Loner's Tip No. 8 - The Pigeon And The Spider

Never had I thought that one day I will, among all the things which man can count as favorites, have a favorite villain as well. My favorite villain is Lord Voldemort – the most powerful dark wizard, ruthless, born out of a loveless union, incapable to feel or even comprehend love. He is shrewd and cruel, a planner who knows how and when to corner his enemy, render him alone and away from all good people and things, render him helpless and vulnerable. And then he would play with the enemy’s mind, show him things that don’t exist, make him scared, make him abandon all things worth doing and all people worth being with. He weakens the victim in body and mind. He makes him believe in the ‘easy’ turning the victim like him. And when the victim is all alone, weak, defenseless, begging for relief, the ‘merciful’ Lord would then oblige – he would strike the final blow. Like a spider he would watch the prey struggle in its web and then – game over. He would not play any more like most play with their food, like innocuous children pull a scared puppy’s legs.

Anybody feels like they know Mr Voldemort? There is another thing sharing all the traits of my favorite villain. Isn’t that description paralleling the very anatomy of loneliness – something that’s born in our hearts when all love, peace and hope is sucked out; something that makes us want nothing but a moment of loneliness even if it comes at someone else’ cost; something that assumes complete control of our minds and hearts like a lustful man or woman and repeatedly makes us feel that the goodness of life was being distributed, an enemy had put 'Do Not Disturb' on your door. It makes us ask again and again, each time louder than the previous – why me – when the sensible thing to be asked would have been – why not him / her? It even makes us want all bad things to happen to another when in our sane minds we would have sheepishly argued that we must not wish or act on something which we would not like to happen to ourselves. Loneliness, it seems, then becomes the thin line separating the Gandhis of our hearts to Hitlers of our minds.

We are left alone and hurt by all that and all those we can't control. I haven't known anything more potent than fear, money and love, when it comes to alienating man from man, turning them against each other as if they were healthy cocks bred by their masters only to win cock fights. Unlike the proverbial cock, the human at the receiving end suffers, less in body, more in heart. Then the demon of loneliness, our own version of Voldemort overtakes us and turns the weak into him while the strong get nothing but a seemingly unending era of unjustified and undeserved suffering.

Do we have a choice? Yes we do. We always do and its a pity that not all know that apart from credit cards and beautiful-but-bitchy-women-in-the-family-serials, there is a choice as well – either give in to your Voldemort and be sullen, down, secretly begging for pity, or tell your troubled heart that the darker the night becomes, the closer the day gets. You can’t see doesn’t mean it won’t come. It will. It has to. For it’s the very nature of ‘nature’. So kick it out of your mind like an itchy stray dog and don’t let it control you. Go into the sunlight feeling the warmth of it on your skin and enjoying the light while it lasts. If you liked to sing while you drive, sing. If you like to cook something untried before, cook. If you like to dance in the private theater of your room and heart, dance. Do everything you’d have otherwise done. Do all this despite a heart so heavy with troubles that it threatens to fall out through the same routes the body takes to cleanse itself every morning. As if that ‘thing’ didn’t happen at all. As if you’re the happiest man or woman on this earth. Till now your troubles laughed at you? Mock them. Tease them now, for they can no longer control your heart no matter what happens. Be the bird you always wanted to be.

Feel the desire of happiness and not the jealousy on someone else’s happiness. And the bad day will pass. I have never known one that hasn’t passed. Some just take longer, but they all pass on. If happiness doesn’t last forever, why would troubles?

Go tell your heart that All Izz Well. Mine is ‘It will pass’. It always does.

Images and text are copyright of the author.

Loner's Tip No. 7 - A Traveller's Memoir

No matter how much we believe or boast the inherent goodness in us, all of us intrinsically are partly made of those demons that we publicly condemn. I am a believer of 'circles' (see my other blog http://simtheory.blogspot.com/ for this) and following on the same rhetoric, I think about the saying that when your line appears to be smaller than the other, rather than trying to erase the other's line, make yours longer. Positive the essence of this adage is, and one that works well for the hard-working, honest and god-believing kind. I once found, that when our line of troubles and emotional issues seems to be the longest, it appeases to find other lines larger than ours. As the name of this post suggests, it is not really a tip. It is a personal account of a day which turned out to be a wonderful experience and a pacifying lesson for days to come.

On one of those days while meandering through a tarred road in the middle of a forest, we found an old man, lean as a stick, as old when the city folk start complaining about nagging daughter-in-laws, inflation and increasing vulgarity in cinema, that old man walked in the same direction as us, holding two large cans full of water heavier than himself, on a steep descent. We the extra kind city folk stopped our car and asked him if he would like a ride. Unfortunately, he didn't understand our language and we didn't understand his, so we resorted to some signs, which had a disastrous effect of giving him the impression that our car had broken down and we wanted it pushed. In a flash, the old man rushed to the back of the car and pushed it with all he had. Had I not rushed out and with some difficultly made him understand that we didn't want the car pushed, he would have collapsed by his sincere exertion. The guy, whom I call Mr. W finally understood our generosity and accepted the ride, all the while speaking something seemingly funny and not-understandable to us and making clueless but curious faces when we said something not-understandable to him.

Shortly after, he signalled us that his destination had arrived. He offered us to come to his home. 'Chala majhe ghari,' he said. Its amazing how little the word 'ghar' changes across so many languages in this marvellous country. We accepted and followed and moved past 2 dry but large pieces of land, scraped dry out of every hope of life in it by the unrelenting sun, a well with only a little water in it, some children running around without their pants, 2 village men who immediately gave us respect much more than what we had asked for or deserved, a couple of cows and stray dogs. Guessing by the size of his home, I thought he would be an influential man in this little utopia, which comprised only a handful huts, but a large number of people - most of them youngsters focusing totally on a cheap FM radio held at the centre of their worlds and attraction. The remaining majority were the children clearly outnumbering adults, old, teens, and cows combined. On that otherwise hopelessly hot day, they ran around, pulled an innocuous dog's tail, played without worry and were amazed by us - the aliens of the day.

Once there, Mr. W told us about the stats of his family, and we were offered a tea, which to my surprise, I accepted. The tea was not very much to my taste but I had a feeling that this was the most sumptuous tea I would get in places like these. That corroborated that Mr. W was not only influential in his village, but also relatively more wealthy (God - me and my habit of being wrong). Mr. W sat with me as for some unknown reason I was most chatty with him. And out of his many words I could not understand, I made out these - water, rains, no, poverty, us, God, etc. I then looked at his face and I saw his eyes were wet. I hated myself that moment for accepting that sumptuous tea for the extra dose of sugar and milk in it, which I was secretly disdaining, which could have fed half a dozen of those pant-less children when they wailed for it. A supreme gesture towards strangers.

Just while everything seemed to be turning tragic, Mr. W said the most extra-ordinary words after looking at my camera - he wanted me to click a photo of him and his family. The smile and pure joy in his eyes, which were wet just a moment ago, his spirit living so much in that one moment of life, almost moved me. I gathered all of his family to get them clicked. His wife, relented first and Mr. W insisted that we request her. She, an equally old woman, agreed with a heavenly shyness, and took time to comb her scarce hair. The image in the beginning on this post is one of those snaps: Mr. W - the man in the middle with the disinterested boy in his arms and Mrs. W - the timeless Madhubala in earthly green besides her man. And what a man he was!

As like every other villager, marvelled at being able to see himself frozen in time in nothing more than a click, Mr. W and family basked in the amazement of science and offered to visit again just as we left.

Now, that whole episode left me at a very troubled point. I just could not understand, how someone so much hated by good fate and reasons that make up happiness, having to support more than a dozen people, managing and living with the hatred of those growing up, and with nothing but a sincere hope that every 'tomorrow' will be better than 'today', how can such a man offer us 3 cups of his version of a rich-man's-tea when his own livelihood was unaffordable to him? How could he manage to smile and feel marvelled by some city folk swinging noting but a digital camera and who would make no difference to his life except devoiding him of some super costly sugar and milk? All this courage and love in a hopeless world for what? All this honest goodness when life gives you all the reasons and those sinful temptations to easily become what you hated most, all this for what? How could such love, peace, happiness, hope and courage fit in that lean, dying body of Mr. W when our young, strong and extra fat bodies reject those like one north pole rejects another?

Some thinking brings me to the conclusion that its not that difficult to smile no matter what you go through, or what goes through you. Its not that difficult to decide that whatever happens to you, it cannot, just cannot change you into your version of demon and a bad man. No one wins by simply doing something against us. He only wins when that thing done against us, changes us into something we always hated as a child, he wins when he turns our goodness into him, makes us like him - a hater, a plotter, a snatcher, someone who basks in the pain of others.

By all measures of maths, physics, and economy, Mr. W's problems are larger than a lot of us, none of which are in his control no matter how hard he tries and how much he prays. If he can manage to smile, if he can continue to imbibe and exude all those good things we only find in children's story books, why can't the rest of us? If some still find it difficult and impossible to smile in times of great personal loss and trouble, go find your own Mr. W, feel how small your line of trouble is from his and then at least feel happy that yours are not the biggest problems of all. For once, being lesser would serve you good.

Image and text are copyright of the author.