, but the intention is indeed noble. Even though I believe this should be done more on a voluntary note, with a sense of duty towards the nation, I should expect that to happen in a Utopian world. To quote from the article, he mentions a few potential steps for the government to identify people to be removed from the subsidy program:

•  All government servants including those in the armed forces and railways, PSU employees earning more than Rs. 30,000 a month (an arbitrary number, again).
• In a city like Delhi, where house tax rates are determined by "class of colony" no delivery of LPG at subsidized rates to Class A and B.
• Work with the local motor vehicle authority and eliminate the 21 million car owners from the subsidy list.

The other facade I wished to cover here, is the topic of caste based reservation. Again, historically, this was highly relevant in a society where untouchability and caste based discrimination was rampant, and if we were to bring those sections of the society on par with everyone else, they needed that extra incentive, that extra push to propel them forward. And India needed them, as she needed every citizen of hers, to move forward for the nation to progress. Something that was initiated as a step towards nation development, stooped down to become a strategy of caste based appeasement. The concept of reservation is very powerful, if it is applied in the true spirit – one of uplifting a section of society from centuries of oppression to being players in building a modern nation. And thus, it is quite warranted that one or two generations of those who have been oppressed for centuries, reap the benefits of the scheme. But, on a realistic note, it has been over six decades since the policy has been put in place. A significant majority of the people who have deserved it, have used it to empower themselves, thereby, in turn, empowering the nation. But, to quote Shakespeare, “something starts to rot in the State of Denmark” when generations, one after another, keep using this policy, crossing over from use to abuse. If someone has benefited from reservation during the term of his education and/or employment, it is imperative that he not use the same policy for his child/children. The intention of the law was to bring a section of society to speed with the nation. The fact that someone has benefited from it, that someone has achieved success educationally and/or professionally implies that the purpose of reservation is served for him and his descendants. He or she should make it an obligation towards the nation that they will not use the extra privileges granted to them by the Constitution again. I know it is a big ask, but this is the very fundamental duty I mentioned earlier which every citizen has to perform. There are a significant number of our population who still need reservation for making them a part of nation building, shouldn’t you and I be making sure that we bring them forward, rather than keep abusing the reservation system so that generations of the same set of people keep using it?

Human resources they say, are a state’s greatest strength. Let us realize that we might need to make some sacrifices to keep it that way. As the incumbent Prime Minister said, if each of one hundred twenty five crore populace of India keep a step forward, it would be equivalent of the state of India putting one hundred twenty five crore steps forward. Let us ensure that we keep that one step forward for our country, irrespective of whether our neighbor keeps it forward or not. I just mentioned two facets of our democracy which I believe need to be examined by every (responsible) citizen, in an individual capacity. Let me do what I can for the country which cared for me, irrespective of what my neighbors may or may not do. A considerable amount of effort would be needed to orchestrate this turnaround of mindset. Mr. Narendra Modi has created the spark, let me conclude with the hope that the establishment and the people take this forward – one step at a time, one person at a time. If that could be done, India will owe a lot to the incumbent Prime Minister.

FOOTNOTE : I’ve been inspired by two articles which came on NDTV. The articles, authored respectively by Mr. Harish Khare and Mr. Ishwari Bajpai, can be referenced here and here.

Thenmozhi

Madras. Or Chennai, as they call it nowadays, was my second home. I came to the city a decade and a half ago, in search of livelihood. I was one of the thousands who emigrated to this southern Indian metropolis in search of job, and the city welcomed me with both hands. She gave me a good job, she took care of me well, I brought my family here. My kids grew up here, and by the definition of it, I was a Chenaiite.

But your own native place is something you can possibly never snap your ties from. I was a native of Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala. I was a Keralite by birth and had my roots very firm there. And as a result, Chennai Thiruvananthapuram round trips were very frequent. I used to love those sojourns on trains, almost every month there was some reason or the other that forced me to travel to Thiruvananthapuram.

It was on one of those trips that I saw her. I was on the return journey to Chennai and we were about an hour away from reaching Chennai Central. I had a side lower berth which implies a bad night of sleep for me. After a night of tossing and turning, I was up early and was watching the barren lands rush behind me as the train surged forward.  That was when she approached our compartment. She had a bundle of dictionaries held in her hand and a bag slung across her sagging shoulder which obviously contained many more dictionaries. I’m not certain what attracted my attention to her, perhaps it was her smile which seemed to eclipse the tiredness on her face on an early morning.

“Intha dictionary vaangunko saar. Ungalukku English nalla pesaam” [Please buy this dictionary, sir. This will help you speak good English.]

Nobody seemed to bother. No one seemed interested to buy her dictionaries. A young man sitting in my coach stared at her, his look betrayed his intent. If eyes could talk, they would’ve screamed, “I don’t want to buy your dictionaries, but I don’t mind giving you a try.”

Someone asked, “You’ve been selling these dictionaries for so long. How many English words do you know?”

She replied boldly, “I know love means kaadhal. I know love, and I love you. That’s all.”

Everyone in my compartment shared a good laugh. So did she. Seeing no one was interested in buying a dictionary from her, she moved forward in an attempt to find better luck in my adjacent compartment.

The train chugged away. The barren landscapes of rural Tamil Nadu switched to more unpleasant facades, the slums on the outskirts of Chennai. I was staring out of the window for quite a long time that I did not realize someone had come and sat on the seat opposite to me. I looked up and saw it was her. She wore a green salwar with a matching kameez, and the strain of roaming from one end of the train to another was quite evident on her innocuous visage.

“How difficult it is sir, to gain the trust of people these days…”, that was more of a statement than a question. She mentioned about Murugan, who owned a book store just outside of Chennai Central station. She was a sales representative working for him. Every morning Murugan used to entrust a bundle of dictionaries with her, and he used to say, “Thenmozhi, it all depends on your sweet voice. If you use your sweet voice well, you’ll be able to sell each one of these dictionaries. Even people who won’t need one will buy one if you can convince them with your voice.” Thenmozhi, such a sweet name, I wondered. Before I could admire her name any further, she continued on. In the evening when she went back to the store, Murugan’s tone would change. He would shout at her more often than not and criticize her as being lazy and sloppy. She was expected to sell at least 20 dictionaries a day and even on days when she managed to sell more than 25, the best she would get from Murugan was half a smile, no more. She knew for a fact she couldn’t change the level of trust Murugan had in her for all her efforts. She used to get 20 rupees as incentive for every dictionary she managed to sell, and life was not smooth.

Lack of trust was even bigger with Saravanan. Who is Saravanan, I enquired. He was an auto driver she said. But the blush that accompanied that statement spoke volumes about her feelings for him. They were in love, and they were planning to get married for next Deepavali, she revealed. Every day in the evening, Saravanan would wait outside the station with his auto, waiting for Thenmozhi. He would drive her back to her home. Somewhere along the drive, he would drive into a lonely alley and then kiss her on her face. Initially, she used to think of it as his expression of love for her. But in course of time, she told me she realized it was not entirely an act of love. It was to smell for cigarette or any masculine smell. He wanted to be sure no man other than himself went anywhere near her. “Earlier along, he never used to ask  me. But now, he askes me everyday, whether some guy physically touched me. And when I say no, he makes me recount every incident of the day. Sometimes I get scared when I think what might happen if someone touches me accidentally when I am with him.”

“Trust” she lamented, “is something I believe someone could never associate with me.  I do not think I am bad enough to break the trust of someone who cares about me, but what can I do if he doesn’t trust me….” Her words trailed off. Did I catch a tear that was surfacing at the corner of her eyes? I presume this is a common sentiment cutting across all girls and women who step out of their home for livelihood. They have to answer a hundred often irritating questions to prove if they adhere to the standards of piety men set for her. They are indoctrinated every morning when they step out not to trust anyone, and in some sense that indoctrination boomerangs back on them when they return home, often tired, from work.

I had a bunch of dictionaries at home, but that day I bought one from her. Someday if I have to look up the meaning of trust, the first thing I’ll open will be Thenmozhi’s dictionary.

Pursuit of Happiness

"Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be."

Abraham Lincoln

I have an average one way commute time of around twenty minutes from where I stay to where I work. Barring a few occasions when traffic or the pressures of job snarl up my attention, I would say I enjoy the commute, the solitude that rides beside me in my car. The solitary sojourn gives me time and a frame of mind to ponder over a wide range of things – personal, professional and even occasionally news events..! Solitude normally induces a chain reaction of thoughts. One thought leads to another, and so on. Simple logic, your mind is not bound when you are with yourself, no mannerisms to follow, no etiquette to break.

It was during one of those trips, while I was waiting on a red traffic light that I saw a bunch of bright, bubbly eyed, energetic and enthusiastic children crossing the road to take their school bus. It just stuck me at that instant, the magnitude of loss that tagged along with the process of growing up. Where was the joy I used to experience when I used to walk or cycle to school? That feeling bordering on ecstasy when you know the when the bell rings on this class, the next hour is PT? As much as time is a healer, time is a dampener as well. With time, when you grow up, your surrounding injects a huge dose of “maturity” into you. The society lays down rules which prevents you from acting “childish.” There is a barrier between propriety and impropriety which you never cared for as a child, but which you as an adult, try to uphold.

Simple pleasures. Stepping out when it is raining. As a child, you simply used to love to run out without a care in the world that you would get wet. Your natural tendency is to just go to the centre of the world and drench out completely till the rain stops, and it gets more enjoyable if it gets your mother to chase you. The sheer, unbridled joy. And now? You cuss upon the rain since it inevitably comes when you intend to step out. You think between jackets, umbrellas and what not to protect you from monsoon even when your intention is to get to your car parked a hundred meters away. And in spite of using any of the afore mentioned methods, you still manage to swear when you finally make to your car, because a drop or two (or maybe more) managed to break all of your obstacles and find its way onto your nicely pressed shirt. Did I forget that I so used to love those droplets falling on me once upon a time?

Lunch at school. Used to be an elaborate, often clumsy and sometimes even an unfair affair. You never had any etiquettes when you used to snatch stuff from someone else’s box. You used to enjoy sitting with your friends and munching stuff from your tiffin box. All those chaos associated with the ringing of the lunch bell at school. And now..? Occasions are getting scarcer when you can sit with everyone and share an elaborate lunch. Manners prohibit you from diving inside someone else’s lunch box scourging, and if we do glance into someone else’s box, we attempt to make it as subtle as possible. “No thanks, I am on a diet”, “Oh thanks, maybe just a little bite”….  

Celebrations. Be it festivals, be it personal achievements, even the joy and celebrations associated with them seem to have become symbolic. What used to be getting together with family and entire days of camaraderie has now been reduced to a weekend party in some high end pub in town. Or an IM or text message wish. With a smiley, not a smile.

I do not have any control over life, I walk the way everyone before me has walked. And I show the way for someone from posterity. The light has turned green, and under this blue sky I take my foot from the brake pedal and shift it towards the gas pedal. It is then I notice the tiny drops of rain that have fallen upon my windshield. As I cross the junction, moving past the kids getting into the bus, my thoughts come back to where it all started, that I have to get to the office before the rain gets heavier. Shoot, the nasty headache from yesterday’s promotion party at the city tavern….

Dialogue

“I wasn’t sure if you would come.”

“I thought a lot about whether to come or not. I couldn’t turn you down, not this time.”

“How are you?”

“Fine. And you?”

“Do you expect me to answer that?”

“You haven’t changed, one wee bit.”

“You certainly have. Have put on a lot of weight.”

“You used to like me being fat, remember?”

*Smiles*

*Smiles*

“So?”

“Nothing.”

“Coffee?”

“No.”

“Weren’t you a coffee addict?”

“I was. And I am. But now, I’d say, is not the best time for a coffee.”

“Okay.”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“Why didn’t you call me?”

“The last time I got your call, it was bad enough.”

“I’m sorry. Those were different circumstances.”

“How’s life now?”

“Work keeps me busy. At office, and at home.”

“How’re uncle and aunty?”

“Not in the prime of their health. Weak but strong.”

“Hmm. So?”

“Nothing.”

“Always wondered what’d have been the case if you had read that email I sent.”

“I was never good at reading emails. Still not there yet.”

“Okay then. See you.”

*Sighs*

*Sighs*

“Hey.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“That was not nothing, is it?”

“I have missed your presence in my life. Just wanted to tell you.”

“Famous last words?”

*Smiles*

*Smiles*

“Are you sure you want to leave now?”

*Sighs*

“I think I better…”

“When will I meet you next?”

“It’s a small world. There are a lot of railway stations and bus stations you can bump into me.”

*Laughs*

*Laughs*

“So?”

“Nothing. Don’t feel like saying goodbye.”

“Let’s part without the goodbye. Not like we’re doing it the first time.”

*Half smiles*

*Half smiles*