Choices

What is a person’s life without passion in it? I often wonder when I look around and see a number of people going around leading lives which to me seem purely mechanical. Everyone seems obsessed by a need to do something. Most often that something brings them neither happiness nor satisfaction. Of course they do make money but ultimately does simply making money satisfy your soul? It cannot. You can justify almost anything you do but if you are unhappy as a result, there really is no point.

Of course, everyone tells me that it is impractical to expect every single person to be happy at their respective jobs. I am also frequently told that many do not have the luxury that I do of simply taking time off and lazing around waiting for inspiration to strike. They are right. I have no clue where I am going in my life but I do know that I will find my way when the time is right. I could compromise like I tried doing off and on for years but I did not want to. It meant a smaller income. It meant frustration of a different sort. It also meant that I did not have the company of people to stimulate me for most of the day. It was not a very easy decision for me to make and I have always been tortured by self-doubt but in the end the choice had to be made. I had to follow my own star, vague and distant though it might appear now.

A passion is essential to live life to the fullest. Imagine getting up every morning full of vigour and looking forward to the day with joy. The idea that you are doing what you were meant to do, what you were born to do and what only you can do very well is compelling. It gives you a sense of purpose quite apart from the daily round of duties and responsibilities that fall to everyone’s lot. When you follow your passion, you are no longer merely someone else’s wife or mother or daughter, you are just you doing the thing you were created to do. I get that feeling only when I attempt to write – I say attempt because I have not yet been able to put down my thoughts the way they are in my head. They seem profound and beautiful in imagination and clunky when put down – I assume because of my inability to capture them correctly. Yet I continue to hope to have that passion rule my life one day.

Overcast

The overcast day always distracts me. The green outside looks a little more intense. The redness of the hibiscus deepens. There is a pensive quality to the air and to the day itself. I can sit for hours comfortable with the thoughts playing around in my head. It’s what I do best. I don’t need music to enjoy my mood – I am happy with the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind. The entire day weighs heavy with expectancy but not unpleasantly so. You don’t get days like this very often for the conditions have to be just right.

I sit next to my window and watch the sky that perfectly mirrors my soul. My soul is usually overcast or at least my mind is. The beauty beneath gets obscured by the sorrowing clouds. I have long ceased to see the blue and see only the grey. It is not a dreary unhappiness - just a subtly melancholic one. It may seem like a contradiction but it isn’t. No one can be perfectly happy. It is easier to be imperfectly happy. I take joy in some things but overshadowing it all is worry for my son’s future. It doesn’t go away and what frightens me more is my incapability. I cannot seem to help him – sometimes it appears I do not even want to try. A little centre of pain such as that can keep you from smiling your fullest smile. It’s been too long since my slender shoulders have been burdened and I cannot but wonder how his little shoulders will hold up. On days like this a certain sense of peace comes over me. A stillness where there is no expectation or thought or worry – just the satisfaction of being. The background noise of cars and people talking too loudly on their cell phones cannot detract from the essential beauty of the moment and I am calm and placid like a lake with only internal ripples.

Marketing tragedies

The current times call for marketing in all spheres of life. You could create the best work of literature in decades and no one would bother if you are unable to market it. The same goes for practically anything. You could be a mediocre cook but if you can market yourself by licking whipped cream off a spoon suggestively enough, you have arrived as a ‘domestic goddess’. Similarly if you have no product worth the name but have aggressively marketed it as the only piece of must-have software in the universe, then you are a millionaire several times over before you can blink. In short if you don’t sell it, you get nowhere – its not what you have to sell that counts, its how you go about selling it that really matters.

I think there can be no one better at selling than the Americans. They have it down pat. They can sell you their lifestyles, their non-existent history and culture (three hundred years is a mere flash in the pan), their heart-attack inducing eating habits and their germ phobic obsessions. They can make you think that they are the most important things in creation. You are pulled towards them by their unbelievable confidence in themselves as the center of the universe. You are mesmerized by their devotion to themselves and only themselves. Its kind of like a mouse being hypnotized by a cobra. You go along with it , aping their movies, their accents and their methods of making money. They are the gods and you are willing to pay obeisance. What the Americans do best, however, is market their tragedies.

They haven’t had many tragedies. They actually had more embarrassments and unnecessary wars than actual numbing, heart-rending tragedy. So for generations they have been insulated from the ugliness of the world and feel themselves above it. That could be why they were shaken up on 9/11. They were clueless about the fact that their ridiculous and short-sighted foreign policy would have led them to be attacked by the very terrorist forces that they had secretly provided arms to. They could have acknowledged their mistake and moved forward toward a real resolution. Instead they resorted to marketing. They made sure that no one would forget 9/11. It became a brand, a logo on a t-shirt, a movie , a milestone. Their dead were more important than any other country’s dead. The tens of thousands of innocent civilians who lost their lives as a result of American incursions into Iraq are of no import. Our Bhopal gas massacre (for it was not a mere tragedy but sheer carelessness) that left twenty five thousand dead and uncounted blind was of no importance either. There was no accountability – no redress of grievance – even our own courts let off the American head of Union Carbide with a playful pinch on the cheek.

In India no tragedy can be on so large a scale that we cannot forget it. Maybe we should outsource out marketing of tragedies to a U.S company – they will guarantee us a tragedy no one can forget...

For a fuller life

Life is not linear. Nature isn’t linear either. I think knowing that has sort of lightened my being. I cannot remember a time when I wasn’t inundated with expectations from without. I simply had to be brilliant. I needed to be first in class although by nature I used to be about as competitive as a placid duck. Studying came very easy to me so the years in school and college were perhaps my most enjoyable moments ever. There was never any solid responsibility. One did not have to worry about running a house, making sure children are taken care of or think about whether or not to pursue a career after being, rather unfortunately, good at academics. So possibly it was the idea of having a comfortable routine which involved no responsibility beyond studying that made my college days as memorable as I now feel they were.

I started talking about life being sort of curvy and not linear because I have always thought just the opposite. I thought that one absolutely had to be good at studying. I thought I had to graduate at 20 regardless of the fact that I had absolutely no delight in the subjects that I chose to graduate in. I also knew that I would be married off to anyone who asked in my 23^rd year itself. I also felt socially obliged to have children. I really cannot understand why I believed i had no choice in any of these things – it could be because I was not allowed any sort of choice even in marriage and being rather placidly duck-like as I have mentioned before, never thought of fighting for anything I believed in. My only goal at the time was to be able to work. I had vague ideas of what I would do but I believe my dreams centred around possible applications of the cheques I would receive. So my life has always been forcibly linear right up to the point where I could not get a job when I wanted one. I started panicking. I was in the US in those days and just out of post graduation with no work experience whatsoever. The job market was down and no one wanted to sponsor a work visa for me and I was truly depressed. It never occurred to me to think of other options and follow them. To be honest I never wanted to be an engineer. It was not my thing.

I did of course get a job and do fairly well till I found myself pregnant. I was further depressed because I did not want a baby when I had just started working. I had my son and learnt that my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer – it was in its most advanced stage. I was devastated and we decided to return to India - both for my father and my son. Thus my career was finished before it had even begun properly. The years in India were not easy. I took care of my father and a colicky child as well – not very successfully but then I was very young. My father passed away the following year. I could not handle it – for years after I simply could not stop grieving. I had forgotten how to smile and was a spectre of my former self. I lost weight which I couldn’t afford to lose since I had always been skinny. I found myself pregnant again and completely lost it.

Thinking back I find I always had a choice to be happy – a choice that I did not take. I was miserably throwing up during both my pregnancies – I kept losing weight alarmingly. I was unhappy at having to rely on someone else financially. I could not take pleasure in anything and I simply wanted to leave everything and go away – somewhere where no one could find me. I truly feel if I had known then what I know now I would have taken life much more lightly. Things don’t have to be rigid, expected or linear. It can happen any which way and that needs to be accepted. An entire lifetime of upbringing and education had left me incapable of handling life itself.

Where do I start with my kids? How do I tell them that it doesn’t matter if they miss a year or two or maybe postpone college and see the world? Or that these little ones will be loved even if they don’t have three dozen awards for dancing or singing or kite-flying or whatever it is that all the children around me seem to be attending classes for. I continue to have expectations of them and find myself emulating my parents. But I am working on it. I am trying hard to break the mould and the vicious circle of expectations and criticism. I want my children to grow up into happy human beings. They don’t have to be able to play a violin at age four. They just have to be able to handle what life throws at them without being worried like their mom or hiding their head in the sand trying to ignore things like their dad. If I can raise my children to treat life like an adventure then my life would truly have been worthwhile. If I can, one day before I die find out what it is that I was put on this earth to do, then I can die happy...But for that I have to learn to live life fully myself.

Need for speed

I was watching through the window as the traffic rushed past. Everyone was in such a hurry. They could barely restrain themselves enough to actually stop at the red light – instead they would be inching along way beyond the white marker and ending up at the middle of the junction so that they could zoom ahead as soon as the lights turned green. Parents would drag little children as they ran through the melee of cars with no care as to whether the panting children could get their little legs to move fast enough. Kids on bikes were lurching up the sidewalks in an effort to overtake the cars waiting at the lights. I saw accidents on a daily basis – most involving two-wheelers and all of them involving an excess of speed.

In the mornings, it would seem, the whole world is in a rush. I rush around too and the children barely have time to get their act together and go out the door on schedule. My hyperactive maids rush through so superficially that nothing gets done but they go through the motions and are out in less than two hours. I get back from work and complete their tasks. I tell them time and time again that rushing serves no purpose but no maid will listen. Its like the chaotic traffic all over again. Why would one rush heedlessly in order to avoid a few minutes or sometimes seconds of waiting and end up jeopardizing things a lot more valuable than time? Why should anyone think that getting things done quickly is better than getting them done thoroughly?

The answer I think, lies in the fact that we Indians, as a nation do not care for perfection or completion. There is a lot to be said about our lack of interest in the consequences of slipshod jobs. We have wells dug up and left uncovered waiting for the unwary to fall in. We have buildings that cannot last more than a few years. We have roads that have to be resurfaced every year at great cost to the taxpayer instead of doing a good job that would last at least five years the first time itself. We have fires breaking out and no way for people to find the exits because the exits have been blocked off (as a quick solution) to get more space to fit in even more people into an already crowded space.

I don’t feel that this means we have no way of being any better. It could be that professionalism or pride in one’s work is not an ethic that is inbuilt. We are capable of so much more as we prove when we live abroad and follow rules and do work that anyone would be proud of. Our country needs us to adopt just such an attitude. Instead we choose to give India our worst and take for granted that freedom with which we are blessed.