A Regional Society indeed are We

There's yet another thought which just keeps making me feel guilty. Its a collective guilt.

As a country, we have been bleeding for decades together, never as a whole but always in parts and bits and pieces. We never cared if Assam was burning; we claim ownership on Kashmir but never feel for the agonies or atrocities being committed there; did we ever start a movement when Ahmedabad was up in flames or Lucknow or Hyderabad or Jaipur. Did we ever react to the Orissa or Karnataka violence. Never, because we never feel ourselves to be an integral part of this land in its entirety. We always reacted regionally and not nationally. We have always treated parts of our country as a distant relative not even a close one, forget about thinking of India as a family. We just know that we belong to this large country called India, but have never behaved or reacted in that fashion. We all have created mini-Indias wherever we live and we think India is nothing but that. Our concerns get limited to that region alone. So much of a difference in the notional and the real Indias that we live in.

If and only if we matured long back n did not have this narrow outlook, may b things would have been different today. (Have we actually matured even now??!!!)

This time, the educated and effluent class got hit, so they have come in front of the media to express their rage. The aam aadmi would never be able to even express if something happened to him. He just immerses himself in his suffering with noone hearing or ready to hear what he wants to say. If the Assamese had high profile people who could capture media attention or if Orissa had dozens of Shobha Deys who could use the media to express their wrath, then the case would have been different.

The aam aadmi has noone to go to, noone to listen to and noone ready to listen to him. The media may create a story but he will never choose to wage an intellectual battle as the one we are fighting today. Its just that the speaking class got hit this time, n so is this wrath out in the open.
Thats the blunt truth.

Sadly, we are a party to this indifference and disregard in this heterogeneous and regional society.

The Metamorphosis

There, not very far away in time, sits a soul- sincere, serious and committed- committted to his work and committed to his own expectations. Anything that makes his work more arduous perplexes him, worries him and sets him on a note of incessant tension. The fear of not being able to execute things as planned or not being able to achieve what he has set out for himself bothers him quite a bit. Most of the times this high level of alertedness helps him being cautious enough to take all necessary precautionary measures or to avert anything avertable.

Pictures keep rolling one after the other. Incidents after incidents and stages after stages roll past as I passively become a part of this journey of self-evolution (devolution ??). The frames change and the settings roll back to the present.

This person little cares for anything wrong that may come in the near future. Believes more in dealing with the present. Cares not to bother himself much by foreseeable hindrances or high set targets. He thinks life is more about living than getting lost in all these worries. He believes in living by the present. Even the disappearance of his baggage for 3 days in this far away land does not affect him and he laughs his way throughout the experience. A sales stint which he knew would be very difficult, never produced sweat on his forehead. Not that he never tried to do anything but never felt bothered enough to try a bit more by anticipating future problems. He felt things would happen with time. And things did happen with time. Was that luck !!?


Sitting in bed at 4 am early this morning, in this shore city of the Mediterranean, having taken this sneak peep into my yesteryears, unfolds this astonishing realization of how life changes us or we change ourselves through life. From one end of this misty timescale I can at best make guesses how time and situations could have brought about these changes in me. Are they for the better or for the worse? The exact answers no one knows for sure. Over time there has emerged a clear change in my attitude toward life. Is this transformation good or bad, I do not know. Keeping cool is good but not being concerned or bothered about work can be harmful as well. Is it really carefree attitude or is it carelessness? or is it carefreeness juxtaposed with seriousness as well, the carefree aspect eclipsing the negative effects of worries- I am unable to figure thatout. For sure, I know that had I been a little more serious, I would have been able to perform much better. Is this 'chill' attitude preventing me from realizing my full potential, is it taking me farther from where I could have been or is my soul searching for contentedness more than materialistic pleasures... these answers I wish I could get.

But one thing I know for sure that though these changes crept in without my conscious knowledge, I cannot say I'm completely innocent. I am party to this metamorphosis as somewhere deep within my system, its me alone that could have given permission to this transformation.

No Dress Rehearsals here….

Its often happened with me and I’m sure it would have happened with many of us as well.

There are times in life when we feel we should do something -offer help, exchange a few kind words, give financial assistance or express our thoughts/ feelings may be praise, gratitude or apologies to people close to us or may be even strangers. Sometimes we just listen to our hearts and go ahead to do it but very often we just miss out on doing it. Not that we get prevented by some binding constraint but that we just don’t have a willingness strong enough to go ahead and do it or may be we become too conscious to do it in front of others.

How often it has happened with me that traveling on my bike, I notice a small child or a man in a condition that touches my heart. I ponder over his condition for sometime and feel I should do something for him but by the time the feeling has grown strong in me, I have already driven a hundred meters away from him and so I simply let it go thinking that I’ll do something on the way back or may be in the next similar opportunity. But most often, I don’t drive back by the same route, or on the way back there’s too much traffic to change lanes or the man may not be there in the location I last saw him or my mind gets occupied by some other thoughts and I simply forget the whole episode. The chance to do my little bit to that man gets lost for ever and it gives me quite a sense of guilt to have not acted at that very moment when I felt I should.

I should have known that moments in life never repeat or reappear, so that moment or chance is lost forever.

Similarly, quite often we fail to express our feelings of joy, gratitude or apologies to colleagues, friends or even strangers. My own experiences are testimony to the fact that a few words spoken even to strangers at the right time can transform strangers into long lasting friends. I never knew that a couple of words that I spoke to a person on the first day of college could transform strangers to friends. Many a time, an act of kindness or a patient listening is all that was required to build relationships. I encountered so many similar occasions but did not act promptly on all of them. Why did I consciously lose out on so many opportunities is what I feel today.

Thinking back we may find atleast some occasions when we could have genuinely thanked our bosses for their support, there would have been plenty an opportunity to genuinely praise colleagues for their good work and several occasions when we could have expressed gratitude to our friends for several acts which we may not have taken notice of at the time they did. Most of the times, we would perhaps be lost in our own worlds and would have possibly turned a partially blind eye or a deaf ear to the world around. Not that we wouldn’t have praised our colleagues on such occasions but that they wouldn’t be full hearted attempts. Strangely but truly, the other person can always see how genuine or whole hearted our remarks are.

Sometimes, though we realize what’s to be done, we simply put off things for sometime and the delay ends up being an eternal one as the context for doing it gets lost with passing time. Everything that we do has a context associated and without the appropriate context things hardly have any significance. There’s no chance of revisiting the entire episode later. Had I been a little more alert, receptive and active at all these times, may be life would have been different- more and better friends, stronger relationships, good bosses that I need never complain of and more cooperative colleagues.

The strange thing about life is that on realizing that you’ve lost an opportunity, 95% of the times, however hard we try, its difficult to find a similar one again and do whatever you wanted to in the way you wanted to.

A recent novel that I read just 2 days back made me reflect over all of the above. It says - life is not a dress rehearsal. Making changes or adjustments in it later is near impossible. Whatever we go through is the final show and so what gets enacted is something that cannot be re-done -its frozen and final. And with these frozen acts, also get frozen our regrets, indifference towards others and with them several lost opportunities. A deed today is sometimes more worthy than an act tomorrow.

And all this only means that ‘now’ is the best time and so we should live every passing moment in the fullest possible way- rejoice to the fullest on our present achievements coz they’ll never come back again, help others whole heartedly and in the best possible manner coz there’s no second chance perhaps, give full credit and praise to people who deserve coz its will make us feel good to make others feel happy, tender apologies to whoever we think we’ve wronged coz we all know its not easy for people to forget bitter experiences and most importantly forgive others whenever possible coz a there’s a lot of joy involved both in forgiving and being forgiven. Once missed, we may never get a chance to do all of it again. Time is indeed unforgiving.

And this reminds me of Rudyard Kipling who said -

“ If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds worth of distance run.…. you’ll be a Man my son”