The Child In Us

Remember the time in our childhood when we used to wait for the vaporous plume to engulf the horizon? After months of sweltering heat we would look forward to the good old monsoon. As soon as the first sign of a potential cloud appeared on the sky we used to go out of our homes onto the streets, waiting impatiently for the first driblet to touch the earth, to feel the wetness of drizzle against our cheeks, screaming out in joy. Gone are the days as we grew up.

Human mind consists of many small and intricate pathways which control the human body and its functions. There is a small part of it in which the child in us lives. He dares to venture out every now and then but quickly gets squashed down owing to the pseudo-social etiquettes. It is this child which makes us do these crazy things and be what we once were. As we grow up, the voice of the child starts to diminish until it can make barely audible squeaks from time to time. And we are too busy to listen to it.

A few days back, I was sitting at my desk, feigning interest in my work when the clock struck 12:30 PM, indicating that it was time for the meal of the day. The hunger was growing in my stomach and the prospect of eating in the canteen made my skin crawl, so as usual I thought of the regular road-side eatery to have my lunch. But the moment I stepped out of the building I saw marginal rainfall hitting the curb. My first impulse was to make a run for it and feel the rain, but my social alarm went off and I thought that it was really a bad idea to take that unnecessary risk to eat better food. But against my better judgment I decided to listen to that child inside me and I ventured out in the drizzle. 

Suddenly I was a child, walking in a park, loving the rain, with no regard for the world around me. With each step my pulse quickened and the excitement grew. The thrill spent a chill down my spine but I didn’t care because I was being stupid. The 150 meters long walk seemed to invigorate me to the point of restlessness. I reached my destination somewhat wet but the food made the trip worthwhile. By the time I was done, the downpour had quickened and there was no way I would have made it without getting drenched to the bone.

The thing about madness is that it not only brings energy into the whole system but also helps people see things in a new way. I stepped out in that full-blown storm and felt the first wave of cold wind hit me in the face. It was only moments before my attire was dripping water. As I walked back those 150 meters back, with people skittering away from the road running for cover, I had an epiphany. It was not just me who was getting soaked in the rain, but I was the only one who was feeling thrilled by that experiment. Somehow I felt liberated and alive again. 

As I walked my last steps away from the cold rain, I noticed the looks people around me were giving me. I immediately recognized that look. It was the one of incredulity, as if they had just seen a mad man. Here I was smiling at myself for loving the whole episode and there they were, too afraid to leave the safety of their shelters. As I walked back to my space in the office I felt boring eyes of my colleagues seeing me disheveled and wet, for the first time, and I realized something. I didn’t care!

As I sat down at my desk, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. I realized that the smile was not of amusement but it was a smile of satisfaction, the smile that is on the face of a person who has just found what he was looking for.  So I asked myself this- what is so wrong with being a child once in a while? What is so catastrophic about feeling alive once in a while? We are all so caught up in our lives that we don’t see what makes us happy. It’s the materialistic things that we vie for throughout most of our adult life and never even enjoy them. We are raised to shelve up things of value but never the things which matter. Why don’t we give ourselves the chance of smiling with satisfaction? Why don’t we be the children we once were?

Being busy and focused is a big deal but its not the only thing that matters. Lets all take a little time out of our lives to let the child in us wander out, lets go out and enjoy the rain, lets feel alive once again, because life is too short and there are a million things that we never do.

The Third Impression

“It’s the first impression that will open or close doors for you.”

This statement says it all. A good first impression will get you through the metaphorical door to success. Today’s world is a standing testament to this adage. We wake up in the morning, wear our best clothes, go out the door with a huge smile on our facial façade and hope to God that it will get us the one thing which we have been taught to run after, a laudable first impression. And then hopefully it will be a smoother ride home.

I feel that the ‘first impression’ is way too over-rated. Everybody think of themselves as some kind of psych analysts and start judging people on the basis of their first impressions. They don’t even give it a thought that may be a person is more than what they appear at first. Everyday tens of hundreds of people face the same harsh scrutiny; they face the same fear of losing everything at stake right at the outset. Can’t we all accept the fact that maybe a person could be better judged on the base of the second impression, or even the third one? No, we don’t. Its way too much to ask of us stone headed imbeciles. After all who wants to give a person, having such a horrible first impression a second look?

This piece of writing is titled the ‘Third Impression’ and some of you might already be yawning since until now I have said nothing about it. Just another example of the first impression shortcoming. I cant help it because I am, and always have been a third impression guy. Life’s has never been a walk in the park for me or many others like me. We have always been under-appreciated and chucked out of the ‘we-are-so-awesome’ club.

Without more of the generalizations and satires, I would like to dwell into what seems to b e an outlandish concept of third impressionists. I have always been a bulky guy and to top it I was raised to the peril of introvertiveness. So in simple words I was intimidating and kept to myself. Now you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to guess the kind of first impression I always made – snobbish brute. I rarely remember anyone meeting me for the first time and getting along with me instantly. I have always had to work hard for the second glance. Slowly I climbed up to the stage of college life and my worst fears climbed up with me. I was sure to be outcast of the clan and I was sure that the day I would pass out of the college no-one would ever remember a shy, silent guy who always lurked in the shadows of the limelight. That was when I found a bunch of daring people who took mustered up some courage to give me the second chance. But soon I discovered that even the second chance wouldn’t work for an introvert like me. So I lost some of those daring guys based on the second impression.

I was distraught with hopelessness and misery, which I thought would haunt me even in my happiest of dreams. But life had different plans for me. Many of those daring guys turned out to be of caring sort too. And finally I got my third chance. In hindsight I consider myself to be the third time lucky. And more importantly I found my niche, along with the knowledge that there will always be some people who would be willing to give you the third chance. And as they say, the rest is history. I managed to get appreciated by those around me, I no longer feared the limelight, and most important of them all – I found a bunch of people whom I could call friends for life.

After having ranted on for God knows how long I have a feeling that the readers would be looking for the trademark ‘pearl of wisdom’ and I will give it to them. In this fast paced life, where people don’t have time to say hello to the people they care about, there is still some hope for us, the third impressionists. Sooner or later people would wake up to us; they will realize our true worth. Someone would come along and say that smiling ‘hello’ and in turn we will reciprocate with a smile filled with gratitude; for they will believe that there is a real person behind the intimidating and seemingly self-absorbed exterior. It is very easy to lose your heart but all it takes for us to get back on the horses is just one leap of faith.  

Human

“Lets face it, we all love violence.” Says James Spader in an episode of Boston Legal wherein he has to defend a guy who had used violent ways to get thing done. Of course in the end he ends up convincing the jury about the innocence of the man he was defending, but something about his way made me believe that it’s true.

Don’t we all love the bad guys and violence? Many of us get the newspaper and the first things we scan for is tragedy or violence. If we don’t find it we are inwardly a bit disappointed, on the other hand if we do manage to find a news story about it then it dominates our coffee-room conversations. So what is it about the bad guys that we love so much?

Recently I read “Hammer of the Eden”, a novel by Ken Follett. It was written from 2 point of views- the bad guy and the good cop. The only problem was that the bad guy view was so riveting and enchanting that it overshadowed the story of the cop. And in the end when all hell breaks loose and the bad guy lost, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed. You see what I did was to get to know the reasons behind the things the bad guy did and somehow I could empathize with him.

So this is how the thought process behind this piece of writing began. I was deeply perturbed because when I realized that I was unhappy about the ending of the novel, which made me panic. I thought that there must be something wrong with me because I was silently rooting for the bad guy to win in the novel. Then I realized something which may sound cynical but it’s the truth.

We are all human and however hard we try to avoid it, we just cant stop our conscience and humanity from playing a small part in all the decisions we make. So when we come across situations where a guy has done something bad, we tend to stop looking at that guy as a human. We judge him as a wrong doer and when that mentality is set, you just cant see beyond it. We don’t want to think that may be the person had a very pressing reason to do it, or may be that the person concerned should be treated with a little open mind. The media doesn’t help either. They constantly keep telling us how others were affected by this guy’s actions and how he didn’t even think for once before committing that heinous act.

We love watching him go down and when it is all over we wait for the next bad guy to come along. Why do we do this? Is it because such episodes are real-life entertainment? Or is it because of the innate human faith. Lets face it, we all live in a misanthropic world and we need to have a little faith to survive in it. So we look forward to events like these to reinstate our faith in goodness. We believe that no matter how bad a situation can be there will be dawn, however dark the path may be but there will be light at the end of it. And so when a bad thing happens we all live to bask in the rejuvenated faith that the goodness will have the final say.

Meanwhile lets not forget that the people are not bad, its the situations that make them act the way they did. And hang on to the faith because at the end of the day it’s the only thing that will get us through.

Double Lives

Don't we all lead double lives?
Everyday we wake up in this world full of creatures out of your comfort zone, and the mind somehow dons the personality which suits out day to day life. There are mostly 2 kinds of personalities one portrays in his life. One which makes his life bearable and enjoyable (sometimes) and the one which is their true self. Somehow the moment we walk through the doors of adulthood, our mind develops a psyche which is somewhat different from whats yours, which makes the passing a little bit easier, which makes trotting through the complex labyrinths of life gentler. And before we know it, we all are living a life whose major portion consists of lies and deceptions.
So why do we do it?
Puritans would say that one doesnt has to mask one's personality to live peacefully in this world, but surely they never lead a life in the modern era. Each step you take, each move you make is constantly monitored and frowned upon. Someone who doesnt follow the norms of the "society" is deemed an outcast and a freak. To live successfully in this era one has to don the personality which is socially acceptable. The way we laugh at some of the most ludicrous jokes, the way we suck up to the powerful, the way we lead our lives is something out of the 'Bible for suicidals' and still it is the way we live. We feel vulnerable when we show out true colors to the social world and so we create a persona of conformation.
Thats why childhood is such a great place to be, where no one needs to lead a double life, where life is not a tangled web of intricacies but a simple winding road.
All said and done but at the end of the day one has to know which one is their true self, because one wouldnt want to loose oneself in this world, where people have to become a schizophrenic with multiple personality disorder in order to be deemed fit for survival.
What would I not give to lead my life being just me, but I guess thats only a theoritical possibility, because i woulnt want to be tagged lusus naturae.

A Day Unglorified

Have you ever had the feeling that all you do turns out wrong? The feeling when you are being crushed from the inside and still have to smile for those around you, so that they dont presume their outcome just like yours? The one when you feel like the whole point of your existence becomes oblique? When you are standing in a mall full of happy people and you feel that you are the only one who wants to say out loud- "Kill me, kill me now."? I hate feeling all those things and so do most of the humans. Usually this phase is followed by the inevitable and pitiful statements like- "Dont worry dude, shit happens." or "Koi nahi yaar, tension na le.".
There comes a point in every man's life when he stops trying to feel anything because its just too plain painful. His heart cries and the mind tries to console it by conjuring up some non-existent visions of hope. When you start thinking about the whole path your life has followed up until now and you realize that its not what you started out for. When the dreams of glorious future seem a distinct impossibility and the the light at the end of the tunnel turns out to be that of a fast train rushing towards you, what do you do?
You just let it be.