Vagabonds of Punterland - III

Basic Instinct

The cold drink bottle on his lips was tipped beyond vertical as TJ soaked the last few drops of Dew from the edges. How people like him could sustain the unbearable fizz while gulping the full volume in one go, had always been a source of utter amazement for Ayan. Sam sat scanning the menu card as if it was written in code. He had taken it on to himself for arranging the most cost-effective-cum-surfeiting one course dinner for the 3 tonight. 

Earlier, with an extremely vocal TJ, the 2 mile walk to the place had turned out to be shorter than expected and checking out of the main gate had hardly been a challenge- Walk like you own the place. 

The guard at the hostel entrance was paid to care while those at the university exit didn’t care to pay attention.

Meanwhile, the luscious aroma of spices and the sight of people gorging all around them, served only to aggravate the hunger. Located just by the highway that would get ironed with loaded trucks ferrying goods across major industrial centers established nearby, there was a titillating feeling about the place that night. The rhythmic hustle of the night train speeding across the railway tracks, at a stone’s throw from the place, would superimpose with the surrounding noises at times, damping the irritating shrieks of an over-used speaker blaring nearby. It was amazing how yester years’ chartbusters sounded like lamentations today.

‘I think one half Mix Veg should suffice. All paneers cost the same. But we don’t know which is better- kadhai, matar or shahi. Daal makhni is another alternative. So is aloo jeera. The problem gentlemen- as always- is choice…’ Sam declared.

For TJ, it never was. To him, within or without an examination room, ‘both A and B’ had always seemed the most appropriate option, especially when it came to matters of the tongue- no compromises. Ayan and Sam discovered nothing could shut TJ up as well as good food, not even good girls. The 3 of them fed on until the dishes were wiped clean.

The gentle breeze after a hearty meal made music for the ears before Ayan decided to make a point.

‘I still don’t see why we should risk a CP for just a little better food’. The reasons for getting a Conduct Prohibition were crystal clear to him. And for a first year, being out of the campus after 8 in his first month at college was somewhere around the top.

‘A little better? The second Batman movie was a little better than the first. Dude, this is massive improvement…’ TJ’s love for the movie and obsession with food had almost nipped the argument in the bud but for the lack of wheels, it was getting late.

‘Cycles will save time. We should have tried a little more’, Sam complained, nodding to Ayan.

‘Well and you should have listened to me when I insisted on not writing our names on the stupid register while checking out, at least not real names.’

It was 8:44 when they reached the university gate and with the quantity of food in their alimentary canal, the 2 km walk back was becoming exceedingly impossible.

The next frame of image that was processed by TJ’s mind was Ayan rushing forward. It was a little instinctive decision that was going to substantially alter the course of the night for the 3 of them.

They should’ve known the founding tenet of ‘Chaos Theory’- how small changes in initial conditions can lead to vast differences in final outcomes. They should have known that the difference between adventure and accident is measured only by luck.

Vagabonds of Punterland - IV

Vagabonds of Punterland - II

These are 3 parts of what was supposed to be a five-part series, and one of our initial efforts. We'd written this some time in late 2012, a time when we used to be both 'unkempt' and 'sophomores' (now we're just unkempt). For precisely those reasons (and more), they always remained just drafts, often yearning for attention and closure. I now reckon they belong more here than in a folder on my laptop, for whatever they may be worth. We have abstained from making any changes to the original draft.

3 is greater than 2 

There are people who choose to take things the conventional way and play by the rules of life. Then there are those who like living dangerously and make their own. For the short time they’d known each other, Sam believed Ayan was a ‘Type 1’ guy, like him. They both knew TJ was the rare ‘Type II’, the ones who never learn from mistakes, until they make their own and blow them up into disasters...

‘Playing loud music and use of stereo is strictly prohibited in the premises...’

‘Inmates are not allowed to bring laptops, heaters, blowers or any other electrical appliances inside the hostel...’

He read the last of the ‘general instructions’ in the typical, hysterically croaky voice of the warden, known more for his unpredictable mood swings than his unconditional fury. The 2 guys on either side suspended their hearty laughter as TJ ripped down the sheet of paper from the notice board. Having been with him for almost a week now, Ayan and Sam had become quite used to the unconventional ways of their new-found friend and roommate.

While these sudden bursts of hyper-activity stemming from his archetypal Bohemian attitude- instantly made this prodigal son the principle focus of attention, it also made TJ the odd one out of the 3. With a perennially serious Ayan, a particularly sincere Sam and a perpetually sinister TJ, it had been a rare but pleasant amalgamation of the Conservative, the Liberal and the Radical under one roof in Room 7 of Tagore Bhawan.

‘Eat, pray and rest. Your ass belongs to me...’ TJ completed the mimicry. “Welcome to the Fox River State Penitentiary” he buzzed.

“What you just razed down was meant for 300 people” Sam pitched in, gesturing to the guard at the gate who was overlooking.

“Common courtesies man...” Ayan bitched as often, shrugging his shoulders. His ‘absolutely sober’ upbringing could not reconcile with the apparently rash ways of this instinctive guy. Sam on the other hand had grown quite fascinated by his spontaneity and outspokenness.

“It’s been 7 days”, he started, strolling along the veranda of the first of the 7 wings that housed their room. “And I already feel like running away”. Ayan and Sam tagged along. They stopped when TJ reached the day’s copy of TOI at the newspaper stand.

It was that time of the year when local and national dailies get swamped with statistics of students topping merit lists and coaching institutes flaunting their best kept nerds- the AIRs.

Looking at the passport size photographs of the supposedly smartest youngsters, Ayan felt a part of him perish. Not a day went by when Sam didn’t repent his ill-decisions made on that fateful second Sunday of April. TJ, meanwhile, had tuned himself to a different wavelength altogether.

“The lectures are farce, food barely edible, campus life non-existent after 7 pm. Curses be on our movies that promise colleges full of ravishing beauties and cafes packed with dancing youngsters”, he complained.

“The curriculum is a mess, labs complete hokum and hostel a pathetic junk-yard”, Ayan rhymed.

“Never thought I’ll smile at people who screw our lives”, lamented Sam.

“These are supposed to be the best years of our lives. I can’t spend them scribbling notes and finishing assignments.” Sam could sense TJ was up to something.

“Enough of this sitting-in like spinsters. We need to shake the shell pals. It’s time we hit the streets!”

Ayan and Sam stood transfixed but clueless.

“Lohni. Tonight.” TJ talked more like himself. Everybody in their freshman year had heard of this place but no one had explored it yet.

“I’m in. They’re throwing grease anyway for dinner”, Sam’s aversion to spinach was well known.

“Well they’ve also reduced the hostel entry time to 8:30. And you know how serious that beast is about miscreants. Count me out.” Ayan was reluctant.

“Come on mate! What happened to the ‘3 more than 2’ rule?”

TJ knew Ayan would always be the one to back down. So, he’d formulated what he called ‘the 3 is greater than 2’ rule for Room 7. It was about how outings were always about 3 guys on a riot and never about 2 getting bored. Persuasive as he was, he had forced the 3 into this strange covenant.

“We swim and sink together, remember?” TJ winked.

As it happened, convincing Ayan turned out to be easier than arranging 3 cycles for the 4 km back and forth journey. So, pretty soon, the 3 of them were out in the dark, headed to the dhaba, 2 kms outside campus- slapping the rules in the face was always fun!

Ayan didn’t have a healthy gut feeling about this. Perhaps he should’ve insisted a little more. After all, circumstantial decision making is like a house of cards, there’s only so much margin for error…

Vagabonds of Punterland - III

Vagabonds of Punterland - I

To be or not to be?

Friday nights make me awfully philosophical. While the rest of the world is out beckoning another weekend, I am usually stuck by a window sill staring at infinity. Not that it feels as hollow as it sounds- it’s oddly comforting- but like all moral and philosophical quandaries, it begs the question ‘why’. That’s a self absorbing chain of causality and one that requires opening a lot of dark doors; so I live with it as is. In fact, it is often such a soul sucking vortex of enquiry that little remains apart from the thought itself. It’s some of these remains that I intend the reader to part with today.

What is the true way of life- one of utter involvement or that of reserved detachment, one of rising desires or that of ‘just’ needs, of attachment or resignation, is it uninhibited indulgence or stoic passivism?

Understand that I do not intend to equate indulgence with extravagance nor passivism with renunciation. As strong as the words may be coming across now, the adjectives will hopefully derive a more contextual definition in the ensuing narrative.

Coming across as absolute extremities on the spectrum of choice, it is here- I understand- that you will be tempted to opt for a more practical and reasonable albeit diplomatic and self serving middle path. It is the same with life, something that comes as a result of sentience and free will. But then we’ve all had our Friday nights- moments when we have questioned, rejected, even escaped reality. Times when we have wondered why it had to be that way. These moments often culminate in one such choice between extremes- to hold on or to let go. Live with them a little longer the next time and perhaps you will sense what I am trying to get to, in case you haven’t already. For what it’s worth, try and shed your subjective perspectives that begin with the phrase ‘it depends…’ and then for once we can look at it with the objectivity that is needed.

So we all seek happiness. All of man’s pursuits are essentially attempts to increase what moral philosophers call ‘utility’ or overall happiness of the individual and society. But then there’s grief, regret, pain, anger, lust, greed, despair and frustration.

Why?

We all make mistakes and we all pay a price. However, a whole lot of life’s problems arise out of our incessant pursuits. Everything that we attach ourselves to is either taken away or ends up hurting oneself, eventually. We are all too human to escape that eventuality. For, once we wishfully engross ourselves in such pursuits, we do not quite comprehend when to put them to rest or often worse- what to make out of them. Most of our actions are born out of instincts rather than intelligent thought and therefore, unsurprisingly, most of what we do at any moment turns out to have little or no relevance with where we were some time (a year, month, week or even a day) ago.

Think about it- how often do you give a second (read ‘deep’) thought to how you invest yourself at any given moment, even in seemingly long term endeavours like career and education? Most of our pursuits are laughably incoherent, mutually unrelated and quite embarrassingly directed to an end that bears little or no relevance to any particular intermittent state of reference. In other words, had it not been for some unquestioned custom, misplaced belief, inescapable instruction or accepted ritual, you couldn’t have cared lesser about it or at least thought differently about it. It is almost like jumping over planks floating on a river, with little or no idea as to where the river leads. Perhaps this transience infested with ignorance- not knowing what will be- is the very substance of life. But at times the stark absurdity of such unreasonable pursuits makes my mind rebel. It is such unchecked indulgence that often breeds frustration and despair and it is in this context that I intend to use the word.

The obvious opposite to such an approach to life would be one of reservation. It makes perfect sense to utilize the mental faculties that put us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom- the ability to reason and rationalize- in order to distance oneself from self deprecating endeavours. Abstaining yourself from emotional investments seems the better way of ensuring you do not allow anything or anyone the power or liberty to affect you in a way that disturbs this overall happiness- peace of mind, so to say. So, although you live in the realm of the senses in a world of distractions that is constantly trying to sway you all across between states of absolute bliss and consuming grief, you resist. It is a cold, measured, mechanical and inherently self serving way of existence but it is also pure- unadulterated by swathes of those inexplicable and apparently insurmountable momentary impulses that arise out of nowhere and strive to distance you from this individual state of neutrality. 

This course of reason will, however, often push you to make choices you do not want to make. Choices that will strive to distance you from your most intimate beliefs and confront you with the darkest of emotions. It forces you to examine the warmth of human experiences from the cold and unforgiving lens of rationality. Things like morality, spirituality, humanity and love get convoluted and tend to assume disturbing proportions if you try to unravel them in this light.

So what do we all do?

We simply choose to go by what we have been taught or told. We use the society as a metric to judge what it is that we are supposed to do, something that will be acceptable, unquestionable, comfortable, manageable. We choose to blindly conform to an abstract code which was made up by people no less clueless about things than ourselves. And reason is often looked down upon by those who found its fruits too hard to live with. It is abhorred for challenging beliefs, murdering faith and above all for infesting sacred human emotions with the ‘scourge of rationality’.

So we act, we smile, we get along and then when there’s time (read ‘Friday nights’) we go back to resenting anything that will make us feel warm inside again, make us feel good about ourselves, about those choices that we think we made. It’s a vicious cycle this, one that leaves us more broken in ways that can never be undone.

True- it is both the ability to reason and the ability to empathize that makes us human. These faculties have been defined and refined through ages and put our race at the very top of this world and from what little we know- the universe. However, the ease with which we keep switching between these behavioral extremes just to serve our own petty ends, to me seems hypocritical, even narcissistic. Why should any one of these often mutually conflicting ways of life be chosen over the other? And yet we conveniently go about doing the same, eternally torn between possibilities.

I think there’s no heaven or hell, that whatever they mean is already all around us, elegantly hidden in the enormous bounties of the world. That we are all made capable of doing great good and great bad in a universe that has a blatant disregard for both. It existed just fine long before there was any point and it will continue to do so long after all of this will cease to matter. However, this universe also has an incomprehensibly strange sense of humor- it mischievously dropped carbon based sentient life forms with a mind and a heart (who somehow developed a huge sense of self importance) somewhere in an infinitely small portion of itself just to see what could happen in between!

So- to think or to feel, THAT is the question…

Dangerous Knowledge

I think we all “grow up” when we realize that people don’t always mean what they say or say what they mean, it’s when we start figuring out what people actually mean when they say something.

Growing up takes time. It doesn’t strike you as a blessing on a Sunday afternoon. It is a process that may take years, decades or even an entire lifetime. It can also be viewed as an evolutionary or a neuro-biological phenomenon that is accrued vastly from the sum total of the experiences of one generation, an ideology or world view that they deem worthy of passing on to the next to ensure the prosperity of their lineage.

It is a discovery, a sense of realisation, of knowing something you didn’t a moment ago. The knowledge that comes with it is a quintessential part of human experience. It happens because we are the only species who have an infinite capacity to learn from other’s experiences. It comes at a price that must be paid with innocence. You lose the ability to seek goodness in everything and everyone, or at best learn to exercise it with ever increasing caution.

It cannot be undone, not in its entirety at least. As it is with science, theories you build once will always be under revision in the light of new observations and experiences, as and when you gain the ability to examine the world with more and more sophisticated tools- education. This knowledge does broaden your world view but while doing so it also confronts you with those infinite shades of grey that will forever cloud the ever expanding gulf between black and white.

It makes you question your understanding of faith and trust, making you a lifelong skeptic. You start constructing an invisible guard that you will now wield for the rest of your life, anxiously waiting, searching for people who can patiently, lovingly invade those numerous impregnable walls and manage to get close enough to wield that guard for you, with you. The walls keep getting higher and stronger each time someone fails to do so or surrenders in between.

It is magical how most of life is about sharing human experiences and knowledge but it is a pity how most of growing up is about understanding the perils of the same. I used to find it very ironic how everyone always wanted to be happy- to the extent that they would even be willing to play along with their own overtly pretentious social exercises like gatherings, festivities and celebrations, just to bath in the aura of collective goodness- but still, somehow, eventually end up more bitter and miserable than ever before. After all, why must there be anger, grief, regret, envy and suffering in a world where everyone wants to be happy?

I now realize it’s because of the pleasant delusion that is hope, that no matter how bad things get, we can always choose to believe that they can get better. This belief, although entirely self sufficient and independent of the dangerous knowledge, it seems comes much more conveniently to those who know less. May be it is just a part of the bliss that comes with ignorance but the one thing I have realized “growing up” is that when the long night comes, it is much easier to keep moving along when you do not know what kind of demons stand lurking in the dark.