This Makes Perfect Sense At 3:00 a.m

“Hey whaddup?”

“Nothing except…well..we broke up…again!”

“Haha! Fuck what is this..the 15th time you’ve broken up with the same girl?”

“15th..20th..fuck knows…”

“When did it happen?”

“Just a couple of hours ago…”

“What happened this time?”

“Usual shit…distance and all that crap…dimaag bhosada ho gaya benchod!”

“Arre chhod na..you’ll be back together in 2-3 days..you always get back together. Chutia ek saal se tera yeh natak dekh raha hoon!”

“No man..not this time. The break-up was different this time.”

“Different how? Like ‘her-body-is-in-the-boot-of-my-car’ different?”

“Very funny (thinks) Waise which car would be the best in that case..Skoda I guess, no? It’s got one of the biggest boots.”

“Maybe..but fucken’ Skoda handles like a truck man…you’ll yourself die driving it.”

“What? I thought you enjoyed driving the Skoda…1.9 litre na, turbocharged and all?”

“Yeah..ripping it is fun, but it’s fucken diesel na, so it’s like a truck only. Full sardar log ka gaadi hai benchod…just like Tata.”

“Yeah, but Skoda’s expensive…it’s for the sophisticated sardar…Tata is for the common ones..”

“Hehe..yeah. (Pause) So what were you saying?”

“About what?”

“Wohi..break-up and all?”

“Haan…wohi it was just different this time. Like I’ve heard it from her before y’know – ‘I can’t do this anymore, you’re never there, I need you to be physically present all the time’ blah blah blah. Fucken’ how can I be there ALL the time? So anyway, everytime she says stuff like this and insists on a break-up y’know, because that’s her thing..that’s what she does..she runs away. And I can understand why..I mean I know the reason she behaves like this. Not many people know her like I do..”

“Dude, you can’t help it. All chicks have issues. Especially the pretty ones. In fact, they’re the loneliest of the lot.”

“Yeah I know but what’s the need to panic? I’m not running away anywhere…chill na thoda!”

“Ladki hai yaar..what’d you expect?”

“I know..so everytime she wants to break up, I convince her otherwise…but this time, it was so mindfucking..ek toh she’s acting all detached..and things are more stressful now…

“Uh huh..”

” So anyway we fought about that, shit happened, she asks if I wanna break up and I’m like ‘Ok. Just take care of yourself’. I didn’t even feel like convincing her otherwise…quite a weird break-up it was.”

“What do you mean…weird?”

“Well there was no screaming, no anger…I just wished her luck and genuinely meant it. I want her to be happy. I mean she of all people, deserves to be happy. I don’t even hate her…and I don’t think I ever will.”

“Hmmm. Waise it’s not just the chicks…we’re also retarded in a way. We only fall for the crazy ones don’t we?”

“Yeah true…the normal ones are too boring. Don’t last more than a month. And even that’s too much. (Pause) And plus I’m not saying that the break-up is entirely her fault y’know? If I could do this again, I’d do it better. But I don’t think she’s gonna change…”

“And let’s face it…neither can we. We’ll be back to our usual haraampanti in days.”

“Heh! Yeah maybe…but fucken chicks are *never* happy. At least we’re not going crazy thinking about the future and fucking up our present y’know?”

“True, that.”

“It’s like I can see God sitting up there. He’s probably looking down at the world He created, full of fucked up people like us, and He’s sitting there thinking ‘Ok so I messed up a bit, but hey..just because I’m God doesn’t mean I’m perfect.’ And He’s saying to Himself ‘I’ve got like till Eternity to sort this mess out, so I’ll deal with it later. Right now, I need a beer.’ And He’s sitting there chilling, sipping Corona – obviously heaven is full of Corona – and fucken Mrs. God walks in, looks at the world He’s created and fuckin flips. And now She’s giving him The Look. You know…the raised eyebrow look..the look that says ‘Saala you’ve been hammering away in the garage for thousands of years now and THIS is what you’ve come up with?’ And then She shows Him the parallel universe that She created, and it’s fucking nice and clean, and smells like flowers, and She’s all nonchalant like ‘Oh I did this in like 20 minutes, while waiting for the cooker whistle to blow.’”

“Fuck..I can totally see that happening.”

“Totally. (Pause) I mean you do all you can and it lasts more than a year, which is a fuckin long time for people like me and her – not that I’m saying I did everything right, but still, I, or rather, we, me and her, we made it last this long – and then it just died out. And why? Because of the fuckin’distance! Because it takes 1.5 hours to drive from my place to hers. It ended because of logistical issues. Sheh! What kind of an end is that?”

“What’s your point?”

“My point is that when we were together, and weren’t fighting, fuck…it was such a headrush! She’s smart, hot, fuckin’ talented…every day was like an adventure. The flirting, the randomness and the fuckin’ speed at which we moved…leaving the entire world behind, it was…magical. And something surreal like that just fizzled away…turned into flat beer. A love
story like this deserves a cool end…cool doesn’t mean tragic – like fuckin devdas and suicide and all – but something consistent with the whole initial magical phase y’know?”

“Like what?”

“I dunno…she could’ve been a spy on a covert mission..like Mata Hari…she was thinner and hotter than Mata Hari of course. Fuckin that Mata Hari was fat..dunno why those guys found her hot. Plus I’d never be able to fuck someone called Mata..that’s just plain weird. Or maybe an alien..like a human female, but from a parallel universe, so technically she’d be an alien.

“Ohkay…”

“Think about it man…how many guys have made love to an alien? That’d be a love story I’d fucken write a book about, sell the movie rights for it, write the fuckin screenplay and also bloody claim royalty on the action figures…whatsay?”

“Dude..nobody’s gonna buy an action figure of you. Action figures aren’t supposed to have beer bellies you know..”

“Fuck you.”

“Hehe.”

“Hey you know what would be even better…she could’ve been a bisexual alien. Or at least a straight alien who liked to experiment. And of course she’d have hot, curious, morally-impaired friends. Fuck, now THAT would be an epic love story.”

“Yeah…instead of Romeo and Juliet, they’d fuckin teach schoolkids about you..the alienfucker.”

“Heh..yeah. But fuck that…all I get is an ordinary end, no aliens and all. How the fuck am I supposed to write about it?”

“I dunno..I guess you’ll think of something.”

“Yeah I guess I will. Anyway, let’s meet up tomorrow evening. I need to get drunk.”

“Yep sure.”
————————————————————————————————-

Disclaimer:
The conversation is inspired from real life and is part-truth, part-fiction. Resemblance to any persons living or dead is purely intentional. And yeah, it won’t kill you to leave a comment.

Unbreakable Bonds

Life- a journey through hope, pain, pleasure, ecstasy, fear, monotony- a series of seemingly unrelated events unfolding in time and space, which mathematicians might classify as a set of infinite random variables, a multitude of possibilities and probability functions that just cannot be mapped out. After all, what is the equation of good karma? How do you quantify it? Of course, if you believe in karma, i.e. the idea that one’s thoughts and actions determine the course and nature of future events, then the randomness of events reduces to an illusion and you realise that no matter how insignificant, obscure or painful it might be, there is a reason for everything. Yes, it’s natural to not see this fact, to be oblivious of one’s own destiny being moulded around each moment of one’s existence, to be blind to the scenes scripted by one’s own hand, being played out on the stage everyone knows as The World. It’s so easy to dismiss simple coincidences without too much thought. For example, you meet someone new, say in college or at the workplace, and after a few minutes of conversation, realise that the two of you live not far from each other and have a few common friends too. Big deal?Maybe, maybe not. After all, since the two of you stay in the same city, your living in the same locality, attending the same college, working at the same office or having a few friends in common aren’t really earth-shattering events, right?
What about coincidences that may be a little harder to explain in purely logical terms? For example, you’re cleaning out your room and chance upon a dust-laden album, which lay forgotten for years, until now .You open it and a young man-boy, maybe twenty years younger smiles back at you-it’s you, with friends who swore they’d stay together but eventually went their own separate ways. An hour of nostalgia later, you decide to look them up but as usual, the task gets put off till ’tomorrow’. That ‘tomorrow’ never comes, and a few days later you’re busy with your life again, when the phone rings. It’s your long-forgotten best friend – the face in the album now has a voice.

“What a coincidence!”, you exclaim excitedly.

Is it really? Would he have called had you not come across that album a few days ago?

So far, I’ve discussed fairly simple events, none that seem to be of great significance, at least not at the outset. These are very common and are experienced by everyone in numerous ways. And then there are those that shake you to the very core of your existence, alter your perception of the world and bring to life the most basic question – Why? The answer to this ‘Why’ is elusive, often painfully so, but there is only one way of coming close to the truth, and that is through Faith.

Faith, in the idea that a higher power exists and governs the world, fuelled only by the actions of the souls it governs – a karmic feedback system, if you will. A nebulous premise, you say, even questionable? Try questioning the faith of people who have had epiphanic realities thrust upon them – like the man whose otherwise perfectly functional car broke down on the way to work, thereby delaying his arrival at the office in the WTC, New York, on the morning of Sep. 11,2001, even as his co-workers arrived at the usual 8:30- 8:45 a.m. Or the tourist who would’ve been in the vicinity of the towers, had he not rushed back for the camera he forgot in the hotel room. What about the family that had to cancel their Christmas and New Year holiday plans in Phuket, Thailand (Dec 2004), on account of the death of an elderly member of the family? Or the Australian mother who was in a position to save only one of her two sons from drowning and had to choose which one, only to be reunited later with the boy she’d let go of. Or the toddler who survived the tsunami, even when the survival of an adult seemed impossible. Stories like these reaffirm faith and then there are those that destroy it, often with a single cruel blow.
A young girl, nine years old maybe, killed while crossing the road, by a junkie who decided that red lights aren’t for him. Wrong place, wrong time. But the question still echoes in the throes of silence – Why?

Albert Einstein once famously said “God does not play dice!” and I’m inclined to agree. Of course, the idea of karma is an intrinsic aspect of Hinduism and has been embedded in the Indian psyche since ancient times. The cycle of life and death, past lives and reincarnation, the idea of one being responsible for one’s own destiny are implied by the idea of karma itself, which simply reminds that, “As you sow, so shall you reap.” Looking at science through the eyes of a poet, beautiful parallels can be drawn between the physical and spiritual worlds, the latter home to metaphors for all the tangibles in the physical world. Take, for instance, the Chaos Theory that can be used to describe and predict the behaviour of a variety of systems, from population growth rates to weather phenomena and most significantly, the universe itself. An aspect of the Chaos Theory is the Butterfly Effect according to which:

“The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month's time, a tornado that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen. Or maybe one that wasn't going to happen, does.”
(Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141)

This fits in beautifully with the idea of karma and reaffirms the notion that nothing is a coincidence. Even the existence of life on earth in its present form is poised on a delicate balance of mathematical precision. As Max Tegmark, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, points out, just a few minor changes in our universe and it would not exist. If our sun, for example, were slightly larger or smaller than it is, then our planet would be too cold or too hot to sustain life. Or if protons were just 0.2 percent heavier they would decay into neutrons, leaving us in a lifeless world of darkness.
It’s easy to see that our physical world is far too symmetrical and precise in its construction to be a coincidence. It’s the same with the spiritual world; only in this case, no observations and measurements exist to give us a clearly defined view.

The truth however is that we, at each moment of our lives, are presented with a multitude of options and the choices we make determine the future that follows. Each choice leads us on a unique path, the path branching out every time we make a new choice, forming an infinite web, stretching out as far as the mind can see, and beyond. So here we are, billions of souls, journeying along our respective paths, not realising that ever so often, they cross and merge and separate, but never do they completely detach from each other. We are in this together, this cosmic puppet show, the strings in the hands of the Puppet Master, but the script written by our own. The futility of wars, religious conflicts, political games and other divisive instruments becomes starkly clear when we realise that we are bound together by quantities as fundamental as time and space. Why then, do we insist on drifting apart and losing touch with humanity?

PS: When it comes to topics like these, there is immense scope for discussion. These are a few places where I found relevant information for my post.

http://www.meta-religion.com/Physics/physics.htm

http://www.mathjmendl.org/chaos/

http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html

On a day like Today…

Today.

A day as good as any other – to break the monotony,to ‘unbreak’ last year’s New Year Resolutions, to wake up with a sense of purpose and to drift off into Dreamland with a sense of contentment, to fill up deafening silences with the words you’ve always wanted to say and apologize for those which should never have been said, to fall in love and see the world in shades of rose,to fall out of love and yet stand tall, rising above cynicism,Dystopia never a destination during your Grand Trip Around The Sun, to go bungee jumping and revel in uncontrolled ecstasy as the world whizzes by, to tighten the reins on your life before it too whizzes by, to realise that children can unknowingly teach you lessons that your adult mind is too blind to learn, to strip away the different masks that you put on for the world and look at the stranger in the mirror and to hide behind them again if you don’t like what you see.

Today.
A day as good as any other,as was Yesterday, and so is Tomorrow…