My Ideas in a Descartes' Idea form

“Normal”, this word has lost all its normal meaning lately. Every time I hear this word on my television screen, from the mouth of some ruling/otherwise politician, I see us being beaten on streets, in our homes, places being vandalized and, and I see fear and pain, cries and despair,  atrocities and deaths. Something must have changed from the time I last understood the meaning of “Normal”/”Normalcy”. or did something changed inside us?

Anyways,  we see this normalcy wandering around lately, it began in Gujrat in 2002, or maybe even before that, in Delhi in 1984, or maybe much earlier 1947, no I think that was not normal, at least people then never thought that as normal. Leave people, I think even politicians were convinced that was not normal. Anyways, it has been wandering a lot in breadths and lengths of our great country, somedays I hear our PM say it is in Kashmir, the next week it travels to Assam, suddenly, I see the HM saying it has reached WB, and then there are smaller mouths like Yogi, Yeddyurappa, Mamta, etc. who intermittently keep us informed about the itinerary of normalcy in their respective states. Looking at this rate, it will not be totally incorrect to assume, very soon, we would all have met her somewhere, someday. In a way, it will be our common kin.

Meanwhile, looking at TV-studios and social-media, it appears, it is visiting our Capital. I could understand that, it appeared, it has been trying to enter Delhi, for some time, but it wouldn’t have looked good, that people who think, they have right to vote, are being beaten and killed during the elections. I think the major problem would have been the announcement. I wonder anyone from any political group, would have wanted to announce her arrival first.  Our morality is mostly defined as its relation to the visibility of our deeds, in absolute black-box absolutely nothing would be immoral.  I think that was the reason for the delay,  maybe that would not have been Normal, I believe, at least not until now.

But we will have to keep coming again to see its definition, maybe someday, while we are busy thinking “I can vote”, it becomes normal to kill me with my voter-id. In a way, it is good that we die with our id, will be easier for the “Normal” lives of those who did not get killed to debate about in terms of our religion/age/gender. Anyways, I am digressing,  Delhi is Normal now, apparently, but I still have not heard any of the top great leaders, announcing her arrival in their own home. Maybe, it is due to some other arrival, the arrival of “our guest”. Yes, it could be that, the Pradhan Sevak is busy announcing his arrival, so maybe he missed the announcement. What scares me though, maybe that devious “Normal” has again changed its meaning again, maybe what we see is not yet normal, maybe there is something new, a new-normal”, which is the “Normal”. I hope, our PM/HM/anyone come out soon and says, that Delhi is normal because until then, their follower mobs would not know when to stop, when they have vandalized/killed/destroyed enough for the normalcy to have arrived. I don’t pray PM/HM/someone to make things truly normal, I just want them to utter those words, so that their mobs, can be sure and bring “Normal” to a new state, new city, your and my cities. Wait for her to arrive in your city and streets, and do not forget to carry your id, while you meet her on your streets.

If you are one of those following news and latest political developments in India, it is inevitable that you could ignore the divided state of the country.  You would have by now decided which side of definition of “India” you are, and as a corollary of that decision, your food, festivals, languages, entertainment and even friends and families are already decided for you. I am not against these decisions as we mature in life, in fact, as we live through our experiences in this world, I think it is very important that we take a stand regarding where  we sit, left or right, love or hate, or as in the current case of India, Democracy or Fascism. However, I believe, this should be a gradual process for each of us, based on our individual experiences, but these expectations are for normal times and times in India are anything but normal. Thus, here we are,  thrown in to make these decisions withing a span of a couple of months, that too in a time so polarized and turbulent that asking for a logical explanation for anything is absurd. I am fortunate enough in some sense, that I had made these decisions long back, but times are emotionally wearing, as each of those decisions are tested today in some sense and while some stand the test, many others just collapse like the metaphorical “house of cards”.

These turbulent times are not organic,  these are created exactly with this agenda or intention, that you chose a side, that you decide your festivals and food, your dress and language and as a result “your Vote”, once and for all. The turbulence is designed that you do not Ask, but listen to the power, do not reason but fight with your fellow citizens, do not understand but just explain to all those are against you, and most importantly, do not love but hate your friends, neighbours, families and anyone who is not having the same “mann ki baat” as your beloved leader. And while you are full with this designed rage, you use it to justify every injustice being done on you and your fellow citizens, your jobs being taken, your food being made unaffordable, your educational institutes being attacked, institutions and rules created to protect you from the powerful being destroyed, new rules to oppress you being created and ultimately the idea of the your country being destroyed. Unfortunately, even if a lot of you can see this being done deliberately, and are ready to fight for the old spirits of love, equality and country, you cannot do much, you face haplessness against these tools of hatred and division, which are being used since the beginning of human thinking. Still, we owe our life to those who are preaching about love, about righteousness, about sanity, because, holding your head amidst a headless mob is a remarkable feat of courage. May god give us more such men and women because it appears a single Gandhi ,Bhagat, Ambedkar, Ashfaq and Phule  would be no match this time, as the enemy already knows how to kill Gandhi, this time we need thousands and thousands of them, ready to prove that you can kill Gandhi’s body, but not his India. Through his India, Gandhi will always refuse to die.

शर्मनाक बहुत कुछ है मेरे भारत में, एक मेरी आवाज़ ही तुमने क्यों देखी ?
नमक के साथ रोटी लिए बचपन है शर्मनाक,
सड़क पे सिटीयाँ, फब्तियां सुनती जवानी है शर्मनाक,
शर्मनाक वो डिग्रियां भी हैं, जिनकी रद्दी सी है औकात,
और वो एक भी, जो रद्दी होके भी प्रधान डिग्री की रखे औकात|

शर्मनाक है, किसी को पूछना की तुम्हारी नोट सच्ची है?
शर्मनाक है, किसी को पूछना की तुम्हारी वोट सच्ची है?
शर्मनाक है, मंदिर में भगवान् का इंसान से न मिलना
और शर्मनाक है, आधे भारत से पूछना की तुम्हारी जात सच्ची है |

शर्मनाक है, वो चुप्पी उस प्रधान सेवक की ,
शर्मनाक है, वो चुप्पी उस जलते हुए घर के, बगल के घर की,
शर्मनाक है, बदले की बातें राजनेता की,
और शर्मनाक है इन चुप्पीओं और बातों पे हर चुप्पी |

और जानते हो शर्मनाक क्या है?
शर्मनाक है, किसी को पूछना की, देश्भक्ति है ?
किसी को यह बताना की उसकी जान सस्ती है,
सस्ती है , एक जानवर की जान से,
और यह समझना की यही सच्ची राष्ट्र भक्ति है |

शर्मनाक है , नित नए कपडे बदलना उस महान मंत्री के
जिसके मुल्क में, रोटी नहीं, कपडे नहीं, छत नहीं,
बस एक शब्द है, हिन्दुस्तानी, शायद वो भी अब नहीं |

शर्मनाक है बहुत कुछ मेरे मुल्क में, मेरी आवाज़ शर्मनाक नहीं |

“Freedom”, I always got reminded of this word on those special National holidays like Independence Day, or Republic Day. More often than not, it was freedom to not go to school, which I was not very fond of going to. Retrospectively, now when I think “why I was not happy going to the school, and why I liked these days related to the Country’s freedom”, I find a deeper connection of my jubilation and the word “Freedom”.  I realize that I did not like going to school in general because it took away something from me, it made me reside inside the campus for 6 hours, it forced me to do not what I wanted to but rather what was designed by the curriculum. I am not questioning the way education was delivered in my school, no, at least not today, rather I am just pondering about why I despised being at school. It took away my freedom to live my life as I wished for those 6 hours, in return it gave me a promise of great future, but at that time, like all kids, I was smart enough, not to buy this delusional, sparkling, dream of a future at the expense of the presence. I got that delusion much later.

So there I was behind closed gates, not allowed to go out till the terminal bell of the day rang. However, there was a further catch in our school, you were not supposed to leave even at that bell unless you have said a terminal prayer. I have never seen smarter enforcement of prayer. Normally, we are taught to pray to ask freedom from suffering, from pain, from shackles, and here some smart individual decided we can create a prayer, which can be fulfilled imminently, right away. This was bound to make us believe in the prowess of prayers. An so I did, I believed, that yes, there is “freedom” at the end of the day. But what if there is not, what if, there is no hope of that end of the day? What if, you know about the next day, as clearly as the day that just passed? When I think about that, I can understand the reason for that jubilation we might have gained in an Independent India. I can understand why so many gave their lives for this single, abstract concept called “Freedom”.

हर आज कल से आगे है, वो आज कब तक भागेगा ।

कुछ बीते कल की यादों में, यह आज अभी तक ठहरा था,
ज्यों गीले कच्चे बर्तन की कमियां पक कर भी चिन्हित रहती हैं
और ठन्डे पानी के घूटों में भी, एक लेकिन खोया रहता हैं।

छूटे हाथों की खुशबू ज्यों, हांथों में कुछ रह जाती हैं ,
टूटे ख्वाबों की गठरी ज्यों , सर पे बढ़ती ही जाती हैं,
कुछ वैसे ही निज अन्यायों की यादें मन में रह जाती है
और हर आज के उजले सूरज को, कल की कालिख मल जाती है।

उस कल के अँधेरे कोनो में यह आज फसा रह जाता है
और कल के टुकड़े टुकड़े में एक और आज खो जाता है ,
फिर एक आज जब आता है, सारे कल आगे पीछे के,
चुप, बिलकुल चुप हो जाते हैं, और एक कदम कुछ लड़खड़ से
उस आज को कल के आगे ले जाता है ।

फिर एक कदम, फिर एक कदम,फिर एक और, फिर एक और
हर आज कल से आगे है, वो एक आज कहाँ तक भागेगा ।

“Failures”, we have all tasted these some time or the other. Some quite early, while some others might have been able to elude it a bit longer, but if you are a person who has ever tried to succeed at something, you sure would have succeeded at failing. It’s like the proverbial “canary” in the coal mine called the path to success.

Failing and progressing
All failures are different, some are small and anticipated, while others are unexpected and shocking. Some are not a threat to our surviving while others may be dangerous and lethal. They all are different in different ways. However, they all have a common feature, they all teach us something, they always have a cause (or multiple) and they all ask for changes, they all move you further from where you began. In that sense, a failure is far more progressing than a success, because while a success adds an accolade to your list of achievements which can add to your chances in one or two scenarios, a failure gives you an experience, which if used bravely, sticks to your identity and becomes a part of your character. To quote philosopher Khalil Gibran – “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”   Concurrently, it is also a great decapitating and paralysing force and it can topple even one of the most enthusiastic souls from their pre-supposed life path.  So, failures are inevitable, the question is how you deal with it once it knocks on your door. Whether you control it to progress or let it paralyse you and throw you off your life’s journey.

Avoiding the Paralysis

This certainty of failures coming our way makes it important to ask, how to handle them so that they do not throw us off our paths? Further, maybe also to scrutinise and learn if we need to change our pre-conceived paths. Following are some of the steps, which might be useful towards handling failures without crumbling-

1. Look for the logical (non-personal) explanations for the failure. Try to look at the failure you have just got in some effort or task, and think about what were the shortcomings in the task, without attaching yourself with the task and the effort. Think like a critique, it is tough to play a critique for one’s own work, but if you can do that you can see beyond the clouds of “I” and “My” of the failure.
2. Think about what you wanted to do differently while you were in the process of doing the task. Very often we have the gut feeling of our assumptions and compromises while we are working and approaching towards a deadline, but they get neglected, and very soon the work becomes an interconnected web of assumptions and compromises which is really hard to alter. Now is the time to make those changes, remember, these changes are not enforced by others rather you were the one who wanted to make them in the first place. Now is the time to do what you wanted to do. Remember, it is never late to change your mistakes.
3. Think about changing your game. Every defeat, every failure wants mostly one thing from you, CHANGE. Now you might be sure about your idea, your effort, or your approach, but there is always something in every situation which you can upgrade to a higher level. For example, you might want to talk to someone about your work if you were earlier taking a more solitary approach or vice-versa or you might want to learn something or collaborate with someone for the thing which you think is pulling you to reach your zenith. If nothing, you can always increase one thing, your efforts in the game. Remember, there are people out there giving more than what you are giving currently, no matter what your current is.
4. Finally, failure is also a time to breathe a bit, take the refuse of your wonderful family and friends and thank god that you have them. It is a time to momentarily withdraw from a battle, pick yourself up, dirt yourself off and get prepared for the next thing. Remember, sometimes, it is ok to be wrong, lose a battle. and humm Bob Dylans famous lines – ” losers now will be later to win, for times they are a changing “

I am sitting at the now familiar Boston airport, trying to contemplate the life in backwards, from this very moment to the point in the memory which can be accessed by the accessing software of the brain. I have to be careful, some of these memories may not be mine, and only an illusion my mind may have created, sometimes replacing the life I have lived, while some other time longing for the life l would have wanted. I hope, amidst all these replacements, these updates, there is something which is really my life, which no matter good or bad, has been lived by me, because what I am I, if not a collection of these “life” images?

Out of all these images, I am trying to recollect the moments I was feeling like I was a failure (and the cardinality of this set is huge, so I can easily wait for my delayed flight), moments which contemporarily felt like the nadir of misfortunes, but then got replaced by worse points. Although between each of these so-called failing moments, my memory is filled with light, bright, wonderful moments,  I am fuzzing those for the moment, like we blur out the unimportant corners in an image. Today is not their day, today I wanna fetch the moments I felt like a failure.

I am eight or nine, and I am trying to learn cycling. A few nights earlier, papa came late from the office than usual, and ringed the iron bell on the cycle “trinnnn-trinnn”. Since that moment, I am restless, I am hungry to ride the cycle, just one dream, I am cycling, I am flying on that cycle. There is just one problem, I do not know how to ride that thing. So I gather a few of my friends in the mohalla (sort of a colony) who are mostly a couple of years elder than me and ask them to teach me how to ride a cycle. Thus began the “cycle” of cycle-learning. The first day, a friend is holding the cycle from behind and saying what his father told him, “do not look at the handle, look in front”. Front? handle? I am not sure I can even see when on the seat of the thing. I am thinking “Why am so tiny, it would have been great if my legs were stretchable, like that boomer ad. Then I can really see without the fear of falling all the time.” . Falling? oh my god, friends can hold the back for only so long, and rightly so, and here I am on the ground on the left side, my elbow and knee, reddened. For the next couple of weeks, I am more often on the ground than on the seat. Falls on your natural side are less messier, you are ready to embrace the momentum change, but sometimes you fall on the side you are not prepared to fall. Side, you have no idea how to handle… Today, I have fallen on my unnatural side, and came home, the whole of my right knee bleeding. Maa is angry from her concern, its a fall she expected but wasn’t prepared to see. Maa is like that, she knows but yet always protects us from so many such unexpected falls. Next day, I am again on cycle, again on the ground, but this time I have a collection of falls, my little falling experience, my own scars. And the next day… and the next… I am on the ground, now even the unnatural side seems reddened. I am not even sure I have learned anything, other than falling on the ground…. I am convinced I can never learn to cycle, I can never go over fallings, I should just give up…

….

I am riding the same cycle to school, and I have not fallen once on the way. My elbows and knees also look less-reddier. Something is different.  I wonder what?

I wonder when I learned to ride that thing. Maybe amidst some of those falls and injuries, I learned to balance, I learned…. I surely did, coz my next thoughts show me doing serious stunts on my cycle. Maybe along all those falls, some expected, some unexpected, some benign, some injuring, lied the balancing.

Maybe not all falls are failures, some are just there so that you can recollect them, sitting at some point in the future, and wonder…

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In the comments, feel free to share your own memories, when you fell so many times, you thought its impossible, but now you wonder.

I love my city of Illahabad, yes its mine, I was born here, played and dreamt here, loved it for all its slow-paced life, its lovely roadside bookshops, its kachaar and kheera and kakadi, its amrood in the winters and numerous bonds,  brief and long it gave me. Finally, it also gave me my life-long bond, my love for life.

I also cursed it all my childhood and wanted to get out of its small boundaries, its power cuts, its crowd of millions of preparatory students,  and countless small things which seemed like mammoths contemporarily. If you ask any of my friends they will say I loved it more than I cursed, and ask one of my siblings, who had to bear me all day long, and they will only remember me hating the city. So it was, a mix of feelings, just like love always is. We hate more of what we love and love it less because we want our love to be perfect.

These days are different though, apparently, we grew up or maybe we just meet so briefly that the small idiosyncrasies, those small imperfections are lost in fleetness of our meetings and the happiness of just being together. The love-hate feelings need the input of time, and in the absence of it, one of the feelings simply overwhelm the other.

It is different now, because my city is in news these days, for everything. Although normally I do not stalk my exes, I confess I want to go back and see what it is about my city making her the love of so many. I hear so many things about her, I heard, her new lovers gave her a new glittery name which they believe was her original name. I wonder what is my original name, is it the name my family and loved ones gave me or one day I too will be thrown a name at. I hope the new glittery name is just like the many ephemeral names we get when we meet a new lover, which fades away in time. I confess again, I want her to get the original name.

I also hear, she is the main love of the current king of the country, who loves her, giving her gifts after gifts, ornamenting every square (chauraha), every garden and everything identifying her old identity with new glittering jewels. I wonder, I ever loved her this way to change her this much, or did she. I agreed that I hated her for imperfections, maybe I would have changed her If we stayed together. Anyways, I hear, it’s a different city now, with every nook and corner depicting the ancientness of the city. I wonder if a child in its gullies is looking towards the ancient because although memories are fading, I clearly recall my city giving me hopes and dreams of the future, with stories of thousands creating their own future from its cradle, while teaching me about its real past. Maybe it is just my grumpiness against the change, but I already admitted,  I wanted her to change more than any of her new lovers. Anyways, I am excited too about her changing,  I wonder if the power cuts are gone, the roads are better and stay better when it rains, yes I hated the hospitals (the govt ones), I hope, if I was there now, we wont have to turn our bikes to the private clinics of the same doctors who wont have time to see us where they are paid to see us. Oh yes, I hated the city for its male rowdiness and the insecurities it provided to its girls, I hope, its roads are not only wider but safer… I hope, now my parent will not have to pay a hefty fee of my school, I remember the face of my parents when they decided to send me to my school because the govt boys schools were missing something, I personally don’t know what, but it must have been something that they decided to bear the burden , hope that something is replaced (not just renamed) by something better.

Look here I am again, overwhelmed by the imperfections as soon as I got some time, even in my mind. That is who I am. That is who we all are, we know the problems of whom we love, we get excited about when we hear them changing, we imagine, how these changes would have made us together.. I am thinking about that now, I know my city needed changes, it needed changes, to make that hate go away in our love-hate relationship, it needed changes that I would not need to accompany my sister on its roads, it needed changes so that we would not need to pay a month’s groceries to a doctor visit or our sibling’s birthday dress on our school fee. Yes it needed a lot of changes, but it sure did not need a name change, it did not need to go to ancient squares (demolishing already old ones), it did not need millions of people for a month while every working youth is forced to leave it in search of his/her dream. My city has become a guest house, a hotel which is flanked by tourists in a season, while it cannot be the home for our aspiring generation. We don’t want a mythical ancient city created in the sands of Ganga while my city is still lying there, even losing her old identity. We do not want statues and we fucking don’t want metro to commute in a city so small I can walk on feet ( yes I did ).

For the past few years, reading has become an unchangeable routine. It started as a remedy to cure insomnia and has translated into a cause for the same. The difference being, now I don’t “turn over” in my bed at nights, rather I “turn over pages” in my bed.  I have been reading at my normal pace, moving from one book, one character, one truth to other. Intermittently, also travelling in the world of fictional characters which more often than not lacked the vividness of the real ones.  The most anxious time in this journey is when one character disembarks and the other joins. A time when I am looking for my next book, a next world. I want to meet the new book while still keeping the memories of the old ones, and sceptical about the new one. In a way it is like coming out of one relationship and moving into another, it has a sweet mix of anxiety, haste, need, uncertainty and hope. Unlike a relationship though, this is not exclusive, we love the new while still loving the old, the overlap in feelings is inevitable and sweet. One such overlap happened recently with me when I finished reading one of the most animated lives ever lived, the life of Muhammad Ali and embarked on the life, journey and words of a person who fought and lived similar foes halfway across the world. The life of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. These two relationships appeared so similar yet so turned upside down, like two parallel lines in two different universes. My surprise, I did not see the link when I began. In my mind, I was meeting a pugilist and then an activist, in reality, I met a little of both in each.

Ali, who was born with the name Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr was a pugilist who was thrown into the politically and socially turbulent arena of 1960s  and early 70s America. He was a rebel to the core definition of it and challenged everything in contemporary America. An America with white dominance,  an America filled with a war promoting ultra-nationalistic sentiments pushed by the government amidst its Vietnam disaster, an America under transformation. In these times, Ali was everything you would choose not to be in a single body. He was a black fighter who unlike his other contemporary black boxing greats like Liston, Frazer or Patterson, had a much stronger ideology and opinion on the matters alien to the boxing ring. Ali also had a strong gut and a wonderful talent, face and a showmanship bringing his opinion out in public. To make matters more intricate, he was a Muslim in an Islam-unaware (if not Islamophobic by then) America, he opposed the most sacred game of any democracy, the “War” and has no respect for the status quo. Although, as he explained in his later years, many of these qualities were reactionary in him rather than pre-thought or planned, he tussled with every “alligator” possible. He opposed the more popular black movement of Dr. King, joined the much controversial “Nation of Islam” of Elijah Mohammad and openly challenged the American involvement in Vietnam. He refused to serve in the war saying his famous lines – “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Vietcong”. This open defiance made him the hero of millions but only after losing his title, his license and his livelihood. After all this, he came back to get everything which was his, on his terms. He was the most vocal American in his time. “In his time” and he was a black-Muslim.
Whatever made him like this, his inner rebellion, his situations or something else?Whether it was reactionary or otherwise, once in the arena (boxing or outside), he never surrendered, rather he did what he could do the best, the only thing he did best, he fought and occasionally lost as well. He was an activist for his love of fighting.

Thousands of mile away and a generation before in time but so much contemporary in terms of circumstances, was another activist. An activist who was a fighter for his love of his people and his society. The parallel in their lives began with the parallel in their names. B. R. Ambedkar too was born as Bhimrao Ramji Sakpal and later received the last name Ambedkar. This parallel in transformation of names is not just coincidental and literal, rather for both of them, this was a start of a fight, a fight to be different, a fight which needed a new identity and a new name. Ambedkar too was all that is not the norm in contemporary India before independence. He was an “untouchable” (dalit as this group is later called), from the “Mahar” caste. A caste which was comparatively better than the other untouchable castes and its own history. One historical account of Mahars can be found in the famous battle of  Koregaon during the rule of Brahmin rulers called “Peshwas”.  Under Peshwas, Mahars were made to hang pots around their neck and broom around their hips. This was to ensure that the path they walk does not get polluted by their footsteps and their spits when they spoke, to ensure that the path remains ‘pavitra’ (pure) for caste hindus. The “better” now must give us some clues about the “worst”. Although Ambedkar was fortunate to spare this humiliation in his times, the horrors of caste and untouchability were his constant companions. Amidst this India (sadly not totally alien to the India we see today, just like the America of Ali was not alien to the America today), Ambedkar was a defiant, a rebel, a challenger of the status-quo. True to his words- “the world owes much to rebels who would dare to argue in the face of the pontiff and insist that he is not infallible”, he was the “rebel” who dared to argue in the face of the “saint” of India, Gandhi and voiced that Gandhi is wrong about the “varna” (the origin of caste), the understanding of caste in Hinduism and about what is best for his people. The people who were speared with the similar arrows of caste-sim (unlike racism it is not a word) and social and literal untouchability.  He was in the ring with the heaviest opponents, his own Identity, and against the “Mahatma-ism” of Gandhi. Just as Ali, he did what he always did the best, fought for his people until the end, made compromises but never gave up. He was a true fighter for his people. He was a pugilist in the ring for the love of his people and their future.

based on my readings of “Ali , a life” by Jonathan Eig and “Annihilation of Caste” by B. R. Ambedkar. both great reads about two uniquely identical fighters.