THE FORGIVEN

Mistakes happen. To err is, after all, a human trait. But forgiveness… that’s a whole new ball game.

People who err, forgive themselves. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes, however heinous the fault. There’s a justification for everything. The milk of human kindness gushes forth to wash away every wrong in the blink of an eye. It’s amazing. It’s survival.

It takes a little longer to forgive someone who’s wronged you. For there, the bigger battle is not that you’ve been wronged and someone needs to be forgiven; it’s that your Ego can’t take the betrayal and the pain and the ease with which your trust has been taken with a smile and kind words, lovingly caressed and kissed as you watched, but crumpled heartlessly, had a knife thrust into it to the hilt and turned, and squashed under the foot the moment your back was turned. So forgiveness takes its time. And the wait can be a long one. For memories of the deception keep the Ego hurting and the heart bleeds silently, and tears well up in the eyes, only to evaporate into thin air before they spill over, and that slow torment crushes the spirit. But the forgiveness does come.

But the biggest irony of them all – the one thing that punches through the spirit time and again with ever-increasing venom and exponentially rising force and ruthlessness -- is that those who have been wronged are never forgiven. For though they may forgive and extend the olive branch again and again, even at the risk of leaving themselves open to becoming the subject of that same betrayal one more time, the betrayer knows the consequence of his/her action. Knows the pain and the suffering it has caused. And that pricks the conscience. A more powerful emotion is also at play here. The betrayer feels guilty and indignant and angry that someone he/she has wronged has a bigger heart and is more resilient. Weighed down by a feeling that this person holding up the olive branch is a constant reminder of their dark deeds, the tormented soul reacts with a cold shoulder and vinegary comments designed to hurt even further and extend the distance, and burn the bridge before it’s built.

Remorse is a lonely road; and a self imposed one at that. And in the end, the soul is condemned to endure Hell for far longer than it is originally destined to.

WHO AM I?

I am a sinner. I am saintly.
I am the devil. I am divinity.
I am hatred. I am love.
I am misery. I am joy.
I am turmoil. I am serenity.
I am despair. I am hope.
I am chaos. I am order.
I am irrational. I am reason.
I am stoic. I am emotion.
I am skepticism. I am gullible.
I am discord. I am union.
I am rustic. I am sophistry.
I am a tomb. I am festivity.
I am wrath. I am affection.
I am deceit. I am honest.
I am the rock. I am the particle of dust that is tossed about by a sunbeam.
I am folly. I am intelligence.
I am futility. I am direction.
I am deception. I am truth.
I am hunger. I am satiation.
I am the destroyer. I am creation.
I am cacophony. I am melody.
I am indifference. I am compassion.
I am ugly. I am beauty.
I am the storm. I am tranquil.
I am pain. I am succor.
I am treachery. I am faithful.
I am fickle. I am steadfast.
I am a vagabond. I am work.
I am intoxication. I am sober.
I am disease. I am health.
I am the question. I am the solution.
I am doubt. I am sure.
I am poverty. I am treasure.
I am real. I am imagination.
I am mute. I am language.
I am darkness. I am sight.
I am numbness. I am touch.
I am tyranny. I am democratic.
I am night. I am daylight.
I am life. I am death.
I am the hunter. I am the prey.
I am void. I am time.
I am envy. I am camaraderie.
I am lost. I am the quest. I am discovered.
I am human. I am a miracle.
I am nothing. I am something. I am everything.

I am…. I think.

FOR ETERNITY....

Nothing lasts. Nothing. Happiness and peace are just states of mind, that change as quickly as people change their clothes. Love and loyalty and trust are merely words… vague and overrated concepts at best. Feelings of joy and effervesence vanish without a trace, like salt in water, leaving only a weird aftertaste. Fantasies and dreams of a great life that we build around ourselves, burst like bubbles in a bath after a body immerses itself in it. Castles in the air, no more -- hazy ones at that. And when the mist clears and the fog lifts, and clarity reestablishes itself, all you have is yourself.
Promises are meant to be broken. Faithlessness is a norm. For what someone does not know can’t hurt them… until they find out. The bitterest pill to swallow, is the one we set up ourselves, psyche ourselves up to take, making ourselves believe we need it and we’ll enjoy the result, and nothing can go wrong. Sometimes, we call this process hope. Sometimes we are so successful in our endeavor that hope transforms into belief. But the real truth is that all these exercises amount to are tears and heartache.
But something emerges from these experiences. Something indelible. Something that does not fade with time. Memories. Bittersweet memories that recur with an uncanny consistency and regularity. The mind keeps these memories alive and rolls them around, much like a tongue playing with that gap in the teeth. But this experience is different in one way. The tongue does not draw blood. Memories, on the other hand, slash open old wounds, keep them raw, and ensure there’s no clotting. And the stupid heart keeps pumping blood to the nerve endings that are now exposed to the air out there, and scarlet foam and froth mingle with the spit and dirt and grime and sweat and drop to the ground, leaving a trail that’s a constant reminder of the path traveled. But the beating heart does not stop, till there’s nothing left to pump.
And then, just as suddenly as it started, the heart falls silent.
But only if you’re lucky.

INVITING THE END

Death, be kind. Come knocking at my door. Come fast, be sure, and leave no mess.
For all the times I laughed, when others cried. For all the times I smirked when I heard of the misfortunes of others.
For all the times I stood by, and watched my handiwork wreck other lives.
For all the times I tore hearts out and stamped on them, drummed my fingers as screams rent the air and whistled as sobs and sighs lent the rhythm.
For all the times I played with sentiments and emotions and feelings and trust – things given to me without any expectation, other than that I keep them safe, treasure them, and exalt in them.
For all the bodily and mental hurt I have left in my wake, as I stumbled and rampaged through life.
I’ve gone too far. Done too much harm -- Irreversible harm.
All that was asked of me, was that I make room for some others in my life. All that was expected of me, was unconditional love. All that was desired of me was that I sympathize, empathize, and lend a shoulder when required. All I did, was add to the pain.
Enough.
No more.
Such a failure has no place on this earth.Death, be kind. Come knocking at my door. Come fast, be sure, and leave no mess, if it please you.

BLACK...

Hello, darkness…. Old friend. Banished once, but persistent in your desire to weld yourself to my life.
How long will you stay this time?
Till I turn you out again?
Till you find yourself so indelibly imprinted on my soul that there’s no light left to blot out?
Till you decide to make way for the light?
Or have you learnt from your past error, and decided not to bow out at the brilliance you encountered a few months ago?
Did you miss me so?
Really?
Why?
Was there no one else who could please and satiate you more?
Why are you silent and brooding? Or is that just your nature… a nature I knew so well, but have forgotten in recent times?
You’ve begun your work I see… The light that once beckoned at the end of the tunnel dims. The shadows grow longer, and the tunnel elongates itself, reveling in your company.
For a few days now, I’ve felt you trying to claw yourself back into my life, my soul. Congratulations.
Your persistence is awe-inspiring. Your efforts have not been futile after all.
I grow resigned to your presence. You grow stronger.
Run your course. I doubt there’s much time left. So be quick.
But promise me you’ll torment only me. Let your vengeance be appeased with me. Do not turn to the source of the brilliance that once ran you out of my life. It was pure. It was good. It is so, and does not deserve you.
My life, as you well know, has been lived on the run. A month premature when I entered this world; 6 months to begin mouthing words; 10 minutes to pick up a dog; half-a-day to find my dog a home; 2 days to decide on a career; 6 months to climb up the ladder; A day to shift houses every time… the clock is ticking. There’s not much time left. Do your worst…. Your best.

TRULY COMMERCIAL

He stopped by the doorway, hefted his jeans higher, pushed his Stetson higher up his brow, and proceeded to pull out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Out came a Zippo, and its flickering flame gave life to 2 curling tendrils of blue smoke. He inhaled deeply, and the creases on his brow vanished, a smile appeared on his lips and he leant his shoulder against the doorframe as 2 fingers closed around the stick and pulled it away from his lips. The tip of his tongue swept over his lips and a moment later, billows of smoke blew the wisps of smoke emanating from the end of his cigarette into nothing.

His horse, stamping the ground behind him, shifted its weight and tossed her head. The whites of her eyes stood out wildly in the dark. She strained against her harness, whinnied loudly, stamped her foot, and fell over in slow motion. The screen went black. And out of the oblivion, appeared jagged words in white “Passive Smoking Kills… Too.”

Simple, yet hard hitting.

They don’t make commercials like that anymore.

These days, the commercials on air, barring a scanty few, seem to showcase more tongue-in-cheek humor as in the naukri.com advertisement; extravagance like the horde of Rajasthani villagers lighting up a palace in the HappyDent advertisement, or skin. They also appear more than willing to play with a person’s aspiration – the “wear a white shirt and get a promotion” syndrome, or tug at the heart strings a la the “Hamara Bajaj” ad.

Creativity, I think they call it. Want a more colorful phrase? Try ‘lateral thinking’. But how is it that such “creativity” has become so run-of-the-mill? How is it that all those creative thinkers, who get to warm seats in a plush air-conditioned office, drinking pots of coffee billed to the client, and paid shit-loads of money to think up “fresh” ideas, invariably end up going for tried and tested scenarios that hold the viewer’s attention for around 3 seconds, and leave no brand recall?

Some ad-men are quick to argue that these ideas, stale as they may sound, work… at least when it comes to picking up a few Lions and Leaves at international advertising forums.
But if that’s the case, and the rule-of-thumb that the advertising world has come to follow, it’s myopic at best.

Others put forth a theory that the client takes the final call, and tried-and-tested is the order of the day. Plausible, but a little hard to believe… because as a student of management, one of the first things that’s drummed into heads is that the life and recall of a product will be directly proportional to the factors differentiating it from its competitors.

It’s a blame-game that has no end in sight. But from the perspective of a layman who’s subject to these visuals every time he turns the tube on, “something new” is definitely “top of mind.”

And so it appears, that a harsh, matter-of-fact re-look at the trash clogging the airwaves is in order. Maybe it’s time to go back to the drawing board and really put the gray cells to work. Or maybe, it’s time advertisers went home and really thought about how the present commercials dilute the value of the product, giving it an “also available on the shelf” persona, and come up with better ways to push their products to the world out there.

PEACE AT LAST...

“I am a sinner. Please forgive me.”

Such simple words.
So powerful.
But what gives them this power? Is it the sincerity? The resignation? The confidence? The desperation? The self-realization? Or is it just the humility to acknowledge that one has slipped up, and needs help?

Whatever be the emotion behind these words, there’s no denying that they call out to the listener. Fill his heart with compassion. Captivate him with their eloquence. Remind him that he too is human, and prone to err.

But it’s the greatest gift of them all. For with these simple words, one seeks absolution, and with them, one feels himself pulled to the Bosom of the Good Lord.

For the response that follows, be it in Latin, or Greek, or English, or any other tongue known to man, offers the sweetest relief imaginable:
“Ego te absolvo in nominee Patris et Fillee et Spiritus Sanctii.”
“I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.”

And a dying man will know peace, and feel himself lifted, and secure.

For man is a fickle creature, in need of constant reassurance that he is headed to a better place. That there is peace and happiness in the afterlife. That the Lord created him in His own image, and so a part of Him he is.

Call it folly. Call is blind faith. Call it what you will. But the greatness of our forefathers, who conceptualized this ritual, cannot be denied. For with one sentence, they put the dying man and his kith and kin in a state of peace, drawing the anguish out like sucking out a snake’s venom.

The quest for peace, ends, with success.

THE IDIOT AND THE BOX

It was the day my friend was having a big bash to celebrate his first TV, and the new Tata Sky connection. “DTH cometh, it’s finally time to make life ‘Jhinga la la’”, read the SMS he’d sent around. “See you at 10 am sharp, Sunday” it had concluded.
The blessed Sabbath dawned. I woke up, as usual, at 10:30, and lazily crossed the street to his pad.
I walked in, and my senses were assaulted by the loud electronic voices of people chattering on TV. No human voices to speak of.
I wade through the hall into the room housing the latest bit of gadgetry to grace his 4 walls, and behold my friend watching TV… all alone. Packets of junk food – some full, some empty – played the role of a carpet. Crumbs of potato wafers, biscuits, popcorn kernels, interspersed with empty coke bottles made up the detailing… I felt lucky I hadn’t kicked off my footwear.
“Where’s the rest of the crowd?” I asked. “Got bored, went home,” came the reply. His eyes never leave the screen. My puzzled expression was lost on him. So I put it into words: “Why? What happened? Something wrong with the TV or nothing interesting on air?”

“Oh, lots of great stuff’s on… but we couldn’t watch anything completely.”

His eyes still haven’t left the screen. I realize I’m screaming to make myself heard. The remote’s lying next to him, beside to a limp arm. But I dare not pad up to the screen and touch the knobs there, lest I irritate him.
But strangely, he’s not feeling bad that he’s alone… but it’s a question that’s been niggling me for a while now:
“So they came, they ate, and they left?”
“No. None of them wanted to eat.”
“So you ate all that by yourself?”
“Hmmmm.”
“Dude, how much of that stuff did you eat?”
“Pshawfghhhhh.”
“That’s not a word, man. You feeling ok?”
“Grmbhhhhhh”
“What?”
He turns his head… looks at me… turns back to the TV… sighs…. Lifts up the remote and switches it off… turns back to me…

“Huh?”
“Did you eat all that junk?”
“Yeah, the others didn’t want anything.”
“But there must be 700 bucks worth of junk food on the floor.”
“850, actually.”
“So what happened to the other guys?”
“Yeah, see there’s only one TV, so we couldn’t decide on something everyone wanted to watch. There’s only 1 remote, and we couldn’t decide who should control it. So they all pushed off.”
“Oh....... So I guess I’ll go too then, let you watch what you want. Sorry I disturbed you.”
“Naah man, it’s cool. The ad break’s over…. I’ll turn it on in 5 minutes…”
“You’re watching ads?”
“Yeah," he says matter-of-factly. "A movie interrupts them only once in 15-20 minutes, and that’s just for 5 minutes or so.”
I can’t believe my ears: “So you switch the thing off when the movie starts?”
“No, flip channels.”

He looks at his watch, turns back to the TV, and click’s it on again.

CLEANLINESS FREAKS!

It’s common perception: A bachelor’s pad will be messy. And why not? The concept of cleanliness has been hammered into the chap since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. And ever since, his one ambition in life has been to let loose and not follow the norms laid down. Let’s be clear about it… One of the most-hated phrase/instruction a lad grows up hearing is “Clean your room.” These three words fester in him, to an extent that they can give him the rash. They spell doom. They spell misery. They spell drudgery. They spell an evening of imprisonment. They spell boredom. And most importantly, they spell the beginning of an evening that could have been spent doing things that are far more interesting.
Scientific arguments that messy rooms can lead to a myriad of disease mean absolute bollocks to him. Ergonomic arguments that a clean room means knowing exactly where things are don’t make sense at all. The only “tidy” he’s interested in is the packet he’s going to make at the football game that evening.
Trust me. I speak from experience.
I have never had to look at my room and wonder: “Now where do I start looking for my blue Umbro jacket with the red and white stripes running down the arms?” The moment I look into my room, I know where it is: Under the bed, towards the top left hand corner, behind that pizza carton, and on top of my tennis racquet which has 2 strings missing, which in turn, lies on a cushion made up of my old white socks with the Nike swoosh on them.
It’s simple.
Ok, you can’t find anything if you walk into my room… but maybe that’s the way I want it. If you need something, ask me. And if I want you to have it, I’ll tell you where to look. But don’t you dare walk into my room and try to pick through my stuff on your own… Not only do you end up making a mess of my living space, you screw up my entire life as well.
A bachelor has other things to worry about than a clean room. Sure, when you walk into it, he may be polite and say something along the lines of “Sorry about the mess.” But he’s just being polite.
And he’ll thank you for not shrieking like a banshee, if you enter the room and spy a cockroach talking a stroll. Believe me, he knows the little guy lives there. He may not necessarily be ok with it, but it’s his way of practicing a life where “Live and let Live” is the guiding force. Please remember, the roach has been walking around since before the Dinosaurs walked the Earth. He’s survived meteor showers, two ice ages, 2 world wars, the atomic bomb, the holocaust, the nuclear storm, and is likely to continue on his regular evening tours of the facility long after your bones are excavated and hailed as the biggest archeological find of the millennium. Such a resilient chap deserves to be saluted, not become the subject of your tonsils doing a hearty jig and breaking the sound barrier with their oscillations.
Yes, there are some chaps who live the “clean” life. But they are aberrations… freaks of nature… exceptions that cannot be used as examples. In all probability, they suffer from a mental disorder: maybe they had too many feminine influences during their formative years. Maybe they were the kind that got bullied at school and were told, on pain of death, that fighting back would mean being sent up to bed without dinner. Maybe they were given too much love as a child. Maybe they were not loved enough. Whatever the reason for their quirky behavior, it must be remembered that these specimens don’t belong in the real world, but in a museum, or better still, an insane asylum.
But I digress.
The room that resembles the site of the last War Of The Worlds, is heaven to a bachelor. And that’s the reason that when he finds such a place, he calls it home. And when he gets a pretty girl in there, and persuades her to stay a while, he calls it: “Getting Lucky.”

BREAKING TRADITION?

“That’s plain rot!”
“But it’s tradition… our tradition.”
“No, it’s blind superstition; nonsensical rituals… things don’t happen that way anymore.”
“No it’s not. There’s a logic behind everything.”
“Nonsense. The logic of the Neanderthal man does not hold true in the 21st Century.”
“It does… more so now, than ever before. And it’s the way we do things in this house.”
“Talk to the hand….”
“Don’t be flippant with me, young man”
“Flippant?!? You haven’t seen flippant yet.”
“I’ll talk to you about this when you grow up.”

So mum had the last word after all. As far as that discussion was concerned.

What’s this about? It’s about the son of a traditional (no, not orthodox, not conservative, just traditional) house talking about marriage. The said institution is daunting on its own. Add that inevitable dash of traditional practices, and it’s a mountain cracking up, with you standing at the peak, looking down.

The crack widen as you probe deeper. Inter-community marriages are one thing. And getting the parents to agree to one is comparatively easy. There’s a whole gamut of other aspects to consider. How do you tell all those elders in the family that the past year spent looking for a suitable alliance had better stop NOW? How do you explain to them that when you told them to go ahead and look at the myriad matrimonial columns, you were not in love? How do you get them to agree that the love of your life does not believe in some of the practices they think are of paramount importance… that she wants to exchange rings despite being from a community where rings are not the “done thing”?

These questions seem trivial. They never occurred to you… ever. While the issues seem trivial enough and hold no great meaning to you, what flummoxes you the most is why the old fuddy-duddies want to make such a big hue and cry about them… I mean, what difference does it make?

So I go back to the drawing board… call up the girl and try to get her to understand… maybe change her stand. High hopes I had!

So after a few calls back and forth, I see a light at the end of the tunnel. I convince her to meet my parents and persuade them herself. “Fine!!!”, she says. I’m thinking : “There goes sweet pillow-talk for the first month after we are wedded, if we get there.”

She comes. My parents meet her. They talk. She gives in…. She even agrees to wear a Sari and a bindi… She loves me too much! I’m in seventh heaven.

I meet her parents. They are happy, I am happy, She is happy, All’s well with the world!

But ---this ---is --- just --- the --- beginning.

We arrange for the parents to meet each other. There’s general nervousness. I’m nervous. She’s nervous. Her parents are nervous. Mine are bombarding me with questions I had not thought could exist.

Somewhat like this…..

Mom & Dad: “Are they nice people?”
Me: “Yeah they are.”
M&D: “What’s this assessment based on?”
Me: “They gave me the woman I love. And they have agreed to meet you guys.”
M&D: “That’s hardly a judgement criteria… We thought you were mature and responsible.”
Me: “I am… It is…. “
M&D: “Fine! We’ll judge for ourselves, when we meet them.”
Me: “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”
M&D: “We thought you were capable of this… now we know better.”
Me: “Ok, can we leave? We’re getting late.”
M&D: “Yeah…. Shouldn’t keep them waiting… Listen… will she be able to blend in with our family?”
Me: “Don’t ask me… you met her… make up your mind.”
M&D: “These responses make us believe you aren’t ready for marriage.”
Me: “Ok Ok… yes she will.”
M&D: “What’s this assessment based on?”
Me: “I love her… She loves me… She’ll do anything necessary… as will I, to make this work.”
M&D: “That’s hardly a judgement criteria… We thought you were mature and responsible.”
Me: “I am… It is…. “
M&D: “Fine! We’ll judge for ourselves, when we her again today.”
Me: “Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?”
M&D: “We thought you were capable of this… now we know better.”
Me: “Is there anything else you would like to know?”
M&D: “Yeah, will they agree to conduct the wedding rituals as per our tradition?”
Me: “Talk to them and figure it out… If I did everything, what will you guys do?”
M&D: “That’s not a proper answer. I shudder to think of you as a married man.”
Me: “I’ll deal with that at the proper time.”
M&D: “Yeah right… don’t come to us if things go wrong.. because you don’t know any better.”
Me: “I give up.”

And it goes on and on and on….

Cutting to the chase… The clans met… they talked, thay laughed, they joked… they agreed that the plunge should be taken… for the happiness of the “children”. And I’m thinking: “Why can’t they just admit they are happy too?”
And then it hits me.
They are! They just don’t want to get emotional over it and show how excited they are. So what rituals are they following?
Each party agreed to do it the other person’s way.
Wow!
And then she pointed it out.
“They are giving in on the little things so they can haggle over the bigger things.”
A conclusion arrived at using her woman’s intuition, no doubt – something I have no idea about.
So there are smiles all around… thumping backs, handshakes, 3 different tongues chattering away – to each his own.
I sit back, content and excited.
Here I am, about to embark on the biggest step in my life so far.
But there’s a niggling thought. And I find the words to put it to my parents on the way back home.
“If you guys are agreeing to everything they say, and the do the same, whose way is it going to be?”
Pat comes the answer: “She’s their only daughter. We want her to be our daughter-in-law… nay, our daughter. Let them do whatever they want to do, their way; and we’ll do whatever we have to do, our way.”
Makes sense.
“So what about alkl that tradition stuff you were harping on about?”
“This is tradition too.”
“Yeah, but its their tradition, not ours.”
“It’s tradition.”
“So now your’e ok with their tradition… I thought you were most insistent it should be ours.”
“Oh, so you want a traditional wedding now?”
“Ma, I just want to get hitched. How it’s done is not my concern.”
“But traditions give sanctity to the entire process.”
“Nonsense. The logic of the Neanderthal man does not hold true in the 21st Century.”
“It does… more so now, than ever before. And it’s the way we do things in this house.”

Mothers! You just can’t beat them.