Post # 28 # Little Ironies

What’s it like being filthy rich and wretched poor? The latter I am more attached to. I was wondering about the differences and taking a stroll and by coincidence, though unfortunate for the wounded, I saw an accident spot. People thronged the area and I could not see who has hit whom with what, but I was just conscious that there was an accident. Minutes later, the ambulance arrived and some people set down while I saw robot in them for their swiftness and extreme alert. Then I saw there were two middle-aged men, who were hurt, lying unconscious, letting the people do what was needed. OK now, what’s the big deal, you might ask — mishaps are the part of a road, like the rain is to monsoon.

Two hundred meters away from the accident spot is an elite hospital. The place for saving and giving lives it is supposed to be, however, I have overlooked the small-scale terms and conditions at the bottom of the 1000-watt, 10x10 feet signboard at its entrance. The poor should go to the government hospital, if they ever care for some treatment, otherwise not. I found that the injured men had been taken away to a public hospital, fifteen kilometers away from the spot.

The siren of the van made me realise the life’s little ironies. In accidents, the worst thing is that you can be the loser even if you have not started the game, let alone having any plan to play. It takes only a couple of minute to lose one’s life, while a century is not enough to build it in perfect form and structure. The difference, as I started out, between the two types of humanity is also apparent but I don’t if it is related with accident or not..

Post # 25 # On Life and Work

Some recent posts on work and job, here and there, lighted a bulb on my mind. For every week, 40–48 hours of my most ‘productive’ time is spent in the workplace. My employer and manager’s views are quite obvious than the dawn of sunlight at the end of the night: to ever increase my productivity and gel along with other people who we clubbed together as colleagues, like chipping in together in our project work like some animals bound by territorial pissing. Working 40–48 hours is quite a long time, isn’t it?

Is livelihood what defines our life? I don’t think so. Financial things and philosophy are strange bed-partners. There are several reasons for this statement. Livelihood is not life. For that matter, no fragmented parts of human existence can define what a life is. No politics. No education. No science. No religion. Not even our beliefs. None of them can explain why we are living. We need to understand the ‘whole’ to know the essence and its parts. So, to put it bluntly, life is not work. To hell to those people who pray work is worship. Forty to forty-eight hours are more than enough, but not enough to give us an essence of life. And what are we without a life?

So reassuring it was when I read Oscar Wilde, when he wrote, “Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.” Why cannot we live without work? Work, I mean, going to office every day — worrying about the salary, running for paying the bills, brooding for the sake of future. I want to go back to the state of nature. But since it is not possible, I would keep searching for the alternatives to find more meaning in our existence. Please don’t tell me it would be hard after ‘killing’ more time at the workplace than where it really matters. Surely, this world is so full of contradiction. Perhaps, the sustenance of life, in or out of 40 hours, is our work even if life is not merely sustenance. 

Post # 22 # A True-and-False Record

All my life I have been an ordinary, average-ish student. Until I found this task in one of my jobs at office. And I scored 99.99%! What a feat!

There were around 800 true-and-false questions. The only time I scored above 80% was perhaps in my pre-high school days. Oh, well. This 99.99% means no salary increment or an appreciate letter from my boss. The sole satisfaction is that I have completed the job quite well on time. I’ll be getting a new task soon.

But do you know how I did it, scoring on a genius-type level? Let me explain. In this job I'm doing, the subject experts set the questions in simple MS Word. And the computer experts set them on a sophisticated computer program. Then me, as mentioned in my earlier post, I worked as an Error Checker; and I have to check if the correct answers are set properly, clicking on each question. I would have scored a perfect 100 if not for these computer experts who had not been giving in their 100% attention and making the silly mistakes.

I find it quite ironical that I scored highly just in this kind of things. The world is so relative. Leave the world. When you come in early in the office, the boss is not there; and when you are late, you know it: he is there not only early, but waiting for you to hand over some work. Leave office. I want to be 99.99% successful in life.

Post # Five # Loyalty and Things like that

"There's something so common between having sex and going shopping with you," one of my ex-girlfriends had told me. "Fifteen minutes into the 'act' and you start running away while I keep pushing you on." Perhaps she was right about shopping. Only shopping! She has exaggerated on the sex part. Anyways. Now I have learned, after all those heartache and heartbreak, it's quite an experience to live with committing to no one. For the record, only fools rush in to take sides. You might say I'm too individualistic but the fact is I'm a lover of independence, I would fight for unrestrained freedom if it is only possible. In the rule book of power, it is also mentioned in emboldened typefaces: 'Always stay away from commitments and allegiance; these are the tools of another person to put you under his/her power.'

But I don't want to demean the power of love. I believe in the power of love. I believe in the power of a soulmate. As one of the local editors updated on a social networking site, "One soulmate in real life can make you stand firm and confident like a tree, while in the company of a 1,000 Facebook friends you can still be desperately lonely and desolate." This Facebook and Twitter things!

From commitment to social networking sites, life is quite a hotch-potch. Believe it or not. Let me explain: after updating the wall post, the editor got around 50 comments and one of the replies goes something like, "The behaviours of quantum particles have added new dimensions to the understanding of reality, but has not changed it. Maybe there are multiple planes of reality and life, but these are esoteric considerations. I am not discrediting the possibility, but even if they exist, the present reality will remain our tangible reality. For all you know, even in the physical world, our immediate world may be the only reality." Interesting! Indecipherable! I would love to add an emoticon but I'll do away with it.

Redefining communication

Commitment and things like this redefine life. It seems like only yesterday, life's all about friends and fun. But now it's about taking responsibilities and applying for a life insurance policy and many other things. In some years down the line, I can see that there will be more nuances to deliberate, more things to understand, more responsibilities to take up and so many other things. For instance, after a few years, I might be having my own family and kids. I don't know what life has in store for me. My life's a journey. The journey of change.    

Post # One # The Story of My Life

This is the story of my life. Unpredictable. Unabridged. Un-everything. This is a simple digital diary I have kept to keep track of my life, in a non-linear way, to tell my tales and to discover what life is dishing out all along. There is so many things happening and it is quite ridiculous all of these would mean just a naught as soon as the last nail is hit on my coffin, when I bid adieu to you, to everyone on this earth. Anyways. But I'm glad there are so many things. And these things somehow manifest themselves to give my life an essence. Otherwise, I would have been a suicide bomber a long time ago and would have been sleeping with one of the goddesses in the heaven. 

Yesterday, there was a bomb blast in my town. They exploded the bomb because they wanted a new nation. But two little girls died when they were returning from their school. Some other people were also killed. Sometimes these political people are more than a pain in the ass. More than a swell in the ass. New nation. New freedom. So funny when all I want is to eat, drink, sleep or have sex when I want. Perhaps you might know what I mean if you belong to, or have some idea about a conflict zone, where elected government and violence-inspired insurgent groups mean the same thing, where so many ethnic groups are fighting for their freedom and their homelands and where you will be alive if you are only lucky. Too much violence and killings and  bomb blasts. But I'm glad again I'm still alive to tell my tales.

While I'm so apathetic to these things like killings and violence, it is a contradiction that I keep mentioning about the issue so often. Maybe, it has become a way of life, a part of narrative that incorporates the life stories of so many of us living in this place, which is just thirty degree short of hell. We call hell a 'norok' in my native language. By the way, I speak Manipuri.

Life's a highway