Someone Somewhere

If nothing else, the one thing that has been a constant in my life for the last 1 month is travel. While I would have flown in 1 month, what an air-hostess does in 6, I have been sensitive enough to not ask for a salary (from the airline people) to fly this often.

You know, this world... when you look at it from 39,000 feet above the ground, looks the same - I mean the clouds, the stars, the ground, the buildings - everything. And both species who apparently own all of this are the only ones who are not visible - us humans and god!

So anyway, on my way back from Jaipur to Bangalore yesterday - as always, I was sitting on my window seat - contemplating about life (and i feel like I am 50 when I do this - and considering I have been doing this for a while now, I have been 50 for at least a decade!), when a thought came to my head. What are the things that could possibly be happening at this moment as I cover my distance to get closer home. What unraveled was the following, and hence the name - 'Someone Somewhere'...

Someone somewhere's playing a song...
Someone somewhere's pulling along

Someone somewhere's just woken up
Someone somewhere's AGAIN woken up, says he - 'I have woken up, I have woken up'

Someone somewhere's looking into the open sky
Someone somewhere just looked at god (again) and questioned him 'Why'

Someone somewhere passed a friendly 'hi'
A lover looked at his own somewhere and said there will never be a 'forever' goodbye

Someone somewhere's feasting on a meal
Someone somewhere's trying hard to heal

Someone somewhere's trying to hide
Hey look at this other, his heart is beaming & swollen with pride

This other I met, just got hired
Someone somewhere oops! just got fired

The guy next door just got in
The girl close by - looked at him and gosh had that 'lovey dovey' grin

Someone somewhere's making love all night
And look at these other 2 lovers - would they never unlearn to fight?

Someone somewhere's just given birth to a life
Someone somewhere's just completed the circle of life

Someone somewhere just learn to walk
Look at my baby, she said (the other) - he just learnt to talk

Someone somewhere just got the fuzziest hug
Damn! a poor guy in NY - he just got mugged!

2 lovers just met after years of staying away
Someone somewhere just said to their lover - stay, please stay...

A priest in church just started a mass
Someone somewhere defined god in class

A couple somewhere just got wed
Ah! Look at those faces - they look so red

Someone somewhere just won a fight
Someone somewhere again failed to have the insight

Someone somewhere uttered a lie
Said in the same breath - 'i promise to love you till i die'

Someone somewhere just got hurt
Asked himself - did that have to be so curt

Someone somewhere's seeking god
Not by seeking him within, but by reading holy scriptures and chanting out aloud - 'Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord'

Someone somewhere is crying tears of joy
Someone somewhere's only seeking joy

Someone somewhere faked a smile
Someone somewhere just won a smile

Someone somewhere is falling in love
Someone somewhere's seeking love

Someone somewhere is running late
Someone somewhere's got all the time - hence he only meditates

Someone somewhere's walking all alone
Someone somewhere's trying to get out of the 'bloody' heavy traffic zone

Its morning somewhere's and the sun is shining bright
Someone somewhere's just kissed 'em all good night

Someone somewhere's playing along
A lot of the others, well they are just holding on...

Someone somewhere's looking at the stars
Trying to talk to the healing scars

And on a lighter note...

Someone somewhere will read my blog
and say in admiration - 'Wow, Oh my god! oh my god!'

Circle Of Life

I have often wondered and asked myself this question - How would it be if the circle of life was to be turned around, and the end of our life was actually what we know as the beginning today. In simpler words - our life would actually end by us going back to our mother's womb. Just the visual of the security, warmth, love and care of that zone makes me want this so badly right now. Picture this - us going back to being babies who are a mere 25 centimeters long, sucking our thumbs, surrounded by all the TLC of the 'mother zone', when we die. Awesome, isn't it?

So let's explore, imagine and create a world like this for ourselves and be that person, who (for example sake), happens to be the only one to go through this 'reverse circle of life'. And before we proceed any further my dear reader, let's JUST be imaginative, and break out of the shackles of trying to 'LOGIFY' this deeply emotional and hopefully a wonderful thought.

Let's start by knowing that if you are a man you would be born at the age of 70 and women at the age of 80 (per a latest survey that i read online, that's the average life span for the respective genders). What we surely don't want to explore or imagine is this - 'how on earth could our parents have conceived us, with us being like this'. All we are focussing on is you, me & 'US' being born at at the age of 70/80. And to make this thought divine, let's also consider that we were like this gentle leaf floating all over mankind, till god assigned us to our respective parents, for us to be taken care of and brought up (maybe brought down in this case?).

Key things that stay a constant with this reversal - the joy of us coming into this world would still blossom (hopefully), our teeth would still be missing (most of them if not all) and we would need a lot of love and care at that age still (Ogden Nash rightfully calls the old age 'The second childhood' stage).

Let's brace ourselves now and get into this fancy world to imagine WHAT WOULD CHANGE. Fathom this - we would be born as people who would have had their own experiences in life (already). So the phrase 'Born Free' in that sense would not be applicable to us. If you are wondering why, let's pause and think. Take yourself to be where you are in your life emotionally right now. Are you as free spirited as you were, when you were born as a kid(in the normal circle of life)? Do you still do things you want to do, completely oblivious of the people and the environment around you? See what I am trying to say? But yes, the upside to this, with experience comes knowledge and with knowledge comes wisdom. So to summarize we would be be 'BORN WISE & SORT OF FREE' - doesn't sound that bad after all.

As we age or rather grow younger, following is what would happen - Instead of working towards building a career, we would start with one, instead of walking into kindergarten in our formative years, we would walk into a swanky cabin, instead of wearing the bubble gummers we normally walk around in, we would be sporting Prada's, instead of us being pampered by our parents with the 'Johnson & Johnson' cosmetics, we would garnish ourselves with the MACs and the BVLGARIS of the world, instead of wearing diapers, we would start by sporting the Calvin Kleins and the Victoria's Secret, & for the majority population that is sexually 'normal', we would not be born as virgins!!! - Crazy isn't it?

In a nutshell, we would be born with everything we desire to have (in our current lifecyle). Things that we would die for today (by the end of our lives in the current cycle), are things that we would be born with and die without, if the clock were to turn. Which if you were to think of is one of the most amazing things to happen - let me show you how.

Go back in time and replay the following - the first 6 months of the relationship that you are in right now, the first 30 days of your first job, the first drive / ride you took all by yourself when you learnt to do it, the first time you 'made love' to the one you love / loved - sweet,cherished, fond and happy memories, right? The commonness in all of this is 'FIRST' - a word that signifies inception, freshness, a new beginning, a new start. Now link this to what you were reading earlier and think - you would by the end of your life, actually come closer and go back to the 'start point' of life. The finish line of your 100 m race would be the line where you now take guard. And yes, you won't cover this running it down like a bullet train. You would crawl, pause, notice a few things (maybe a lot), and then reach the end point. You will for sure take more time, and for sure, you would enjoy it more. And by the time you finish this race, complete it and win it, u wont be the 'BIG GUY' (phrase, nothing to do with gender). You would have turned into this 25 centimeter long person that we earlier spoke about, and as against the usher standing at the end of the line with the flag, you would go back into the womb that you come from today, with your mother waiting their with all her love for you. Wow, what a way to end life - perfect!!

Zooming back into reality (as I 'sort of' lye on my bean bag), I can't help but connect to the feeling / reason that triggered this thought in me. I am for sure a young, successful, richer, maybe a good looking guy too. Nothing can take away from the fact that I am happy with how my life is as well. But you know, with all of this, what I have also become is conditioned, opinionated, suspicious, wary and in that sense closed. You see, while I was 'Born Free' I wonder if I would 'LIVE & DIE FREE' too (in a true sense). So what makes me want to reverse the 'CIRCLE OF LIFE' is the desire to be FREE again. Freedom from my conditioned mind, the conditioned people & the opinionated world. Funny how I want to go back to start point, when with each passing day I know, we all come closer the end.


Knowing very well that this so can't happen, what am i going to do? Well, you must have figured by now, that like all of you, I was born free too. And the only for me to 'DIE FREE' and make the most of me being 'BORN FREE' is to 'LIVE FREE'. So while the circle of life may not turn the other way, the drift surely will.

BOMB-BAYED

A few emotions you instantly feel when you replay the images about mumbai being 'BOMB BAYED' - anger, vulnerability, helplessness and above all a huge sense of loss and sorrow. Sorrow not just for what's happened and for people who lost their lives, but sorrow for the people who were left behind with a feeling of shock, grief and emptiness. I mean, which on of those people would have ever thought that this would be the last of what they would see of their loved ones. As much as we know that we can prepare ourselves for this finality of life, one cant help but think of what some of those voices would have said that night - "if only my son/daughter/husband/wife/friend/fiancee wouldn't have gone to the Taj/Oberoi/ or that platform on 26/11..."

So what has this exposed about us as a nation? What has this exposed about our government, our media and about us citizens. As I type I realize that I saved the best for last by typing 'citizens'.

The incident exposed the age old inefficiencies in our political system yet again. What added to the misery was the intelligence failure. The obnoxiously evident shades of insensitivity ranged from some of the leaders saying -" SMALL slip ups like these do happen sometimes" to some of the award winning lines like " the plan was to kill 7500 people, but we ensured and controlled it with just 200 odd people losing their lives". Sad and outrageous how losing lives and terror attacks are looked at from an a non-emotional and an insensitive perspective and treated like an economic equation. Do the stupid leaders realize that this is not the pay commission we are talking about over here and that just because we are a nation of a billion plus - lives cant be taken for granted or be treated so cheaply. A billion plus people is our strength, our pride and a part of who we are - not a buffer for incidents and lapses like these.

Turn channels and you see the media sensationalizing the entire episode. My heart goes out to journalists who were shot and injured during these attacks, and I also tip my hat to the ones who covered this so fearlessly. But how do you justify and 'logicalize' some of our most renowned and successful journalists using this as a platform to increase their TRP ratings. How CAN YOU, walk up to a grieving mother or an anxious wife and ask them "how do you feel?", when all that you can see is tears and all that you can hear are sounds of anger, sadness as they shout and cry, HOW???!!! How do you become so mechanical, so task oriented and so commercial about something as big as this? This after you are there in the situation, seeing people howling an dead bodies being brought out possibly every hour???? No wonder we have a forum on facebook that wants a leading journalist from NDTV to be off air!!!

As this reality stares me on my face every single day when I wake up, I know and believe that we will as a nation rise above all of this. We will conquer our fears by coming together as one. Stand as one to not just fight something like this, but come together as one to fix this at a grass root level. At a grass root level - to exercise our right to vote and chose the right leaders, be the voice and the force to unite people beyond religion, beyond economics, beyond the obviously irrational social set up (even if it means we reach out to 1 person in a day). 

From the looks of it, it seems like we are getting there, be it by coming together and shouting slogans against our leaders, or be it a group of a 100+ walking silently with candles in their hands. What stands out today (over and above the fear factor and nervousness), is a feeling of being one, being united and a certain sense of awakening, that this has to end.

So while the common man seems to have woken up and become more aware, will the leaders ever listen and rise beyond the power games? Hopefully this time around time won't tell, but actions will!!