My Blue Speck

Every day after I reach my office, after I park my car, I take a few steps across a wet road and climb up a few soaked steps to reach a door that will take me to the reception from where I head towards my bay. During this short journey, I always see a Janitor busy mopping the floors. Meet Raju Cleaner. I can’t help but feel incredibly guilty for Raju. For some reason my company has decided to not use doormats for my particular building, forcing me, and several others to walk in without wiping / drying off our feet.

The timing factor here, is simply remarkable. Every time the poor Raju takes a moment to admire his work, a meeting would finish, or it would be lunch time, or time for a cup of coffee or it could just be a group of people who come running in, all drenched and soaked from the rains. All of them probably causing our dear Raju to hate himself, his life, his job and just everything under the sun.

Yet, perhaps keeping in mind his family, and the hungry bellies that his measly salary will feed, he shruggs away the hatred and starts over. Every time, every day, through-out the year, year after year. Munna Bhai MBBS suggested the Jaadu ki Jhappi, but would it really work in real life? I feel terrible walking over a freshly mopped floor. Yet, I must. I’m not brave enough to go give a jaadu ki jhappi to Raju, or any of his colleagues, but I do kind of apologize, or at least wear a guilty look on my face. I try to rid my shoes of as much water as I possibly can on the cold, hard surface before trespassing over Raju’s recently completed and well-done job.

I can’t do much, but I’d like to believe that wearing a look of guilt on my face, apologizing and ensuring that Raju sees me making an effort to dry off my shoes makes a difference. Maybe he won’t hate me as much. Maybe he won’t hate himself so much knowing that there are people who care and who appreciate him and his work. Thank you Raju, for making my blue speck a much cleaner place to live in. And thank you Munna Bhai for opening our eyes.

Before you proceed to read this, I must warn you, that reading this post might literally leave you breathless. However, for your own good, you must fight the urge and continue to breathe, just as you always have…

Every morning on my way to work, I notice an army of sweepers busy pushing aside all the layers of dust on the roads. Go to any developed country, dust is something they seem to have almost eradicated. In India though dust is an industry employing several millions in the form the sweepers, baai’s etc. They keep sweeping our streets and our homes to rid of us this dust, which in all probability is the same dust that was forced to reluctantly just leave yesterday. Why can’t we seem to get rid of this darn dust! It just seems to be all over the place, all the time!

Now I’d already warned all of you, so brace yourselves. I read somewhere a little while ago, that of the several things that comprise household dust, some very interesting ingredients are human / animal skin, cells, and hair. I’m not sure where I read this, butI did find a reference of the same here.

So, the air that you’ve been breathing all your life; the air that has miraculously been transporting oxygen to your lungs; air, which is around 25-50% dust, also forces you to breathe in tiny little particles of decayed, defunct, fallen off skin, cells and hair from all over the place.

Now that we know what constitutes our dust, and while our faces turn blue from not wanting to breathe it in anymore, ponder upon this. India is one of the most populated countries of the world and the honour of packing most of that population in minimum amount of space goes to Mumbai. So I think more population equals a more dusty environment.

Picture this; it’s a Friday (Saturday for some ) evening. You’re sitting at your desk, restlessly peeking glances at the clock on the wall, waiting for it to end your long and tiring work week… And while you’re waiting, you’re planning your evening…

“On my way home, I’ve to pick up ‘X’, ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ from the shop on ABC and then I’ll go watch a movie with ‘DEFGHI’ and we’ll have dinner at ‘Hotel MNOP’ and blah blah blah…”

So in what language did u plan out your evening… Was it English, Hindi or some other language? Language is something that helps us communicate with others in an intelligible manner. Do we need a language to communicate with very own selves? We were certainly not born that way! But that’s how we have become…

So if we’ve become so hard-coded to think in a particular language, then how does a person who was born deaf, think ? So try this exercise… Plan out something, and use only pictures… Picture anything you want…

Done? There yet? Wrap your minds around this then… So If a person is born deaf and blind… does that person have no thoughts? This first occurred to me when I saw Black. That was one scary performance…

So perhaps there is a language that we were all born with and forgot all about somewhere along the way?

As the name would suggest, a footpath is a path for people who are brave enough to commute by foot. While driving to work via the Lal Bahadur Shastri Marg, known more popularly as LBS Marg, I see this narrow strip of unused road on both sides. Riddled with garbage, sewage, hawkers, human beings and a number of other animals in deep slumber.

Most of the roads in Mumbai’s suburbs have 3 lanes to each side. One lane is dedicated to the brave truckers of our country without whom we would be left in the Stone Age. After all, when they’re tired, they need to park their mammoth vehicles somewhere, don’t they? Then when it’s raining, due to the lack of the “footpaths” people tend to descend upon the road and take up lane number two. Now that leaves the vehicles, 80% of which comprise of Auto-Rickshaws, with just one measly little, pot-hole ridden lane. Is it still surprising then that it takes me almost 30 minutes to cover less than 6 kilometers?

Another interesting phenomenon is that you would see many people walking on the road despite there being a nice, clear and dry footpath. Those people are mostly in disbelief. And believe it or not, on a recent trip to Colombo, Sri Lanka where everything is just beautiful, I too, could be seen walking on the roads. There was a footpath, and it was a good one too, but I had to consciously remind myself to climb onto it again.

It’s not all bad though, go further south towards Mumbai city, known affectionately as “Town”, and you would be pleasantly surprised by the sight of 10 ft wide footpaths. Simply beautiful… Marine Drive, Church gate, Fort, Nariman Point… I can’t help but be reminded of “Saddi Dilli ka CP”. Mumbai has a lot of things, but Mumbai can never have a Connaught Place. Some may say that Delhi can never have beach, but I say wait… If Global Warming has it’s way who knows what’s next….

Often as a kid I used to wonder what I’d be like when I grew up. I also used to “decide” at times that I want to be this person or that person… Usually, the “persons” used to be super heroes from a variety of television programs that I used to see. Here’s a list of my favourite superheroes, in order:

1. He-man

Easily, the coolest of them all!!! A good looking prince with ton of loyal servants, the powers of an entire Castle (GraySkull), a tiger for a pet, and a beautiful princess. Truly, a Master of the Universe.

2. Lion-O (from Thundercats)
   Ok, so now that I think about it, this character was probably gay, however, he was one of my childhood heroes, so I must mention him here. Leader of a bunch of cats with special powers, this guy had a super cool sword that gave him “sight beyond sight”. If I recall correctly, I believe I had pestered my parents into buying me a not-so-cheap plastic replica.
3. Superman
   Who didn’t / doesn’t want to be Superman. Part-time gay, part-time bird, he is now my least favourite, so I have no desire to talk about him here.
4. Spider-Man
   The friendly neighborhood spider, the wall-crawler, the web-slinger… I loved the cartoons. But, thanks to Tobey Maguire, this hero crawled down my personal favourites’ chart, to the very bottom.

Fictitious characters apart, there was a different set of “heroes” that I wanted to be. Back in the 80s I spent around 5 years in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where my father was working as a doctor for a hospital. This was common phenomenon and supposedly a very lucrative one as well, for Indian Doctors to go and spend a few years in the Gulf.

Anyways, I don’t know how many of you have actually experienced the same, but the non-fictional heroes that I’d wanted to be were none other than our bollywood heroes. The two that I can vividly remember were “Shashi Kapoor“and “Amitabh Bachhan”. Believe it or not, I’d actually spend a lot of time sitting in front of a mirror watching my face age and transmogrify into that of the above mentioned heroes. Soon I learnt that the all the changes were taking place only in my head. Needless to say, I remain quite disappointed till this day .

And then there were times, when I would imagine myself to be some kind of Supreme Being sent down to look after other humans. To protect them, to guide them, and to bring order and peace to them. Anyone who was entrusted with such huge responsibility would obviously need to have super-powers. On a number of occasions I thought I had special blood that could not contract any disease and super fast running powers. Every time, I’d get a blood test, or any other kind of test, I’d just be waiting for dad to come with the report, surprised with the unusual levels of whatever parameters decide our health. I’d imagine that I’d just be sitting there with a smile on my face.

Everyone, right from childhood wants to be someone else. Everyone wants to be someone other than themselves. It is too common a phenomenon to be ignored. Everyone wants to be immortal. Imagine what the creator, if there is such a thing or person, must think every time such a thing happens. What would Beethoven have thought of if his music spoke back to him and told him “Music sucks, I wish I could sound like Metallica”. Well, either our creator is used to it and doesn’t care any more, or simply doesn’t exist.

As the years pass and things start going wrong we all realize that there is no such thing as immortality. Most of us look nothing like what we wanted to, start losing our hair by 20, the liver starts complaining by the time you’re 25, which incidentally happens to be the age when u can legally start drinking. And then, on day you’re told that one of your Inter-vertebral discs has prolapsed and you’re forced to change your lifestyle…

But wait… My dad started going bald when he was 35+. His friend’s had slip-discs and liver problems when they were 40+. What’s wrong with me? Me? Is it just me? I know at least 10 other people, most of whom are younger and much lighter than I am. What ever happened to evolution? What ever happened to the advances of modern medicine?

I’d like to believe that we are all being punished. We are being punished for not liking who we are and for wanting to be someone, or something else. Our parents didn’t have dreams of being immortal. They didn’t have the fancy super heroes to look up to. They just had their parents. They dreamt of having cars and making their parents proud and happy. They dreamt of flying kites in open fields. Play games, singing songs, and a lot of other things that didn’t require them to be immortals. We are being punished by the creator for wanting to be immortal, and there’s nothing we can do about it.

Modern medicine and evolution may allow us to live longer, but what kind of a life would that be? Would it even be a life? Or would it just be an existence forcing us to depend on machines and borrowed, artificial organs and other body parts. Is that a price that we’re willing to pay to be immortals? Not me!

After months of dwelling over what to write about and when to start, and how and whole lot of question marks, today, I finally venture back into the blogosphere. And as always, re-entry is far from smooth.

It took me over 3 minutes to formulate that first paragraph. 180 long, nerve-wrecking, and very tense seconds! Actually, 3 minutes and a few months… It is tough getting back on the saddle. It is tough picking up from where you left off. It is tough to start all over. Often becuase one has to do it alone. More often, becuase you have to do it alone. Ten months ago, I moved from Delhi to Mumbai. Slowly, as time passed, I realized that I had given up writing. I had given up gymming. I had given up reading, playing the guitar. This didn’t happen consciously. Well, all except the gymming bit . But to be fair, I did try… Perhaps not hard enough… And I always found a zillion to blame it on. Bad Namit !

Many a times we turn our focus to one thing, just that one thing that matters more to us than anything else in the world. And just sometimes, some people, end up getting it. That’s when the sane one’s go “Oh Crap. What next?“

That’s when you realize that the rest of your life had been taking a backseat for the longest time. But, as I realized, it actually never is too late to start, or even start over. I mean, if you actually get what you want, then could there be a better to inspiration to get everything else? It’s a gift. I was blessed with that gift. And I don’t plan to let it go to waste. So watch out world. I’m back. Fortunately, I hadn’t completely given up guitaring, and it won’t take me a lot of time to get back into shape once I start gymming. The writing has already begun, and the reading isn’t too far.

So here we go… It’s time to reboot…

CTRL+ALT+DEL

Yeah, yeah, I know… but good ‘ol DOS used to obey that command and much reluctantly… it used to reboot…