I was still rolling on the bed debating if I should get up or not. All the things I scheduled for that day popped up in my mind – I had a busy day ahead. I switched on my cell phone and went through the twitter stream and rss feed. My eyes refused to open, so I put my cell aside and pulled back the blanket. The phone rang as soon as I closed my eyes. It was Sundeep, “Ajay passed away” he said.
Archives for January 2013
A Love Affair
With a beer in hand one day, my friend asked me – when/where and how did I fall in love with books? I tried to recall: I went to a Christian missionary school and in December every year we had the half-yearly exams followed by a holiday of two weeks for Christmas and New year & I happened to live in a locality where most of my friends studied in schools which declared holidays in January (for Sankranthi) instead of December. So, year after year, I was at school when my friends were playing and at home when they were in school. With none to play around I used to search for ways to fill my free time.
Responsibility
Do we need bosses to remind us to do our work?
Do we need cops to monitor our traffic?
Do we need invigilators to stop us from copying?
Do we need anti corruption bureaus (ACBs) to stop us from corruption?
Do we need police to stop us from commiting crimes?
Do we need revolutions to push change?
Do we need guns to bring us peace?
Do we need strong borders to make good neighbours?
Do we need bloodshed to remind us the futility of war?
Do we need heinous crimes to wakeup our humanity?
Do we need a “Damini”* to make us more responsible?
- a tribute to the girl who was brutally sexually assaulted in Delhi
Wakeup call
I witnessed a death couple of days back. It made me sad. Made me wonder, isn’t it the end for everybody? All marching towards the same dead end? We all know this, but we still toil all day long to amass toys and trinkets to be happy. Is this ‘smasana vairagya’(a detachment all experience during a funeral) I’m speaking out of? even if I am, isn’t it true? By the end of that day I was back to normal life – talking to friends, planning the future, worrying about the past – I had moved on. But, the uneasiness remained, unanswered, lurking behind my hopes and dreams shrouding them in a veil of vanity, ocassionally questioning me, what for do we toil? what for do we struggle? “Dust thou art, to dust returnest” isn’t it? but, I pushed the questions back into a remote recess of my mind hoping it’ll not be my fate, hoping it’ll not be my end.