Birth of a man

Every story should have a beginning & so this story begins with a 15 year old boy sitting in a hesitating posture.  Neither was he in love, nor was he about to commit crime. He was sitting in a barber shop, contemplating how to garner courage. He needed that, because he knew the barber was about to use unsterilized blade on him; yet again. As the barber moved toward him flashing the bio-weapon, the boy’s eyes were transfixed: not due to fear, for he had forcefully overcome it 6 years earlier by jumping from his two-storey building (into a sand-pit btw) repeatedly till it became fun. His only concern was not to hurt the barber by pointing out his lack of general awareness. You see, as a younger boy whilst adulating the patience & bravado of Karnan (a character from Mahabharata), his imaginative relative infused in him a lie that his bloodline is that of a Kshatriya’s. It didn’t take him long enough (till he woke up that morning) to realise the truth about his lineage, but that didn’t erase the pride he had for embracing pain.  The joy of overkilling fear & the impish whim to welcome pain seemed cool to start with. But it hurt. It hurt when he was brought back to reality by the pain the barber had inflicted by ‘mistakenly’ cutting the skin of a child seated next to him.

‘How dare you say it’s a mistake?’ - shouted a voice. Tons of blurring sentences later, the boy took that child to his home, with a sense of pride seeping from his eyes. It wasn’t about righteousness or rationalism, for he knew he wasn’t versed enough to differentiate right over wrong. Instead, in the age of individualism he banked on his intuition. That was why he stood up against the thugs who thought seniority can get them anything. It didn’t hurt when they hit him; as it only took a little push against gravity to make them all choke. But what hurt the most was that he was waging a lonely battle for his haplessly incognizant fellowmen.

That day he could have walked past those people; but couldn’t bring himself to leave the society however unbecoming it was turning itself to be. Hence he stayed an outlaw, yet not as an outsider, ready to be summoned during the times of troubles. Neither did he do it for honour, nor for glory. He did it only because his intuitive mind told that it had to be done.  Yet his intuitions never were able to find the missing puzzle that would complete him. It wasn’t merely a mathematical puzzle that could dwell deep into the three dimensions of space. It was way beyond the four dimensions known to man that which would make him the learnt & the learner, the empowered as well as the overpowered.

People say good things happen when its least expected. True to that, on a sunny day, the eternal light cast its ray on the scrupulous boy. Before he could comprehend the meaning of it all, the plane took off using the surge of momentum. There was the thunder, the wind and the rain. But above them all was the ray of hope. It became his strength but as it so happens it was his greatest weakness as well. For things that land in your hands can either be crushed or be protected, as he flaunted & espoused his pride, he ended up crushing it before realization struck. They weren’t the torn pieces of paper which could be stuck together; they were the shattered pieces of a mirror which would only reflect the ruined image thereafter. Hence, stranded, lost and only the hapless people to turn back to, the boy for the first time got tired of being with people who make him feel like an alpha male.

Every story should have a beginning & so this story begins with the boy wanting to turn himself to a man.

Construal of the existing

We may be fighting the war alone, but we have to remember that we are not the only one fighting the war.

In the world we live in, we cajole us into believing that everyone is unique in their actions. Actions result from circumstances that occur only to us & it can never really happen to someone else at the same time, in same combination & sequence. As a consequence, we tell ourselves that the outcome of our efforts cannot be compared with others who tried the same thing albeit in a different manner. On the contrary, we fail to realise that in the world we live in, as a result of globalization and uniformity, every social activity has already been done by someone else. So even if you tell that his life is different from yours, you can’t escape the fact that comparison is inevitable.

Take any example: preparation for exams, making a movie, Office work, relationship issues. In almost every one of these situations, due to the variation in absorbing the knowledge from the world, the approach can vary slightly; but only slightly, because, we all have been conditioned in the same environment and taught the same lessons; alas in different manners.  So even though there is bound to be some deviation in the way we approach our life, due to the standardization of life lessons we are all basically different manifestation of the same entity. Therefore, if someone who had grown up in the same milieu, tells that the preparation for an entry exam can be completed in 3-4 months, you can also do it within the same time period, give or take few days. The deviation in time happens only to fill the gap in knowledge and alacrity that the benchmarked person had over you. But one has to remember that, that person maybe weak in something in which you have a better grasp.

With the illustrations mentioned above, it would seem I am taking only the generalised activities in the social milieu which warrants minimal creativity. But the comparison isn't merely among oranges and apples. It is among numerous variants of oranges and apples. Though separated by mutation & evolution, if we strip down the complexities that circumvent these genera & look at them in a holistic manner, they primarily are oranges. And so is tomato a fruit. The point I am trying to raise here is that no matter how unorthodox & out of the box one’s thinking & execution maybe, as long as we base our analysis on preexisting materials we can never proclaim to have done something new. It is not like we created a new world to see something new. Even if such a surreal event is to happen, as long as we reckon it with our existing knowledge we can’t claim it to be ours. Suppose humans were to see world through the brains of a lion things might look different.

But, if we keep on turning blind eyed over the fact that we are all the same people working on the same agenda, we will eventually become complacent over the outcome of our efforts. People like Selvaraghavan are the epitome of the case I am trying to put forth here. Overridden by the self-pride that they are doing something unique, they skip over the fact that they need to do it well. Granted, they might be pushing the frontiers in many aspects, but without the imbibition of existing achievements, the leap forward will end up only being a limping one. 

Give me more, for that is all I want

Along came a note from eternal sunshine,

Along with it came the joy of life;

Or so I thought.

Happiness weakened me,

Success softened me,

Confidence overrode me,

Laurels cajoled me,

Hope subjugated me,

Liberty entrapped me;

And I had nowhere to belong.

Give me back the pain, my Lord, for I want to feel alive,

Give me more pain, for I want to be primed,

Give me more pain, for I want to find a way,

Give me more pain, for I want the blood to rush to my head again,

Give me more pain, for I want to fight for my right,

Give me more pain, for I want to be reminded who I am and who I was.

Give me more pain, my Lord, because I can endure it all;

Give me more pain, because that is where I belong.