Such thoughts don’t emanate within me when I am sitting in
front of my laptop in a huge concrete block or when I am sipping away soda in a
busy street or when my body wriggles to the tunes of the DJ’s, I need to go
out, I need to struggle to shed out this image I have worn on myself and I need
to peek outside. Unfortunately, our lives have been made up so much and over so
many years, that the way to live and “do” things have been already defined, the
boundaries marked and any effort to cross the lines is a mammoth one. Ones who
cross the lines find themselves lonely and outcast sometimes which makes many
to come back to the boundaries scared from the challenges facing ahead. But,
the ones who stand strong realize at some point of time that it was worth their
lives. Maybe, they won’t be able to make others understand the worth of that
step but, who cares? Why spend our entire lives making others feel that we are
great or we are good or we are bad? Isn’t it worth more to make ourselves feel
we did something or that we are good?
There are moments when we think like this and very few
people are lucky to even get a chance to think like this. Its even a smaller
percentage who lend weight to such thoughts and decide to shed the masks worn
for the rat races of life and who decide to do something about it.
One of those moments beckons below. I won’t say that I went
all the way but, I heard myself and felt things.
A plan to visit the snowcapped mounts of Alps range, mounts which
carried the last traces of snow of the season and the first ever traces of snow
of my life. I guess many from India go crazy about snow. The only place which
has snow in India is no longer accessible for normal public, you got to be a
native, terrorist, soldier or part of the establishment to go there. The only
access we have to snow are through the movies, the beautiful cinematographies
of Mani ratnams, Santhosh Sivans, Vidu Vinod Chopras and many more…
So, when opportunities presented itself, I was not going to
give it up for anything, anything!!!
Trains carrying a stamp of yore.
People old and young out for a break form their mundane
lives.
Passing through…..
Snow and snow more
Symbols
Sometimes, I have felt after coming here in a place in
Europe, that, why are people so steeped in the past, the strong desire to hold
on to something which no longer matters to the way things are shaping today. Then,
I realized that some of it matters, some principles, some tenets of yore need
to be kept alive, not the monuments or statues but, the thoughts. Somehow, the
monuments and statues act as the symbols for people to associate the thoughts
and principles. But, why not accept the changes happening around? Then, I see some
places, some practices and that makes me feel let them remain so at the expense
of change. Many times, I have felt that regarding my home state- Kerala. No industry
is let to live and changes are so tough to enact. Then, I see the greenery, the
customs, the colors, the traditions, the food and I feel let it remain so at
the expense of modernization. The modernized cities which adopted me like
Chennai or Bangalore or Pune, have killed some of the basic tenets of our
existence. In the name of modernization, we have created walls of rules and
constraints which won’t let us realize life. Life here is all about making
money, running rat races, reproducing, mortgages and getting old and dying a
death. The children produced are fed into this assembly line with an amazing
efficiency. Is this life all about? Is this why we were born or lived? If I took
30 years or let’s say 20 good years to realize that there is something more to
life than all this, then, how long will my kids or my friends’ kids take? I fear,
they will realize things in their death bed. How unfortunate and pitiful?
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