managed to get my hands on a typewriter amongst a lot of things 'happening' over the course of the last week or so, most notably my falling a victim to the flu and missing out on my Rakshabandhan being the highlight.
anyways, the past 15th 'happened' to be the 61st Independence Day of India. i could not have been anymore prouder and happier on that day being the incorrigible Indian with a nationalist spirit that flows in ample doles (barrel-full amounts i presume) in my blood which in turn is a direct hand-me-down from my Bengali genes. so i was happy. i was celebrating and championing for freedom...
early in the morning there is no better thing than the daily newspaper. fresh and crisp. you can even smell the ink that was used to print it. the ink that brings to you the news from the world at your doorstep. the quintessential morning requisite.
...that day the papers were all bloated with the news of the nation. 61 years of independence and now we had our 1st Olympic gold, had almost cracked the Ahmedabad bomb blasts and were hot on the trail of the perpetrators and were redefining the motto "India Shining" with our sturdy economy. and then somewhere amongst all the stories of triumphs and victories and heroics there was this tiny bit of news. lost and hidden amongst everything else that was glamorous and desirable. the real inconvenient truth about our nation. a 10 line article about the death of a 12 year old boy at the hands of the field owners/farmers from whose fields he had stolen 4 corn ears. this was the moment of disillusionment for me. 61 years of freedom after 190 years of struggle and war. and this is what it all came down to. the value of a 12 year old boy's life was not even worth that of 4 corn ears. and here we were talking about our 1st Olympic gold medal, our Nuclear deal, our Cricket team and our glamorous life and country. and all not even worth 4 corn ears.
this is my nation. the nation where poverty and hunger forces a child to steal at the risk of death at the hands of the farmer, and the nation where the farmer kills the thieving child who would have otherwise starved to death in any case because he can barely sustain and survive himself. this my dear friends is my country. it is not shining or glamorous or a super power. but it aspires to be all of this. but in reality this is what India is. i still love her. always will. but i also bleed and weep for her.
***
so then i got me hands on a typewriter. and this is what i went tip-tapping about (the complete unedited crap and bulls**t that i hammered out).
confound it! at times life demands a certain sense of volatility of perspective to it. changes we may call it. adaptability to the situation is a must and there are plenty of certainties of the fact that life is paradoxical. and quite rightly so! cause if that were not the case then all would be lost ; and we all know how hard it is to find something that is lost.
for all those who are ardent believers in the fact that it is we/ourselves who are hmmm...oh! the red ink also works! yeah! it feels like an old man to be typing away on this ancient piece of instrument/machinery. the tip tap of the typewriter...a certain joy that i had ceased to enjoy ever since i laid my hands on the first computer and it's keyboard...
there are innumerable things running through this mind. so many thoughts that vie to occupy the mantle of the ones that are to be penned down. a mind itching to say the things that it fathoms out of the depths of its ceaseless memory is a hard mistress. she wants everything at her disposal. but in return all she promises is more and more heartache. heartache cause you know that you can never satisfy her. never truly reign in her inherent infidelity to her own thoughts. the mind cannot be loyal to just one thought. the mind has to change. the mind is volatile. the mind is full of joy, it is the heart that must hurt. but you still cannot stop yourself from loving it. after all, she belongs to you. she is you. and no, i am not a chauvinistic jerk! just a man with a sense of romance that leads him to see the feminine in all the things that he loves.
sometimes all we need is some relief! this need is what changes are all about. insatiable, invulnerable, incapable, inexhaustible, infidel images of us all. the true mirror to ourselves. confessions! why do people confess to anything? a mere justification that we must give to ourselves each time we choose between our instincts, our mind and our heart. a justification to the one that has been left out by the one that has prevailed in its endeavour...
parfleche! what kind of word is parfleche? silly French!
***
it has been a somewhat emotionally volatile week. holidays were abundant and so were the thoughts and emotions.
