On Humans and Humanity

It was a Saturday, another Saturday. I wonder why people chose to have only seven days in the week- not that it’d be any fun to have a different number of days but it sure is a wonder how everyone agreed with the number seven with no one complaining. Humans were never so concordant. Anyways, putting aside the wondering and the speculation, I’ll stick to my story.

So, Saturday it was. It was another day in the alleged paradise we populate. I had not had a sound sleep for quite a few days- owing to the psychological pressures that come with the Indian System of Education and the perturbation arising out of the other problems that had been gnawing at me. After a few hours of the rudimentary sleep, I could no longer pretend to be engaged in the coveted activity; I rose from my bed and looked at my watch- it was 0430 hours. Picking up my towel from its usual throne- the backrest of my chair- I slung the door open and walked towards the washroom. Once facing the mirror, I looked into my eyes (might sound strange but the human exploitation of optics has made it a possibility). They were still red and burning with the desire to rest. I splashed water into them and instantly discovered a method of decreasing the pH of hydrogen-hydroxide. After the heat in my eyes had lessened, I wiped my face. In doing so I realized that my facial hair had exceeded its usual length, but realizing that it was not something I cared, I let the thought drift out of my mind. I walked towards my room and placed the towel in its habitat. The time was still 0440 and the mess would not serve breakfast before 0730, so there was time to be digested. Following an impulse, I decided to take a walk. I pulled on my walking shoes and let my feet embark on a journey to the unknown. Once at the gate, it took me seventy seconds to persuade the guard to let me out.

Once outside the gate, I started walking towards the Hyderabad Central University. The HCU campus is about two miles from our campus and once upon a time the IIITH campus was part of HCU as well. I was perhaps thinking of this and consequently I didn’t notice the rays of the sun breaking through the darkness. It was only after sometime that I realized things around me were visible. This was one of the times when I was fully aware of my surroundings; I had nothing specific to engage my mind, so I was as free as a bird. To surrender all the thought provocation and look around, only to be surprised by Nature, helps at times. And that was what I was precisely trying to do, until I set my eyes upon the scene ahead.

Through the infant rays of dawn, I saw a pup sitting near the remains of its mother. The mother had apparently been run over by some heavy vehicle and was reduced to a stationary mass of dog-flesh and dog-bones, and perhaps dog-food. I am not a dog person. However the sight was pathetic and no human could’ve resisted turbulence in the pool of emotions. The pup’s serene muteness seemed to radiate an overwhelming sensation of mourning. Its fixed black eyes seemed frozen in their cavities and its tears had dried out, only to be represented as dark lines on his face. The pup appeared human. It had feelings and it knew of a way of expressing its feelings. That nobody cared how it felt is another issue.

Dogs are a species as old as the humans. Even if they’re not, it does not matter. What matters is that they are flesh and bone-like us. Dogs do not have organizations like humans, they cannot construct buildings and they do not drive cars on the roads they built. They have no jobs and they certainly do not read books. But like us, they like other dogs and dislike other dogs. But there’s a bottleneck in their hatred of other dogs. They can kill only one dog at a time, unlike us humans. We might resemble dogs in some of these days but we’re superior to the dogs in a lot of ways. We should be called super-dogs, because we are dogs who can burn a hole into the ozone layer, control weather and cause catastrophic changes to the climate around the world. Only if we were half as loyal as - they say - dogs are. Someone once said, “You take a starving dog, give it food to eat and let it free. It will never bite you. This is the fundamental difference between a dog and a man.” I don’t know how much of truth is in what he said but man’s history has shown us that the statement is not false altogether.

I walked a little further and then my feet found themselves glued to the ground. I could not walk any further. The pup was a few feet away from me. It had lost its only kin. It was alone. It had no place to go to, no one to turn to. If it had harbored any dreams - if dogs could dream - they were shattered. It suddenly became aware of my presence and it looked in my eyes. It was sad. I was sad. The whole situation was an irony. Humans have the ability to feel, to sympathize and to understand pain - be it their own or somebody else’s - for pain is universal. Nevertheless humans have the social forces that prevent them from relieving themselves of the agony they find themselves in when they see others in pain. Simple acts of kindness fail to manifest themselves when they confront the ways of the world. I was a human. I wanted to embrace it but the sole fact that I was a human and it was a pup and having seen people frown at dead dogs on roads and dismiss them as rubbish and label their children as ‘litter’ all came to me and left me in a dilemma. I was wordless and the pup couldn’t speak our language either. I could not decide on how to react, so, I wished the pup were strong enough to survive on its own and prayed to God (the force we turn to when we face tough times) to take care of it. And like a useless mass of flesh and bone I turned back and started walking towards College.

I wish the pup had found company.

[ Tag ] Top Playlist

Until very recently I was not aware of what the concept of informal tagging of bloggers by other bloggers is all about. Thanks to Karan Sir for tagging me and thanks to Aniket Sir who told me what it meant and how I was supposed to react to seeing my name (or a reference to it) in print in Karan Sir’s post. Thanks also to my buddy Mayank Juneja who brought this fact - that i had been tagged - to my notice. I’m not sure - still - of what is to be done, for Aniket Sir enlightened me by saying that the person tagged has to write a post with the same title as the post in which he/she was tagged and I firmly believe that different forms of literature : stories or essays or whatever can share titles. I wanted to write a story with the title ‘Top Playlist’ but after finding ample support here and here, I said to myself “What the Affective Stylistics? Let’s stick to the common practice.”


Consequently, to stay on the safer side and to retain (or this is what I thought) the unblemished image of staunch non-goofism (a term I use to describe the ability to goof up) I was led against my own will to change my decision and list some of the songs I’ve been hearing lately instead.


I’ll cause one final interruption before I itemize the songs: since I’m an explorer of different forms of music, you might find the songs unrelated in taste but believe me: a masterpiece of a diet is one which is composed of delicacies which are all tasty and which are all unique in their tastes and no two of the delicacies can be compared on the basis of their flavours for even though they are on the same table, they stand apart from the everything else and each other still. However for the listing to be more medium relevant I’ve classified the songs into the languages their lyrics are in. The songs are in no particular order though.


English:
1. Rise Against - Swing Life Away
2. Scars of Life - Bullet in Your Name
3. Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen
4. No Vacancy - Fight
5. Mother Jane - Chasing the Sun
6. Savage Garden - To the Moon and Back
7. Megadeth - A Tout Le Monde
8. Fort Minor - Where’d You Go
9. Breaking Benjamin - Diary of Jane
10. Kenny Loggins - Dangerzone
11. Cardigans - Bluest Eyes in Texas
12. James Blunt - I really want you
13. INXS - Afterglow
14. Counting Crows -Big Yellow Taxi
15. Vanessa Carlton - 1000 miles

Hindi:
1. Call - Jilawatan
2. Fuzon - Ankhon Ke Sagar
3. Jal - Sajni
4. Noori - Ooncha
5. Roxen - Mujhko Satao
6. Strings - Keh Diya
7. Akash - Hum Azad Hain
8. Khawar Jawad and Faiza Mujahid - Bandeya
9. Josh - Kabhi
10. Delhi 6 - Rehna Tu
11. Rock On - Zehreelay
12. Roza - Yeh Haseen Wadiyan
13. Abhijit Pohankar - Piya Bawri
14. Mohd. and Ahmed Hussain - Nazar Mujhse Milati Ho
15. Jagjit Singh - Ahista

The Canonical Anatomy of Robin Stevens

It was still dark outside. The wind had a chill to it. The sun had not yet fully intruded on the privacy of the darkness of the night. It was one of those days you wished to wake up late, relishing all the coziness of your warm bed, as if it were your last day of peace.

But things are not always what you want them to be, and for a person with a strange job and strange habits like me, the deviation between the desired and the available is even more. So there I was, walking alone on the desolate street in the early morning duskiness, an exercise I had become used to liking, for it kind of reflected what I was inside- cool, intriguing and unexplored.

I stopped at the bend on the way to the subway station and picked a copy of the Times, from the newspaper boy who had little reason to expect anyone else at this hour. Today he didn’t give me his usual shy smile as I shoved the customary 1o buck bill into his coat pocket. As usual I had no time to handle the change but he exhibited the lack of his usual practice of having all the time to notice me. I wondered if he was fed up of his job as well. But a job is a job and not matter how demanding it becomes, you have to have a job, not because you cannot survive without it but because the social circus would not let you survive without it- honor is certainly important to some people and I used the particular quantifier on purpose.

I didn’t want to rush into the sheets in my hand, which you would’ve noticed if you had witnessed me, I hadn’t rolled down like most people do: because I consider that gross; like my father, I like to keep all paper in two dimensions. His words “Son, even flattened cellulose pulp demands respect and you owe it to it” rang in my mind and I continued on the usual path.

I didn’t want to rush into the paper, for I recently had developed a strict policy of not rushing into things, after the divorce with my ex-wife Tatyana a week ago: she had turned out to be a Russian spy.
I still had a plethora of unresolved issues but my life had to wait till operation PINFRE could be formally deployed. (PINFRE is an acronym for the Prevention of Infiltration of the North Frontiers through Reverse Engineering, and that is all what I can reveal right now for it is still a long shot and also Confidential Information). I wondered how long the software ELF 1.0 I had been working on for six months would take to be completed- I’d love to see the look on the General’s face when he gets a taste of his own medicine.

I realized I had reached the subway station and swiping the pass against the magnetic pad, I rushed down the stairs to find my local all set to leave. Its doors were moving towards each other, and I managed to get in there just in time to prevent the amputation of my left lower limb. I smiled at the young lady in the overcoat who I had held out my hand to pull me up but who hadn’t responded. She didn’t utter a word even when I said “Hello”. She looked indifferent, as if she were oblivious of my presence. That was something I had not experienced in years, since passing out of junior college. Now I held an important office, people around me had gotten used to noticing me.

I had always preached about minding one’s own business and it was my time to practice the same, so I sat on a seat conveniently close to the door, next to the old man with the long beard. Minutes later the sleepy-eyed old buddy fell asleep and his specs fell off. Like a responsible fellow traveler, I picked them up and placed them in his palm. He woke up with a start, looked around, noticed the glasses in his hand, put them back on and dozed off again. He didn’t even look at me, let alone thanking me. I was kind of getting freaked out.

Still minding my own business, I set my eyes on the Times and what I saw sent a shiver down my spine. Right on the first page, in bold letters were the lines,

AN ASSET TO THE NATION IS LOST FOREVER- ROBIN STEVENS, THE MASTERMIND BEHIND ELF 1.0 FOUND SHOT DEAD IN HIS APARTMENT. FOREIGN HAND SUSPECTED.

I had ceased to exist.

Paradox

I am sitting by the rails.
I aim to destroy myself.
As I look back through the years,
Through all the pain and agnoy,
I am glad it all will soon end.

I'll soon leave this mortal shell
And move to some place more peaceful
Where my faults won't be pointed out.
And no blames against my name,
And no blames against my name.

I am not what I wanted to be.
I am but another slave of the latent force.
What happens is what he makes happen.
And he doesn't care what we want.
I am a damn necessitarian I know.

And If I leave the world he rules,
I will be a free soul Or will I ?
Is there life after death I know not
And will never know till I get there.
It scares me to wonder if things'll get worse.

If at all I'll be aware of myself,
Once I reach my end.
What form will the continuance of my being take?
Will it be better or worse?
We are all enclosed in Paradox.

Insane

The Sky has lost its red
The wind is playing a game
The someones around are commonplace
And we no ones are insane


The road is a boozy one
It unwinds like a snake
We don't care where it takes us
The vision, if its real or fake

All we have is our own
The music and the rhyme
Their harrowing tunes once disturbed us
But now we don't have the time

Cause now we've set for the tunnel
That'll take us to the Destination
We pursue our unfulfilled dreams
Some say its redemption, some perdition

The bland world is phoney
But we are what we are
We have walked out on them
But we still have to walk too far

We'll leave our foot marks in the sand
And they'll look for our track
But we're determined to go on
Now there's no turning back

Calling a truce'll be a crime
Against our life of perpetual pain
But we love the excrutiation
For we no ones are insane