Fear of...?

What is your deepest fear?

Most of the people fear death. Death; because it is the Ultimate Unknown. No - one has ever come back and told us " Hey folks. It ain't so bad. " . That is because no one has come back.

Why people fear death has always been beyond me. If in a mathematical equation one doesn't know a variable you just give it a value x  and move on. Assuming of course, in course of time we will get to know what  x  is. Why cannot we treat our lives to be more like an unsolved equation with many  variables. We will have to ignore a few to get to know others. We will have to ignore some, guess some, assume some and
outrightly reject some. In this equation put Death as x  and move on.

What is then the biggest cause of fear?

Fear of failure: Some say it is the most profound fear present in most people. Failure is a very subjective term. Optimists see Failure as a learning opportunity and Pessimists see it as the end of life. So somewhere in between the two for most people. In any case what is does failure have to do with fear? Both begin with the same letter. And that is the only thing I find common in them. Well; maybe if your failure can cause your death and you have a fear of death then probably you can find it fearful. No?

What is your biggest cause of fear?

Fear of being forgotten? Often people have told me. They fear being forgotten disappearing into nameless domain. Forgotten.Wiped off the annals of this earth. What is there to fear? There have been 106 Billion people that are or have lived on this planet. How do you expect to be remembered? Gradually your creations will get old, your theories will become axioms, your words will sound archaic, your sound will sound ancient, your movies will become too low definition and your children's children will remember only your children. It is inevitable.

What is then the biggest fear?

Well, my biggest fear is to be remembered.

It may sound odd. But I do not say this just to say " ...Two roads diverged in a wood and I-- , I took the one less traveled by...". Nor do I wish to shock and awe. But it is because I understand the very nature of how the human mind likes to think.

We often tend to remember the bad things done by people.
We remember more bad things than good things. We remember the wrongs, the unjust and the unpleasant.
We can't help it. It's human to remember bad things. That's how we have evolved.
We cannot control this urge to focus on the negative.

I know that I am not a perfect person. As it is; I do bad and good to people.
If people do remember me they will remember me more for the bad moments and not for the good ones.

They can't help  it. They can't change the  source code.

My biggest fear hence, is to be remembered.

I do not want to die in a world where I am remembered.

Because mostly I will be remembered for the worse.

It is a pessimistic point of view, yes ,  but pretty close to the reality.

The Good, The Glamorous and The Ugly.

I hate that kind of parties, where I don't know more than two people and not more than two people know me. And noone knows anyone really. Sort of those social functions. Feels, um... Boring.

It's a menagerie of personalities, some of them idealists, moralists and some rebels and dissenters; Comics and tragics and some generally uninteresting. All in all it's a collection of varied people, who realize that the room has a certain potpourri of a number of personas, and get a somewhat faux sense of glamour and happiness to be the part of this fascinating array of multifarious characters.

But there I was; doing a favor for a friend in one of those  parties. I was hovering around the room trying to locate the only two people I knew: I failed, though.

In situations like these you have two options: what one can do is observe people or try to chat up with someone new. I am not really a hi-stranger-how-do-you-do types so I decided to clam up and take in the surroundings.

"It's funny", said  a voice, from somewhere behind me, " to see that someone is also facing a similar problem regarding socializing".

I turned. There was a girl standing over there, medium height and dark-ish complexion. She looked, to use a Indian newspaper matrimonial term, quite homely.

"Hi", I said, "I didn't see you there".
"Of course you didn't", she replied, "it's hard to see from behind the head, generally".
I smiled. Option Two it is.

We introduced ourselves. I forgot her name. We talked for a while.

"So", said I, "What do you think of this party ?"
She replied "It's a menagerie of personalities, some of them idealists, moralists and some rebels and dissenters; Comics and tragics and some generally uninteresting. All in all it's a collection of varied people, who realize that the room has a certain potpourri of a number of personas,  and get a somewhat faux sense of glamour and happiness to be the part of this fascinating array of multifarious characters."

Yeah well. I plagiarized it.

"You sound like a dissenter." I said, taking a sip of something hot.
Soup, probably.

"No," she said, "I'm Ugly".

I paused. To be brutally honest, she wasn't a looker. Some would even call her ugly. I, used homely as the adjective. Clever Me.

"I beg your pardon."

"I said, I am Ugly." she replied.

"Is that a class of people?"

"Sure."

"I don't think so"

She took a deep breath. "Look around", she said in a low tone, " and observe. what do you see?"
I glanced around, confused.
"The humans have created many distinctions," she continued, " on the basis of faith, on the basis of class, creed, race, language, nationality and sex. But there is one little distinction that mother nature has made, that class far supersedes anyone created by man. The class of beauty."
"Look around, Good looking people chat with good looking people. The average looking people talk to the average looking, The Uglies hover with more of their kind in the interstitials. Sometimes as satellites of these groups. It's an inbuilt class system.Something which comes naturally to us"

"C'mon" I said, incredulously, "beauty is only skin deep".

"I expected you to say that", she replied, "someone had to say that. Or else it would have looked as if humans created this segregation. It's pretty natural. Now if you had two people to talk to. One looks much better than the other one, where will you go? Obviously, the one who doesn't look bad to you. It's basic human Law : Beauty gets magnified, ugliness gets blurred out of focus."

"I don't agree. Beauty isn't everything..."

"You see, beauty appeals to us more than anything in this world. They say ' beauty is in the eye of the beholder'. I say, 'All eyes are the same'. We don't like ugly. We shun ugly. We attain beauty. Or atleast try to. That's the whole principle of the face cream companies."

"Ugly is real. Ugly exists. It stares in your face. Everyone avoids it. Just to not hurt the sentiments of the unprivileged  the society says 'Its the beauty within that matters'. That's probably the worst thing anyone can say. It gives you a false sense of hope. The fact of the matter is ugly is bad. Ugly reminds you of ... well, ugliness and negativity. A thing of beauty is a joy forever. A thing of ugliness is a pain in the butt."


"You don't love a woman because she is beautiful," I stammered "but she is beautiful because you love her, said someone long ago".


"He was probably drunk" she replied.


"Physics teaches us," I rose, now desperately trying to find a loophole in her argument, "that things don't exist if we don't look for them. You change things by observations."


"Yada yada yada," she jeered gleefully, "getting desperate, are we? Trying to pull the ol' science-is-flashy stuff on an arts student. huh? Well, nice try. But the hard fact is everyone observes. We are human. We see. We naturally move away from hideous people and move towards the pleasing ones.
"Take yourself for example," she said as I blanched in defense of a verbal repertoire I was due, " You didn't start talking to me. I started talking to you"
"I wasn't planning to talk to anyone" I mumbled, "honestly."

"Yes, but did you ever notice that I was standing in front of you for the last 5 minutes before we started to talk."

"I ... I ... noticed everyone." I choked, "I don't think I remember everyone I see."

"That's never true" she said, "anyway; Nice talking to you"

With this she disappeared in that crowd. A conglomerate of various individuals, both the picturesque and the inelegant.

Pic courtesy @morpheusredux (http://morpheusredux.deviantart.com/art/Beauty-22796961)

of Liril and Lifebuoy and Hindus and Muslims

Tell me, do you ever fight over the fact that you use Liril OR Lifebuoy for washing your body?

(do keep in mind that the soaps in context are the largest selling soaps in India)

Likewise why do we fight over the fact who do we pray to?

I mean it's as personal a fact about life as the brand of soap you rub on your butt.

Have you heard anyone going into the details of something as intimate as personal hygiene?

Should I ask you what do you clean first?

Legs?

Arms?

Chest?

Tummy?

or perhaps something lower?

How are your strokes, are they manly and robust, or are they gentle and caressing?

Do you like the lemony lime smell emanating from your body? or is the bland carbolic smell that effuses from your nether regions? 

How thoroughly do you clean your hair? Do you use shampoo (:D) ?

Don't you find these questions tasteless and full of unearthly humor?

Why can't we treat religion as something as intimate as that and be reluctant to raise that issue in public?

The thing to keep in mind that bathing cleanses your body and praying cleanses your soul.

It doesn't matter if you use Liril or Lifebouy or whether you use Ram or Allah for your happiness and well-being.

The operative word being "well-being".

This is probably the shortest blog I am ever going to write.

Regret

It was like any other night in the small town. The man made his way to the railway signal room. It was a night like any before. A chilly December night. Cold. Dark. He thought of his family on his way to work. Those thoughts kept him warm during his usual night shifts.

The man had lived in the small town almost his entire life. He had married there; had three kids. He worked with the railway department; and spent most of his time at the junction station of this small town. He enjoyed his conversations with his sons. He loved the dishes his wife would make him.

He pushed the signal room door. The warm conditioned air washed all over him as he made his way to his spot on the console. He chuckled as he remembered an incident with his wife that afternoon. I have a good life, he thought, but I still complain too much; he made a mental note, he should be more thankful to the Almighty, once in a while. Sometimes you gotta listen to your wife.

He was living a good life. His elder son was earning well. His daughter and younger son were getting perfect grades. He was glad and he eased a sigh of content as he eased into his plastic chair.

His colleagues were looking as anxious as they always had. He hurriedly tried to arrange his features into a more busy stance as he cleared the route for a train onto the small town's station.

There was static on the radio, the dogs howled, taps dripped, and clocks ticked as the night wore on silently.

Minutes passed by, then hours. The happy man went about his work as he settled into the usual humdrum of his routine work. He had worked in the railways for more than 20 years. Monotony is contagiously soothing for some people, he always used to say.

Suddenly the silence broke; There was some urgent voice on the radio, panicked and harsh.

Suddenly there were a lot of sounds. Suddenly someone ran into the cabin with a message that; wait; he could not hear what was said. Suddenly there was confusion and fear. Suddenly the phones were ringing all around. Suddenly he was the officer in-charge. Suddenly the world had turned upside down. Suddenly there was methyl isocyanate in the air of Bhopal.

The courier had collapsed on the floor vomiting and his pale limbs jerking spasmodically. Everyone had covered their faces with damp towels and handkerchiefs. Some ran towards their homes trying to save their families.

The man had only one objective, to not let any passenger train stop near Bhopal station. God knows what will happen then, he thought. He manned the signal station as his colleagues fell one after the other, subdued by the thought of their families or the deadly poison now coursing through their bloodstream. His eyes hurt, burned and stung. He cried silently, mutely wishing his wife would have run away with her son to someplace safe.

The trains kept coming through Bhopal Junction and he kept diverting them wherever he could. His arms ached, his throat singed, his eyes seemed ready to inflame on command. He did not stop, he couldn't stop. A signal station is never left unmanned. There should be atleast one person in the cabin.

The sun rose on 3000 bodies lying dead in Bhopal.

Someone came for him in the morning. He was relieved from his night shift. He could go home. He could barely see. He stumbled across the road. He could see his home. He was happy again. Thinking he would see his wife. His wife had not run away to safety. She had waited for her husband.

He was never to see her alive again. She would die later in a hospital, without an oxygen mask. How easy it is to rob a woman who is alone; especially when a loved one is dying. He lost his youngest son too. He would never see him again. He would never talk to his son. He would never taste his wife's cooking. All he was left at the end of the day was a commendation letter from the Government telling him how brave he had been.

The happy man would never be happy again.

And the night rolled silently by; there was static on the radio, the dogs howled, taps dripped, and clocks ticked as the night rolled silently by.

This is an actual story of a one Mr Rehman Patel; my grandfather, who was present in Bhopal on that fateful Night of December 2-3, 1984, the day he lost his wife and a son. He always lived with the regret that he did not go home that night.

result of random time wasting and sickness...

Waiting... Waiting all the time.

till the clock tick tock begins to rhyme,

I wonder where the patience comes

to wait for the hour, to wait for the chime.

Still we wait, wait, for day, for night

for love, for hate, for smell, for sight

for honor, for revenge, for luck, for help,

for health, for wealth, for right for might.

Waiting is our favorite game,

we love to wait all the same,

when life ends in waiting,

who in the world will take the blame?

Waiting, waiting, then waiting some more

We while away the chances galore,

then one day we ponder, when times are up,

why didn't I keep a score?

Don't hesitate.

It's not worth the wait.

Live your life.

Face your fate.

*pardon me... I am down with jaundice. This is just a frustrating attempt from a guy who is fed up of NOT doing anything.

the girl in the bus...

Kolkata buses; they are hot and stifling and yes... overcrowded and noisy. I was on-board one, coming back from watching a movie. The rabble of people fidgeting in the background, fighting for some little volume for breathing, standing or just managing to clamp on to some piece of metal which would enable them to continue their journey.

I have always found that there is a certain lack of humanity in public transports: People are eager to finish their journey, its stuffy and hot and uncomfortable; fights break out , there is an air of irritation and frustration, you hear people cussing all around you especially when you have a large bag with your laptop in it.

It was such hostile environment that I was travelling that day. I was standing somewhere in the aisle and about four feet away from a girl who was sitting in a window seat. Another thing about public transport is that though it may sound ridiculously obvious; there is a tremendous lack of privacy. You can't help it ... there isn't enough places to look at. She was messing around with her phone and try as might as I wanted to avoid it my eyes would inexplicably go to her screen and the Extra Large Font on the large screen of her Nokia.

She had received a message...

I did not know from whom it was from but she was reading the message over and over again; staring at the screen. The message was "I am sry. But I am brkng up with u."

There she was... the girl in the bus... jilted by her lover perhaps... And there was I, feeling like a thief... looking in on moments of her private life.

She typed "Thnks for all the wundrful time we shared." and closed her phone.

I watched her silently from where I stood. If she was in anguish, she controlled it well. She looked out of the window watching the meaningless traffic slide by, trying to suppress some emotions that threated to burst from her in an instant. And I stood there as an invader of her privacy silently watching. Staring.

I could not see her face from where I stood only the profile. I could not see the pain in her eyes. I could not see the minute facial expressions one gives before they crack. Her hand reached up for the window. I thought I saw it tremor a tiny bit, a shiver and a certain lack of belief in her present state.

I was a mute spectator of the controlled implosion of her sentiments, of the deliberate deconstruction of her mind, it was like watching a castle made of cards being swept away by the wind; there was no sound, there was nothing which would say that a world, perhaps, was destroyed here. There was no evidence of melodrama, there was no hint of a tragedy.

It was like watching waves on the beach. The surface of the water often belies the strong current beneath I had learnt;What I had not learnt was that human spirit could mimic their very persona.

Suddenly she turned and looked directly at the culprit, the peeping tom, the pryer of her thoughts, the watcher of the whole episode; me. I tried to look away, but my mind was overcome with panic. My body seized up with guilt. My eyes could not rearrange their point of focus.

I was overcome with sadness which flowed from her eyes, my heart went out for her, but still wracked with contrition my speech had abandoned me.

Suddenly the conductor shook me by the shoulder. I had missed my stop. In a whirlwind of events that followed I was somehow off the bus, one stop further than I had intended.

I was dazed, I did not have an opportunity to look again where she sat. It was over as abruptly as it had begun. I was left as clueless as I was before.

I started to walk slowly back to where I had to go, but all the while my thoughts remained with the girl in the bus.

(picture courtesy Zindy @ http://zindy.deviantart.com/ )

Somethings I hate in Social Networking

Social Networking. The buzzword of today. Even this post is hypocritical in itself as Probably you will be redirected here through Twitter, Facebook, Orkut or whatever.

Trust me. I am not against social networking. Rather I spend much* time commenting on pics, lol-ing, sometimes even rofl-ing, liking, disliking, tagging, re-tagging, scrapping, poking, superpoking and watching popular videos.

(*much here means 65% of my online time.)

But there are some things which irritate me about social media networking. My friend Shrey already has said something related to twitter followers in one of his posts, but my rabble is not site specific.

Things that irritate me.

1. People who want us to join societies on facebook : Yeps. Join societies. Thats the best way to save lame puppies. Or Hate Jews.

2. People who play games via Twitter: Yes, that has started recently. Twitter-games. AAggh the Humanity!

3. People who put faces of kittens and puppies with misspelt language : I don't hate puppies/kittens. I just don't think they are worth a click.

4. Win 10000$ if you forward it to 50 people: I mean what do you do when someone sends you one of those? Also in this category send-to-50-people-or-you-will-die-last-friday and send-to-20-people-get-kissed-by-the-love-of-your-life. I mean I knew Google was a big and rich company. But how can they find the love of my life. (or kill me by some obscure cancer)

5. Sign it for a reason: Online Petitions. What does one get by appending your name to the long list of arseh***s . I mean... what happens? does this list go to the President afterwards?

I can't imagine the scene.

6. People who ping me after I have written DND : Sometimes I have even written DO NOT DISTURB and/or DISTURB AND DIE but the same thing happens in Gtalk.

X: Hi!

Samar: DO NOT DISTURB PLEASE.

Me: hi

X: wassup?

Me: busy.

X: k. just wanted to say hi.

Me: k

Sent at 7:50 pm

X: so when are your holidays?

Me:

7. StumbleUpon Shit and Fall in It : Why do people add free download lists to SU? Average day looks somewhat like this.

• 60 GREAT addons for Firefox.
• Why is Firefox better than IE
• Why is Chrome better than Firefox
• Why is Safari Better than Chrome
• Why should you shift to Linux
• Why Microsoft Sucks
• Open Office Downloads
• 15 Open Source Apps you will love

NO. STOP.

8. When someone forwards a mail to 100 people and does not remove the irrelevant email ids: So then you can see the whole chain of people all around the globe who have been duped into reading the obviously useless thing that that guy/gal sent in the first place.

So yo have to scroll down for like... forever to get to the useless part. Sigh.

9. Old Hoax News: Do you remember the time that mails used to come to not go to dingy movie theaters for fear of being infected by the HIV virus. Sometimes those ancient emails find a way back to your inbox.

Tell me if you have other pet peeves of your own.