Life, or something close to it.

God. Where is he? What is he? I do not know. I do not believe in him. I am curious to know why so many people do. I don’t think I have it figured out yet. For me it’s a challenge to rationality, to reasoning thoughts, to the thinking mind. How can I believe in something I cannot prove to be true. But I guess, that’s the charm of faith, you believe though you can’t understand. He works in strange ways people tell me, and I ask, why? Why can’t he make everything simple, why does everything have to be difficult? He could make life easy for us. It’s not like he has a point to prove to anyone, he is the all knowing almighty. It’s almost beautiful, the faith and devotion people have, it’s something I can’t understand and maybe that’s why they think I am ignorant, though I think the same of the people who believe. Everything has an explanation, there’s a reason behind why things happen. Except I can’t explain God and his ways, and many people who do believe in him can’t either, yet they trust him, without any hesitation. Why? My mind isn’t bright enough to grasp such a phenomenon. I argue, that people need God to have the fear of being watched. They need to feel that if they do something unholy, there is someone watching that sees all and hears all, someone there’s no hiding from. So to please him, they think twice about doing such wrong deeds. But for me and most of the people I know, we have a clear perspective of what is wrong and what is right. All our lives we have been taught exactly what is wrong and right: this is right and that is wrong. So after all these years of relentless teachings, I have come to understand the way right and wrong works. And before I think of fearing God for doing a wrong deed, I already know it’s wrong. So before I feel ashamed of doing what I am doing, I can think of what I am doing, if this is what was taught to me, if this is who I am, and without relying on the punishment I might receive from above I can change my ways, if I deem what I am doing unclean. My principles, that I have forged over days and months and years, can be my guiding light. I can do right, without being told that it is right. So what role does god have in this drama that is my life?
But I know I am wrong. Hopelessly wrong. God is not the petty scorekeeper that I make him out to be. People don’t believe in him to make him a statue of fear and wrath, no people believe in him because he is a source of hope. That’s what people look for in him. Hope. It’s something underrated, highly underrated. When things go wrong, and everything is as hopeless as it could be, and the world is dark as the night, and everybody has become a stranger, who will you turn to, where can anyone turn to? I don’t know. Perhaps I can offer you explanations on why and where it went wrong, what you could have done to avoid them. It wouldn’t do much good though, because when you are feeling the bitter tremors of agony, you don’t want to hear where it all went wrong, you want to hear how I can make every wrong into a right. But I won’t be able to do it, the future and the past are beyond my control, my rational brain believes all we have is the present, and the present for you is pretty unforgiving. But the believers, they turn to their God, who is all receiving, the sinners and the worse sinners, he doesn’t care. He is all forgiving and he, without any discrimination, offers hope, without an explanation, without reason. Hope for free. And when such a time of despair comes in my life, as I rot in my anguish, desolation and misery, I will envy all those who have a thread to hang on to, who have been offered hope as I slowly decay in the merciless darkness, reasoning out why everything happened. Then I will be vanquished, defeated, broken. But until that day, I will keep questioning.

A few days back, me and a very good friend of mine were discussing about restriction and how they spoil everything. And the discussion went to a point where she said restrictions would be like writing a whole paragraph without the alphabet 'C'. And it's true, writing without the alphabet 'C' is not only difficult it also makes the writing incomplete, but i gave it a try.I guess restrictions also offer challenges. Hope she gets to read this sooner rather than later.


"Life is strange. And I know there are a lot of meanings to the word. Life is strange in every way. It is doom and gloom, darkness, sorrow, despair and depression and yet its also hopes and dreams, blinding lights and uplifting fairy tales. It has billions to offer, all we want are millions, we get in thousands but truth be told hundreds would serve just fine. Evolution has transformed the fight for survival to the fight for luxury. And life exists in this world, where all of these possibilities are oriented in an unrelenting harmony that is like a bootleg version of an anxiously awaited movie, it’s not as good as we want it to be, but maybe it’s the only we will have and the better version is always so far away.
Life, and the world that shelters it, somehow manage and they will keep managing till the world has had enough. And then all life would stop, the harmony shattered, and the universe wouldn’t even realize everything that has happened. We would all stop existing and the planets would keep rotating and revolving, the universe would keep expanding edging nearer to self annihilation, like nothing’s gone wrong and this life that we fight and struggle to enliven would be as important as a drop of water to the wide wide sea. So where do we stand in this master plan for a grand symphony? What meaning and purpose will we ever find in this momentary flash of ambiguity we give the name life?”

A few days back I was buying a bottle of coke at around 10 in the night, I think. I know what you are thinking, that’s a great beverage, and you’re right, but that’s not what this is about. Anyway as the shopkeeper was getting my bottle of the black elixir, an old lady, thin and in a ragged saree, came up and asked for a bar of soap. “How much for the Vim bar? “, she asked. “Eight rupees for the small one and twenty for the big” the shopkeeper replied not really looking at her. She was a poor old thing, frail and timid. She looked at the two notes of currency she was clutching. A ten and a five, and it was as if saddened by the sight of it. She didn’t have the money to buy the bar of soap she wanted. A simple bar of soap. “Give me the small one “she said and grabbing the polythene with the soap in it, clutching now a two rupee note with the five, was gone, leaving me to ponder on what I had just seen.
I hadn’t witnessed the resurrection or anything spectacular. It was simple ordinary every-day event but it had so much to say. Problems are subjective. They always have been, they always will be. Our problems will always be the most difficult problems and no one seems to understand that and no one ever will, because they feel the same. Sure I have to study for hours every single day, but do I have to worry about saving up five rupees so I can buy a proper bar of soap, that’s what the old lady would tell me. And I would reply, not really and hopefully I will never know that problem. Although I still think it’s not as big a problem as having sleepless nights preparing for a three hour ordeal the next morning and having my entire life resting on the hands of someone who analyses what I do in those three hours. Examination oriented education isn’t doing me any good. We all have our crosses to bear and well it feels my cross is just a little bit heavier than all of yours. And if I ask you, you would tell me the same thing. We are selfish creatures by nature. And for me, it’s not wrong that I feel my problem is bigger than everyone else’s. Along with thinking my problems are the biggest, I also accept that the person who is best equipped to do something about it, is me. If I give importance to my problems and not brush them aside, maybe I’ll work harder on solving them, or get totally crushed by it. It’s all very variable. But problems will always be there, till the end and we will always be searching for solutions. A life without problems would be boring, well at least that’s what I think. It would be great to experience it firsthand. But having a few things to enjoy does help. So I am off to get another bottle of carbonated joy and this time I am taking an extra five rupee, to do my good deed of the day, if the circumstances arise.

It started in the heat of Mexico, took a while in its globe spanning course and relatively slowly it may be, but it has surely reached the humble borders of Bangladesh. Yes, unfortunately Swine Flu has arrived. The evidence? Well, there are the boring statistics that will show me the increasing rate of prevalence of this ailment or I could just look out my window and see faces covered with masks, with eyes that stare at any being that even thinks about sneezing without a cover around their infectious noses. Suddenly everyone is health conscious. It’s not a bad thing to be careful, as the adage goes prevention is better than cure and it does stand true, unless of course if you are in the health business. But a sneeze, doesn’t mean you have the flu, leave alone swine flu. It’s good putting on a mask; it’s no good crowding the hospitals just because you have a running nose in the morning. Just like everything other disease, the aura, the fear of the disease has spread faster than the disease itself. What has happened is that, suddenly cold is become one of the most noticed disease. You could’ve sneezed your way through a class, or coughed through a meeting with a minimum of fuss from your colleagues. But those days sadly are gone. If you are in a sneezing phase now, you better be at home resting, where you and your disease belong. Somehow we are forgetting this is also the season of another disease which has symptoms of running nose and headache. It’s called the common cold, and as the name suggests it’s pretty common.
Although, there is a thin line between stoicism and foolishness. You could be bravely trying to fight off the virus of the common cold when in fact you are getting more and more infected by the H1N1 virus or it could be exact opposite where you are just taking up the doctor’s time in an already crowded hospital. But there is a solution. I could search for the symptoms of swine flu in the internet(http://pediatrics.about.com/od/swineflu/a/409_symptoms.htm), correlate with the symptoms I have, and then prudently decide what my next step should be. But the best thing I can do right now, when I don’t have any of the symptoms, is head out and get myself one of those cheap masks, be a responsible citizen and look down on those who are not.