Churn after Reading

Recently a friend of mine asked me what I think about ‘True Love’. I said, “I don’t really know… there are many definitions of it.”

My friend said that I should give the most rational and non-mush-coated definition I knew.

I thought a bit and said: “If someone were to ask you, what would you die for, and what would you kill for, and if the first answer that came to your mind was the name of a person, then that according to me is true love.”

After that was dealt with, what I said got me thinking. Given the recent terrorist attacks and that entire anti-corruption furore in India, the youth and other common folk seem to have developed radical interest into the debilitated state of affairs (or affairs of state, if you may). Yet, I can’t help but think, what if someone were to ask all these ever-motivated people, all the ever-nosey media, all the ever-condescending authors and all the ever-twittery celebrities: What is that one thing they are ready to die for, and what is that one thing which they are ready to kill for?

I don’t know what they would answer, but I know fo-sho that it certainly won’t be India…

Now I do know (from my brief and questionable knowledge of history) that there was indeed a time when the vast majority of the said individuals would have actually said “India”. What interests me most, is why, when, and how did this huge transformation take place?

I don’t claim to have perfectly-acceptable-by-one-and-all answers to these questions, but the first step towards understanding a mystery or figuring out an unknown force, is asking the right questions…

So let me ask you a question…

      Have you washed your hands today?

…and before we move any further, by the powers of subtle-product-placement bestowed in me, here’s a small message from our sponsors:

***Heartfelt apologies to my Devanagari illiterate friends... the following content will probably look Nordic-witchcraft-like to you, but hopefully it makes much more sense to the Devanagari literate… hopefully…

आज 15 अगस्त है,

पूरा देश स्वतन्त्रता के जोश में मस्त है,

फ़ोन पर, देशभर, बधाइयाँ बंट रही हैं,

नुक्कड़ की दुकानों में पुरजोर बर्फियां कट रही हैं...

राजपथ पर परेड देखने को भीड़ उमड़ रही है,

64 साल की हो चली है आज़ादी,

अब इसके चेहरे की झुर्रियां साफ़ दिखाई पड़ रही है.

अभी इस वक़्त, दूर एक अनजाने गाँव में, देश का निर्माण हो रहा है...

और अभी इस वक़्त ही, राजधानी में संविधान अपने प्राणों से हाथ धो रहा है,

उस गाँव में सरिया, बालू, cement और पसीना एक होकर,

नदी की ऊर्जा से बिजली उतपन्न करने का संघर्ष कर रहे हैं,

और दिल्ली के आलिशान ऑफिस में बैठे बाबू और साहिब,

Civil Engineer के design को अपने ही अंदाज़ में 'optimize' कर रहे हैं...

"देख लीजिये, हमारी constituency में बाँध टूटा तो पार्टी की घणी बदनामी हो जावेगी...."

"आप चिंता न करिए जी, पांच साल के पहले बांध को ज़रा सी भी आंच नहीं आवेगी.."

"पर पांच साल बाद टूटा, तो भी लोग हमपर ही न इलज़ाम लगावेंगे?"

"अरे.. तब उसका कारण हम ruling party का खराब maintenance बतावेंगे!"

और मजदूर बेचारा तो ये सोच रहा है,

की ये बाँध उसके गाँव में साल भर पानी, बिजली और खुशहाली लाएगा,

पर उसे क्या पता की आज गोधुली के पहले ही,

कच्चे cement से जुड़े एक भारी पत्थर के नीचे दबकर वो शहीद हो जायेगा...

आज 16 अगस्त है,

आलस भरी छुट्टी के बाद आज दफ्तर फिरसे व्यस्त हैं,

पर ये क्या? आज tiffin के साथ सुबह का paper नहीं आया है?

ओह अच्छा... हमारी तरह कल printing press ने भी आराम फ़रमाया है...

लेकिन...

क्या आपने इस ज्ञानवर्धक newspaper को पढ़कर कभी ये सोचा है...
...की आपकी plate तक खाना और घर तक बिजली पहुंचाने के लिए, रोज़ पचासों किसान और मजदूर मरते हैं,

और आप उनकी मौत को बस एक statistic की तरह पढ़कर, अपने current affairs के ज्ञान का उद्धार करते हैं??

पर इतना जान लीजिये,

की सिर्फ ऊँची सोच और नेक विचारों से देश नहीं बनता... देश बनाने के लिए खुद अपने हाथ गंदे करने पड़ते हैं......

Something like... this..

Serendipity

I was in love then.. and the air felt so different.. I used to stay up all night thinking about her, imagining... envisaging crazy things, and wondering how things will turn out when I express my feelings to her and she accepts.. but what if she doesn’t? Oh but she will.. didn’t the bunch of random things she did for me (which any human being would have done for one of their acquaintances) like offering a Band-Aid when I fell from my bicycle or calling back saying "I'm sooh Sohrry" after seeing 7 missed calls from me, indicate that I meant something to her?

Maybe.. something special too?

And basically, if I didn’t, that could only mean two things.. either I am over-reading into things or.. she isn’t human..

So I forgot there was an activity such as sleeping or maybe even eating.. frankly I didn’t even feel like sleeping.. and at 4am in the morning I used to think that its late enough and lied down to rest my back on my bed. But my mind.. and my heart.. never rested.. restlessness is such a profound feeling.. you can never truly experience it without falling in love.. you might feel restless about your exam results, about your favorite teams performance in a tournament, or maybe about what you will be holding in your hands after ripping open your Christmas presents.. but you aren’t experiencing restlessness per se.. because none of the outcomes are in your hands (the exam results might be, but I choose to think otherwise).

In this case.. everything depends upon how you behave, how you dress in front of her, how you talk to her, how you treat her friends and her dog, how many questions you answer in class, and God knows what else.. you keep fine-tuning all these little things, so that, the one instance she looks at you during class, you aren’t found with your index finger inside your nostrils, poking away with perplexed fascination..

After half an hour of resting my back on my bed, I would give up, and go out for a walk or a jog, and I tell you, the air felt so different at that time of the day.. the Sun used to come out by the time I was on top of the partially constructed parking garage located right across the street from her house.. I used to sit in the same corner everyday, that strategic spot which offered maximum visibility and minimum exposure. When the Sun came out, I would start my day by peeking through the window into her sunlit room. She would get up, stretch a little, cuddle her dog, and after about 15 minutes, she came out to jog. After she would go beyond the horizon of my sight, I went along my own separate way, back to home.

I was always in a dilemma that whether or not I should join her on her jog. Wouldn’t that be a fantastic way of getting closer to her? Imagine commencing your day by meeting a person every morning.. how romantic a thought! It’s probably the precursor of being married.. The very thought just thrilled me.. but what kept me from doing so.. was this one question she might ask, that why do I come to jog in her neighborhood when I live like 4 miles away. Till now I had no good answer for that and I had determined that unless I come up with a good answer for it, I am not revealing myself.

So I would jog back home, imagining all the while that I am jogging along with her, and kept saying things that I would have said to her, if she were alongside me. But she was there, maybe not in person, so what? She was with me..

I smiled a lot those days, I sang a lot, and the sun seemed so much brighter then. The road on which I used to jog back was lined with trees on both sides.. I shouldn’t call them trees as they were more like stick figures rather than dense masses of foliage, but yet they seemed beautiful in their own scantiness.. they reminded me of myself.. inadequate creatures desperately trying to grow taller and taller, so that one day they could touch the Sun.. even though they knew they never could, they never stopped trying (as a kid I thought the trees were in love with the Sun.. what else can explain this amazing phenomena of something going against the mighty force of gravity and standing there high and tall for hundreds of years?).

The trees gave me motivation and every time I felt things are hopeless, I would turn to them for inspiration.

So after a lot of time had passed and I had fell in and out of love with her a considerable number of times, I finally decided to express myself to her. To bare it all. When she came out to jog that morning, I joined her and she recognized me. She asked me how I was in the neighborhood even though I lived on the other side of town. I said I was visiting my grandparents who lived nearby. We kept jogging, I started talking and I noticed something very odd.. for someone who goes out jogging every day, she had pretty bad stamina.. she started huffing and puffing in under half a mile and I found that pretty weird. She said she wanted to stop. We sat down on a thin patch of grass and she was noticeably out of breath. I asked her if she’d started jogging just recently, and she said that she goes out to jog every morning.

To which I asked if she has any medical problems and she instantaneously spat back “It’s not a problem OK?”

She looked at me and noticed that I was visibly startled and she said (in a much repressed tone) “or at least I don’t think it is..”

“What’s wrong?” I asked

“Can I trust you with something? Please say yes..”

“Ya sure.. with absolutely anything.. I cross my heart and I..”

“Its… this very weird feeling that I get.. every morning.. ”

.. and then she continued.. and it was the most heart-breaking thing I’ve ever heard in my life.. She said she had feelings for this girl who lived on the other side of their house.. and every morning she woke up and saw her sleeping, she would feel this strange attraction towards her.. and she would run away from her house and come to this deserted place where she would sit and cry and try to convince herself not to think about her..

I stopped paying attention to what she was saying after about 5 minutes.. The only thing going around in my head then, was the amazing irony that the very day I’d decided to reveal myself to her, she revealed herself to me..

I gave her every inch of superficial concern and apathy I had and consoled her, saying it is very hard to deal with these feelings etc. I never talked to her after that day. I also became an atheist.

Quite amazingly, after many, many years, I met her a few days ago on a running track near my house. We talked briefly and then went along our own ways. I noticed she has much better stamina now. Now I know, God exists and he has a wicked sense of humor. That girl she had feelings for, is now my wife.

~o~