The Déjà Vu of Nightmares

The Déjà Vu of nightmares and their consequential events; like your life is being run by a replay button. Like being Stuck in Reverse. It all happens. Maybe with a lot of people. Maybe not. Maybe its just me. But for me it has become profoundly important. Why so?

Why; because every time it returns, it burns me and nails me and crucifies me. But I never get cleansed or purified. The agony burns my heart and pierces my soul, I scream and I cry, but I never get salvation.  I am not Judas, but I am ragged, beaten, bruised, in pain, stoned and yet not forgiven. Every time I run through this nightmare, I feel myself robbed and wronged. And then the ensuing doubts about myself, the "reliving memory” exercise for all the bad deeds ever done.

The faith has to come. It is always here, woven in our nature. Nobody is an atheist in fox shackle. I am not pushed to one, but I face the nightmares every now and then. The thought of not being worth a while, of failing, of rejection, is overwhelming. I hate to be judged that way. I yet have to prove what I am! 

Looking out the window

Looking out the window, I saw a routine view; children playing cricket on the street, a teenage boy flying a kite in the corner, another riding a bicycle -  a mundane view which always made me envy these kids for their carefree life. They could be whatever they wanted to be without the fear of consequences, and were lucky enough not to be bogged down by thoughts of a future.

Suddenly, my serene, mundane and routine view was disturbed. A young boy was standing knee deep in a pile of garbage, sorting through it collecting dry garbage in a dirty sack hung over his slender shoulder, to be sold to industries. He was so immersed in this activity that I could hear him humming to himself, oblivious to the stark difference between his surroundings and his condition. I could not envy this kid. I wondered why? Why is there so much difference in the life of this kid and the other’s playing cricket on the street? What did he do to deserve a life surrounded by other people’s garbage? What will he remember from his childhood?

And I wondered with fear, what if he realized all this and started asking questions? Will he forgive me, or for that matter, anyone for his misery? Will his actions be justified, when he decide to take revenge from the world? Are we not responsible for this injustice? “Come on, of course I had nothing to do with all this”, I tried to justify to myself. Ironically, I was more threatened by the consequences of this unfairness rather than feeling responsible for this wrong.

Some days later I came across somebody who brought this incident back to me. It was a kind of “in your face” experience. I met a lady who was working for these kids because she “felt responsible for this injustice”. She said, “No child in the world deserves to live their life in garbage and waste”. She invited me to visit her organization.

I expected it to be a flashy NGO, but instead it was her home, Headquarters of Aabroo Welfare Organization (AWO). We went from there to her school, where such children were provided education and lunch. When I entered the premises, the place was like “Kingdom of Heaven”. I cannot possibly explain my overwhelming feelings seeing those children so confident, hopeful and cultured! They knew the basic manners better than our children. They could even speak English!

The lady in charge started telling me how she started all this with the children of her housemaid. She has now 5 running schools, all near the slums of the city. There were paid teachers, as well as volunteers from high profile universities and schools, people who felt responsible, people who wanted to make a change. When I asked about revenue generation, the lady said that earlier they used charity primarily. However now they are self sustaining through their “dry waste project”. The idea was given by the children themselves, of collecting dry waste from the homes in different localities and then selling it to industries. Now their vans pick up dry waste once a week from every locality and then they sell it to the paper industry.

Visiting them was an eye opening experience. It washed away a little guilt and gave me some modicum of satisfaction that somewhere out there somebody was saving us from the consequences of injustice. However, it also gives me hope that all is not lost for these children; they just might get a childhood worth remembering!

Worth of Convenience

Very often, I mull over the reasons for my deeds; don’t we all! Most often, I find my conduct without any rationale. Once upon a time, this kind of behavior was termed nonsense, not any more. The new non-sense is all that makes more sense, makes you see the truth. Nowadays sensible things are those which are convenient and make our life easier; nonsense, because it is true for us all.

Take Facebook for example. Long ago, I was of the firm belief that this activity is non-sensible. It creates a fake sense of reality, a fake world for the user. It made easier for people to hide behind a “Profile”. Implicitly, it was re-enforcing the social norm of portraying what they wanted people to believe, rather than what they really were. It created a false sense of happiness, joy, sadness, remorse, laughter, tears, love, relationships and God knows what through “Status and Relationship Updates”. For me it was almost like a contagious utopia that was fast removing my friends from actual reality. It was like having imaginary friends!

Yet I joined. It was nonsense not to be on Facebook! “Hell, it is convenient man!” is what I came across everyday. And it honestly was. It was a lot easier to stay in touch with all the people and let me save a lot of time that I could spend elsewhere. Multitasking was suddenly made uncomplicated. Of course, it did not matter much if I was also in touch with people I did not really want to be in touch with, my life was smooth. I was working full time, and yet my friends stopped complaining about not being in touch or not giving them time. Ironically, we now spend less time together than before. How sensible is that?

That is what I guess we do with religion, and every other thing that pushes us to the rocky road. It is not convenient for us to commit to it, hence making it non-sense.

Encounter with Self

It is so surprising how you come across knowing yourself. The encounter is usually not very pretty, almost ugly, and you find hating yourself. Sometimes it is a person that makes you see your reflection in his actions. Sometimes, it is situations, what goes around, comes around. Sometimes I wonder, is it even necessary? Why do I NEED to judge myself all the time? Why cannot I live lime everybody else, and be content about it? But then I realize… I don’t mind such encounters… life would be meaningless without them, and I cannot survive that limitless nothingness.

But recently, I came across myself quite unexpectedly. It was a movie (I know that’s clichéd) but the mapping of it on me was very beautiful. It was almost like grabbing in the dark and suddenly touching what you were looking for. An answer. An answer that defines you. That defines your actions, your reasons.

Once I asked somebody, “How do you keep on your beliefs, your ideologies?” and the wise man said, “You keep re-enforcing them”. I pictured it like a forsaken, dwindling structure of a museum, and you fix the fallen bricks every week you go back, and a new sunlight enters it everyday, and then a day comes when it will be worth visiting by others. I feared that I had lost the old building way down the road. But I was told that it will all come back to me, as it was part of me.

And so I know why I write. I preserve myself… My beliefs, ideologies, visions and fantasies. It is so heartening when you figure out something (almost) on your own and out do yourself!

Trade off with Self

Sometimes you think it's your entire fault. Only if it weren't for you, everybody's life would've been simpler, easier. If it weren't for you, everybody around you would've been happier. It makes you go crazy, almost suicidal, literally. Why can't be happiness just pure? Why does it have to be foiled in sadness, guilt or tension? Why can't it be unadulterated?

I guess it is because we've become older. We now know and believe in "opportunity costs", the economics of life. We believe that we have to "choose" and let go off "the next best alternative". And throughout life we have been programmed to choose what is rational, logical and practical. All this and we have lost touch of what it was like to feel the joy of "the next best alternative".

When as kids, we could afford to that. We could choose the alternative which did not make sense. Consequences did not matter much. But it is different now. We have grown up. And it comes with the package.

And choosing the logical course brings you this. You think that you have given sacrifices, huge ones, by not choosing what you wanted, and still the happiness comes in with sadness and tears. You think that you are the poor one. Your expectations weigh you down, almost to the point where you are six feet from the edge.

The trade off for being the part of this world with my own self is way down the road, and I wonder, was the trade off worth it?