Ma(i)nly Mechanical

Who does not want a little easy-going? We all of us desire comfort, be it in a bus or a train, or even in a saloon. Quite often we so accustomed to comfort that even the slightest of discomfort becomes hell, and we begin to make a hue and cry about it. One should see the plight of those who are used to air-conditioners, when the electricity fails, and to add incense to injury, if the generator too fails. They might be driven to take multiple showers to bear the humidity and heat, and they may curse every person on earth for the curse they had thrown on them. But if we have to look at a person who does not even have an electric fan, life is as cool as ever; he does not even realize that there was an electricity failure.

If a choice is given between a comfortable job and a challenging job, less than one out of a hundred might choose the challenging job; invariably everyone would go for the easy and comfortable one. No one wants hardship in life, they all want readymade solutions for all the problems of humanity. That is why there are service providers for everything imaginable, from tourism to catering, event management to travel agents, religious ceremonies to private parties. People would do everything one wants, if only one has enough money to pay for the services. Money can get anything one wants, and everything is offered on a platter.

Our lives have become so very easy going that we cannot think of putting up with a minimum amount of inconvenience. We had used in our younger days, pencils which had lead inside, and we had to sharpen the pencil using either a shaving blade (and my father offered on turns to our siblings), or those who could afford pencil sharpeners. In those days the sharpeners were already a luxury, and very few could afford it, and naturally we could not buy them. But now we live in an age, where one does not need to sharpen pencils, and all they need to do is to insert the ready-made lead in, press it, and use it. We don’t need blades or sharpeners, and no wasting time sharpening the pencils. Purchase the lead and use it as and when you need.

There was certain joy and thrill in sharpening the pencils, when the pencils are new, and we would inhale the smell of the fresh soft wood, and may get annoyed when the lead broke, and we had to make another try. We did not complain then that we had to go through the hard process of sharpening them. Quite often I had better sharpeners and bad pencils, and so the pencil lead would break each time I was on the verge of getting the pencil sharp. And suddenly the lead would snap, and I had to do it all over again. Though it was a bit annoying, we did not hate it, and even now I do the sharpening pencils all by myself, and am happy to do it, instead of rushing to get the readymade “mechanical pencils”.

One reason why most of our lives become so very mechanical is because we are used to too many mechanical objects. We love to have short-cuts in as many instances as possible, and do not wish to take a little long routes which may give us the joy and satisfaction of running the full course. I used to enjoy doing my initial writings – poems, short stories – on a paper, before I would type them out on a manual typewriter. But nowadays I do not do much writing using pen; I prefer to sit in front of the laptop or computer and try to do the writing directly. It is for this reason a few days ago, I had pulled up my writing pad, and had begun to write on paper. I hope to complete the long article on paper, before I would type it on computer. There is a special joy in doing it through the hard and tough way, and the trouble is worth it!

Letting Barking Dogs Bark

Often in life, it is easier to retrieve from the battle-front than to stand in the thick of fight and be overpowered. It is psychologically simpler to run away when the battle grows thick, and there are still chances of saving one's life, even if that means acknowledging one's cowardice and shame, than to face the deadly weapons scathing through one's body, while the soul remains unmoved. We are of course, not talking about battlefronts or brave warriors or consequences of losing one's battle. This is merely an allusion, which we all go through each day, and have a lot to teach us.

My friend is convinced that there is no point in fighting with other companions who were after her to put down, and show their superiority complex in all respects. So, when the others try to shout at her, she makes it a point to keep quiet and mind her own work. This has not stopped the problem, but had only aggravated it. If there are people who grumble that she was spending too much time in the computer room with internet, she would decide not to step into that room, lest they get another chance to talk about her. But the problem has not stopped there either.

In a battle front, one cannot be careless; every move should be calculated; but if one is too preoccupied by the moves and refuses to swing the sword to prevent the enemy coming past one, there may be nothing left to calculate. The iron has to be hit when it is still redhot, or else it is difficult to shape it. Avoidance may be one way of handling problems related to persons who are or think they are superior to others, but sure that does not solve the problems. Confrontation (care-frontation) is another way of doing it, though this may not work with people who do not bother to take one seriously.

We can learn a good lesson from stray dogs. These street dogs have a way of finding out who is brave and who is coward. There are persons who as soon as they hear a dog bark, start running away, and the dogs know that they are frightened and so have fun in chasing them. If someone were to stand and stare at the barking dogs, they would invariably soften their barking, and after a while even stop trying to frighten them. This is a reality, and if we try to run away from problems, the problems may start chasing us, until we are fully down; if we stand erect and face them, then we may realize there was no problem at all!

There is also another way of handling these people who are after our blood. To let them bark as much as they want. They cannot bark endlessly; when they find that no one is taking them seriously, they may grow tired and ultimately stop barking. Let people say whatever they want; I will continue to do what I am convinced is the right thing to do. I should be prepared to be challenged, and even face the brickbats; ultimately what matters is if I am ready to stand by what I am convinced of, even if that means giving ears to endless barking. But the barking will one day stop, and I then can breathe easy!

Waiting for Godot!

Those who have studied American literature would remember the title, a modern English play, belonging to the genre of ‘abstract drama’ by Samuel Beckett. This is considered as a prototype of the abstract drama, which captures the absurdity of life in modern times. The entire drama revolves around a person waiting for another person named Godot! There is no forward or backward movement in the drama, at the end of the play, the audience are exactly in the same place where they were at the beginning, and so also the characters.

While on the one hand, the modern world swears by speed, on the other it is typified by endless waiting. Every moment of waiting has been added to the quest for better speed. We want quick solutions, and waiting as it were becoming a thing of the past. There is no one who really wants to wait. Waiting for three hours to get the parts of computers we have paid for, is not just a thing we can take so easily. People taking their own sweet time to pull out the required parts from the store, and placing them together so that they could pack off the customer in half an hour is an art which is alien to the boys working in this biggest computer shop in the whole of Eastern India. But who will teach them the art of getting things faster than they are used to?

But is it not time that we just throw our watches and clocks and just flow with time, following the course of the sun and the moon? Some years ago, when I decided to stay with the Santal tribals, I did the same, and I was happy without knowing the time, while staying in a village, where there is no way of knowing the hour of the day. What I could say was night and day, morning and evening and noon. I would look at the sun, and would guess the time for my meals. It gives a different feeling when we forget for a moment the human-made indicators of time. Time and space cannot be measured in human terms and categories; one has to let oneself to flow in the current in order to feel the cosmic flow.

Waiting is associated with a lot of pain and suffering, and every waiting reminds the persons concerned that there is a great expectation, though the expectation may not end up with a positive result. Like in the case of Waiting for Godot, at the end no one might turn up. The entire waiting might come to naught, but then the waiting per se has a meaning, which cannot be separated from the act itself. Fortunately when I went to the shop today, I had not worn my wrist watch, and so was less conscious of every passing hour, but then there were wall-clocks which reminded me that I had already spent four hours waiting in that cozy room, with a lot of men and women crisscrossed, each one minding their own business.

Waiting is a sweet and sour candy that we are given, even when we are not in a mood to chew it. The taste however is not in the candy, but in the tongue and the mind which provides the taste. If your waiting is on someone or something that you would be delighted to, then the candy would taste sweet; if you are waiting to meet a bad news, or bad person, whom you would have liked to miss, but are forced to meet, then the candy would taste sour. You cannot throw the candy altogether, because each moment of our life comes with a waiting, with a sugar coated candy, and it is for me to make it taste sweet or sour! Waiting after all is not a physical phenomenon, but very much a psychological one.