Why can't I cry??

Have you ever felt an emotion so overwhelming that you are numbed on impact. A continuous state of anxiety and fear. As if something is chasing you and is not letting up even though you are trying your best to escape its grasp. I am writing after a very long time. I had started writing about 10 years back to give vent to my emotions. As a person I have been brought up to be a bit doubtful about myself. This one trait of mine has destroyed everything I ever tried to build.

I never had any kind of confidence in what I was trying to do. Pursue your dreams was something I was never told by anyone. Being born in a typical middle class household with hard working and pennywise parents somehow inculcates a sense of insecurity which kills any sort of freedom in thought. Living with myself has been a bit painful for the last 15 years. I guess, it all started in school when I discovered that I was no good with anything. Having a competitive peer group does two things to you as a child. It tells you to pull up your socks or get left behind. Secondly it opens you up to your shortcomings like nothing can. I could not debate for the life of me. I could not speak when spoken to. I perpetually lived with low self-confidence and fear.  A paralytic fear of failure. A fear which stops people from exploring themselves and kills any chance of looking at life differently. I used to get images in my mind of failing. Of failing big time, causing shame to everyone, parents first and then whoever came later.

It’s a little odd, that during this turbulent time I found some friends who were helpful enough to understand that there was someone weak amongst them. Someone who needed more time and effort to do things that they could do in their sleep. But, I am digressing. Why I cant cry more? I have in my stupid little life, come across people who can cry very easily. Some who can really howl and be normal in a split second. I don’t even remember when I cried last. I am not comparing to anyone else, but I have had my share of embarrassments, shaming, failures, depression and difficulties. Let me try and list some moments where I shud have cried probably -:

1.       Once when Mom dad fought and mom threatened to leave the house. I was small but I did not like the energy of the house at that time.

2.       Once when I failed in 4 subjects out of 5 in my 12^th class second term exams. I saw my mother crying for the first time. I really did not know how to react to that.

3.       I went to my sister’s house and her mother hugged me and cried for her elder daughter who has committed suicide. I felt sad for the household but I could not bring myself to cry.

4.       I got beaten up by mom and dad for some mischief I had committed at a family friend’s place. It was unreal. Getting beaten up for one whole night.

5.       My best friend died in a road accident randomly one day. I attended his funeral , gave him a shoulder during his last journey, saw his mother’s eyes dried up, saw his brother sitting like a stone, saw his fiancé with dried tears. Saw his crushed face with my own eyes but I could not bring myself to cry. I still don’t know what came over me that day but I just could not cry.

6.       I was left heart broken at Ranchi railway station when for the first time in my life I mustered up the courage to tell a girl I love her. Apparently she was already dating someone else and I was not aware. I travelled for 2 days in that train completely stoned. Did not know how to react.

7.       I decided to separate from my first girl friend in Chennai when I understood that there would be no future together. She cried, howled, hit me, cursed me, beat me, abused me. I did not cry then.

8.       I saw my father selling off his house because we had no money. I remember that visual clearly. Dad and me sitting with our heads down as the broker came to us with the cash and dad handing over the keys of the house to the new owner. I guess it was too much for Dad too as he went to his friends place and asked me to go home with the money and be with mom. Dad cried, mom too.. I did not cry then.

9.       I had my second heart break when my relationship with a very close friend ended. It was a passion fueled relationship when almost ran us mad. I had experienced passion , but such insanity was a new experience. Sitting in the middle of a road at 1 in the night with one hand completely broken due to a bike accident, my girl friend standing next to me shell shocked. A scene straight out of some novel. My girl friend cried. I could not cry even then. Probably a tear or two because my arm was mangled completely.

10.   Deciding to marry outside my faith with a girl I loved more than anything. Eventually I realized that we were not made for each other. Great as individuals, not so great as a couple. Calling the thing off. Getting called names. Being accused of treachery, cheating, letting down, breaking promises and what not. Everyone and their uncle called me to tell me I am the worst guy who ever walked planet Earth. She cried.. a lot. Her dreams broken, her life sent through a very avoidable tangle.I could not cry still.

11.   My mother was diagnosed with Diabetes. Here is the catch. This diagnosis happened from inside the ICU where she was battling between life and death. I had been careless with her health. I take responsibility for it. Looking at my mother breathing heavily and on Ventilator with a 20% chance of survival, my father cried. My uncles and aunts and their children, my cousins everyone cried. We almost lost her. She stopped recognizing me when I saw her in the ICU , all caught up in a wiry mesh. Her expressionless stare at me was something I could not take out of my mind. She spent 3.5 months in the ICU and eventually got better with time. My aunt told me this. She never saw me crying through the whole ordeal.

12.   I was diagnosed with Jaundice once. I spent 1.5 months in the hospital with excruciating pain in the abdomen. Not being able to move or eat with the body rejecting food at the outset. It was hell like no other. Sedation caused more anxiety as the drip was not properly placed. I woke up one day in horror looking at my hand swollen to 1.5 times its normal size with the veins and nerves all visible. People got anxious looking at me. All through this, I could not bring myself to cry.

13.   My best friend who I had lost, his younger brother got married and his parents in a show of large heartedness put me in the front for all rituals. His mother hugged me and cried , maybe thinking of him. Had he been there he would have taken on the whole responsibility of the wedding and would have danced his heart out. I spent a quiet moment in some corner when the ceremony was taking place looking at the sky, thinking probably he would be ashamed of me too, that he had such a loser friend who was no good.

14.   Joining a company in an industry I was always interested to pursue. Quickly realizing that the place was filled with slime balls who had built their careers through boot licking and Chinese whispers. Lost respect for the company but still respected my work. Got called in a meeting room with the whole team looking at me. Boss threw papers on my face, shouted at me and I could do nothing. I sensed my fists clenching and I really wanted to take her head and smash it on the wall. But I could not. I could hear sniggers from the juniors as I was being taken apart. I felt all my work life has been reduced to this one meeting where I am being fucked over. I felt sad and angry. I walked out of the room and sat in silence but however hard I tried I could not cry even then.

Is it depression? Is it some sort of inability to express emotion? Coldness maybe or is it that I am seriously ill and will one day explode and burst like no tomorrow? I don’t know. Its difficult to even comprehend. My lack of expression tells people that I don’t care. But I know in my heart ho much I have done or cared. But again its my problem that I expected and felt bad. So, no expectations from anyone. Probably when I go from here, people will say good riddance. He was a pain and only caused more pain to whoever he met. Well, not something I would be proud of but then life has been without purpose from day 1. I still don’t understand what I am made to do. I am drifting and will continue to drift. My core has been of empathy and that kills any kind of retaliation I may think of. Its good sometimes to let go. To feel the wind on the face. To feel free and live for another day. But when the day ends and I am back in my shell wth all the walls closing in, I pop in my head and keep asking the same damn thing. Why can’t I just bloody cry?

Dil Se... -- Love in times of strife!!

                                       

For all of the kids who grew up during the 90s, hindi cinema represented two stark possibilities. One would be the ideal family sugar saccharine entertainers and the other would be crude masala movies which stuck to the “Formula”. In the middle of this clutter where you cant tell one film from another came Mani Ratnam’s ground breaking Tamil movies Roja and Bombay which blew cinema lover’s minds in their dubbed versions. Calling him an auteur would be an understatement as watching his work was like a slap in the face for all those who felt good story telling and water tight writing doesn’t get good box office so they needn’t be there.

During 1998 when I was a 13 year old and Kuchh Kuchh hota hai became the cult sensation for an entire generation, I was slowly getting sold on that very idea of movies. Movies need to entertain, family movies are an escape from real life, hindi cinema music sells when it caters to populist tastes & SRK is THE loverboy and that’s what he is best at. It was during this time when one of those evenings, the 15 sec teaser of Dil Se began airing. The teaser began with A R Rahman’s soul stirring aalaap of Dil Se and fast cut shots of SRK and Manisha running with explosions around and mountains and before you could make head or tail of what you saw, the teaser ended. That was something I had never ever felt in my life. The only word that described what I felt was “Exhilaration”. I couldn’t believe the sound my ears were listening to. I couldn’t believe the visuals my eyes were looking at. What struck me right away was, this was SRK who was playing a fluffy college kid dancing around young girls looking half his age and still making the whole film watchable and out of the blue he sticks his neck out and prepares to blow everyone’s minds with an absolute antithesis of the conventional “Bollywood love story”.

Next thing I knew I waited with bated breath for the audio cassette of the film. For some reason I just could not take the visuals out of my mind. The cassette released and I immediately played it. The album started with the rambunctious Chhaiyya Chhaiyya, went mellow with Ae Ajnabi, became soul stirring with Dil Se Re , turns sexually charged with Jiya Jale & finally rounds out as intense and mystical with Satrangi re. I listened to the whole album in one go and I was hooked. Never before had I felt so many things at one time. I was jumping, happy, thoughtful, sad, scared, anxious, spiritual, empty all at one time. No other album had ever messed with my head, the way this one did. The sound, the words, the arrangement were unbelievable and I became obsessed with following the movie and finding out whatever I could about it. I stuck to TV Channels which aired clips from the film, interviews with the stars and Mani Ratnam. I remember SRK saying in one of those interviews, Dil Se is a bollywood love story told in the most “unbollywood” kind of manner and it pushes the envelope. In Hindsight it described the experience beautifully.

Because nothing could have prepared me for what I felt when I saw it.

Dil Se begins on a rainy night somewhere in the North East where an AIR program executive is trying to catch a train. On that stormy night he meets Meghna and is instantly besotted. He tries everything to get her to speak and finally when she speaks his adrenaline sky rockets. She says ,”ek cup garam chai”. Now its not too much dialogue but the way Mani Ratnam sets this scene up coupled with the sound design and Rahman’s background score kicking in, there is a world of emotions conveyed within that itself. The scene ends with SRK rushing back with the tea and watching Meghna board the train with 2 strangers, but he cant do anything about it. As the train starts moving, he shouts “Oyee” and Meghna immediately looks back and that’s the end of “duniya ki sabse chhoti prem kahani” or so we thought. In 15 minutes Mani Ratnam set up his main characters and took the audience on a mystical ride and still kept room to tell his story. I knew then and there that this is not going to be what I had been fed as movies till that point.

For a pure cinematic experience, Dil Se was filled with gooseflesh inducing moments that kept coming from the word go. As the movie progressed, Mani Ratnam kept those moments coming in and went on laying the foundation of the screenplay brick by brick. As SRK determinedly pursues Meghna and she keeps resisting his advances the audience slowly is getting ,that there is more to this than it looks on the surface. For example, who is Meghna and why does she freeze every time she sees SRK. Who were the people she boarded the train with? Is SRK a psycho coz his behaviour can be called borderline stalking but he isn’t necessarily harassing her? Too many questions and we haven’t crossed the first 30 mins yet.

The film moves ahead and SRK finds out where Meghna lives and proposes to her without a care in the world. Meghna tells him she is already married. SRK out of  guilt wants to apologise to Meghna and ends up getting beaten up by those two men he saw her board the train with. SRK recovers and finds out that Meghna doesn’t stay at the same place anymore and used to make calls to Ladakh. He goes there to cover the Ladakh festival where he sees the Army fire upon a supposed terrorist. In the ensuing chaos he again sees Meghna and starts following her. He meets her on the bus she is sitting in where she calls SRK her husband when questioned by an Army officer. SRK jokes around but now is intrigued by this woman who is turning out to be something else completely.

Their bus breaks down and SRK out of sheer frustration asks her about her name and who is she exactly? Meghna doesn’t give in and SRK in a moment of madness kisses her forcefully and gets pushed back. They both reach a Gompa with another group of people and are waiting for the night to get over. Meghna sees SRK smoking and sitting alone and asks him to come inside as a storm is on the horizon. SRK mocks her for being many people at once. Meghna violently hits SRK and tries to resist him. SRK realises to his horror that she can’t breathe and asks her if she has had such an experience earlier. He tells her to cry her heart out and not to stop herself and finally Meghna calms herself down.

By this time the relation between SRK and Meghna is established and the audience is slowly induced into a false sense of mystique. A lot of people I spoke with felt that there is no structure to this. It felt like random scenes put together and there is no definite direction that the story was taking till this point. To me personally, this whole portion was haunting to say the least. The backdrop of never ending landscapes that Ladakh represented filled me with this feeling of hollowness and for the longest time I did not like to see this place. It made me very uncomfortable. For some reason I felt like I was on some wild goose chase and wherever I go I would just fall short as it was vast nothingness where I could touch or feel nothing.

The story moves from here where SRK and Meghna strike a rapport and fall asleep one night. The next morning when SRK wakes up, he realises to his dismay that Meghna has left again and this time with a message on sand.

From this point onwards Dil Se, shifts gears and turns into a dramatic thriller as Mani Ratnam chooses to gobsmack the viewers with a killer revelation of Meghna being part of a revolutionary group who are planning something big during Republic Day celebrations on the 50^th anniversary of India’s independence. The transition is done so smoothly that the audience is left with no time to ponder as to what all has led them to this point.

Dil Se.. is a treasure trove of “moments” which remain unforgettable till date. Santosh Sivan had never shot frames with such fluidity. The deliberate ambiguity that was written into the screenplay was beautifully played out on screen through Sivan’s magical lens and the magic that SRK and Manisha Koirala conjured up. If thought of simply, Dil Se is classic Mani Ratnam where a topical subject serves as the background for an intense love story. But where Roja & Bombay were fairly straight forward, Dil Se takes the audience on a mystical journey and unravels its core layer by layer. Once the revelation comes through, it ratchets up enough tension and momentum to leave the audience gasping with a shocking ending.

Dil Se’s credits roll reads like the who’s who of masters. Produced by Shekhar Kapoor, Ram Gopal Varma & Mani Ratnam, Music by Rahman, Editing by Suresh Urs, Cinematography by Santosh Sivan, Dialogues by Tigmanshu Dhulia. Not to mention an astounding cast comprising of SRK, Manisha Koirala, Sanjay Mishra, Aditya Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi Chakraborty, Mita Vashisht and a sparkling debut by a certain Preity Zinta. The test of any great film is how well it ages and whether the elements hold up or not. Dil Se gives me something new everytime I watch it. The haunting background score with Sukhwinder Singh’s awe inspiring version of the poem “Sitaaron se aage jahaan aur bhi hain… abhi ishq ke imtehaan aur bhi hain”. This one line sums up the whole movie.

For the first time in mainstream hindi cinema the concept of the 7 stages of love was depicted by a film maker. SRK is shown traversing through these which are Hab, Uns, Ishq, Aqeedat, Ibaadat, Junoon, Maut. The final 10 minutes where SRK confronts Meghna are arguably the most powerful 10 minutes ever shot and can still give anyone goosebumps.

Its been 20 years since it released. Everyone associated with it or anyone who saw it went on their own journeys in life, but nothing could ever replace this one milestone ever. Whenever the history of hindi cinema is written Dil Se will need to be mentioned as the actual game changer which threw every rule book out of the window and wrote a new cinematic language. Its my go to movie to restore my faith in cinema when it is repeatedly shaken by what we regularly now get in the name of cinema.

Some movies outlive everything and take a life of their own. Dil Se..

Raah...

Saamne dekha toh dikhi 2 raahein,
poochhti thi mujhse jaana hai tujhe kahan..

jawab dil mein liye.. aankhon ko moonde..
jo laga sahi..

us raah pe main chalta raha..


poochha gaya mujhse... jo raah li hai maine...
kya ban raha hun khuda main..
kyun le raha hun yeh raah main..

aankhein churaaye... sach se pare...

us raah pe main chalta raha...

jo waade kiye the saare maine...
jo sapne bune the saare maine..
sab hans rahe hain aaj mujhpe...
sab kehte hain jhootha mujhe...

sab kuchh apne andar samete...
sab ke liye ek rakshas banke..

us raah pe main chalta raha...

vishwas hai toda maine...
ek baandh hai jo khola maine...
ban gaya hun mook andhere jaisa...
pad gaya hun thanda barf ke jaisa...

aage kuchh hai dikhta nhn...
par raah jo li hai woh chhodni nhn...

aankhon mein aansoo liye...
apne har kisi ko ganwaaye..

us raah pe main chalta raha...

Anger.... Raw Anger!!!

When we talk about anger... what are the visuals that hit our conscious mind...  Raised voices, boiling blood, red nose, clenched fist n maybe some gritted teeth. I am sure all of us have experienced these through the course of our lives... I mean lets face it... if Gandhi says he never felt anger.. its a lie... its the most basic of human emotions to feel anger.. to feel the need to retaliate... to vent all the feeling one suppresses....To say he covered it well would again not be the 'Absolute' truth... but then who are we to question him anyway... he did it his way... we all do it our ways...

In my life I have seen many instances where perfectly sane people have behaved like primal beings on being triggered by something seemingly innocuous.... people who look totally in control of themselves and their situations. In most of the cases... the visuals have been far from pleasant and the realization that these people are just as animal-like as compared to the people they despise... the iconoclasm is complete...

This post is a very small attempt to understand what happens when suppression meets provocation.... when control is lost... when irrationality and the need for destruction overruns sound reason...

Anger over the years has been called a lot of things -- Rage, Ego, Letting-go, venting and what not. What most people dont talk about is why does it manifest itself as the rawest form of human emotion. What is it about this one emotion... that channels all the energy the body has in one single moment and unleashes in such brute force that everything gets blown away with it...

I experienced my first brush with this emotion when I was in school. I as a child was the typical nerd, who did not have many friends... who was not very popular amongst his class-mates... the silent-shy type. Given the pressure on academics and my absolute hatred for it.. I used to hav a tough time convincing my parents that I will be fine.. scores or no scores... In that impressionable age I had seen an appreciable level of suppression where what I had to say was never heard... where my voice used to drown in the deluge of more sane(?) voices... During one of these days.. I was sitting in my class, when a boy sitting behind started playing pranks on me... He kept on calling me names... asking me to show some stomach (?) for a fight and was pricking me with a compass... I kept silent for about 20 mins... but he was not relenting... something was building inside me all this while... I had never felt it before...but I felt this insane urge in me to smash his face...
I waited for 5 more minutes... and then... I did not realize what happened... I jumped up... stood before him... caught him from behind his neck ... took my right arm under his... and pushed him forward... and he thudded into the table ahead...he banged his head against the table and fell.. and started crying... I took me a while to realize what had just happened...the entire class was stunned into silence... some started laughing at the guy... I just stood there and kept looking at him... coldly... At that very moment the class teacher rushed in and took me to the vice principal's office where my parents were called and an anger management therapy was suggested... as innocent as all parents are... they thought I had done it on purpose.. How could I have ever explained them that I had let my innermost devil take center-stage for those 15 seconds...

God knows what helped... the therapy or my realization that nothing remains and everything is in transition... anger stems from the fact that we 'hold onto' things..I can be called crazy for this... but from then on...I never ever got into a physical duel with anyone as I culd see the futility of it all... sainthood ACHIEVED!!
On a more serious note... I was happy that one episode had helped me get sorted in my mind and I would never let it get the better of me in any situation as I had attained modern-day moksha with respect to managing anger. But Life has its own way of kicking you in the ass to let you know who's the boss.

I entered MBA and made friends with people who were the absolute sorted kinds... evolved souls who had seen enough shit in life and were inspiring in a way that "hunger for success" drove them to be what they had become...At first sight.. these are the last kind of people you would associate with violent outbursts.. But then who said life was so predictable and straightforward..
Over the course of two years.. things changed... situations changed.... the fruits and nuts had multiplied... and now these people were as screwed up in the head as anyone else.

Imagine, people studying to be managers which is all about handling temperaments.. throwing things at each other... flinging stuff around... getting into physical brawls... abusing like no tomorrow... calling each other names in the most disgusting manner possible... banging fists on the wall... breaking things... slashing themselves with papercutters... shouting at the top of their voices... creating a scene in public... hitting and kicking each other. Watching all this first hand.. amused me at first... but the frequency of such outbursts scared me. I used to tell myself.. that I am above all this.. I dont need to get involved in all this. At points.. when realization dawned over these people once the dust had settled.. more often than not.. it was found that the central issue was never as big as it was made out to be.. it could have been settled in not more than 10 mins.. but ego ruled and hell came through.
To think that sometime later.. I also got involved in the above said acts is my nadir as a human being.. and the only time in life when I questioned my existence because it showed me my ugliest side and it was not what I had ever imagined myself to be.

Someone once told me that what you hate in others is only a part of you..which you choose to suppress. A part of you.. that shames you..being part of civil society. A part of you which is a collection of everything that is wrong about you.So who do you hate really.. where is the anger directed.. at someone else's wrong doing.. or at one's own self for letting something like dat happen. actually the question is... during the act.. do you have such balance or guts of steel to look into the mirror and see what you have become. Maybe some reason would prevail.. Maybe the world would indeed be a calmer place. But not for nothing was it once said ," Violence, mental or physical, is Sudden... Brutal and Unreasonable." So what is the answer ? wait.. lets first figure the question out and who exactly needs to do the answering. The answers would show up themselves..

10 days of hell -- my encounter with the devil called jaundice..

Part 1: 

On the 13^th of October, I was on my way back home from the factory when it started raining. Now when I say raining, it means it was literally pouring down and Pune was under the risk of being flooded. I had resigned to the fact that it was going to take a long while to reach home so I took out a book and started reading to kill time. The book was about guy who was undergoing a time of personal confusion regarding his love for a girl and how he was stuck in a friendship lagoon he was not being able to get out of. As I was reading the book,  subconsciously I started relating to the situation and my head started aching. All sorts of weird thoughts started coming to me, right from school time, to college to my first job in Accenture, MBA and the last 6 months spent in my current company. Maybe it was all the pent-up frustration that was all getting collected in my head which was receiving a trigger.

I reached my place, I put the book back in and all I could feel was anger, sheer, raw anger. Anger at everything, my life, my job, my way of looking at things, my knack of getting played around with… everything. It got so nasty that I even shouted at a guy on the road who was driving on puddles without realizing that the water was being thrown on bystanders.

I walked over to an Udipi restaurant, had dinner in that catatonic state, reached home and slept off in the hope that this day will pass off and I will start afresh. When I woke up the next morning, I realized that I was shivering and was feeling very warm on my forehead. My ears were burning as well. Like old times I didn’t think much about it and went for a bath and left for office. While in the office I was sitting on my desk when I started feeling really cold. It was a new assignment and I was expected to work on it. I went through the paces, set the meetings up, read through the docs that were to be discussed and prepared for the meeting. All through the day I was feeling a funny sensation of warmth on the forehead and ears. I ploughed through the meeting and rushed towards the bus to go home. 

On my way back, I slept off. My eyes thankfully opened when the bus had reached my stop. I started feeling very weak and reached my home. I threw my bag and fell on the bed. As soon as I kept my head on the pillow, I felt my forehead becoming really warm and my vision started spinning.

I just closed my eyes and just lied down for 2 hours. When I woke up the temperature was still there in the forehead and I realized that I was hallucinating when I closed my eyes. I saw weird things and weird shapes bombarding my mind, making it difficult for me to sleep. I decided I had to get a check-up done. I reached Noble Hospital where a regular check-up was done and I received an injection. The doc there said, my temperature will subside by the next morning. I went back and slept off. The next morning I woke up and realized that my temperature had actually subsided so I prepared to go to office. When I sat in the bus to go to the office, my forehead again started feeling warm and the heat had returned to my ears. I reached the office but my supervisor realized I was in no position to work so he arranged for me to come home. I reached home and lied down again with the forehead and ears almost burning now. I called up my parents and they found out that I wasn’t doing really well. The call was a pleasant change from the constant headaches and lack of sleep.

I continued taking medicines as was suggested by the doc but they were not helping the temperature subside. The next day I took a sick leave and decided that I need to switch to simple food like fruits and milk to get back to normalcy, This was after going without normal food for three days. Due to the medicines and lack of food, my body had started showing signs of weakness as I was finding it difficult to sit up for a decent amount of time. In the afternoon I got a call from the office and I was surprised to hear that they had arranged a doctor to come and see me at my place. The doc came and suggested that it maybe a little more serious than what the initial diagnosis suggested. He gave me 4 medicines and left with a smile saying , you will be all right. I took the medicines as per the prescription and started having fruits. The next thing I realized was that my digestion had gone for a toss. I developed a permanent pain in the abdomen and whenever I had to stand or walk or even lie down, my stomach would wince. I decided then and there that I won’t have any more medicines and whatever check-ups or tests needed to be done will be done in Delhi.

Part 2 -:

It had been 8 days since I had first felt that idiotic sensation in my forehead and ears. I had somehow managed to pull through these 8 days and finally boarded the flight to Delhi. Truth be told it was the most painful flight I had undertaken due to the constant pain in my stomach and the refusal of my body to accept any sort of food. Even drinking something as seemingly harmless as water had become a pain. The flight landed at T3, New Delhi. I had only read and heard about the sheer size of that terminal and I literally hated it for precisely the same reason that evening. It took me about half an hour to get out of the terminal and reach the exit gate where my parents were standing. I was limping all through and they didn’t miss it. I reached the car with my mother and collapsed in the backseat.

The next day I was taken to the hospital for a check-up and was diagnosed with Jaundice and Typhoid. Now, I had heard these two words many number of times but never ever had imagined that they will be used in my context. For me at that moment it meant an end to all the plans for Diwali and a long time to be spent in the hospital(something I always dreaded..).

Getting admitted to a hospital is an experience in itself. You wait in the lounge as the paper work is done. Then an attendant comes towards you with a wheel-chair and puts you on it. Then you are pushed into a lift and taken to the ward where he next 10 odd days of your life are going to be spent. Once you reach the ward you are made to stand the wheel-chair is pushed back. The attendant helps you lie down on the recliner –bed which can be reclined to aid patients to sit –up or lie down without moving a muscle. The ward looks like a 2 star hotel room with white dominating the color palette. To add to the effect there are weird looking bottles hanging upside down from stands. Of course you don’t know yet that these bottles contain life-saving fluids that will be routed to your body through a drip arrangement. A drip basically means a needle that will pierce your hand at a location where it hurts the most and be kept there so that it can act as a ready-made funnel for all the fluid to enter your body.

Once on the bed the ‘Angels of Death’ (nurses), dressed in all whites start their duty. They always carry a BP machine and a tray with needles and tapes. The drill goes like this -:

They ask for any one of your hand, tie the BP machine strip to your hand and press it as hard as they possibly can and check the BP reading. It’s an altogether different matter if the level of the arm and heart are same for an accurate reading. Once done they will check your hand and see where they can find a nerve to place the drip there. For me they checked both my hands and tried to find a nerve in five different points. It basically means I got injected 5 times on my left hand and my agony had no limit. Finally they left the left hand and moved to the right. Voila , they found the nerve in one go and placed the drip between my thumb and right index finger. Once the drip started , the pain subsided And I lied down and slept off due to the sedating effect of the fluid.

The worst part of these diseases is the loss of appetite. The body’s refusal towards food intake of any kind creates a double problem of weakness and more sedation. The docs saw it and put me on a liquid diet where I had to take coconut water and a full glass of Glucon-D  every 15 minutes. After a point I could actually feel the water jump in my tummy due to so much intake. I understood life’s irony in those 10 days because whenever I used to sleep the only things I could think of was super delicious food that I was missing out on, being in the Hospital. I remembered how a month back me and mom had discussed what all we would do and where all we would go during Diwali and all that had been reduced to rubble due to this illness of mine.

Another disturbing part of getting admitted is if the nurses don’t know their job well, your life can be turned into a living hell. One fine morning I realized that my hand had swollen to two times its size and I could clearly see red blood vessels on my forehand. I jumped in my bed and called the nurse. They concluded that the drip was put incorrectly and the fluid was collecting within the hand making it swell, so it had to be changed now to the other hand. Hence, the agony of getting the other hand injected with a big needle with no clarity of where the nerve would be found this time was about to be relived. My mom was next to me and held my hand through that. This time call it luck but they managed to fix the drip in one attempt and correctly as well.

After about 6 days in the hospital I had my first decent meal of Rice, Dal and curd. I ate very little but it felt good to be returning back to normal food after a month of having nothing really. I was asked to begin walking a little within the ward to start the recuperation process. On the 8^th day the doc came to see me and was happy with my progress. I had grown very impatient and was desperate to get the hell out of that hospital and go home. But the doc requested another 2 days in the hospital to be doubly sure about discharging me.

On the 10^th day I finally reached home and immediately felt better. I realized that since the time I had landed in Delhi I had not spent any time at home. The next two weeks were absolute bliss as I spent time at home, did nothing and just soaked in the warmth.

Now I have recovered decently to start working but the horror story that started on that rainy day in October keeps reminding me of the fickle nature of things we take for granted. Imagine a thing like sitting up on bed which is a normal activity no one thinks much about, had become a pain to carry out. And to think of it, all this was started by one supposedly clean(?) glass of water.

Sarfaroshi ki tamanna ...

Patriotism.. that oft-repeated word to sum up the sudden burst of pride one feels on seeing the tricolor aflutter, on seeing India win a cricket match, on seeing the Mig fighters fly past us in an impossible formation.
How seriously do we take this one word? Have you ever thought about it? The above examples are merely pop-culture references to define the momentary adrenalin rush of blood on being reminded that we belong to INDIA. But what about the life after that moment. My guess is , we go back to our daily lives and end the day discussing the problems the country faces in the name of corruption, incompetent bureaucracy, indifference , apathy and the lack of awareness amongst common people. In some cases these are not even worth discussing coz it is depressing.(disclaimer: take no offence, those who choose to ignore are within their rights to do so. Democracy gives you this right in case you were not aware... )

In conventional terms when I mention 'love for the country' , what images conjure up in your mind? The tricolor, Republic Day Parade, Army Jawans, Lagaan, Rang de Basanti, IAS(oh sorry, its taboo but i'll come to that later!!)? If anyone who has read this , gets something close to 'nation building' claps for you , and if someone got closer to 'What have I done in my own capacity or even What can I do for nation building' . salutes!!!  I use 'nation building' as a fluid concept here as not many really would believe it when I say it can be done and on a sustainable basis. 9/10 people would be busy pointing out flaws in the system and how it impedes progress.

The tragedy of out nation is that we all want a BHAGAT SINGH to come and change things. But we want him to be born in the neighbour's house , not ours. I can bet whatever amount of money on the fact that anyone who listens to 'SARFAROSHI KI TAMANNA' gets goosebumps. What is the reason behind it?? What power does this poem possess that can shake people out of their indifferent slumber and cause them to feel an emotion that is unparalleled. Just imagine if this emotion gets channelised and we have a million people just like that(in a country like India where population records are not news anymore ... ) , what all can be done and achieved. Dont get me wrong, listening to a poem is not the solution to all problems but the point is of awakening people and keeping them that way.

Rang de Basanti had a nice piece of dialogue which went something like ," Koi bhi desh perfect nhn hota, use behtar banana padta hai. Politics join karenge, Military mein bharti honge, IAS banenge. Yeh desh badlega , hum badlenge ise". With all due respect to the naive idealism that the film preached, even today IAS is referred to , as the shortcut to a life of power, respect and money(??). And dont worry, if the IT sleuths come calling, there are more than enough banks in the ALPS that are willing to help.And dont even bother about Wikileaks. The people asking for details from Assange have to save their asses first and by the time its ur turn, u'll be 90 and a pauper. U dont mind that, do you? Yes I am being cynical here and I am just trying to put things in perspective because lets be fair, not everybody is corrupt. But tell me one name who has been charged with crime and has recieved due punishment.

Its not a very healthy sign for a country already dealing with a social fabric on the brink of a fracture. As a fellow Indian and someone who feels very strongly about it, I just say this - Go live your life. Yes do what you have been assigned to do with all your heart and believe this when I say it, you are making a contribution to this country by being honest and thats some contribution. For the sake of well-being try to avoid the convenient way and go the whole hog. Believe you me, paying ur taxes on time, purchasing goods with bills and being postive about living life can lift the spirits of a lot of people. It is indirect , it way too idealistic but then it isnt so tough is it ?

There is this line that I 'll close this blog with ," Kabhi kabhi insaan ke andar ki aawaaz use itna door kheench laati hai jahaan darr ki saari seemayein khatm ho jaati hain aur wahaan hota hai ek ajeeb sa sukoon, wahan insaan azaad ho jaata hai woh karne ke liye jo sahi hai.Aur yahi karna sabse mushkil hota hai aur sbase zyada aasan ... "

The beauty of nothingness ....

As a child I used to wonder , what all is happening simultaneously in this world. The sheer magnitude of the thought is too big to even comprehend. Picture this, as I type this blog, there are people in this world who are leaving for office, people who are meeting their loved ones after a long time, people are are separating, people coping with the bitter reality of life , people smiling and thanking god for what they have been bestowed with...  And this is just the start of it. The idea is very artistic in nature and is inspiring enough for creative minds to come up with their own interpretations of the collection of little things  that the world is made of.

The point to be noted here is that in the larger picture , how significant is it really. While on the question of significance, comes the question of purpose. What purpose is being served by each happening in the larger picture created by god. In Stephen Hawking's path-breaking book, 'A brief History of Time' a lot of time is spent in trying to explain the science behind the cosmos with an entire chapter dedicated to the concept of BIG BANG which if you realise is taken to be the start of time in the universe's life. The most mind numbing idea given by Hawking is to try and go behind the start of time which would effectively mean, imagining a space where time doesnt exist. A man of Hawking's stature who dedicated his life to Science, is forced to close out the book by saying , "If there exists a god, going behind the beginning of time would tell us the mind of god."

Personally I believe every human has the right to define god in his/ her own way. Its too personal a concept to be made available for public consumption. People worship deities, god-men, spiritual gurus and in some cases end up so disillusioned by the entire thing that they choose to drop their belief altogether. Coming back to the concept of beauty, it is again one of those things that work in different ways for different people. A bunch of dry leaves may signify spring for some, days gone by for some ,sadness for some and grief for some. Its a simple example but its interesting to see the diverse reactions being elicited from people regatrding something as docile as dry leaves. Yes, it is kind of stretching the idea of romanticizing everything in this world, but it works for me.

In one of my all time favorite films 'American Beauty' there is a particular scene that is based on the concept of finding beauty in everyday stuff and believing that if you look closely god will smile back at you. --

The dialogue goes something like this --

" It was one of those days when its a minute away from snowing. There was this electricity in the air. And ... this bag was dancing with me .... for 15 minutes. Thats the day I realized that there is this entire life behind things and that there is this benevolent force that wants me to know that there is no reason to be afraid.
Sometimes there is so much beauty in the world, that my heart fills up like a balloon and I cant take it. "

The scene has been shared below --

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijv67WuTiIM&feature=related

The next time you see something seemingly ordinary, try to look closely, you may find ur inspiration to live there itself and if it doesnt work, dont worry , it will.... one day ..