I am a BIHARI

Pandit Nehru once said,"I am an Indian first and an Indian last". Our own-love me or hate me but you can't ignore me star SRK-refused to hear the names of the states in Chak De. Many more instances from life-both real and reel-go on to add to the same flow of notion without really making a difference on pragmatic grounds. I belong to the list of defaulters here. I am at fault but I was not always like this, not atleast when I started off, not when I was born and not when I took it on me to see the world through one eye for the sake of equity of vision. I was born little more than two decades ago in erstwhile BIHAR and thats how I began.

I was very bright when I went to kinder garden, but then who isn't? Its like half of India playing better cricket than Sachin Tendulkar. Did I understate? I started off in an english medium school only to switch to hindi because that apparently was the more convincing way of studying mathematics and by hearting those multiplication tables! I was not even four when I was almost programmed to know the aim of my life. Yes, you people are right, I was supposed to become an IAS officer. Bloody hell, the dream got embedded to such depths that it still takes lucid forms at times!

But life moved on and with it the dream moved as well. An IAS officer to a scientist and what not! Included that short lived dream to be a cricketer; though it didn't get the sort of appreciation that I was expecting after I revealed it. There is a famous theory in Organizational Behaviour which says that the chances of realizing a goal increases by 50% once it is revealed or made public. Only in my case it was crushed and beaten to pulp. Though my parents got me a full cricket kit which included a Sanspariel Greenlands bat from Calcutta, it was more to motivate me to study harder than to make a Sachin Tendulkar out of me.

My life was rather sedate, there was hardly any element of fun or adventure in it. Also I never realized that I had a jinx of birth associated with myself. In due course of time, I passed standard twelfth. And by then I was ordered to be an engineer, preferably, from some IIT. There is a special respect for any institution or job which begins with the word "Indian" back there. Well, I moved to the Indian capital to pursue my dream. That was a very big city I landed foot into. For the first time I saw roads so wide and buildings so high. I could only gaze in wonder and gasp for breath from time to time. The city promised to promise a lot and deliver a little. What a pessimist Am I even today! I never had that free and liberated mindset to do what I wanted to do. I lacked in courage and will. I was loaded with fear and apprehensions instead! I failed in the big city. I still try to figure out for myself if I failed myself or the city failed me? Were my dreams fragile enough or was the city that hard? Whatever it may be I was a brand of failure than success, a matter of insult than respect. My lovely acquisitions from the great land of dreams. A dreamer with the pulp of his dreams, irony!

Not only this, I got the first taste of discrimination in the big city. The first ever opportunity in my life which made me realize that I have to live with something I am hardly responsible for. The curse of birth as they put it in some places in the books of literature. Banters which pertained to my funny way of speaking my mother tongue and the alien language (read english) were the primary things of target. I realized I had to be something big to get ahead of them or to let go what is my own. Letting go what was my own is not that great a thing to achieve, not in my dictionary at least. So bitter as it might sound, reality was there for the taking and I took it right on my chin. I bled profusely. I wiped it up and moved. I sometimes sit and think I have been mostly a Nomad in my life, I have moved on pretty frequently.

This is how I built upon those pit holes what are the buildings of today. I sure still have that feeling and it goes on to hurt. It pinches and my muscles flex but I have to control them. It acts like an old twisted ankle which can never take a jerk on its own. But I live on. I read the constitution of our republic and I feel proud about it. I go deep into it and I feel I have been deprived of somethings at some points in time. But I let go. I let go because I am still intact with the core I began with. I added on quite a bit. I let go because there has to be a start where you let go and start reading and following those great men who saw a dream. Like me even they were dreamers. My dreams, remember, I had their pulp with me. I have managed to transit them to realities. Back from the pulp, I call them now. I look up, in the sky and feel liberated today because I can think and I can smile about the battles I lost and the recoveries I made. I owe it all, to you, my land!

Love Death Theory

(Love Death Theory)
As I procrastinated the drafting process of the thoughts I have been getting since yesterday, I was continuously wondering about the origin of my thoughts, thoughts of death. Death is a difficult phenomenon to handle, at times the effects are excruciating (with the exceptions of those cold blooded psycho killers) on the person who witnesses it. Death is considered as the pit stop for the spiritual ones, who believe this journey is far more than what we assume it to be. Its obscure for people who do not believe or rather cannot believe the mystifying aftermath of a death. For some, it’s just the end of a story. Everything stops once this terminal is reached. Whatever perceptions we have of death, irrespective of that, there is a common ground where every thinker and non thinker seemingly agree. The commonality associated with this freakish event is the fear, the fright of not being able to see the world again, the disappointment of never having gotten that opportunity to do that one job one always wanted to. Death is not as ugly as it seems neither it is as supposed to be that bad, what gives this touch to death is nothing but love.

The last word over there might just spring a few moans or sighs of disbelief from the readers at the first reading. I am expecting that. Love is supposed to be the most beautiful feeling that any living being possesses. Love is what defines the purpose of our life. Love is what gives us the motive to breathe without questioning the daily routine. Love is what gives us hope. Hope is what gives us the desire. The desire to love is derived from the hope to be loved which generates from the feeling of love itself. Who says love is not self seeking? It seeks a lot. It seeks love. And it is this love which fabricates those stronger than steel bonds between two beings. It is love that makes one think about oneself before others because this "oneself" is the object of love to "someone" who in turn is the object of love to the "one" in question. This is why when we sneeze hard, parents back home get desperate. And because we do not want to see them in that state of desperation, we try not to sneeze hard while talking to them on phone. Now imagine something like death in place of something so insignificant like a sneezing act. Derive the origin of fear which makes death so painful, even the entire process of death and the mere thought of it coming almost asphyxiates me totally every single time. The origin is love, because love is the only reason which can form a bond that is strong enough to intensify pain on severance. Fear would be nothing if love would have been nonexistent. Death would be nothing if fear would be nonexistent, just a thought with a practical experience!