The day I lost my id card.

The day I lost my id card was the day I was playing cricket in the room with my room mates. A plastic ball, a chair as the makeshift stumps and a log as bat. I was savouring every moment of it. Making loud noises on getting someone out, some grunts of frustration of close calls and a puffed chest on every shot well played. And within half-an-hours of play my achievement was a cracked window, broken pen stand and a lump on my friend's forehead. All seemed to be going my way till there was a knock on the door. Play was interrupted and the knock was attended to. And standing on the thresh-hold was a small kid, almost in rags. He was sweating profusely like we were, though for a different reason. He had just carried a 40 liter water canister up the flight of stairs to the second floor. Not to mention the blistering heat. Whosoever had the heart to let the boy with such burden? He just looked straight in my eye and asked me in which room I want the canister kept. Did he not realise that he's being exploited under some clause and section of some act and he's protected under the same? Probably he didn't care. Well what I did on my part was feel sorry, told him I'll carry it myself the rest of the distance, gave him 10 bucks and wrote this piece.

Have you.

Have you ever wondered how someone in utter distresss and someone in utmost joy appears similar. If observed from some distance that is. And if you are not plugged in to the situation, more often than not, you cannot tell whether one is crying or bursting with laughter. The facial expression, the body language is almost the same in both the circumstances. The curling of the lips, the body jerks, tears rolling down, eyes reducing to slits, eyebrows drawing closer, forehead forming deep furrows and the almost smothered whimpering at irregular intervals. There isn't much of a difference. To an outsider so to speak. And if you're the one being observed, of course it's a hell of a difference then.

Try it.

Do something that you hate from the bottom of your heart, pit of your lungs and bile of your intestine. And you'll hate yourself for doing it. Curse yourself and the world for existing. Froth on the mouth and feel miserable for the day. Promise yourself never to let yourself go through such punishment. But after sometime you would have realised that you have just accomplished something that you didn't have the heart to do. What an achievment. And the next time you're made to do it again, you would do it without going through the pain you did while doing it the first time. So come to think of it you have just killed two birds with one stone. First you have managed to do something that you thought you were better off avoiding and secondly if circumstances prevail over you to do the same thing again you would most probably go through anguish of lesser degree. Which means you have learned to master that fear that you were hard-pressed not to admit. Right? So on a day when you are feeling miserable and when you think that you'll be better off if the sky were to come crashing down on you, do something you hate doing from the bottom-of-your-heart. So that what you did will override the bad hair day and you'll end up feeling better in some little corner.

Left is never right.

Will it be right if I take the left? Ya, take the first left. That’s right, no it’s left but its right. I mean the right is not right, the left is right. But left cannot be right! Where do I go from here? The prudent thing to do is to take all the rights. Any number of times and the chances are you’ll land up at the same place with the same question, “Where do I go from here?” If you are nonplussed, and under the circumstances, which you’ll be, it’s advisable to give the situation some deep thought and subject yourself to some sound reasoning. That is, if I take left I have already taken the wrong lane. And if I take right, which is right but not in this case, then I am taking the wrong route again. What the deuce, take the middle path or just get lost.

A Thought.

When I was on my way to school, a thought hit me. I though the thought was worth a thought to give it a thought. So I thought over the thought till I couldn’t think any longer. I decided (for the sake of my half-quarter brain) to brush aside that thought and think on other things that merits my thought. Ten years have passed since then but that bloody thought refuses to leave me alone. It’s still haunting me and pushing me to give it another thought. So I did and I am still thinking. And so are you for sure.

What?

Standing on the window sill late in the night he let the dry air run through him. It carried dust, sand, sound and some memories he had salted away. The world around him was sleeping and he was feeling cold, happy and sad. In fact the whole surrounding was reinforcing the fact that he was marooned in a far away land with virtually no human contact. He stood there for sometime till he felt heavy-eyed thinking of the swarm of people he will have to run into the next day. Without delay he hit the sack.

Prime Suspect.

That docile neighbour, who always wears Jamaican Shorts and a friendly smile, perennially on the balcony watering the plants. That taciturn colleague who comes to office only to work. That total stranger on the street who went out of the way to find you an auto rickshaw to make sure you reached your destination safely and on time. That shopkeeper who told you that his product carries a defect and is not worth buying. All prime suspect. They have been too good to be true in this world. It’s not how a normal person of decent is supposed to conduct himself towards others. What is the hidden agenda behind such show of kindness? Must be something utterly malicious. It’s so inhuman to help others.
There aren’t many surviving specimen of that kind though. Thank God! And they are thinning day by day. Going by the trend, a day isn’t far when we will be seeing the last of them. It’s not that mothers have stopped bearing them. But they grow up in an environment that repeatedly hammers them with survival tactics. Every step out of the house means a lesson. A lesson how to live for oneself.
Like, during my preschool days I learned shedding tears or behaving properly in front of guests fulfilled my demand for ice-cream. Then scoring good marks or pretending to study hard did the trick. And after that money supposedly to visit the book fair or buy an important book. And finally, sitting in front of a computer for 9 to 10 hours at a stretch and in between dishing out sermons to pliable juniors and boring them to death. A nice way to earn money. So the more exposed I was to the world the more I leaned to wriggle my way out or manipulate my way in. I became a pro. More learned and wise. More distrusting of people who are upright. While commuting in a bus if a co-passenger picks up a conversation with you for no apparent reason one tends to be a little wary of the conversation starter. And if you don’t then that gives the other a reason to be.

What Is This?

This is my house. This is my room. This is my bathroom. This is my wardrobe inherited from my sister. This is my pair of jean. This is my music system. This is my corner. This in my window. This in my view. This is my sky. This is my share of wind. This is my cycle long abandoned. This is my neighbourhood. This is my favourite facing window. This is my girl by the window. There goes another one by the promenade. And many more. This is not what I meant. This is not what I want from life. This is not me writing. This is me smoking in the loo. This is me lighting an incense stick to douse the smell. This is me sitting idle. This is me hooked to the phone. This is me on the dining table. This is me sleeping till late hours. This is me writing. This is not what you want to read.