dear dad...

Some families express their love effusively, through hugs, kisses and tears. In some, the expression is more sober. You are conscious of the fierce affection, but it stops with that. The expression comes out through the words, the way certain things are handled when you are around and the small smile every now and then that is reserved only for you.

We are the second kind, and you are my first teacher. I would always be your son even if you disown me. My decisions would always be slow, circumspect and calm. My tastes will always be a bit sedate. My tone will always be polite. Not because I can’t change it but because these are traits that idols instill insidiously. Your traits.

There are other things I aspire to be. To be responsible, to be regular and to take decisions confidently & face problems with conviction. I aspire to reach your high standards. There have been times in the past when I have felt that I have been dropped off at the deep end of the pool. But it did foster independence of thought and action, an independence that was always laced with a few shots of responsibility. I have sometimes cursed you under my breath for not taking my decisions when I faced a tough dilemma. But those were low points and I halve also cursed the cupboard in the hall and the lizard on the wall at other times.
Whether it is hero worship or genetics (or a bit of both), I have come to resemble you in a lot of ways. It gives me great joy when I realise accidentally that some of actions are very similar to yours. Though, the grip and the general writing style resembles that of mom’s, the ‘S’ on note I had scribbled the other day had an uncanny resemblance to my your ‘S’. That made my day. I had this small lingering smile for the next ten min. 

Trust grows over time. And with trust comes confidence. Once I had your trust and knew you that you were happy with my actions, I was confident I was making sensible decisions. I also knew that my thought process didn’t cross the imaginary lines of moral propriety. Unfortunately, independence of thought breeds opinions. As I grew up, I had my own take on the things around me, either backed by logic or by gut. I also knew that the core values carved in me through years of parental tutelage, would still guide me on my decisions subconsciously. It still does stand me in good stead when in doubt. But, when a decision is questioned - A decision that seems so easy on the surface, a decision so organic with the ethics that I have imbibed - it threatens to unhinge me. I lose my identity.

I have been brought up to be polite. I have been brought up to respect people. I have been taught not to discriminate. I have been taught to love; to be compassionate. I have been taught not to cry and throw a tantrum when rebutted but stand up and argue with my head than my heart. Are these worthless? Aren’t they absolute? Are they valid only conditionally? If yes, I didn’t know about this then. Aren’t we supposed to be consistent with who we are? Isn’t integrity a good thing? I don’t know.

The heart did take over this time. Once the heart takes over there is no control over your actions. You express it earnestly. Emotions are in its purest form(whatever that means) when it is straight from the heart.  I remember this story mom narrates about how you got me a folding cot because I wanted one. She also continued with some scorn, at the speed with which it was bought home because I had asked for it, without heeding her advice. That is love. That is all heart. That is me, now. I am just older and I happen to love someone else as much as I love the both of you. But, I let myself go only when the mind was ok with it. I knew then, as now, that I wasn’t crossing any lines of impropriety with my decision.

I am not fighting you now, I am not your enemy, I am just you, in a different time and at a different age. I am someone who has grown up with access to better things. It is a flip of a coin they say, this privilege. I am always thankful to you for that and always been proud of what you have managed to provide for me. But this is not a market. I don’t owe you anything. My love for you doesn’t have a cost. It exists, like yours for me. That doesn’t give you the right to my life. This is not arrogance. This is just me being assertive, something you taught me to be, and something that makes me who I am. By denying me this happiness, you are shaking the foundation of what you have built. Please, I beg of you, please, let me go. I will be ok, I know I will, you know I will be too.

Maybe I’m wrong. But let me learn for myself; find the world out for myself, like you always have. I am confident now and am better armed. I will be ok.

Love you,

son.   

the bus

With a smile playing at the corners of his lips, the boy runs behind the bus and in one fluid leap, hops into it. Being the last bus, the seats are in great demand. He finds a spot beside an old man. As he nears him, the man assaults his nostrils. The man reeks of alcohol. The boy is repulsed, “these alcoholics… stinky breath… so dirty…”.He quickly scans the bus again and spots another seat empty; this one beside an avuncular gentleman who seems to be amused at the boy’s repulsion. The man motions him to join him.

*************

A lot of people have pushed their way inside before the bus lurches ahead, starting from a stop en route . The mad rush bordering on stampede is typical of certain stops which scares even seasoned drivers into stopping the bus a few paces after the bus stand. The boy is squeezed, on the left by a head of teeming legs and on the right by the man seated beside him who refuses to give quarter.

The bus brakes violently; the driver swears loudly; the boy curses severely. A motorist passes by, oblivious to all this, absolving himself of any guilt. “I’m sorry, please forgive me”, the man sitting next to the boy apologises. He blabbers a few more apologies incoherently. The boy is amused. “It is ok,  busses brake and people fall… why is this uncle apologising so profusely?” The ‘uncle' comically gropes for a handle as the bus lurches ahead again’.

The boy is still cramped for room, his posture starting to tire him. He squirms a little and adjusts his posture a little to fit into the now constricted space. As he settles down into reasonable comfort, he is conscious of the man’s hand resting on his knee. He feels strangely reassured. “Only three more stops to go… then dinner”

**************

With just one stop to go, the boy‘s wandering thoughts come back to the road. He checks his bearings once, mentally composing himself for the ordeal of wading to exit. He lets out a deep breath and as he readies himself to get up, he's aware of the man’s hand. It has inched upward from where it was earlier. "what?". He looks at the man quizzically.

There is a gleam in the man’s eye “don’t resist, you will feel good, be calm, let me keep my hands here...” The boy is shocked. He doesn’t 'feel good' at all. In fact the whole thing feels weird. He knows whatever is happening is not right. It can’t be right. Sensing the boy’s panic, the man inches his hand higher up the boy’s leg, rubbing slowly. “Calm down son, I won’t harm you; I’m like a father to you…”

The bus comes to a stop at that precise moment and the boy, with great relief jumps out of the bus. The bus waits for the signal to turn green while the boy stands beside it, disoriented. He doesn’t mind the fact that he'd jumped out at a signal. He doesn't mind the walk to his home either. He shivers a little, he doesn’t know why. He still feels the man’s hands on his legs, he still feels it rubbing against his legs. He feels extremely filthy. “Why did he have to do that? Bastard. Maybe I should have taken the seat next to that drunkard.”

another day... another morning...

You just woke up, and the room is dark, dank and devoid of life. You don’t see a point in waking up, just yet.  
You wake up amidst a ruckus, the Radio plays a morning prayer, your mother calls from the kitchen for some intelligible favour, there is also this familiar smell of rasam wafting in.  You sneak a peep at the watch just behind the looming figure of your father; hardly 7:00 AM. NO!! you snuggle back inside the cover… No point waking up, just yet. 

You had left the office early yesterday, the work was getting to you and you had walked out in disgust. You don’t want to face another day, not so soon. 
"Appa!! go away!!. 5 mins. It is just 7 o’clock. School is at 8 30, it takes me just 15 minutes to get ready. Stop nagging me. Go read your paper" and with a naughty grin, appa goes : "No, I'm going to poke you until you get up". 
You skim through the newspaper; you don’t get time to read it in detail. You have no idea how your day is not able to accommodate something as mundane as reading a newspaper.

You are still groggy; you find your bearings slowly. You get ready, mechanically. No not really,  not mechanically. 'Mechanical' could indicate a certain degree of efficient execution. You forget your watch, go back and get it, misplace your keys, spend time sifting through the pile of laundry, checking the pockets for them. 
“Amma… I forgot to buy ‘India political’ map yesterday… shops won’t open till nine no? surea she will scold me.”  “Check whether the shop opposite has it”. “Ma!! That’s a general store, why would they have a map of India political”? ”Go check and come… what if they have?”. You don’t think so... you think your mom’s fool.
You are such a fool. You forgot your wallet on the way down. You trudge back upstairs to get it, all the while cursing yourself through every step on the flight of stairs... “What the hell man... seriously, can’t you remember your wallet? Do you forget to brush?” ya you do sometimes and realise it only when you shower… 
you take the flight of stairs, two at a time, “Amma you are a genius… they have it… not a ttk map… but something is better than nothing…”.“Seri Seri… time is already 8:15… hurry... eat up… why do you keep forgetting all your school stuff? Do you forget to watch cartoons daily?”

It is 09:15 you feel heavier now, you don’t want to leave the room yet again… should I really go? I will call in sick… I am not the only employee… the company won’t sink if I fail to punch in today. There are other people who are practically useless and we still manage to make profits.  
“Dei 8:30 hurry…”. “Ma it is 8:20… the watch is 10 mins fast” “it will be 8:30 by the time you are done with your breakfast”. “Where is Appa? Will he drop me?” “Yes he will, but you will still be late…”. “Ok ok... I’m done...” “dei don’t waste your food… eat everything…””karuvapala (curry leaves) sux”. “No, eat it”. “No”…. “Seri poi thola (get lost)”.”Appa go start it… I’m coming down”.

You start your bike… it is 9:30 am already, you are going to be late… you don’t care anymore. The wind blows through your hair and everything around you seems to slows down. You find yourself lost in the sea of humanity; lost to yourself and to your soul.
“Dei Appa is going very fast, he is touching 45… see?” you peek over your brother’s shoulder... “Appa super!!!” a bike overtakes you… you don’t care… this TVS champ just broke its previous land speed record”. “But, it’s late da…” “Ya... today we have common assembly, we will have to stand outside the gate”… “Cha sama bore...”

“Hey the boss called you…”. “Ok thanks”. you don’t think, you should go in, as yet… he’s doesn’t really deserve someone like you. You sit down; push a few files around on the desk, and there is a sense of Déjà vu, another morning, another day, another report to file by the End of day (without fail).  
“Dei, today’s Friday no?  PT period… yay!!”

The year that was...

31.12.2014

2014 for me was a year with specs of happiness dotting a generally dull canvas. Though the tone of the written word depends on the state of mind when written, this all-pervading despondence is really not the result of a lone bad day. There is a poignant metaphor “talking about drowning to a parched tongue”, and I would understand if this metaphor is the only thing that comes across as the essence of it  after reading. My problems might be small,But I’m still drowning and drowning kills.

Mid last year, Frustrated and almost disoriented with the low paying job I had, I quit and joined another that promised me a good pay. The trade-off was a drop in job satisfaction but with a lot of time in hand to gather my bearings and find out what I wanted to do with my life. A breathing space if you may. The buoyancy of successfully pulling off this change lasted well into the start of this year. There was a palpable optimism and I couldn’t care less about the world around me.

Some convictions over time have a way of morphing into seeds that eventually grow into these nagging doubts affecting the same convictions. As the year dragged on, I started feeling the uneasy “what have I gotten myself into” in my gut. Being used to a culture of breakneck efficiency and thankless returns, the shift of jobs, instead of giving me a chance to breathe and contemplate about my future, ironically cast severe doubts on where I was heading with my life. This new life: the job that i had gleefully gotten into was slow and the standards of efficiency, ancient. Over time, an abject stolidity settled over me which turned pretty stubborn, when I tried to wear it down; my bleak efforts proving futile.

The end of 2013 ended on such a high. I was happy with how my plans at the start of the year, had panned out. Some of them, wild, even inside the framework of dream space, came true. I practically cavorted into 14 from 13. But, in contrast, I don’t feel like facing 15. There is a vacuum which I want to fill, to make 2014 more meaningful. One year of my life has just gone by, and I have nothing, absolutely nothing to show for it. All my resolve breaks when I think about this.

The thing about time is it makes a lot of our decisions irreversible; the result of which is that the mind, when faced with setbacks, paints a silver lining around positively depressing days while simultaneously drawing out a depressing picture of our lives as we live it now. “Maybe I should have stayed back”, “maybe I should have waited for a few more months”, “is this what you really want?”, “you can’t go back now even if you wanted”, “what about 30 years from now?”, “was your decision really worth it?”.  After all this, when your self-doubt has finished assaulting you, you are bashed up by figments of conversations from memory. “You can still shift back”, “It is ok, come back”, “I know how this would turn out, that is why I didn’t take it up”.

Nothing hurts me more than “I know this would happen”, because deep down, I knew too. Sometime back in the early 2013, I just wanted to let go, I realised I had enough of "caution and pragmatism" in life. Even with all the emotions running high, I believed, I had taken a sustainable decision. A decision that would still land me running, were I to fall short in my ‘leap of faith’. Unfortunately, as it turned out in 2014, I never took the 'leap'. I ended up finding myself standing still, watching the others fly by me instead.

I realized that the expectations, the pressure of performance and the pressure of conformity can be easily piled onto oneself just by thinking about it. In reality, these need not exist at all. But, once the idea is planted, it festers in your head, it just refuses to leave. A wall blocks out even the most benign, sane or gentlest of suggestions. You are easily outraged and find that everyone is out to get you.  The world becomes sad and lonely. You are unable to let people in, taking offence and suspecting every opinion of trying to tamper with your ‘ideals’ that are etched in stone. As more and more opinions are thrown at you, your objectivity is lost and the mind finds solace in reclusiveness, misinterpreting and bending even innocuous facts into a potential weapon of proselytization.

Sitting in my office the right now, typing this, I realise, I have lost a lot of things. First and foremost, the meaning of what I considered my duty to the country (big words, but true). A sense of giving back and a feeling of being part of a bigger scheme of things - the two emotions that drove me through the first three years of work, taken away in the first three months here. Slowly, in the next few months, all that was left was abject cynicism and a general apathy towards all things living. A mask functioned, earned my livelihood while the face, slept and started fading away. The more I think about it, the enormity of all this, the more I stop functioning coherently.

Money, position, power as my colleagues like to call it drives people who are already primed for it. I have nothing against them. Not having really been tested in terms of money, till now, I find it inconsequential as long as there is enough to sail the boat. What is ‘enough’? I hope I trust my instinct on ‘enough’ and let it go at that. Power? It should have come naturally or at least should have been thrust upon me at some point in my life for me to experience the drug. Unfortunately this has eluded me, partly due to my hesitation and partly due to happenstance. So, I’m left with preaching happiness as an end to anything we do. The whole idea of ‘happiness’, resting on flimsy grounds of subjective interpretation.

One of the things I resolved to do a few years back was to attribute anything and everything that happened to me, to my actions and my actions alone. I endeavoured to remove the supernatural from my equations, at least for the time being. This led to a lot of agony, when the hard truth hit, but also gave me great happiness and contentment when things did go well. This also gave me moments of great hope in times of despair when I knew that my fate rested with me and I always had control, if I chose to wield it. It just so happens that right now, the ‘will’ to soldier on has faltered a bit and the control has slipped off, just a little.

Come Thursday, a New Year starts, bringing with it so much hope for the hopefuls. 2015 will start slowly for me. But, enough of ze maudlin me. I am making a pact with myself, as I write, to leave no stones unturned to fill up 2015 with something, I don’t know what it is now, but something. Stuff and nonsense. Even if it means more of nonsense than stuff. Take stock, giddiyup and end 15 in a canter.I will take strength from the fact that, however bleak 2014 was, I still managed to retain all my friends, well almost all, I still have people who love me; I’m still cared for. I managed to get really comfortable in the kitchen. Tried and failed, but tried nevertheless to learn music; something I will look forward to continue in 2015. Furthermore I’m optimistic about my travel plans for the coming year too. To just pack up and get away, get lost in another unexplored city, in a sea of humanity that is alien to me, blissful. I still haven’t lost my passion for music and am looking forward to some fresh sounds in the coming year. This whole ‘Music’ thing in the middle of this narrative might seem very much unrelated to the larger scheme of this ramble, but happiness is my goal, isn’t it? The fact remains that the two cans I purchased at the start of this year have brought me the maximum satisfaction. I shall also look forward to some good times with another ‘asset’ I acquired, my camera. Here goes a small wish for better portraits this year. One of my achievements, if I may use the word has been this blog. The posts have been regular and it has never been idle for more than a month. Readers? Subscribers? Well, it is a process, I will get there, someday. I just need to soldier on. No pain, No gain. I have also become ‘Zen’ about all those things, anyway (not).

As for a plan, I have none. It might be a blessing in disguise. But at the stroke of midnight today, I shall take a deep breath and accept things as they are. Most of us are not satisfied with something or the other in our lives. So what if my work is boring, it has its perks and positives.

I will take another deep breath and trust my gut, the way I have done in the past. My life is not a derelict shack yet, that I have to reconsider rebuilding it; a paint job would suffice for now.

I will draw in the last of these deep breaths before it becomes a bit weird, and scream off all the shackles holding me down, scream out all the negativity and scream out happy New Year. All inside my head, of course.

I'm taking a sure step forward, into 2015; the way you step into unknown territory when you realize you have no other option and nothing to lose. All of us live to die one day. I would like to live as this person whose actions were true to the life he led and didn’t delude himself into thinking more of it that what it actually was.(Is 26 is too early an age to turn to philosophical chicanery?)

An eternal optimist, this is me hoping for a good year, fresh mornings, beautiful sunsets, clear skies with twinkling stars and full moons and holding hands with the people I love.