May the 4th be With You

I believe in Jedi Knights. I believe that Yoda looks after young padawans. Sometimes I feel like Obi-Wan. Sometimes like a lost Sky Walker.

But whatever happens, I believe that it is within us to believe that the force is with us. May 4^th and Star Wars is probably the greatest PJ ever created on earth but for the believers it means so much more when their official beginning of their working life happens to be around that day.

This year, the week of May Fourth was important as it was also the fourth year of my active employment. I know the celebrations are due for next year but when in the fourth year itself, you feel a little lost and a lot tired, you wanna look up at the Stars.

The week had started well. On the exact day I completed my fourth year, I was out in the small hen-coops of Mumbai which pass as houses talking to consumers about their kids, their holidays and their life in general. That’s what keeps me going even till this date and then slowly things started unravelling.

But the point is not about what went wrong. The point has always been what’s gone right. And how happy you can be with what’s happening around you. It was late in the night. We just had come back from a stressed out meeting. But when I walked on the paved boulevards of Marine Drive, I could feel the sea telling me, “All is well. It’s a Friday Night after all.”

The Teacher had come to meet me the other day. And these days when all seems lost I think about the time we spent together in the 1 BHK overlooking a putrid canal wondering about life. His first charts as a teacher, his vacillation, my worried support. It was a strange time. And in my uneventful life, it was almost akin to the renunciation of the prince of Kapilavastu. All through my life I have met heroes – normal people who stood up and did something that surprised every bit of conventional wisdom in the book. Heroes are human, very human, with every little failing our kind is prone to. But when you know them you want to believe. I am not a hero, my ex roommate is :) But what I can do is be the chronicler – the Callisthenes to the Alexander.

It’s been a long day and I am tired. Tomorrow I have to head to office, search hard for the grey matter within the cranium and figure out a way to make sense of the world around me.

But you know what the world around is not a bad place to be. Last Saturday when I was breaking my head over numbers and had in a moment of desperation cribbed in public, Juicy Girl raised up her antenna, felt my distress across the airwaves, (not for the work, but for lack of caffeine) and led me to the secret chamber of nectar. I know good people :)

And if you are reading this, “May the Fourth be with you to show you the path you so desperately seek.”

Tomorrow

I really wish was another day. Mumbai is reeking of her millions, pushing and jostling with each other, for the little extra space in this overcrowded city and the stench is everywhere. Putrid, vengeful, unforgiving. The stench is creeping up on us.

I wait desperately for the rain. I want it to wash away my fears, my heartbreaks, my desires and return me to innocence. The Buddha was right, attachments are at the root of all dissatisfaction.

I guess the whiff of sadness in every rare gust of wind is trying to get to us, wipe away our hopes for a better tomorrow but in the ensuing battle of human endurance, we are becoming harder. The road rages increase, so does the helplessness in crowded trains. Mumbai is reaching the boiling point. It’s just the beginning of May.

I want my Kalboishakhi.

Probably India is too. Without the distraction caused by mouse hunts from the white house, India suddenly had her new issue to protest on. And the intelligentsia quickly split to take up sides. When we used to debate in school, we used to look at a topic and depending on various factors and take a side. They could be as random as “I want to go against the crowd”, “I want to speak for the motion as it’s lucky for me.” “You know, that idiot from LMB is speaking for the motion. I have to take him on.” Only rarely it would be, “I believe in the stance I am taking”. So as I watched over a month the innumerable television debates, I could sense going back to Calcutta Debating Circuits and a hushed audience. In a deep baritone voice, the teacher announces, “Your topic for the day is…”

“In any society when a combination of sclerotic bureaucracy and raw incompetence has caused all the cogs and wheels to seize up, the black market is the only lubricant.” Icon – Forsyth

Mind seeks its distractions in the seemingly scripted debates. But the mind is not the only body part we are worried about. There’s a searing pain sometimes near the heart. And you wonder, whether the biology books in Class 8 were correct in their description of the heart as a pump. If it’s a machine, then why does it pain so much? Why does it worry so much? Why does it cry so much? Was that a bit cheesy? Maybe.

One day I believe the rains will come. They always do. That’s the predictability of the ever changing seasons. However little or however devastating the monsoons will be, there shall always be the first kiss of rain. Whether it is a kiss of life or kiss of death, few can predict and that’s the beauty of this unpredictability.

I wish you were here to share the rain with me. But we can no longer cross the chasm between us. Guess, the bridge was never meant to be across forever.

And as I wait for the rains, I wish you this song

You deserve the sunshine and not the rain

You deserve the rainbow you've had enough pain

I wanna see you win

And get it all

Hey I never see you fall

Cant you see

Waiting for the rain

Cant you see

Waiting for the rain