Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A Perfect World

Some years back, I realised that the world is not perfect. It isn't something that is worth boasting about because to whom in the world would such a thing be a 'news'. But I also realised that the world is not perfect because it is not supposed be. Imagine a perfect world, all perfect human beings, all perfect events, incidents, situations, solutions. Everything absolutely perfect. Where would that lead to? An absolutely predictable, boring world. We wouldn't have all those small surprises that we never expected. We would be deprived of having any opinion, or disagreements. We won't approve or disapprove anything. We won't have any choices. There will be just one single way and we all will be following that path. How does that sound? A perfect world!
From early childhood onwards we have been a given a picture of a perfect world. All those fairy-godmothers and happy-ever-afters. All that honest endeavour rewarded, and evil greed thwarted.But the world is not actually like that. And there is reason. In our own way we all think of ourselves as the heroes, even when we are visibly acting like the evil villains. We have our own justifications and we believe in them. In a perfect world, the justifications won't be our own.
Moreover, come to think of it, if we are all perfect, what happens to the pursuit of perfectness? We won't get any better, we can only get worse. At least, now there is still hope for this world.


PS: I remember having once written a poem on this particular topic. Long time!

Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Scared of getting bored?

Once you get out of college, life gets busy. There are so many things to do. We start to get the big picture. Think big. That's what we are always told to do. 'Reaching for the sky','Not limiting ourself', all those stuffs. In the midst of all these things, we forget to live. We forget that the best things are not always big. Sometimes they are small. Sometimes, they are exquisitely sweet and subtle. Sometimes, when we think too big, we cut ourselves off from a host of more meaningful possibilities.
I know we all read all these things in forwards, forward them too, sometimes without even glancing. In a way we have all become so mechanical that we do things without actually thinking or realising wha we are doing. We do it because we have been doing it, we do it because we are expected or supposed to do it, we do it ecause we have been pratising and practice surely maketh us mecahanical even if not perfect.
The other day I was walking home, I found a few more people walking. All of them precisely 'plugged' to their cells or ipods. One of my colleuge, he said "you go home walking? what a waste of time!" . He does too, you know, but he keeps himself busy on the phone so as to not waste that time. I wonder what happened to all those little things that I used to enjoy. I remember having fights with my brother to get the window seat. For simple visual pleasure. Today may be personal audio pleasures have taken preference over that.
Was it not enough that we have managed to isolate ourselves so much in the virtual world that we do so even in the real world? We are all scared of getting bored even if it is for a minute or a few seconds. We have lost patience. We have lost interest in our surroundings. We have lost interest in ourselves. We are all running away from anything and everything that might bring us face to face with us.
It is often said that creativity is but the child of boredom. Not all such creativities are good. But for the ones that are, the risk is worth taking.

Just another year

This is my second new year after I shifted back here. Last time went in a blur. I sat in a corner, remembered the last new year and cried. ...