Intra-muralistic pleasures

There is a line of separation between having freakish fun and gearing up for the future. If one needs to violate this line and enjoy both these premises at the same time, one has to look no beyond the one place- Hostel. The name itself brings vivid flashes of dingy rooms with rickety beds, giving you claustrophobic sickness; really bad mess food and the works. But believe me, in veracity there is much more to hostel life than these small intricacies.
When I first entered my hostel I was apprehensive to say the least. I had never been away from my home and at that time, to go to an alien city and live among strangers was a preposterous and ludicrous idea for me. But when I retrospect, I find myself deeply gratifies with the way things shaped up for me. When a person enters a hostel, he leaves behind everything to be a part of a completely new and different world. He is like a pliant mound of clay waiting to be moulded to desired conformation on the hearth called ‘hostel’.
Apart from the fact that the food was outrageous and at times it seemed that the mess workers were contractually bound to see to it that the inmates lost their appetites, everything else was wonderful. It seemed like a cultural summit, where everyone was uniquely different in terms of background, castes and creeds, yet the purpose was same- to grow up to be a successful human being. In spite of the huge cultural differences and upbringings, everyone gelled together. A hostel epitomizes the really pretty picture that the makers of constitution had in mind, when they concocted secularism into existence.
In hostels you are away from the perfectly sheltered lives of your homes. You start to feel lonely in the crowd and that’s when you develop instincts of survival. Somehow hostel life seems to be in contention with the Einstein’s theory of relativity. There is no ‘survival of the fittest’ but rather a ‘survival to be the fittest’. Everyone tries to help each other in growing mutually.
Hostels are like dream worlds, where everyone knows each other and are willing to look out for each other at the drop of a hat. You learn to be ascetic in certain sense, but that doesn’t deprive you of new indulgences every now and then.
Where there is a rose, there ought to be thorns, similarly in a hostel you are faced with some saturnine moments, clash of interests, egos, emotional outbursts and cynical perseverance but they only spice up hostel life. And more importantly they instruct us how to tackle problems of life amicably and in the interest of both the parties involved.
Insouciance becomes the code when you inhabitate a hostel. The boundations cease to exist. Everyone is a free soul, devoid of any social stigmas and behavioral etiquettes. For the period of stay you experience what it feels like to be free. The place which resembled hell’s alternative at a time, looks like an abode of happiness. It is the place you learn to laugh with others, cry for others and feel for others. The previous mawkishness becomes genuineness and binds you together.
The most important thing that hostel life gives to us is the persona. Most people develop a personality during the say in hostels. I’ve seen introverts simpletons turn into street-smart manipulators. You are a zilch before entering a hostel and you are everything you ought to be when you leave it. I’ve seen boys become men and men become gentlemen and that’s where it is so important for a person to taste the recipe of life in a hostel.
When I started writing this article, the idea was to pay a tribute to what has been a dweller’s paradise but I ended up in giving you a realization of how impassable is hostel life. When I think about it now, words form in my mind-
Men as always come and go,
But it stands rigidly tall;
It treats us a friend not foe,
Until we can take on the fall.

Life Estranged

Life-the one word which embellishes almost all the philosophical articles, the very basis of so many clichés in the literary world. But have you ever thought about it? There has to be a reason why it is the only thing which can be compared to anything in the world? The comparison could vary from the most innocuous thing like a bicycle horn to the most bizarre stuff like a soccer pitch. What is it that makes it click as a literary weapon? Almost all the major writers have something or the other to say about ‘life’, and each one finds something unique to compare life with. Those of you novel buffs might have noticed that whenever the author is looking to stall the pace or get more number of pages into his creation, he invariably chooses to forcibly push towards us his interpretations of ‘life’. Even an amateur like me is choosing ‘Life’ to get through to you. So is life that simple a phenomenon that everybody has a unique say on it? But that certainly doesn’t seem very likely possibility because I cant think of any writer who has had the courage to spell out life as ‘simple’. So what we gather by this is that even though life is very complex yet any Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows about it.
Actually life is far too complex for anyone to understand. It is the congeniality which attaches itself to you when you are born and just like the truest friend it doesn’t let you go until death separates it from you. It is the only thing which has the power to make us do anything. Some fear it, some bear it while still some befriend it. It is like the dragon which keeps hovering around you that can’t be tamed or made to follow your wish. It is the vessel which can’t be measured for its depth and capacity.
When you really look at it, a man, starting from his birth, develops a bond with life although subconsciously. When we are young, we respect it. We treat it like a cradle which holds us until we are ready. It seems like a smaller idyllic world, provided to prepare us for the bigger and bitter outside world. We feel warmth under its shadow.
Them comes the famous ‘teenage defiance’. We start looking at life as a caged carnivore, which on the onset seems docile but inwardly it is ferocious and deadly. But we are too wasted in the intoxication of youth that we pay no heed to the inward possibility. We keep pushing the envelope. We try out level best to try and intimidate it, but it doesn’t loose its portrayal of unruffled equanimity. Some of us do get lucky in provocation of that savage but they don’t live to bask in the glory.
Then youth comes and with it comes the effervescence. We taste success, we fall in love. Everything seems to be brimming with verve. Life seems to have become your best friend while it bestows on you the joys of life. Each new day brings with it a new meaning of life and exuberance. It is the phase which each one of us wants to continue indefinitely.
But as they say ‘life’s like a cycle. To keep your balance you have to move on’. Like all the ephemerals, the euphemism dies down. The life dons a new hat and a new role. A role which we have never seen it play that of a tyrant landlord, whose constant fear haunts us. The mornings become tawdry. Each day you wake up to a new agony in waiting. Life seems to be castigating your transgressions. You start to slide down an abyss. The gears and steers are no longer turning at your will. Luck seems to run out. And that’s when you develop the fear. The moment you start dreading your life its all folks! The life takes away everything you ever wanted. The apodictic certitude is gone and all you are left with is a meek acceptance of the fact that your peroration is just around the corner. You become just another pawn in the vast game of chess.
In the end darkness engulfs you. Try however you may but life shows you the upper hand. And then it all disappears, the suffering mitigates, the agony subsides and you are left with an eternal peace. Your languorous soul emits opulence for a while and then the circle of life starts all over again.
So in the end life conquers all then why try to conquer its complexity. Why waste some precious moments of life in trying to comprehend the notion behind the mother of all clichés. Life is too beautiful a concept to clutter your mind with. Live in the moments that take your breath away. Past brings tears and future brings fears, so try and live in the present and never forget to have fun along this journey called ‘Life’ because try however hard some may, no one has ever managed to come out alive.