The Idea-Smithy and I decided on a prompt for writing fiction. When she adds her story, it will be linked. I’m withholding the prompt to avoid spoilers.
My recent updates on various social media networks about the difficulty of writing fiction notwithstanding, I completed the “story”.
Funny has two flavours.
One that makes and one that tastes.
We can be both, but we are not necessarily both.
One cooks, one eats.
One can eat what one can cook. Not always, though. It’s always better when someone else eats what we cook.
A friend refused to come to my place ever, because he discovered that I cook. I am now referring to ‘real’ cooking. Like food. He is afraid of dying of food poisoning.
That is funny.
I tried to be funny once. I wrote a post.
Tried.
You are funny or you are not.
Perhaps you cannot always be funny.
Or, once you were funny, now you are not. Maybe you will be funny later.
What you cook remains the same but their tastes change.
Maybe you will cook differently in some time.
Maybe it will appeal to the new tastes.
Maybe not.
What’s important, is the food.
Not whether you cook it or eat it.
One who eats is as important as the one who cooks.
The kitchen needs the dining room. And vice versa.
There’s too much of more. There’s a new fanatic in town, and her exposed argot has more words that end with -er.
Faster, smaller, thinner, longer. Sharper. And the sorts.
In Victor Hugo’s apt words, however, argot is the language of the dark; a language of misery.
Here’s a blurred photo.
It’s blurred. You cannot see much detail. There is hardly any specificity in the image. What does this mean for the image? Not for the photographer (that’s me, and I do not care much about what you think of me). Does it become a bad image because, alas, we cannot see the twist and the weave of the fibre that makes the thread that have revolted out of the binding Rexine?
A friend would take up this argument and talk of test cricket and the T20 format.
I’ll digress. If you don’t want to, skip the marked section.
<Start Digress>
I quit Flickr Pro and moved to 500px because it was a suggestion by a well known photographer. I hated it as soon as I saw the “top” photos. They just do not seem real to me. 500px is a muscle show of post-processing. Not that post-processing is bad. I use it all the time. I was looking for a word when I was discussing 500px with a friend. I didn’t find it then, I have it now.
Synthetic.
Over the years, the 500px platform went through a number of revisions and changes, growing together with technology and photographers, and keeping focus on the highest quality photos. Via 500px (emphasis, mine)
500px offered a way to sell photographs, but I was not (and am not) interested in it, anyway. I’ve (mostly) quit 500px.
</End Digress>
There is no doubt that our tastes are changing, our attention spans diminishing. We have lesser time for our friends and no time for ourselves. Enough research floating around to prove that. 2831215 is the phone number of the travel agent of my first company. This was when mobile phones didn’t exist. Now, I don’t even remember my fourth travel agent’s name. Hell, I don’t even remember if I use a travel agent anymore. I have to remind myself to add keywords to her address card. My choice of keywords defines what I will forget about her and what I might use to search for her. It’s exhausting, in a way. Her’e a worthwhile exercise – how many mobile numbers (of close friends or family) do you know by-heart?
I need to travel a bit. But I digress. (I should have warned you)
Adobe recently announced that the Creative Suite will now be cloud-based. To make the news worthwhile they included some super sharpening tools to the CS. (Now you know what triggered this post)
Apart from the irritating plugin that I *have* to use with browsers, I do not use any Adobe products because of their bloated sizes and prices. But this post is not about Adobe, at all. Software is a tool; it makes sense in a way that you use it. I find arguments about tools pointless. As long as you do your work well, the tool doesn’t matter. Hammer vs. Pestle. Mac vs. Win or Can vs. Nik. Same difference.
This post is about simple questions.
How much sharper do we need our images to be? How slimmer should our phones be? How faster should our computers be? How much thinner should our laptops become?
And while the inanimates around us become more ‘-er’ and ‘-er’, what about us?
What ‘-er’ should we be striving for?
My best friend and wife (I’m talking of the same person, here), is participating in the Rare Acts of Political Engagement, (R. A. P. E.) show, to be held in New Delhi from the 10 – 30 of April at Art Bull Gallery.
The show is curated by the well-known Johnny ML.
Location:
Art Bull, Art Gallery & Auction House
F-213 C, First Floor SIS House
Lado Sarai, New Delhi – 110030
Phone: +91-11-6568 3083
You are all invited!
I have been blessed as far as friends are concerned. Not because I have them in my life. But, because they have taught me that being friends means that you overcome geography, time-zone, time of the day, schedules, and circumstances.
And, that friendship is a two-way street, but it works as a one-way street too. Love may seek reciprocation; friendship does not.
It is my friends who allow me to recognise who my friends are, and make me an able friend.
There’s a lot that you can write, when you want to say something about something that has been fifteen years in the making. You could talk right from where and how it started and chronologically reach to the point you are, right now. Or you could extract specific events and talk of them as special markers. Then, there is the philosophising of the period, assimilated in a single presentation.
But it also happens, that you don’t need to say anything at all. Because everything that you want to say is already known, and everything that you feel is already experienced. And while social networks work overtime to corrupt the meaning of the word ‘friends’; there are, thankfully, places in this world where the essence of that word is just as beautiful as it was always supposed to be.
Thank God for that, and for you!
There’s a conversation I know of, one that I cherish. I lived it, experienced it in a way that that my entire life participated in it.
It was a while ago. I have an opportunity to reconstruct it. I am there and so are you. I live it up. I try and make the magic that you and I experienced before. I choose the same venue, I try to be myself (which becomes my undoing) and I push to recreate the magic of what we once experienced.
I fail.
Miserably.
Since that day when we experienced magic; things have changed. You have; I have. And the way we interact with our environmental variables has changed. There is no way to recreate the magic that we once experienced. That is the lore of scripted romantic movies. That is why movies make sense – we watch them over and over again – because they are a time machine of sorts – they operate without variables. The constant of the script allows us our illusions.
But your life and mine – it’s not that simple – I spoke with you – and I had no idea what I said. The time of the day, your mood and mine, what has transpired since we last met, that small angle of how you sit and therefore how I see you – it changed. The differential made all the difference. And suddenly we have nothing to say. All our previous adventures are only the markers of what made sense, then. Our today is an unfortunate clean slate where we are reluctant to scribble what we feel.
Time is the only currency between us; once in abundance – now scarce. The world has changed and I am now learning not to believe in magic.
At the end of the day, every post that you (I, actually, for this blog) write is about the emotions that are stirred because of an event.
Of the million emotions that you go through a day – which one is worth writing about? Now, after the tribulations of the daily dose, you now have to choose the one that is bloggable; one that is worth expressing; possibly the one that your readers may relate to you. You know, likes and comments. There is no way to identify that one stinging feeling in a 24 hour span, really. We are conditioned to ignore the ones that hurt us the most. It is a survival instinct. But the one’s that ‘are’ trivial – those lovely ones – those with the scope – those with the latitude that allow us to express ourselves. Cute, aren’t they? We enjoy them.
They are the ones that we can wield. They are inspirational – because they let us hit that person in front of us – help us feel like a winner. We look for those. Of the million emotions that we go through in a day – we choose to express just one or perhaps – two. But the remainders, they come to bear – they stand like green ghosts behind a simple expression of affection and those aggressive ghosts are ready for war. So even if you just wanted “only” to say, “Hello, dear friend, how are you?” – them over-eager ghosts, will slash the sword to ignite a fiery conversation.
That’s when we lose it.
We all live with ghosts – no doubt about that – but these ghosts have been with us for so long – we ought to have learned to tame them. Tell them, at every conversation, we are not at war. Remind them, that ghosts are not necessarily evil; remember Casper?
But the defensive friend – when he sees the ghosts more easily than he can see you – cannot, but be on standby; half-sheathed.
There is no “f” of friendship – for, to me, it is a complete word; nay – it is a complete world.
If my “reindship” is in place, do you have it in you to forgive the “f” that I did not, allegedly, understand?
There is no space left.
To stretch your arms – stretch your legs – lie down and look at the blue sky. To laugh an expansive laugh.
There is no space left.
For a good feeling to reverberate hundred times over and cumulate it for the future. Where echoes can remind you of the moments that passed us by.
There is no space left.
Where all can gather and dance the dance of joy in a place devoid of an edge. Where rhythms can take us far away to worlds that we have not seen.
The only space, if you can call it that, left — is in our minds and hearts. An infinite space. Where we can be ourselves.
And a billion of these spaces exist — but seldom intersect.
We all have dreams.
Well, most of us do. I am not talking of those abstract blobs of irrationality that we usually cannot control when we are asleep. I am talking of those that we live when we are wide awake. The kind, when they are the most lucid when we are in a classroom where the lecturer wishes to be elsewhere as much as we do; or in a meeting where everyone except the person who has convened the meeting, knows that it’s a waste of time. What goes in our head during such events is a mash-up of dreams, thoughts, ideas, plans – and they seem to effortlessly slide on a plane which defines what we really want. And as tangible that plane is when we dream – soon after – it becomes an abstraction of nothingness as we are sucked into our deigned zombie-like activities.
Today is a special day – and my love-hate relationship with milestones notwithstanding, I am happy.
A year has passed after a certain event – and I am able to discriminate where I stand vis-à-vis where I thought I stood, once upon a time. This GPS-kind of activity has not been easy. Enough shock, hurt, pain has been encountered and endured before finding the absolute location of where I am. There has been much difficulty in letting go and even more difficulty in denying the questioning brightness of the truth that has harshly scalded my eyes. The asking heat, without malicious intent, asked me if I would confess that I was living in the wax-world a-la Indraprastha; I said I was not. I fought it for a year.
It’s slow, but I see the wax melting.
And those grandiose images of false comfort burned down to their bare element. The bright light smiled, I think, as if saying – I was always on your side, but I had to sit on the other side of the table – because you were gone for far too long, and lost to me. I would have preferred to sit with you and look together – but we were looking in different directions. Therefore, I had to confront you, said the wise light.
“I am glad, we can now look in the same direction.”
As I stand where I am bereft of the wax palace, I wonder. It must have been the light that, with its heat – melted the opaque walls so that I could see beyond.
It’s late now, and what I see is an even darkness. I stand where an impressive palace once stood. I see nothing of the grandeur that once made me believe I was king. I find myself on the top of a hill here, though. Alone. But I feel the breeze that the faraway sea brings and finds its way through the valleys to where I stand. It has a gentle sting. It does not matter that the wax structure is no more, because, soon, it will be morning. I know one thing: I will see more than I ever did.
And, I will see clearly.
Who were those people? What were they made of; what made then real? How did they get love in return? Love for love. They must have found out the secret to simplify this transaction.
Lost! The roads have parted and all of them chose a separate path. For a while they walked with me; and in those moments we lived in heaven. Who would ever have the time to bear the idiosyncrasies of me for while longer than is possible. And who am I to complain if my shadow, even, often, has seemed distant.
But, there is no one long road that we can walk together. If we are to be our selves, it is a truism. But we are to cherish that companionship that we experienced for a few miles, or less. For that has made our journey worthwhile. That is what added colour. And we shall meet the others, the new ones, who will in a peculiar way remind us of our friends. In turn, they will become friends.
But that is all friends will do, they will walk with us for a while, only. If they walk with us forever they are slaves.
Do not despise them because of the length of the journey. Love them for the content of the journey.
PS: Thanks is due to Sahir Ludhianvi, for all that happened in italics in this post.
A letter is due.
It has been for a long while now. It has been promised for a while. And it lives, with its honest intentions and desire to be alive. Yet, it does not “be-come.” The recipient of the letter is special. The letter, therefore deserves to be special. In this need of mapping, it lives a ghostly life. It exists, but it does not. It is true in spirit but it is unable to manifest itself on paper.
And paper it shall be. For this one letter is supposed to be tangible. The rough-smooth texture of paper, the blot of ink on it. When I write it, it has to drag at the tissue of the paper, as I pull ink through it – with curved lines that form the words.
The words that form the sentences.
The sentences that form the paragraphs.
The paragraphs that form the body.
The body that holds in itself the world of the emotions that I experience at this moment – that only you are privy to, my friend. How, shall I do that? How shall I make the dance happen? Because it is not just any letter that I want to write – it is a letter that I want to write to you.
My feelings have dried more than the ink in my pen. They are flakes I dare not touch for they will crumble. In their marginal existence – they carry a semblance of expression. Yet, today, I worked with the dried ink. The basin, water, and some help from me – and I have my Camlin screw-top working. I cleaned it well, water, cloth rags and all. I got out my letter-writing pad and I started writing.
Today is not the day – was the first thought that came to my mind. I was to pre-occupied with my ink-pen. Will it stay true like the other times I had written a letter to my friend? Will it participate in the symphony of my thoughts and the ink on paper? Will it move as effortlessly as my thoughts, once I get started? Does the pen remember how we used to write? Will it allow our usual flourish of the strokes and the tails of the letters? Strong stems and sharp corners? Sharp apices and beautiful bowls?
After the training I realise that it is not just my pen that needs training.
It was a lovely long conversation yesterday.
We talked much, of life. The setting couldn’t have been more appropriate as the youngest in our family was sleeping blissfully in the middle, as experiences took off and landed all around her and above her. We were like four ATCs sending our prized flights to each others’ airports. And there was a lot of traffic.
In fourteen years, you tend to accumulate a lot I guess, of material possessions. And of emotional baggage, making their rounds on a conveyor belt. Only one or two belong to us, but each bag gets our attention. We have accumulated and stored a lot. Most of them however, are memories. Some are good, some not so good – but they are ours.
In fourteen years we have understood what it means to travel light. We have learnt to identify our bags very well in the baggage claim.
In fourteen years, we have discovered where we want to go – it’s not a place where most people want to go. When we check-in, the queue at our counter is much smaller and there’s no baggage to check in. When we arrive at our destination there isn’t a queue for the taxis. They some time give us funny looks, usually they do not understand where we are going, but we don’t get bothered with that any more.
In fourteen years we have taught ourselves to get surprised. Sometimes the surprises are nasty, but in return we have experienced the most exotic destinations in the world and in our hearts. We have found ourselves in ways that we didn’t know we existed. We chose not to play the tried and tested games because the rules were designed for the same result that everyone wanted, and we have won unusual trophies.
In fourteen years we have wandered the forests and have been scared and angry and happy and excited. We have lost a lot and because of that we have gained much.
In fourteen years, we have discovered ourselves because of each other.
And, after fourteen years, it seems just like yesterday.
*
Song for the day (and forever): God Only Knows – Beach Boys (Prefer the version that was used in Love Actually)
This post was originally published a couple of days ago. I got some of my most interesting, thoughtful comments on that post. However, I deleted that post. I was not happy with what I had written. When I started to write the post, I was quite clear about what I wanted to write. I realised, however, that as the post progressed, it was bouncing randomly all over the place and it ended up being a staccato rant than anything else. Not that rants aren’t acceptable – but when rants run over the original thought, the thought is stuck in the mud.
I have, at the end of this post, added the three comments that I received on the deleted post. They refer to sections in the deleted post, so they are decontextualised to an extent – yet, by themselves they are very valuable thoughts and have their rightful place in this post.
*
Last Saturday, Rayo, a good friend – who I regret not meeting as often as I want to – asked (said?) this on Facebook:
You know what’s the most interesting thing on FB? It’s you. Not what you read on the Washington Post Social Reader, what games you played courtesy Zynga, what videos on cool things in advertising/marketing/whatever you watched or food you ate. (Well, maybe the food you ate.)
Instead, how about you talk about the most wonderful person you know? Yourself. What you’re thinking, what you’re feeling. What’s happening in your life. Be open. Be personal. Share. Make it interesting. Make it count. Be yourself. Break down your limited profiles. Dare to be the same person to everyone. It’s a social network. So be social. Can you?
I re-posted this status as the “Facebook Manifesto”; he seemed to agree to the title that I had given his status. Facebook themselves would dismiss this caption for obvious reasons.
A while ago, I had posted a thought about Genuine Interest. And I meant every word in the post. The two comments I received were one-word comments – which said a lot. When you get certain one-word comments, from certain people – they are more meaningful: it is proof that you have expressed very well.
As much as I agree with Rayo about what we should do on Facebook, I know we are losing it. There was a time when I wrote about what was happening in my life, what I felt — broadcasting it to my friends. There was a time when Facebook was about friends – it wasn’t about networking. Rayo posted his status update on Saturday. Sunday, I posted a photograph that I had taken early in January. I have been posting many photographs from my archives to Facebook. A friend asked me, if I had quit “working” (The inherent thought being – where do you get the time to travel so much – implying – you don’t have to work, do you?) I took a long time to digest that comment. What did she mean?
It is obvious that she meant it in jest. It did bring to fore the thought, however, of the possibility that this could well be the beginning of the conversion of a perception to belief.
Our social networking has been reduced to sharing the already shared – news that has little connection to who we are. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That is the case of links – the currency of the web. We are trading in that currency, in the guise of networking. It is now easy for us to have a thousand “friends” but not know our “friends.” There is granular control to partially or completely block people, or know everything they do on Facebook. We can control what we want to know and see, about our friends. For every person we block completely or partially, someday we will have to wonder why they are on our friends’ list. Not to discredit online social networking: it has been useful. I have met some of the most interesting people online through Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter (and of course through this blog). One, who I now count as one of my best friends, even if we have met just five times, so far. And, make no mistake, I still stand by what Rayo said – we are missing out on getting to know each other, online. The advantage of being online is to overcome the constraints of time and geography rather than posting news, videos, guilt updates, and disturbing photos.
Facebook is the new Orkut.
We more or less do the same thing on Linkedin that we do on Facebook – but we call the people in our network – connections. To my mind, that makes more sense. We are only connected online.
When we can never know ourselves completely in this lifetime, for sure, we will never know others completely. We may not even agree with what others think or believe, all the time. The point of Genuine Interest is not to know everything about a person, nor is it to like everything about another person. It is mutual, and has inherent objective acceptance. My peeve and therefore my agreement with Rayo’s status was that we tend to become different online. Facebook being more personal than Linkedin (for example) leads us to believe something about a person that may not be true. Folks who are most prolific online, suddenly have nothing to say when you meet them, and vice versa. To their credit, I also know (very few) people who are the same – online and offline.
When you discuss people, personalities and perceptions – subjectivity will rule. The “both-sides-of-the-coin” will crowd the conversation. There is no one answer. (as I was reminded in one of the comments). And I wasn’t looking for one. Earlier, I used to enjoy being on Facebook, the noise, however, has got to me and I see no signs of it abating. The more I am on Facebook, the more I feel I should be off it.
In any case, after I have unsubscribed partially or completely to all the noise, there won’t be any writing on the wall.
*
Three comments were posted on the previously deleted post. They may not make much sense now, given that this post has now changed form – to an extent. But these comments, which are posts in themselves are ones that I treasure for the unravelling of thoughts on friendship, online-ness and genuine interest.
By batulm:
Very thought-provoking post, Atul. In fact, you put together several thoughts that were nebulous in my own mind. These are the reasons why I hardly use FB. Or any other social networking platform for that matter.
But then, the idea of really knowing, really being interested in another person, has also faded away with age and other considerations. It is something that I am re-learning.
By asuph
I read this in the morning, while still juggling breakfast, kid’s morning rituals, and wife’s looks. Okay I made the last thing up, but, the point is, I read it without full attention that it deserves. And if I wait for eternity to find time and attention to comment, I’d probably not, just the way I haven’t to your few posts that I really wanted to comment on. So, at the risk of sounding like I haven’t read the post at all, or have confused it with some other post, I’m going to offload thoughts that the one, inattentive, reading has originated in my mind. I know you’d forgive that, so won’t ask for forgiveness. Silence would have been more inconsiderate I believe.
Trivial: I’m ashamed that I couldn’t even come up with different one word reaction for that post and the manifesto.
Reciprocation: I have a slightly different take on this, and I think you know it, but just for completeness. If I am interested in knowing ‘everything’ about a person, I will try to do that. It would not matter to me if the other person wants to know ‘everything’ about me. Reciprocation is fraught with dangers, and I can be happier by letting go that requirement, and being the selfish person that I am, I chose that over the other, hard, requirement for reciprocation. In fact, with offline friends, I have always insisted on non-reciprocation. I do what I can, because it makes me happy. I don’t expect others to reciprocate. And in the so called ‘real’ life, I’ve been lucky enough to have had people take more interest in my life/well being, than I’ve been able to. It makes me feel a little guilty — because that’s not what I had bargained for, rather the opposite — but then I don’t mend my philosophy.
Knowing all: Consciously/subconsciously, in (I’ll drop so called henceforth) real life, we project selectively. Most of us that is. We’re taught to do that by bitter experience. The child that we were, naturally shared everything. Growing up was learning to protect, project, to balance hurt/disappointment with joy/excitement, to become closed — to various degree to different people, to be aware of circles of concerns and their intersections. How would our online ethos escape that baggage? How would they be very disjoint from ethos offline? And I wouldn’t expect it from other people for sure. About me, I don’t know yet. I stayed away from google+ because somewhere I DO want to be same person to everyone. I DON’T want to think ‘should I share this with him/her’. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to share everything with everyone. So then the FB-me becomes the least common denominator of all those me’s I’d have been with different people. And I grant you, it will be boring compared to the me you’d have got if only you and I were on FB. I don’t have an easy solution.
Do I want to only know you (not you you, but anyone) that I like? Not really. In real life I like people as a whole, or don’t as a whole. It’s not fair sometimes, especially to the latter group. But without loss of generality, the scheme works. I rarely let the people in latter group hurt me, because they don’t have access to the ‘core’ me. The former group, on the other hand holds tremendous power to hurt me, and rarely do they use it. And when they do, it hurts worse than it would have if I had not being doing the liking in a packaged deal way. I’ve been told I don’t judge people correctly. It’s actually wrong. I know I’m taking a risk, knowing that I’m giving away that power, and I’m ready for that hurt, for the rewards are so rich. But then that’s not the point. Point is this: since I do the package deal sort of thing, I actually do not mind knowing things about someone I like that I don’t like. If they’re close enough, I actually let them know it. Sometimes that doesn’t work as I expected because I had judged the ‘closeness’ wrongly. But I don’t change much. And sometimes, I like those things later, I even internalize them. For the I that I am (rhyme with ‘the sam that I am — Dr. Seuss) changes too, and I have to be open to that possibility.
The question is “do I have time to know ‘everything’ about you”. I sure wish I had. And there are some people, you’re definitely one of them, for whom I’d strive to make that time. But god knows I fall short. I don’t have answers for that either.
And finally, people rarely think about activities like FB, like some of us do. Online ethos is an oxymoron for them. If I cleaned my FB contacts off these people, I’d be left with very few. That might not necessarily be a bad thing. But so far, among the noise, there are still some signals. There is still some connection which I’m not sure I want to lose as of now. For, for those few people, I don’t need FB. I can pick up my phone. And so I live with FB as it has become. The day I won’t I’ll just go back to the phone.
PS: two of my ‘best’ friends are on FB for namesake. They rarely share anything there. And yet I know more about their lives than I do about most of my FB friends.
Sigh! Sorry for pedantic reply. I’m still hoping it’s better than no reply.
By Mahendra Palsule:
You say “I will not, in this post, question your social networking ethos” but I think you’ve proceeded to question others’ ethos towards the end of your post.
As asuph points out above, I think most of what you’ve written springs from and applies equally to offline ethos. How much of oneself one is willing to share, with whom, and how, differs from person to person. Even the core idea of ‘friendship’ differs from person to person. Every person has different ways of thinking about friendship. Giving others space to be themselves is a way of respecting their individuality, freedom, and privacy. This includes the way they use phones to communicate or use or don’t use social networks in whatever fashion they choose. The concept of a single manifesto for one social network that should apply to all is abhorrent to my mind. Forget social networks, there can’t even be a single manifesto about friendship!
“My Question: Are you willing to accept a person for who he or she is?”Not sure what you mean by ‘accept’ – I don’t think we have a choice. Other people are who they are irrespective of whether we accept it or not. Even acceptance can mean different things to different people. For example, in a group of three friends A, B and C, A being a smoker may be ‘accepted’ differently by B and C where B criticizes it and C doesn’t. C’s acceptance is in not criticizing it, B’s acceptance is in continuing to be a good friend despite it.Lastly, ‘acceptance’ can also include the acceptance of how the person uses different social networks, and asking or expecting others to use a social network in any particular way reveals a lack of acceptance to my mind.
“Or will you colour your opinions of their personality with your limited understanding of their limited online expression?”Our understanding of others is always limited, whether online or offline. Our understanding of others is always colored by their expressions, online or offline. This is normal, human behavior. Any pretense to the contrary is a sham. What is important to me personally is the awareness that my understanding is limited, and being open to enhance that understanding.
Soon, most of you will be away, and I hope you will not be checking your emails or your tweets or facebook (Facebook is almost a non-noun now, so I choose not to capitalise it) status updates. It’s a good thing, if you will do that. And, if you do insist on staying online – I hope it is all about you telling me what a good time you are having. So,
Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year.
No, I did not say Happy Holidays. Like, for example, the BBC has been doing on its channel.
The world’s changing into too much of averageness, And I will have none of it. Every specific thing that I have known – every festival is being reduced to an abstraction of meaninglessness. Hate me for it, but I refuse to participate in this politically correct (PC) charade
When it is Diwali, I will wish you a very Happy Diwali and Prosperous New year. When it’s Christmas, I will do the same. And I will wish you a Happy Id, depending on when the moon chooses to show itself. Even if it for a moment in that day, I will remember Guru Nanak’s teaching. I will wish you a Happy New Year, when the Parsee, the Tamilian, the Maharashtrain and when the Punjabi celebrates it; when anyone celebrates a New Year (I may not know your new year, that’s another thing). What the hell, if you decide a that a day in the year is a start of the new year, I will wish you then. (Just let me know about it)
I do not do Happy Holidays. Period.
I do not know what they mean. It is almost like wishing you a fun vacation. Which I will do – if you are going on a vacation. But I refuse to do it during a holiday given for a festival. If you look deeper at any festival, it is essentially a time to be with family and friends. To make merry, to connect, to eat together; to enjoy together. And each festival has a ritual, a means — a method — to be with family and friends. Some festivals have protocols. Some fun; some weird. You may not subscribe to them in their entirety, but in your own modified way, you will follow them, let go of your ego and high-practical-scientifically-oriented-thinking for those few days and just be. For most of us, these days, festival holidays, especially if they come in contact with a weekend, are a way to retreat from the daily routine. The significance of the festival is lost to us. Some may think that. I don’t, yet. As joint-families give way to nuclear families, it is the way to go. We still end up doing what we were essentially supposed to do at festivals. We are with family and/or friends and we make merry.
A few years ago when I had wished many of my customers in the US, a Merry Christmas, my colleague, who was based on the US for a while, had chided me for sending these messages. He identified a few of my customers, who were Jews and other non-Christians, and told me that it would be inappropriate to wish them a Merry Christmas. I thought about and acceded to his request and maintained the “Happy Holidays” protocol in the next few years. In my mind, however, I never ever completely agreed with him. He of course, never took the pain to remind me of Jewish festivals when I could wish them, specifically. I later asked him, why none of my customers ever wished anybody in my team a Happy Diwali? My team took the pain to explain that we would not be working for a Thursday and Friday and sent them Wikipedia links about Diwali. Apart from a few generous souls, no one ever wished my team a Happy Diwali. He obviously had no convincing answer. Most of the folks from the US, wished us a Merry Chirstmas, incidentally, in December as they proceeded to their “Happy Holidays”.
Isn’t it blasphemous to wish a Hindu or a Muslim a Merry Christmas? Or, for that matter, wish a Happy Diwali to a Christian? I do not know.
This post may be seen as the cultural incongruence we face, when working with different regions and religions. It possibly is; even, But, we need to make that slight extra effort; we need to understand that abstracting every festival to meaningless averages is not going to help us understand each other better. What will help us, is participating in each others’ festivals. I have been blessed that I was invited to a family Thanksgiving dinner, in the US, where the family kindly cooked chicken for me because they were not sure if I’d eat turkey (I did). I have been blessed that my friend from the UK has visited Lalbaug cha Raja, and participated in the Ganapati Aarti, with me at my home. I have been blessed that my friends, when they have stayed overnight at my place, have offered their morning Namaz at my home.
Most important of all, I have been blessed to have been taught to know and respect cultures around the world and that I can keep this respect alive without succumbing to political correctness. So, whether you are Christian or not, here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year.
What other people believe and do, does not determine who you are. What you believe and what you do, determines who you are.
Their genuine interest in your life; your genuine interest in their lives, is what helps the world go round. Take time, know the people in your life in the same way that they attempt to know you. In those small, sharp intervals of interest, this world becomes a better place.
Such, are your true friends.
She posted this photo to Facebook.
I was worried.
Bhimbetka was a cover up, I have to admit now.
But a cover-up that we were supposed to cover-up.
I cannot hold it any longer. For long, I have held the secret within me – and now it needs to come out in the open. We were surfing the surface of the blue sea — maneuvering through rocky reefs. Perhaps we seemed like an unsuspecting couple and were approached by a two men in black suits – no tie (else I would have known who they were) – who said that they needed us to do something. They injected a very viscous fluid; my left biceps. Suddenly I felt strong – I glanced at her, if this had impressed her in any way. I did not see a positive response. Perhaps, she knew that it was the effect of the viscous injection.
And without warning, they attached a cylindrical gadget to my nose.
“We need you to smell what’s on the rock”, they said. I asked them what rock they were speaking of. The guy on the left with two silver-capped teeth just smiled, as if demonstrating the only wealth he had ever accumulated.
“Of course, if you ever publish this, we will deny it. But we may not have to, actually”, they said, “because you have no idea who we are”. I was dazed. I did not have time to think – as they dropped me in the ocean. I sunk down graciously – smoothly. I’ll admit, fear gripped me like a friend who bear-hugs you – when he sees you after sixteen hours.
Having seen “The Abyss” and many such films of that genre – I wondered how I would survive – in my jeans and my iPod-enabled-Nike. But it was probably that viscous liquid which that helped sub-marine and enabled me to withstand the pressure under deep-water. But as I made my way to bottom of the sea, and wedged myself in this crevice, there I was – smelling the rocks with a smelloscope that they had attached to my nose. It was the sweet smell of being in an exotic place with friends. It doesn’t happen any more. Friends have got busy.
I think the men on the surface could also see the blue-white light, which washed over that deep rock. People on the surface seemed shocked. But I not only smelled, that rock, I discovered great meaning — which thankfully I did not require to report to them.
And I am being tracked by that white light at the bottom of the ocean. I never saw that light (it was behind me, as you can see), but I am glad she took this photograph. Perhaps those that I call my friends will know what it means to be deep down there, being alone, and knowing it all.
It has been a while since someone has ever challenged my thinking, my thoughts. Along comes an old friend. We are separated by geography, but neither one of us gives a damn.
We spoke of the world we live in. We spoke of the world that will bind us to a way of living. We talked of revolutions that we need to cause, to ensure that this country’s promise lives true. It is so easy to be a rebel, with or without a cause. I can parade my slogan and make you slave to a cause by being a predator on the very emotions that you seek release from. I can penetrate your innermost sense of helplessness and be the icon of your most suppressed expression.
For the most of us, our call and support of the unstudied cause is our re-shares on Facebook and retweets on Twitter. Our understanding of the constitution of this country laid wayside, we are flag-bearers of an unknown colour or emblem, just a current flavour. Our dismay of a prevailing situation overcomes our sense of right. Our call is simple – an uproar. Only on the basis of an inherent outrage that we experience; yet feel completely neutered to act against it.
You see, convenience trumps right – hands down, every time they face each other. These are enemies. Staunch. They will never shake hands. A person I respect a lot, once told me: There are ethics, and then there are ethics, and then there are ethics. I suspect, he was on the side of righteousness, but he was warning me about convenience. I have yet to decipher the meaning of his statement – I believe it was multi-layered – but I hope to get there, someday.
We need to put things in perspective.
For a millionth time – I am grateful for all my friends out there – irrespective of their ideology. They make me a better person.
In the last few months, I have visualised this day a number of times. Each time, a different picture emerged. And what I am experiencing today is nothing like all that I had visualised. The feeling is weirder than anything my imagination could conjure.
You do one thing for ten years and then a day dawns when you are not doing that one thing. That definitely counts for weird, in my books.
For those of you who aren’t in the know, I left my job at the company I started with seven wonderful people with nothing but a handful of dreams, a twinkle in our eyes and no resources, but our belief. What this journey was all about is obviously not within the scope of a single post, but suffice it to say, ten years later, I walk immensely rich with the love and learning that has been the continuous yield of this time.
Here’s to each and everyone of you that walked together: love!
My first real post about this day was on the count of 10 years. I evaded all means of being clear, meandered through the real point of the post, and engulfed it in a ball of emotions. Which, apparently, made for interesting reading, as most comments on that post will demonstrate. It was the first time I ever wrote about this day – as such – but in spite of my deflective attempts, the post sounded out the day – loud and clear.
A year passed by.
You could have easily concluded that it took me a whole of 11 years to know that it was love, after all. The title, was such. But then, love is a many-fangled and often-mangled thing. Each makes his and her own meaning and assumes that the other feels the same.
Another year passed by.
Now that love was (apparently) understood, 12 years later was all about beauty. Not the visual kind, but the one that we experience and hardly pay attention to. And the thing of wonder is the experience of experiencing such beauty. The actual process of it – as much as I hate using the word in such a post, in such a context.
One more year has passed now.
At 13, I think I am blessed. One theme has been recurrent every year – since the first one to this day. We ask each other one question every year this day – does it feel like these many years – and the answer is always resoundingly negative. We do not know why – even after thirteen years – why we don’t feel the stretch of the time as a strain on us. But we don’t care. I think, after a while the sharpness of it all blurs away, making understanding much easier. In the detail, is the strain that time imposes. In our lives and our work this sense has been growing beautifully on us.
Over thirteen years we have been able to let go of looking life in small detail, somehow. Apart from marking a conventional stamp on a calendar, this day’s significance has also begun blurring to a more meaningful abstraction.
