It’s another year!
It’s that time of the year, when each of us looks back at the previous in retrospect and introspection. I, for one, have come across quite a few posts on these lines. But, I will not look back into the year that just passed and analyse how things went wrong and why. I prefer looking into the future and making the most of what is still left.
It was a difficult conversation. I was telling someone the other day that life is too short and too wonderful to be spent with regrets. I have none; I will never have any. Because I honestly believe that every experience, every friendship, every acquaintance, every heartbreak and every opportunity has taught me something invaluable. Today, I am not what I was a year ago. I will never be the same again. But, so what? After all, what is life but a string of moments made memorable by those who mean something to us? We miss those moments and we never get them back again. I am perhaps being completely incoherent right now. But frankly, I don’t care. Right now, the only philosophy that appeals is the Epicurean: carpe diem. Seize the day! Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie! Long live Ronsard! It requires plenty of courage to be able to say that, and live life that way. Today, I am saying it. I don’t really know if I have the courage to live life that way, but I am trying.
Here we are, at the beginning of a new year. A new year to me signifies hope. Hope that tomorrow will be better. Hope that this too will pass. Hope that one day, I will look back on my life and consider it well-lived. With all these million thoughts clogging my brain, I re-read this poem by Robert Frost.
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.”I hope I will be able to say the same. At every turn, life gives you a choice. It asks you to choose between what is easy and what is right. At every point, I have chosen to do what felt right then. Of course! Some of those decisions have gone terribly wrong. Others have done me good beyond my wildest dreams. But as a human being, I can guarantee the process, not the result. I will continue to do what appears to be right at any given point. It is at such times that Tagore’s poem seems to sum up my state of mind best.
“This is my prayer to thee, my lord- strike, strike at the root of penury in my heart.
Give me the strength to bear lightly my joys and sorrows.
Give me the strength to make my love fruitful in service.
Give me the strength never to disown the poor or bend my knees before insolent might-
Give me the strength to raise my mind high above daily trifle.
And give me the strength to surrender my strength to thy will with love.”God! Give me the strength!
No…I don’t drink…is that a problem?
I was at the office party last evening, and chatting with someone with a glass of coke in hand. I was chatting animatedly, and standing quite close to the person in question, seeing as neither of us could hear the other properly over the din of “nakka mukka”. X approaches me with a smile. The conversation goes something like this.
X: Hi Amrutha! Nice party isn’t it? By the way, is that rum?
Me: (Glancing at the glass of coke in my hand) This? No. This is coke.
X: You don’t drink?
Me: No.
X: (Now openly staring at me and at P, the guy who was talking to me) You don’t? Hmm…can’t quite believe that!Twenty minutes later, this conversation repeats, practically verbatim with another person. This happened at least three times at random intervals. A good hour and a half later, I was again with someone, a guy again, with a glass of Sprite. The conversation with random passer-by? Lather, rinse, repeat!
If you notice, each of the time a random passer-by asked me if the glass in hand was rum (or gin and tonic in the case of Sprite), I was chatting with a guy! Someone tell me! What’s the connection between me talking to a guy and not drinking? My final conversation with random passer-by, let’s call him G, went like this.
G: So, Amru…had your drink? Is that Gin and Tonic?
Me: Uh..no…that’s Sprite.
G: (Incredulously) No?
Me: (Calmly) No.
G: (By now completely drunk and quite out of his senses) C’mon! Don’t tell me that! A girl like you, studied in Paris, talks to so many guys, is so friendly…but don’t drink? What ya?
Me: (By now deciding that I’ve had enough) Hmm…excuse me while I go my sixth tequila shot!Sigh! Some people will never understand! They are better left alone, aren’t they?
Disclaimer: This post contains no reference to anyone, living or dead. Any resemblances are purely coincidental! 😉
It’s our heritage dammit!
I had a conversation with someone yesterday that went something like this.
Me: I really want to go back and see Sadras. There is so much more to see in that fort.
X: Sadras? Where is that?
Me: Behind the Kalpakkam Atomic Power station.
X: Oh! That old building? Yeah! I know of it. I have been there…we used to use it as a bar, since you don’t have one inside Kalpakkam!
Me: What the F***?
This kind of an attitude pains me. My heart breaks when I see a part of my history and my culture being used as open-air urinals and bars. Such monuments of historical importance are meant to be valued, cherished and protected. I was always under the impression that it’s only people who were uneducated and uncouth did this kind of thing. But my conversation with X effectively rid me of this perception. I now realize that smart, educated, urban young men (and women) are as ignorant of the value of such historical monuments as the uneducated village youth of my imagination.
Sadras is not the only fort to meet with this fate. Some time ago, there were ads by the Ministry of Tourism, as part of the Incredible India campaign to sensitize people to the value of their heritage. I honestly don’t think that has worked. I myself saw several empty beer bottles, plenty of plastic waste, and graffiti inside the Sadras fort. I remember pointing out a random declaration of love to Sriram and fuming at the mouth about it. I can only hope that at some point in the future, people will stop treating forts like Sadras as urinals and bars and start giving them the respect they really deserve.
After all, they are not just old, ruined buildings. They are a part of our culture and our heritage. They constitute bits and pieces of history using which we can rebuild the story of our past, brick by brick. When will people understand that?
Being single…
This is one thing that’s been on my mind for quite some time. I sat down to write about it today and realised that Julie’s latest post, as well as one published quite some time ago, deal with precisely this. I vaguely remember saying something about Julie reading my mind. This time the coincidence is quite freaky. She conveys, more eloquently than I can ever hope to do, why being single is such a desirable thing. She quotes this from Bridget Jones’ Diary.
“When someone leaves you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you’ve created together collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and, in the end, the whole sum of parts which adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love.”
Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’ Diary, p. 193 (Picador, 2001)
Now, I haven’t read the book and have no idea what it talks about. I know it’s one of those books I must read, but somehow never got around to doing so. But the quote…it strikes you hard. Causes a flash of pain, origins unknown, and makes you wish you didn’t have to rely on someone else to give you that elusive happiness. I don’t know what or who I am waiting for. Sometimes, I wonder why exactly we need another person to make us happy when, as Julie says, we have the tools to do it ourselves. But then again, unlike Julie, I am not quite a hedonist. I like people. I need people around me. Being alone and being lonely make me crabby and irritated. I have grown up alone, despite having lived in a joint family. I would hate to remain that way all my life. Ok…wait! I am getting ahead of myself.
I honestly don’t know if I have it in me to be happy on my own. But, I am trying. Happiness after all, is a state of mind. The less dependent we are on others, emotionally and otherwise, the better are our chances of being happy. So, while I might not succeed in this endeavour, I am going to try: to seek and find happiness in me rather than looking to someone else to give it to me.
This time last year…
…we had no idea that in 12 hours, our world would be turned upside down. This time last year, terrorists were getting ready to attack the Taj, the Trident and the CST. What seemed to be a two-hour operation for our elite National Security Guards, turned out to be our worst ever encounter with terror. I can’t get the memory of that day out of my mind. I can’t get those television images of Karkare, Kamte and Salaskar out of my mind. Nor can I forget the young and handsome face of Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who along with dozens of others lost his life to those terrorist bastards. Men, no older than 19 and 20, who decided to right all the perceived wrongs by randomly killing off innocent civilians whose only crime was to have been born in a non-Islamic country.
On second thoughts, did Islam, or any other religion for that matter, even figure in their thoughts? Or was it simply the blind faith that by killing a hundred civilians, they would get their 72 virgins in heaven? Did even their own religion matter when these men, who weren’t even old enough to be called men, killed off those people waiting to catch trains and get back home to their loved ones? I don’t know. I don’t want to know. All I know is that but for those men who laid down their lives trying to save others. If Karkare, Kamte, Salaskar and Sandeep were men in uniform who knew their lives could end this way some time, the staff of the Taj and the Trident took the word customer service to new heights that day. They died trying to protect their customers.
I could go on like this for the next 10 pages, but nothing would diminish the pain we felt on that day. I wouldn’t say that my heart bled for my country that day, one year ago. But, sitting in faraway Chennai, I suddenly felt more insecure than I ever had previously. I suddenly felt terrified for the lives of those I loved and cared for the most. What if my parents, my friends, or even the lady next door were at the Taj that day? What if tomorrow, I were to lose one of these people I cherish and adore? What if one day, I had to sacrifice a son, friend, husband or brother like Sandeep? It is too terrifying to contemplate.
Having said all this, we still keep the men who perpetrated this crime alive. I argued passionately for the right of Kasab for a fair trial. But, I also say that justice delayed is justice denied. How much longer are we going to have to wait for the trial to end? How much longer are we going to allow the media free access to him and listen to that man say he regrets what he did, and hear his laments? I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know why or how he became a terrorist. I am, even a year later, in no position to conduct an academic inquiry into the motives behind a man turning into a terrorist. All I want is justice; justice for the wrongs; justice for the killing of the hundreds of civilians who only wanted a good night’s sleep. Unless we, as a nation act firmly and quickly against the perpetrators of terror, we will remain soft targets. First, it was Delhi, then Jaipur, then Mumbai, more than once. Tomorrow it could be Chennai, or Hyderabad, or Bangalore. Are we going to wait until every one of our cities, major and minor, becomes targets of terror attacks? I certainly hope not.