India as an Idea

Here is what I think of India as an idea today and tomorrow.

India is the identity that has been caught up in a historic dilemma. The dilemma is that of a transition from the old to the new. The old India that is rigid about its culture and its roots. The India that is unwilling to recognize the advent of tomorrow and believes in static energy. One that is averse to change, good or bad. It is reluctant to open up to the wind, fearing its core values may get polluted. It talks about independence, but is unsure of what freedom for the youth should mean. It is blindly in love with the old, and therefore, anything that is new is seen through the eyes of suspicion. It is so obsessed with philosophy that science does not seem important for human growth.

On the other hand is the new India that has seen the world and tasted the alternate, giving it courage to dream big. It wants to shred the age-old dogma of so-called good and bad. It wants to relieve itself of the burden of beliefs it thinks are no longer relevant. It dreams of crossing over to the other side of the horizon where bigger opportunities and possibilities await it. It is willing to fly across unknown layers of the stratosphere. It refuses to be bogged down by the legacy of colonial fear of failure. It is experimental, adventurous, and it loves to juggle with risks. Its aspirations are largely based on what is achievable rather than what has been achieved earlier. It wants to travel, go to new places, and embrace new cultures and lifestyles. It is happy to adopt and adapt. It believes amassing wealth is not bad, and spending on what it wants to have is a welcome trend. It is restless and loud.

Which is then the real India? Is there a case of identity crisis for the nation and for its youth? Does the older generation feel alienated from this dynamic pace of change? Are we trapped in the vicious arguments on what is right and what is wrong, between idealism and realism, between a glorified past and an uncertain future, between the more evil and the lesser evil? Is there a sense of grand confusion out there? Have we understood our problems and do we know which direction we’re headed to? Are we ready as a nation for the kind of change we’re envisioning? We don’t know. We’re still in the process of finding these out. These questions are as mobile as their answers today are.

I think why India, in its journey from where it is to where it wants to get to, has an edge over many other countries, is because it has a strong foundation built on the concept of family. One of our core social fabrics is how we even today value our family systems. True, families are falling apart and getting thinner as we speak. But this is an institution that sets us apart from many others. We hear a lot of western sociologists and economists strongly advocating the need for a strong family culture, in their books, publications and speeches. There has been a steady realization that despite tremendous progress in the fields of science, technology, human rights and so on, some of the developed countries have an increasingly weakening family structure. Happy families make happy people. It’s disheartening to see the concept of family in India loosening with time. Surely the composition of a family has gone through changes over many years, but the nucleus of happiness for us remains our family. Unless this is preserved and further enhanced, we’re destined to witness disparate growth. We’re headed for times when machines will be dearer to us than humans.

India has never been more perfectly positioned to take off. One of its core assets, its youth, has come of age in the last few decades, demanding larger acceptance in decision making and social mainstream. The youth has never been more mature and more prepared to take charge of its destiny. It has evolved from being a confused, lazy, unclear, passive, disruptive community to being more assertive, responsive, constructive and certainly more participative. We as a society must engage the youth in meaningful ways to contribute to their own future, through education, awareness and jobs. It’s not really old versus the new, it is old and the new! That perhaps would be a more inclusive approach towards a participative democratic structure, where we enable the new to take charge.

Through my discussions with people I come across and work with from different countries, I can tell you there is a lot of curiosity about India and what it means to the world. Gone are the days when it used to be a black box to the world, full of snake charmers and unknown magic. We’ve started shouldering them in universities of global repute, and in organizations people die to work in. We are today being taken seriously, our skills are valued, and we’ve offered enviable thought leadership. Probably for the first time in our history, we’re being listened to. Rapes, crimes against women, poverty and malnutrition of course are issues the world knows are about us. We’ve never said we didn’t have to put our own house to order. In fact, now is the best time we’ve ever had to do all that must be done! 

Yes, both the Indias are very different with respect to aspirations and priorities. But that’s exactly how it’s meant to be at this point in time, and perhaps for generations to come. My idea of India is one that is accommodative of the contrasts and diversities, as we collectively strive for something better to propel us to the next level. We all deserve a better deal, and we need each other through this transition. This is the most opportune moment for us, and we cannot let go of it. History will not judge us on the premise of why we couldn’t make a difference; it will hold us responsible for failing our future. 

In conversation with God

People think I’m Hindu. Why? Why not, I was born in a Hindu family. I therefore inherited Hinduism from my parents. I am because they are. Nobody ever asked me after I entered my adulthood if I was OK being called a Hindu, or if I wanted to take up any other religious identity. That was such a given. Ever since I was a kid, I used to wonder what religion was. Was it the various ways of praying to god? Then how different would that be from rituals? Would I really have to travel to a place of worship only to say something to god, and that too via priests? That was the journey of an inquisitive young mind going through an evolution of temporal understanding. My parents had contrasting religious ideologies despite both being Hindus, but I’d never seen them debate or openly disagree on their beliefs. That’s the mutual respect they had. Thanks to that, I was given the space a young mind needed to independently grasp things. I grew up amidst a blended culture of blind belief and logical reasoning that laid the foundation on which I could one day build my own belief system devoid of any born biases.

I’d often ask myself, where does god reside? Many learned people have likened god to our inner self. Then what do we see thousands of places of worship for? Why do we see millions of pilgrims every year traveling all over the world to go and pray at various ‘holy’ places? What is so sacred about those places that makes them more appealing than our inner self? I’ve often wondered whether it’s not severely undermining god’s omnipresence if we start believing we need to or can ‘capture’ god within the four walls of a man-made erection. None of the temples, mosques or churches are older than humans. We built them. At a time we had none of these installations in the world, where was god? And now that we have hundreds of thousands of them, have we actually been able to ‘contain’ god? I haven’t been able to come to terms with this comic paradox. We see temples being built on playgrounds; places where kids would play. As soon as we have a temple there, god (or gods) starts ‘living’ there? Has anyone ever heard anything funnier than that?

An innocent question I often ask believers is: why do you go to a temple or a church? My intention is never to challenge or question them or their belief. I ask to learn. Sadly, nobody has been able to give me an answer that could convince me. On rare occasions, I’ve been told, ‘I go there to thank god for creating me and keeping me alive and healthy.’ I don’t know how truthful such answers are, but this idea of feeling thankful to one’s creator seems fascinating. That’s humility. But does it stop there? Don’t we always have a list of demands to put forward to god? One of my lady friends gave an interesting answer to me on this. She said, ‘God to me is like my father and I’m like a child to him. He’s the one I can openly talk to. He’s the one who has created me and can influence my life the way he wants. There’s nothing wrong in me asking him to fulfill my wishes.’ How does one, however, explain the bribes we offer god, in the form of hair or other physical valuables? Why do I see commercial trade-offs in the form of attempts to strike deals with divine blessings in lieu of something earthly?

One of the evilest inventions by humans is institutionalized religion. Rituals are the icing on the cake. All religious books were written by wise people who were driven by an urge to help the masses understand various ways to comprehend god. The everlasting damage was caused by the most privileged classes of all societies across the board, who had access to education and therefore had an edge over others. They soon claimed custody of those scriptures. The common man and woman didn’t have the means to learn the languages in which these books had been written. They had to therefore go to the middlemen so their prayers could reach god. These priests and middlemen, for whom it had already become a way to earn a living, started misinterpreting the teachings of the scriptures. They cleverly devised the most efficient way to protect the monopoly of themselves in an unchallenged manner; that was to create fear. Fear is a universal conqueror wherever there is unknown and unseen. The common people historically have had a miserable life. All that has always mattered to them is how they can elevate to a better life. Religion soon became a vehicle of change for them. They were made to believe if they followed certain rituals, their sins would be lessened and they could hope for a better life when they would be reborn. Seriously?

Anything to do between god and humans is an extremely private affair. No books, no religions, no damn rituals have any business there. When you talk to your father, you don’t hire expert professionals to facilitate a dialogue. Then why do you need to be escorted by priests when you have to offer something to your own creator? Has god become so inaccessible? If yes, I’m better off without such an understanding of god. If he creates and then expects his creations to go through brokers for a simple prayer, I must question his method. Aren’t we told he creates everyone with a purpose? Then how can be become so oblivious of his own children? Sorry, I can’t accept someone who’s said to be omnipresent, to be so whimsical! These middlemen are self-proclaimed godmen who, we’ve believed for long, have special powers to get us closer to god. Some friends of mine who represent these ‘sects’ have told me it’s an art their predecessors have mastered, and hence prayers offered through them are more likely to reach god quicker in a more effective manner. This argument is not even funny! This is deplorable.

Despite not having any respect for institutionalized religion, I’ve gone to many temples and have spoken to people who believe in the power of these places of worship. Many have explained to me rather scientifically, how electro-magnetic energy and the positive vibe of all devotees collectively could make a welcome impact to people’s life. While scientific rendering of any phenomenon must be considered seriously, I’ve never found selfless devotion (‘bhakti’) anywhere. Most of us go to temples out of two reasons: fear and greed. Fear because I’ve been told by my parents and elders that there is a negative consequence of not doing the conventional, and by questioning the status quo you may anger god who in turn could curse you. As if devotees’ lives aren’t already cursed! Why else are you in a temple anyway? Greed is because god is perceived as someone who could give what you ask for. Great, so I can ask for good health, wealth, education for my children, promotion at the workplace. I can also ask for bad things to happen to people I don’t like. Come on, give god a break. Take charge of your life to the extent possible. Try and understand the laws of cause and effect. For your own god’s sake, please ask questions.

If you have a great life, but if you have never asked any questions to understand yourself and your surroundings better, do you think god would be proud of you? On the contrary, he must be embarrassed because of you; you’ve only asked things from him. What have you given in return? Have you ever told him you wanted to apply your brain in analyzing things around you? Have you ever told him you wished to ask questions so you could learn more about god, rather than be mystified by what you’ve been told by others? Have you ever told him you wanted to come out of the prejudices of fear and greed and wished to thank him unconditionally for everything he has or has not given you? God definitely deserves a better deal. I’m sure he doesn’t feel great about people he’s given intellect to, who choose to remain dumb! 

I have been branded differently by people who know my off-beat understanding of religion. With all humility, however, I can say I’m more religious than many of them. I preach less and practice more. I observe honesty and few more humanly virtues through my deeds. My methods could be different, but I’m certainly trying to do my bit to my creator by asking questions and getting closer to him. That’s the divinest journey we all are meant to cruise along!

English over Bengali?

My good friend recently questioned me for not writing in Bengali as often as I should. He’s been a constructive critic (I don’t know many of them!) of all the crap I write, and I know he’ll continue to support my insanity. Anyone who writes should have a friend like him. He brought up an important point when he noticed that I was ignoring Bengali as a medium of expression for my thoughts. It called for an introspection. Let me decipher.

I went to Netaji Subhash Vidyaniketan for my high school degree. It, in those days, perhaps was the best school in my state of Tripura. I would often as a school kid regret not studying in an English medium school. Some of my friends who I played with in the afternoon in our colony went to schools where they learnt history, geography, science and math in English. And here I was, reading and writing everything in Bengali! I would sometimes think my life could be glossier if I went to an English medium school. I must have been very young then! Gradually I understood my father’s point of view. While he was particular his children should go to Bengali medium schools to remain close to their ‘roots’ – mind you, Bengali schools back in the day were not as out of fashion as they today are – he would make exceptional arrangements at home to teach English vocabulary and grammar. He himself was an ardent lover of literature, and soon I realized I’d inherited that from him. He would teach me English for hours, give me homework in the form of ‘tense tables’ and ‘sentence making’. After a hard day at work he’d sit with me to go through my homework. In addition to my instinctive love for Bengali as well as English language, this trick by him worked wonders. I learned about the basics of English grammar at an age when my Bengali school mates would struggle with more elementary concepts of the language. I had a big English to Bengali dictionary that I was in love with. It was like an encyclopedia for me that knew everything!

That wouldn’t necessarily make me a good English speaker or writer. I would write poems, short stories, plays and even novels in Bengali. I loved doing that. Since I couldn’t practice English with anyone in school, I devised a mechanism to master the art of speaking. Nobody, not even my father, taught me this. It was my method to respond to the hunger in me to beat my surrounding odds to speak the language I loved so much. I’d pick up a topic of my interest, varying from ‘my school’ to ‘cricket’ to ‘books’, and start delivering a speech to an imaginary audience. I’d do it in bathroom, so I had to ensure I had the required buffer time for those speeches in addition to bathing. I’d speak for long minutes, pretending to be facing a crowd in my bathroom! While my Bengali poems and short stories were being published in some newspapers and magazines, the Shakespeare in me was still being conceived. I tried my hand at English poems; I thoroughly disappointed myself. I just couldn’t play with English words to get them to the rhyme or the rhythm I envisioned. I could however write essays and articles in English with reasonable flair. When I look back now, I understand how naïve I was.

My first big academic ecstasy with the language began after my class ten board exams when I started referring physics and mathematics books written in English. I was immensely thrilled to read Newton’s laws in English; I’d known the laws for long but hadn’t felt that moved. While I had great love and respect for Bengali, I could feel an emergence of crave for getting better with English in all its forms. I’d read newspapers (The Statesman was my father’s choice) and magazines (Frontline, India Today and so on). My father, who had battled a lot of adversities in his life starting from losing his father when he was in high school, had a two-pronged vision for my future. He wanted me to become either a professor of English language and earn a doctorate degree, or write the Indian Administrative Services (IAS) exam and become a government officer who could make a difference to the society through administrative reforms. I became none of the above; I chose to pursue a future in engineering.

That marked a huge turning point in my life as I got increasingly closer to English and naturally distanced from Bengali. I would still write poems in Bengali, for I didn’t know how to do that in English. But most part of my hobby reading would be consumed by English. I could talk to people, participate in discussions and debates; all in English. I’d be admired by friends for the way I wrote. Many would ask me to help them write project briefs, articles, and even love letters for them! Gradually my shelf space was replaced by English books.

Rabindranath Tagore still remains the most influential literary presence in my otherwise English life. His songs to me are still the most melodious music creation of all. But I find myself alienated today from my mother-tongue in many ways. I don’t remember the last Bengali book I read, I hardly watch Bengali films, I haven’t followed a Bengali news debate in years. Bengali has sadly been reduced to a language I use to speak to fellow Bengalis. English has penetrated so deep into my everyday life, it comes as the natural language of choice when I feel like writing to express something. It’s true that I can reach a larger spectrum of readership if I write in the international language, but that’s not why I hardly write in Bengali anymore. I don’t want to call it a state of natural dormancy, because I’m sure I’ve inflicted this upon myself to a good extent. 

It’s ironic I’m writing this post in English. Does it mean I’ll make conscious efforts to write more in my own language? I should. My mother taught me Bengali; how can any other language be dearer to me? It was through Bengali that I was introduced to this beautiful world of infinite possibilities. I could learn English because I knew Bengali! 

Am I a Pseudo Activist?

I often wonder if, as a writer, I at times reduce myself to a pseudo activist. Do I hide behind a mask and pretend to be genuinely concerned about what’s happening around us? Is this the most appropriate way for me to react to all positive and negative developments that impact me as a citizen of my country and a representative of humanity? Should I come out to the streets, participate in rallies and protest against wrongdoings by our political class? Am I searching for a safe zone in front of my laptop so I could insulate myself from the sun and the rain? Am I being just too convenient to contribute positively to my society? Finally, am I being true to my conscience, which is the most critical intellectual mass of my existence?

Here’s where I begin a monologue with myself. Well, everyone isn’t born with similar strengths and weaknesses, and everyone’s surrounding realities despite being part of the same socio-political environment aren’t necessarily the same. How we react to a social event of a reasonable impact is largely determined by our circumstantial realities, followed by means of manifestation we think we are good at. The highly charged political environment I was raised as a child in, meant an early proximity to protests, rallies and meetings. I could never stand injustice. But as a young boy, I didn’t know how to stream my protests. Not until I figured out I could write!

The pen indeed is mightier than the sword. While most forms of art excite me and I can consume them with reasonable levels of maturity as an audience, I’m not necessarily good at performing the same acts. I probably am marginally better when it comes to writing. My friends and family have been overwhelmingly kind with their criticism of my writing, be it poems, short stories, novels or articles. I owe it primarily to my father who I inherited it from, and also to friends who appreciated me even when I was certain I’d written a crap poem!

I believe I’ve done a good job if I’ve entertained someone in a dignified manner, tickled someone’s brain cells with a thought, highlighted an issue worth being aware of, offered my point of view on a matter of national importance, participated in a discussion concerning a positive change to our life, voiced my protest against ills of institutionalized religion, advocated a more scientific approach to understanding social stigmas, batted against the political anarchy in the country, questioned the collective conscience of groups or sects. All through my pen, in my tiny little way. 

In the end, if the narratives I script have made a positive impact to anyone’s life even for a moment, I’d consider myself privileged to have been of some use. I am an activist in my own right. If each one of us identified an area we are good at and utilized that to make a small difference, the output at the end of the chain would be worthwhile. There’s an activist in all of us; we must awaken that and see the flurry of possibilities. 

The story of a reluctant Smartphone user

For years, I’ve said ‘no’ to smartphones. My friends had given up on me, calling me ‘old school’. My wife kept trying to convince me and I kept convincing her on why I didn’t need a smartphone. I would tell everyone including myself that I was not fascinated by the idea of a phone that needed to get smarter than my old Nokia touchphone was! A phone, I thought, was but a phone which was meant to make and receive calls, write messages and play music. I hated phone cameras despite all the jazzy stuff they’d write about how great those snaps would come out to be; I knew a camera had to be a camera and not a phone. So, there I was, happy and content in my non-smart world.

My wife already had a Samsung Galaxy S3: sleek, sexy, and – yes, of course – smart! She was glued to it. She’d play games for hours, write emails, play cool music, surf the internet, and chat with friends. She, in short, had the world at her finger tip. I, on the other hand, would occasionally look at her phone and less occasionally play a game of Temple Run! Some of my friends had the ‘ultimate’ phone, the iPhone, but that too couldn’t arouse that attraction in me. That was me.

As fate would have it, my long-standing companion, my Nokia touchphone, started showing signs of ageing. It would occasionally freeze in the middle of important conversations, and I faced other performance-related issues as well. That’s when I started asking myself, ‘Looks like, I’m soon going to be done with her. Should I consider buying a smartphone?’ A follow-up thought was, ‘But is it worth it? I’m not going to use a lot of phone apps, I wouldn’t play games, and I certainly don’t want to be overly accessible on chat groups all over the place?’ I would use my SLR camera for quality photographs and I had a laptop, good enough for my internet necessity. After some serious pondering, a third question also came up, ‘Well, why not turn smart, now that I’ve decided to buy my next phone?’

Suddenly I forgot about the grey hair on my head and decided to adopt a welcome change. Gone were the days of rigidity and conservatism; I was a reformed man ready to explore the world of smartphones. Boy, didn’t I do some good research – reading reviews, discussing with friends and so on? Didn’t I spend time on Flipkart and Amazon? Didn’t I start learning about the phones even before I bought one? Most of my friends however didn’t know that I was researching for my own future phone. When I knew I had done it all and I figured out the phone I wanted to buy, I settled for Samsung Galaxy Grand Duos, a big phone with decent specifications. The only turn off about the phone was its inbuilt memory (or lack of it) and the screen resolution, which could have been better, but struggled at times trying to support the 5-inch screen. 

So, here I am today, an ardent smartphone lover for whom this isn’t a mere device. This is a living and breathing companion that follows me everywhere I go, including the loo! 

Saifai: an alternate angle

The recent Bollywood bash organized at Saifai by the Akhilesh Yadav government has drawn quite a flak from all quarters of the civil society and the media. People have questioned the brazen shamelessness with which the state administration scorched exchequer’s money to have some fun at a time when the Muzaffarnagar riot victims – still homeless and struggling to make a living in relief camps – were up against the terrible winter waves. Bollywood biggies like Salman Khan and Madhuri Dixit have come under aggressive scrutiny for not having shown the courage to pull out of this festival citing humanitarian concerns. Quite fittingly, Nero played the fiddle while Rome burnt! I want to, however, look at it from a different angle.

Let’s try to understand who the primary stakeholder in this festival this year was. It was the people. I’m told thousands of people flocked together to catch a glimpse of the performers from the tinsel town. Who are those people? Aren’t those the aam aadmi, who’ve lost their near and dear ones in the brutal Muzaffarnagar riots? Have they not been shattered looking at a Godhra happening in their backyard? Has their conscience not been challenged by the continued apathy of the Samajwadi Party government to the survivors? Did they not know that a huge number of children died in those relief camps where they were supposed to have been protected by the authorities? Did the Europe vacation by ministers and legislative assembly members funded by the common men and women not cause their eyebrows to frown? Did all the people who attended the carnival not have the moral obligation to show solidarity to their brothers and sisters who were languishing out there with rehabilitation eluding them even after so many days of the massacre? In other words, am I to believe that the Saifai festival was a celebration of the shameful demise of compassion for fellow humans?

I’m glad we’re targeting the state government for not calling off the event, and we’re up in arms against Bollywood. But who’ll question the collective failure of thousands of people who have shamed themselves by turning up? Could they not have boycotted the carnival? If they had, who would the performers entertain in the first place? Akhilesh Yadav could go ahead with this extravagant affair despite criticism by everyone because people of his state allowed him to.

It has become cool of late to bash up any form of organized institution in the country. While it’s a welcome change in the society to demand an increased level of transparency and sense in administration, we also need to look into the mirror. Our madness to challenge the status quo shouldn’t come at the cost of introspection. We have no moral right whatsoever to ask the authorities for explanation until we clean up our own act. 

I appeal to the people of Uttar Pradesh to unite against all wrongdoings by their state government and to realize that SP is a close cousin of BSP. They’re exactly like the Congress and the BJP on the national scale. Two different names, but the same ideology. 

Homosexuality and the Rainbow

At the outset, let me confess I don’t understand the psychology of homosexuality quite well, although I’ve been friends with men who many thought didn’t represent the conventional ‘straight’ sexual orientation clan. Those who were subject to some level of explicit or implicit ridicule by their friends, never asserted their sexual preferences to me. It wasn’t deemed necessary; it’s pretty much a private zone.

I agree, it’s unusual for a guy to indulge in a discussion with his female friends about what colors and shades of lipsticks have come up in the market, or why a particular brand of high heels was cooler than the other. What is saddening is that these guys get picked on such interactions by their friends and they often become a reason for an unwanted laugh. There are girls who from an early age of their life have had a liking for all things considered guyish, like not growing their hair, not wearing ethnic women’s wear, preferring to ride a motorcycle to a scooty and so on. While some get away with a ‘tom boy’ tag, some others fall prey to the conventional prism of their friends’ analysis.

As an onlooker, this stereotyping and subtle bullying by the heavier side of the same coin has disturbed me for long. Our minds – and brains in some instances – are pre-conditioned with definitions and concepts that are conveniently acceptable by the majority. The world has historically been harsh on the minority, on the lesser-privileged bracket in all walks of our life. It’s perceived as ‘one way, majority way!’ We often undermine the importance of a more inclusive societal structure that accommodates the conventional as well as the rebellious, the usual as well as the off-beat, the predictable as well as the unpredictable, the old and the new. Only a compassionate society can foster a progressive growth for all.

While our film industries have highlighted some realistic issues faced by the homosexual community, they have also unfairly popularized a stereotype of them being sexual predators and perpetually hungry. You look at any popular film that casts a gay person, and he’d be seen drooling over other guys all the time! While most of these are comedy movies, they perhaps should exercise a bit of sensitivity not to show a particular type of orientation in poor light. As is true of a person of conventional sexual preferences, I’m sure it is equally true that a person who has a different taste of preferences isn’t always looking for a physical outlet to stream his or her sexual identity.

There are learned men and women who have denounced this identity, and have called it unnatural and a disease that needs to be cured. I don’t know if this claim of theirs is or isn’t disputable, for I’ve not studied this psychology well enough to know if it’s a born attribute or an acquired trait. I therefore believe more than the bullying, what appears to be a wiser thing to do is to learn about this orientation with a pinch of science, history, and economics. 

The rainbow looks its best when all the seven colors are equally visible!  

Why do I cook?

I have of late been cooking a lot. I’ve prepared some delicious chicken items, some with shrimp and I haven’t spared vegetables either! I suddenly find a rush of adrenaline flowing into my veins to make a difference in the kitchen. And boy, haven’t I responded well?

Contrary to what some of my friends know, it’s not true I don’t know how to cook. I’ve just been lazy! The greatest kitchen discovery of my early life was my mom who could weave magic with an array of sumptuous dishes. She is, after all, a mom! I picked up some basics of cooking from her when I was in high school. Unfortunately, however, I’ve not lived in my Agartala home for years now and mom could do little whenever she visited me in Bangalore. Then came another exciting chef – my wife. She represented a partially different school of recipes that crossed over to the Chinese and European territories while still being accommodative of traditional Bengali delicacies. The obvious beneficiary, as you can see, was me. These ladies were cooking, and I kept eating!

But there was another in-between phase of my life when I lived with none of these chefs, which was an opportunity for me to delve into waters that had attracted me but I knew not much of. I plunged. I started preparing chicken not knowing the basics of how to do that, thanks to my parents not eating and mom not cooking chicken. The naïve me didn’t even know how to clean cut chicken pieces following the grammar book. I decided to set ablaze the cookbooks and launch my own recipes. I invented new ways to flirt with vegetables and spices. Oh, it was so much fun, not caring about what was the right or the wrong way to cook. I was cooking my way. If anyone asked me to name my dishes, I could tell them the ingredients and the procedure, but couldn’t attach any conventional name to the finished product. In fact, I didn’t want to discriminate! Things over a period of time changed and I became more conscious of the chemistry of the kitchen. I gradually realized there was a reason why there were cooking conventions that ought to have been respected.

That realization was further strengthened when I started observing my wife while she cooked amazing stuff for me. Since she too didn’t have a glorious past in the kitchen before marriage, she’d be rather obedient to the rule books and what her mom taught her; something the rebel in me wouldn’t want to comply with. In addition to the methodical approach, what worked in her favor was her love for good food – she herself was a big foodie – and keenness to learn how to prepare different cuisines. The gold medal was going to be hers with me suddenly disappearing from the kitchen; my job again was to eat! For a long time to come, she’d regret hearing great stories of my cooking credentials but not tasting any proof of that. For me, it was the case of the horse who gave up to a more illustrious horse in the race and said to himself, ‘I am proud coming second.’ Whenever I thought I’d cook, I feared being questioned by the lady on my disrespect for some of the rules of cooking, combination of oil and spices and what didn’t go well with what. As a result, it was the poor lady who was always cooking.

But here I am, finally with some sense of seriousness about the rules of the game. Believe me, it’s fun too! I still know my type of cooking consumes less time and yet delivers good taste-bud experience, but then following the convention isn’t bad either. With my wife not being around, I am in charge of my kitchen now and I’ve been humbled by my performances. I pledge to get better and offer her aromatic experiences to cherish. 

As for mom, I’m already a celebrity chef. Move over Sanjeev Kapoor!

One Life. One Love

Despite all the imperfection of my life and the times we live in, there’s so much beauty all around. I don’t know if I adopt an overly simplistic view of the otherwise complex world, or whether I approach it with an astonishing zeal of optimism, but life keeps getting dearer to me.

I know life is a finite entity and the journey since we were born could also be perceived as a walk towards the infinite beginning which starts with the end of this life. Do we however know what happens beyond that point of nothingness, that moment of big crunch? We don’t, although we have unproved theories of what that phase after death could be like, and how many more births we may be subjected to. While it’s all speculative and largely abstract, the physical truth is this being of our lifetime. For me, the biggest truth of my life is that I’m right now alive and which is why I can make a conscious difference if I chose to. The physical death of my life may not be the end of my consciousness, but for me this life is all I have. I don’t care what will happen once this ceases to exist, for I love this life of mine way too passionately.

Our life is our life’s best gift. I may not have been responsible for my life coming into being, but I’m at the helm of my living. The oxygen I inhale to be alive may not be mine, but I’m the custodian of the body through which it passes. It’s incredibly important to me. It’s far more significant than only a balancing act between oxygen and carbon dioxide. The best way we can give back to our life is to love it unconditionally. I’ve never had a perfect day, not even when I was a child and I had no baggage of societal or parental expectation. I’ve never had everything I longed for, but that hasn’t stopped me from longing for something I don’t have. I aspire, I crave, I dream, I falter, I stumble, I recollect, I reflect, I absorb, I laugh and I cry. You see, it’s just as ordinary a life as anyone else’s. But this isn’t how I gauge it; I never did.

The biggest fear of my life is that one day it all will end. This roller coaster ride will have to stop and I’d have to offboard my cruise. I won’t be able to see this beautiful world, smell those wonderful flowers, and touch my dear ones. That is one hell of a scary thought. Whenever this cuts through my mind, I fall in love all over again with my celebrity life, with all the madness for it that I have. I’m the best thing that could have happened to my life. I don’t know if an almighty has created me. If yes, he or she would know that through all ups and downs, what I’ve been witnessing is nothing short of a historic experience. Thank you!

Most part of my teenage, I believed in the omni-powerful three words: tomorrow never dies! I’ve had this written all over my bookshelf, my study table, and all my books. There was a sense of tremendous thrill in those three magical words. Some of my pessimistic friends would tell me, ‘But tomorrow never comes!’ While I couldn’t dispute the truth in that, I used to tell them, ‘No matter what happens today, there shall always be a tomorrow.’ While there’s a risk of undermining the importance of ‘today’ in the context of romanticizing ‘tomorrow’, no one could take away from me my firm belief in the prospect of tomorrow. I’d think of tomorrow as shinier and more promising than today. With the passage of every day, that wouldn’t necessarily always be true and some of my tomorrows would be uglier than the previous day; but I’d soak in the glory of what better the new tomorrow could bring me.

Many years on, I know today is a bigger reality than tomorrow as the later may always remain elusive, uncharted, untested and untasted. That in turn amplifies my love for my life. For me, my life is all in a day’s moments, the day which is today and far closer to me than a prospective tomorrow, which will have to take up the shape of today before it becomes part of my conscious reality and presents itself to me. 

I’m here to make a good living out of my life for as long as it’s mine. I’ll write, love, sing, talk, walk and I’ll do all of this in celebration of my being alive. One life and one love!