History and Humility

"History never repeats itself, but it does rhyme."

- Mark Twain

I have opted for History as a core subject at college. I love my course, and a lot of that love has developed because I love my teacher. She is not a professor. She is fireworks in flesh. She is the reason my eyes have begun hating me and loving me, when I watch History Channel in the middle of the night, with ear-phones on and the living-room lights switched off. And yesterday night, while I was watching something on the Inquisition (ironically started by a person called Pope Innocent III) and Witch-Hunting, it struck me that History has taught me to be humble.

When I would read about things like the Holocaust, the Dark Ages or the the terrible, terrible condition of peasants during the French Revolution I'd think, "I could've shown them a thing or two about how to run the country; they handled things so badly. I could've shown them how to resolve conflicts on the ownership of resources, or how to develop efficient infrastructure, or how to draw public policies, or how to manage public dissent. Were I there, things could have been handled so differently. I could have shown them the way to do it right, and prevent so many catastrophic consequences. Things would have been so incredibly different." Then I stepped down from my pedestal, but just a bit to think, maybe not me but at least any capable leader of my time.

And then it hit me - were it not for History, I wouldn't have known anything at all about these things.

Indeed, these concepts wouldn't exist.

History gives us a chance at something which always seems to be just out of our reach - the future. We can't rewind the tape and live it all over again, no matter how differently we would and no matter how hard we want to. But what we can do, is learn some useful lessons from the past and change where we're going to.

Cheap thinking

(Caution: Extremist views expressed. General feeling while writing this article was, "Screw Laissez Faire opportunists!")

This article is partly my undigested and very frenzied thoughts on gossiping and partly something I wanted to write after I read an article written by my friend Tina, which you can read here.

It doesn't take much to get my neurons and tongue fired, often in quick succession. One such thing is the word, 'gossip' and any faint strains of an argument justifying it. It gets me kicked inside, I cannot stop myself from making myself heard - loud and clear. So I've decided to write it all down and get it thrown out from my system once and for all, so that the next time I hear that odious word, I'll just give them the link to here. (Narcissus and I seem to share an awful lot of genes)

If talk is cheap, gossiping is free of charge. When we gossip about something/body, we're doing the least amount of separating-rational-from-rubbish kind of discretionary thinking possible. Some people like to say gossiping brings about a little magic in their lives. I really don't agree with this. Seeing dust particles dancing in Medusa-esque frenzy, suspended in a beam of sunlight cutting through a dark room seems more like magic, in case David Copperfield is not on your speed-dial. The sense of 'magic' these people are talking about is delusional and borrowed because we don't create anything, we just propagate water-tight, compartmentalized thinking. Adjectives are thrown around like used recharge coupons and prejudices become as convenient as disposable tissues. Agreed, it takes effort to convert something mundane in to something magical. But the satisfaction in doing just that is Premium A-Class. And who's asking you to be Superman? Go for a walk. Watch the sunset. Turn over stones and see what's below. Doodle. Listen to RHCP. My cousin-brother's favourite - give your boss a sudden smile, just to see his expression defrost.

Some people like to sugar-coat gossiping by calling it, 'expressing an opinion'. Bullshit. Gossiping is a dirty word and you can't canonize it. If gossiping is an expression at all, it's an expression of unconformity to what you think is right. She doesn't walk talk dress eat think like you do. Big deal, sweetheart. I don't think we realize just how much we're limiting our ability to embrace and find beauty in things which at first appearance may look a little off the graph's co-ordinates or just plain crazy. Me thinks crazy is good, real good. (Ahem. About this unintelligible piece of gibberish here - I don't apologize for it, but you have to meet me to know this)

One universal element in gossiping is the presence of an air of collective agreement (thus eliminating the possibility of alternate opinions). Everybody nods their heads like they're all in some Very Serious Seminar For The Upliftment Of Humanity. I'm very sure there are atleast a few people who have had no exposure to the kind of things being discussed but nod their heads they will. And we talk about rebellion and being teenagers.

Sometimes life is labourious, grey, boring, empty, pendulating in vacuum. I give you all that. But how on earth does tracing the trajectory of somebody else's life give you a purpose to your own? Maybe George Clooney's life is labourious, grey, boring, empty, pendulating in vacuum. Who knows? (Apologies to Sonal). I'm still waiting for my illuminating moment of insight here. Because there is so much ignorance, so much naive realism involved when we juggle thoughts and speculations around like that. It's all a question of personal bias vs. personal experience or knowledge.

These severely perpendicular views aside, my indignation here is not meant for people who may have indulged in a word or two against somebody. Heck, I do that too. But if your indulgence is similar to that of a desperate diabetic's, you're sadly just another drop in the ocean.

Urban euthanasia

He wears a faded Mickey Mouse t-shirt with torn shorts, both of which have succumbed to an easy brown colour. His hair is greasy with that very Bombay combination of humidity and dirt, and his face is a refugee camp of diseases. But all these physical generalisations of poverty come to an end when your covert glance reaches his eyes. They make you refute the Classical Indian Conditioning of underestimating the personality in black eyes. His sooty eyelashes reverently caress irises which look like two lunar eclipses. Pain, hunger, terrible beauty.

His daily job is as monotonous as a blue-collar worker slugging it out on his five inches of the assembly line. He cleans the compartment floor with an assortment of fossilized bamboo branches - but then his gaze sweeps over you and cleans up so much more. His alleys brushed, he swiftly stands up as if righteously reminded of his dignity and takes out two shiny pebbles from his pocket. Suddenly, the frozen atmosphere of the train compartment is shattered. He starts singing. His song is a cliched cacophony but he does create music. (I have always been against the idea of genres)

A wave of disapproval washes over - how did this piece of persevering vermin find its way in here? But he remains invulnerable to his cocking sixth sense. Swaying to the gentle rhythm of the train, he clicks his pebbles with fluid expertise and blares forth. There seems to be a disconnected quality to his song; the lyrics seem to struggle against becoming a robotic monologue till somebody hands him a tired two-rupee note. He weaves his way between an impossible number of bodies and bags, his jarred notes heightening the silence. Finally, the train halts and the boy nimbly jumps off onto the platform, his thin frame dissolving easily, exiting one crowd and entering another.

I am left with a will-o-the-wisp memory of a boy and his song. And I undergo the sixth panic attack I've had in this week.

There are two things in life that I fear the most. One is being seated in an over-speeding motor vehicle and the other is becoming desensitized. Desensitization is one of the side-effects of living in an incredibly fast-paced city which is still dealing with a lot of unclaimed baggage. I sometimes feel the emotional quotient of our people is ten points short of a plastic bag's. And I can't imagine anything more catastrophic to the future of humanity. Yeah, I know that sounds straight out of a UN World Poverty Report, but it seems this will become just more than red-tape lingo.

Bob Dylan said it best:

"Yes and how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesn't see?
The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind."

I hope we strip ourselves of our wind-cheaters.

Letting things on

You know you've slept too much when the sheets start becoming itchy and the air presses down on you. It was 2:18 am by my neon-happy digital clock, and I decided it was time I got brave. I threw my fleecy bed-covers away and hauled myself out of bed. The chill brushed at my skin but it was welcome after the suffocating warmth of the room.

Shaking off my state of vegetative placidity, I headed towards the bathroom. Nothing shocks better than cold, cold tap-water first thing in the morning. Sufficiently aroused, I wondered around the house. It's funny, but habituation comes to nought when you move around your own house in the darkness. The house's familiar architecture seems formidable and challenging to the purpose of smooth motion. So much for night-vision goggles .. you crash into everything that comes within a three-inch radius of your feet and arms and you are, literally, in the dark. And sounds, oh god. Every rustle, every whoosh and every creak is magnified so deeply, you think you're in one of those ads where the fellow begins by tapping his cellphone on the table and before you know it, the whole restaurant is in the midst of a full-blown A Capella instrumental concert.

After bumping around a la carte Don Quixote, I finally reached the balcony. Although it looks like a stunner even during the day, it had never looked more beautiful than it had that night. Bathed in silvery moonlight, it looked like a ship sailing confidently across a dark ocean. Dad's shirts strung artlessly on the clothesline looked like sails and the railing made good to the imagery of a deck. I could almost lean over the railings and shout, "To the Seaboard!". There was a tall wooden stool to the far right and I couldn't resist sitting on top of it. A once-upon-a-time handkerchief served as an eye-patch and a discarded tissue-paper roll served as my telescope. Our balcony overlooks the lake and so my vision of an ocean was complete. I realized that everything was with me. Figmental or factual, all the elements came together and lent themselves to my maritime imagination wholeheartedly. Move over, Keira Knightley.

I didn't plunder or order about or take control of rough seas. I just sat there and thought, how often do Time and a Situation come together and actually help you create something like this? I would've created something similar with or without these little associative aids but I wouldn't have felt so much in peace with the world. There wasn't much I was looking for when I had entered the balcony.

And there shouldn't be so much force, so much conscious intent attached when you decide to create something. There's something very wise about the myth that you never find pots of gold under rainbow if you deliberately search for them.

Everydays

It was when I was in 9th that I began to notice the whats-up phenomenon. It was a phenomenon in its own right; everybody seemed to be swept by the two words. Whenever I met a friend say after a week, those two words would issue forth.

I think it was the same time when conversation started to become compact. Situations were abbreviated, gesticulations were more and more flowery and in cyberspace, emoticons created a short-cut for my tongue. I knew the right word was waiting to be thrown out, but the urgency to articulate was too great. This is something I constantly experience not only in a real but also in a virtual conversation.

I love walking on a road unknown and unsought for. Sometimes I wonder if friends have become a necessity to flatter the need to be heard, understood and most importantly known. There is great peace in being alone. Not because you're a rebel without a reason, but because if you give yourself time, there's so much to listen to, so much to wonder about. We do have moments of what I call cosmic connections; something like an intuitive strand which weaves itself between two people. These moments are beautiful and are always cherished lovingly. But it's the rarity, the yawning eternity between these moments which makes them so beautiful. I wonder why we have to ceaselessly search for something like that, some semblance of purpose, need, existential worth.

I still feel a little disconnected when somebody asks me what's up. As if there is this tremendous need for things to be bright, perky and strawberry-pink. I like the worn-out-socks comfort of a day when I get a bus on time, when the train compartment is not reeking with Darwinism and when the sun isn't sweaty and thirsty. Or days when I don't get a bus on time, when the trains are reeking with Darwinism but I'm under my umbrella and still smiling at a puzzled sun. How do you describe a day when you just sat on the train, straight from Dadar to Kanjurmarg, just peacefully thinking about nothing at all. I remember something I read from a Calvin and Hobbes Jumbo Book:

"There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want." - Calvin
Amen to everydays.

Freshman Perceptions

It's strange, isn't it? When you ask pass-outs about their college experiences, a wistful sigh is exhaled and they begin by saying, "It seems just like yesterday that .. "

And here I am, a month-old freshman and thinking how long it has been.

College made me think about school. A lot. I had a continuous schooling experience; my father had a territorially stationary job, so I never went through the process of spasmodically changing schools. I had made a familiar groove for myself, like a long curvy reclining sofa, the kind you see in smoky clubs and lounges. The deep maroon ones. And from all that hot-coffee-on-a-rainy-day warmth I was thrust into a place where unknown faces would scrutinize the way I did every single thing, every single day. I suddenly felt like I was dancing naked in a packed hall with just a violently purple hat with bright orange feathers on. The attention made me giddy with self-consciousness but it was these days that I had my moment of behavioural epiphany - a smile works wonders.

The class-rooms were dizzyingly large and the corridors reminded me of Hogwarts. The stairs, however, refused to comply with my vision. They were narrow, crowded and winded with the sure promise of dangerous anatomical consequences. Of course, this was only till I discovered another flight of stairs which were much wider and thankfully anonymous. They creaked and I loved the fact that now I could truly relate to the thousands of horror stories I'd heard. Creaking stairs .. sigh. They are a beautiful sound.

The professors (goodbye "Miss! Miss!" and "Teacher! Teacher!") strode in with a sense of worldly knowledge perched on their glasses and were swift with their preliminary instructions. I couldn't but help notice a sense of weariness and curious amusement in their sweeping glances. I think that must be a normal reaction when you address a new-pink batch for the first time. Seeing them was another nail on my school coffin. I remember dreading certain teachers during PTA meetings because they seemed to know everything about me. "We will treat you like adults because we think that you are, adults. Don't make us change our minds." This ominous expectation of our college professors made me feel slightly disconcerted. For the nth time I wondered just how being 18 qualified me as an adult. And that being 19, I should well know the business of being an adult. When you reach your eighteenth birthday, "zap!" and you know everything about social etiquette, sex, professionalism, networking, grace under pressure, time and money management. It's like an internal tussle between the sails and the rudder of a ship.

There were two girls to a desk and in cases of excessive friendliness, three. There were quite a lot who were trying to fill up a bench all on their own. You are heightened to instances of loneliness around you when you are alone. I suppose it's our strong anthropological history which precedes us. We've always traveled in packs and lived in cozy groups since we were on our hind-legs. If it's hard to quit smoking, it isn't surprising that being alone is a difficult habit to adopt.

Being alone, however, had its advantages while the solitude lasted. You could sit, unnoticed, like a tiny insect on your collar and observe just why we do a lot of things that we do. I found that it was easy to be objective about humans, but not so easy to put those quaint little things I observed into perspective. Everything did not have a reason. You could see things happening, but you couldn't put them out to dry and find out why. It was all grey clouds to see, but sometimes you got to see rainbows too. Whenever I have found out why the sky is blue, or why sugar tastes sweet there has always been a sense of being cheated out of something. "That's all there was to it?" Maybe that's why the right hemisphere is much smaller than our left. The left is concerned with analyzing and the right, with feeling. Putting situations under a microscope always requires so much more effort than just pure, open-eyed wonderment.

But man isn't as much a social animal physically as he is mentally. I'd prefer to go for a walk alone, but I'd hate to stand alone with my opinion on something. So slowly but surely, the connecting began. Hesitant hellos and covert glances grew into saving seats in a class and sharing food. There isn't a deep maroon sofa yet but there are faint stains of familiarity on the leather. The cognizance is still gentle and unassuming but the whirlwind catches up. A reputation, associations, a history to judge me by.

So while my freshman freshness lasts, it's good to still have to feel my way around college.

Citrus Child

It has a feeling it hasn't stripped off its crab's skin
And
Something lies beneath its shadow waiting in the moonlight
To
Flatter its liars - the candle, the rainbow, the ash-tray
Oh
To be servile seems so inviting, so altruistic, so perfect
Yet
It cleanses itself of fancy purity, disillusioning righteousness
By
Throwing away the you and me, the right the wrong, the black the white
So
Rise above, Citrus Child - your sourness alienates you well