a mARTIAN dIARY

Easy to ignite,
Power limitless, riches untold,
Future architect of its architect
A life riddled with death

Creaking fans, once-pitch-black-now-grey black boards, a sleepy weekday afternoon and 50 odd kids trying not to sleep off lest they get caught by their “madam” propagating the system that everyone loves to hate today. These are the scenes under which l learnt most of the concepts that define me today.

“…and this chaff and waste which is thrown away in other countries feeds our huge cattle population…” . Since resilience was too big a word for me at that time, this is the line,(image rather, of a bovine feast) I attached to concept most akin to resilience that my young mind could conjure up . And with it, it also gave an important pillar in the value system of my social identification of being an Indian. It was these very forgotten brain synapses that were tingled when I recently stopped at a traffic light and this saw this image.

In these times of great uncertainty, this is one picture that gives great solace to my heart. Why? For to me, it is an epitome of what differentiates us the rest of the world. And to stretch the limits (Literally) it would also be the best picture to answer the question “What will happen to our economy and our people in face of this slowdown?”

For the uninitiated this is the picture of a tyre of one of the typical monsters that ply the road in India. This one is of a yellow variant which reminds me more of Adthoma from spadikam but that’s probably besides the main point here. Now I am no dendrochronologist but I am sure that there are many a stories behind each of that crack and rings which is the result of the wonderful phenomenon called “re-treading”. And this is where we score!

Today people talk about cost cutting, but I think as a nation we took a PhD in it long back. This resilience and cost effectiveness in the Indian culture is not something that has been consciously nurtured up by us, but something that has grown out of brutal necessity. It’s no simple joke when you have to provide for nearly 18% of the worlds population on 2% of its land! And this is something we have learnt to do beautifully.

They say when people are agitated, like by being woken up in the middle of their sleep, they generally start abusing in their mother tongue. Only time will tell that if that in this hour of need, the class of Indians (including me) tainted by western education, who are in a place where they can rewrite the history and redefine world power equations, will be able to fall back onto our core Indian values to see the storms through.

But its these pictures that I see every day in life- from the raddiwalla (scrap-collector) who goes thru hazardous garbage – a work that would ensure a litigation in any other country (legacy code reuse?) , to the truck driver who tries to make that extra buck by offering his empty company truck space on his empty return journey (Reverse-supply-chain ?) that make me believe that if anyone is going to weather out this storm, its gotta be an Indian first.

So my request to Indians trying to cope with the slowdown – Please look around and be inspired!

1 + 1 is no longer 2
And happiness comes in fancy packages
In the day of the satisficers
No one wants to look beyond
Content with indifference not brought
But nurtured gradually by the unknown will

As our castle stands weakened
Is it the evolved motto?
Or just another trench with no drawbridge
Dug up to shield the peasants
But isn’t it the nobility who fear more?

And for each foe kept out
One more starves to death inside

Stimulus! That small spark that can initiate that chain of thought that keeps you from madness. Each link on the chain savoured for the moment for its beauty but also for the fear of non visibility of the next. And again till the end.

The end of the chain prescient either as the chain weakens leading to its gruesome death with the just the infamy of being some random thought in some crazy existence, no more bullet points at its epitaph, or as it strengthens bringing the loop to a close, still destined to be forgotten as the result takes the spotlight.  And it detaches. It detaches and you, motionless not by your volition, see it float away into the vacuum of thought.

But nature does not like vacuum. It fills. It fills with the repetitive chain that you tried so hard to escape. Yes the same one, the tormentor from whom you had celebrated your freedom. But no rescue is permanent, you realise, as you fall back into the depth a familiar pit, whose only problem is that it’s just too familiar.  But the chain is stronger as it has grown weaker in your absence, patiently lurking in the forbidden ally of your mind, waiting for you in its solitude.  Should you now re-forge it with the very hand that first made it what it is or should you abandon it. But if only you had the choice.

So you lie near the forge furnace going through the motions, trapped, waiting for the next one to come along, to shackle you in its own length and hide you from the heat and fire of the furnace.

Will it end?

Balance. We humans as a race are obsessed with it. Every story, every song, every life needs to have a balance. The perpetual good vs. evil, where until the balance is restored no story is complete and if we think it is, we accused of thinking small, and encouraged to think from a larger plane of being. I am no different for however cynical I get (have got) there is that underlying glimmer that hope for it. Balance.

(Goodbye My Lover) And we have god, the great shopkeeper, ever ready with the extra cup of good or evil to set the balance straight. Life is easy for us, for the balance is out of our hand, and more importantly it exists controlled by some invisible strings. The connotations of helplessness that set in with “strings” make it too fatalistic and easy. But is it really that easy? For don’t we have enough tricks up our sleeve to control how the balance is distributed and aren’t we anyway too neck deep in our gentrified life to be not bothered, and isn’t the pain and joy that comes with this is what makes us live and not survive. And god there to ensure the balance of worry and bother exists and is maintained at the cosmic level. A contradiction ? Yes but one that, by virtue of working, ceases to be one

Just like me sitting here hoping that this vomiting of words is going to have an effect on the greater balance of the universe, which, even if it does, will be known to be only by my belief and not by my senses. At this juncture god revisits us giving the conviction for this belief to exist, becoming that self fulfilling prophecy which exists by virtue of its improbable inception and is equally true by virtue of its existence.

(So Long Jimmy) But too much of people to my liking, yet I am enjoying it. The contradiction is too strong and the urge of the reclusive side stronger. The darkness engulfs me, manifesting it in channels that I can easily accept without questioning my sanity. God comes in again this time in form of an urge to feel a temple. So I walk.

(Wisemen) Contradictions galore! My mind wavers at first, but then slowly draws comfort from the chord it strikes with the surroundings. The first part of my pilgrimage, or mental masturbation if you will, takes me about half an hour. In my loneliness James Blunt, gives me company making me feel lonelier, happier. His’ is a monologue, but I have nothing to add, nothing to contradict, only the need to listen.

And so I sent some men to fight,

And one came back at dead of night.

Said he’d seen my enemy.

Said he looked just like me,

So I set out to cut myself and here I go

(Same Mistake) The song is banging full volume thru my SE earphones, making me feel like a character from an Alejandro González movie, father time obliging , the world moving in slow motion as the headlights on a dark road look at me like sneering eyes and stares that pierce through the air conditioned interiors with filled disdain (or jealousy?) . I forget it’s the middle of the road. For a while the world stands still for me. The music penetrates deeper into my organism than what the stares could even dream off, a state of orgasm, but then the survival instinct kicks in guiding me to the footpath. The pseudo sense of machismo, creating a temporary hormonal in-balance, is countered by my sense of reality, at least at a subconscious level. The veracity of the situation is lost in my consciousness but captured fully by some vague part of me to whom I owe a lot. Probably some fuzzy act of cosmic balance to ensure that this piece gets written or just that I brush tomorrow? I understand the pretence of the situation but it does not take anything away from what the moment is to me.

(Your Beautiful) The ground grows softer, as the soiled remains of the deconstruction work that is currently going on in Delhi gets solace under my feet. Their new resting ground, as the city marches on into its tryst with new India. Is something under your feet trampled or is it protected till its eventual erosion from our memory? The contradiction strikes me. But for now the imprints that I leave on the soil, only to be washed by the next rain, gets some hope of care and remembrance in the picture that I take.

(1973) Images of 21 grams flash through my mind as I see rolled up glass left scattered after the last accident. My mind wanders into the realms of absurdity as I think about the people involved, and their family. About how it would feel for a kin to come back to that place which lay witness to the last few moments of a life never meant to leave so soon. To see a leaf dancing to the wind in front of their eyes, the same leaf that bore the weight of the splash of blood so close to that what runs in their veins? To have time running parallel and be able to reach out and touch that leaf during its herculean moment or smell the flesh blood but be unable to do anything. But eternal return consoles me with the knowledge that each moment, from your birth to your death all run parallel, not interfering with each other, but existing for an eternity. For it is the same with a book that one reads with each character reborn, different yet similar, in each mind that it comes across, sometimes taking more, sometimes less life that what the author intended more dependent on the neural pathways and experiences of the mind than the words from which it came, each stream running parallel to one other.

Balance. My hunt for balance is successful as I finally see the gate back to the campus at a distance. The sight is broken by involuntary pangs closing my eyes as James engages in his final vocal gymnastics for the day. And then all things in the world seem to fit again.