Another Mortal Life

Dil to kehta hai mujhe ishq hai tujh se
Duniya ki kitaabein kuchh aur kehti hain.
Bujurgon ke tajrube hain dayaar-e-aql maana
Kya karoon meri zindagii to kahin aur behti hai.

Ik ajab ishaarah hota hai, padha hai maine,
Kisi ko mohabbat hotii hai jis lamha.
Tujhe chaaha to bahut hai maine magar
Koi ishaarah nahi to kya jhoota hai mera jazba.

Ik baar ho jaaye mohabbat to dobaara nahi hoti
-Maan to leta main ye kitaabi falsafa magar,
Chehre to aur bhi achche lagte hain mujhe
Mohabbat phir hoti hai tujhse pahle se badhkar.

Meri akeli nafrat se upzi meri akeli mohabbat
-Ek puraane sukhanvar humein batlaatein hain.
Yun to banti hai yaaron zamaane bhar se apni
Ik akeli mohabbat se koshish-e-nafrat kiye jaate hain.

Usne mohabbat nahi ki jisne na izhaar kiya
-Apni baat kijiye miyaan sab ko kyun lapet.te hain.
Aap ke zamaane mein haseeno.n ke sandals
Utne sakht nahii.n hote the jitne mere dost jhelte hain.

[--- To Shakespeare and the likes of him, with hate, respect and apologies.]

"No! Not from those!"
"Why? Oh.. Okay, then?"
"Those, the white ones, are for engineers; the practicing engineers I mean. You guys take those gray helmets"

I picked one of the gray helmets, and wondered how safe it was. I don't think it was safe even against a 5 kg weight falling from 5 m above. To our guilty satisfaction, the white ones differed only in colour. I don't think I would like to don one of them ever in my life.

But I won't deny I liked the first day on the second floor of the under-construction buiding. It took three years and a walk from the third basement to the second floor of that buiding to realise I am studying civil engineering. Till then it was physics, mechanics, maths, or whatever, but it was not civil engineering.

Some realisations are relieving, others urge you for action. Entering the MS of the college for the first time was relieving. Some, in those very moments, felt an urge for action; I felt the same, three years later on the roof of that under-construction buiding. I was too late.

Each human life sweats equal tonnes, somebody once said. Guess I had had enough of waking up at 11 am. But 8 am was harsh, for my standards. And three consecutive days of it were unthinkable. I bunked the third day. Four workers fell through a defective shuttering on that day.

The safety inspector was yelling at a junior engineer on the day next, "Make your workers understand that slippers are slippers and therefore not suitable for a construction site."

I wonder if the white-headed man understood. Nevertheless, he nodded.
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Comments...

"You are high on exaggeration these days."

"Ok! Maana ki garmi hai, temperature 40 ko cross kar raha hai.. but won't you like to tell your readers that you spend 90% of the time gossiping in the comfort of the office?"

"That guy, your junior engineer, needs immediate treatment. The heat can aggravate his white heads."

"You told me you are enjoying. This post is in total contradiction with that!"

"Kuchh tone badal yaar apni posts ki. Kya ghazalon ki tarah ek hi sur mein.. :P"

"Men and women would sweat in equal tonnes only if there was no labour pain in this world. ;)"

"Whom are you reading these days, temme??"

Current phase of my life yearns for a idea. And it finds none. The only thing that can distantly qualify as an idea is what I've decided just a couple of seconds before: To write a blog post without editing it even once. 'Backspace' is the key strictly prohibited for this particular post.

Even while I start I know that the ban on backspace is quite dangerous. And unlike the numerous posts that never saw the light of the day (yeah, literally! Written in the night, and deleted therein), I have also decided this post won't suffer a premature death or a life-time hideout as a draft.

Having-no-idea-and-yet-writing is not very tough, isn't? I am already into the third paragraph. I think the humanities courses taught me enough of it. All those professors who mark you for the length of your answer taught me enough of it. You've to first start scribbling something, and in the flow of it you finally get an idea worth barking about. Now barking is too misfit a word here but I guess you've to let me get away with it. I can't edit you see. Don't blame me for posts such as this. Blame the hiatus I am in, with majors already over (3 days back) and the intern yet to start.

When it comes to language I've been a troubled guy almost always. The places I've lived in have changed twice: at the age of 6, and then at 10. The mixture of the regional dialects was such that I could never speak with proficiency neither in the dialect of people who knew me since I was a kid, nor in the dialect of the city I lived in ever since I was 10. The school was easy, bookish hindi was easy. But I could never connect with the heavily accented voice of the locals of the city. The children would find it difficult to not think of it as funny hearing someone in the playground speaking in a Hindi bordering on purity. I could never catch their local words.

Something else too happened simultaneosly and gradually, in the part of the summers that I spent in my paternal village almost every year. I had left that place at the age of six. A kid of six is not expected to have got the language and its every nuance by that age. A child growing up in a different environment can't be expected to retain whatever small part of the dialect he had learnt till the age of six. One can't be expected to learn the language, to immerse into the customs, and to remember the brief encounter with every distant relative one is not going to see until another summer vacation. But I was expected to. And I wanted to. But I could never understand how could I be expected to. Nevertheless, you are a child. So you must be doing something terribly wrong. You don't respect elders (i.e. you don't remember a face you had a glimpse of, some two years back, with no introductions.). The world never understands. Thankfully, parents understood. And soon, only they became my world.

As I said: I wanted to. I wanted to feel to be a part of them: those children in the playground in my city, and those people in the shades of non-baked bricks in my village. But I couldn't be a part of neither of them. My comfort levels in communicating with people kept slipping down the hill. Soon I realised I stammer a bit. Soon I realised how much I hate a phone. Soon I realised how much I love silence.

But life changes. One fine day, I realised I like languages, and the variety of them. One fine day, I realised that though I don't have a hold on any particular language/dialect I am gifted with a partial knowledge of many. I've grasped many words from many different areas and I have loved discussions on them. I haven't got the best hindi, best english, or best urdu amongst the people I know, but I'm happy I know a bit of each of them. I can equally understand the people of Rajasthan and Haryana. I can even decipher the meanings of most punjabi songs on hearing twice or thrice, though I don't get an iota of the conversations I sometimes find happening around me in the said language. I've liked Bindrakhia's voice a lot, especially his song Isqe di agg, and dupatta tera sat rang da. I once met an elderly Andhran man in train. He didn't know English, and whatever Hindi he tried to speak bordered on tough Urdu. I was glad I could understand him.

I would never forget the room I dwelt in previously. My love for the languages must've started around the time I first stepped into that. I guess the bhoot of the previous occupant of that room got into me. I started blogging and, most of the time, I've loved it. With blogging I think I have improved upon my english a lot. But I'm a bad thief. You'll say theft itself is bad. But chosing one person as a victim for all your thefts is too bad. You steal a room, then you steal a template, then you steal a template again! Too bad. To continue I will've to get into the IIM.

I was really made a sandwich of in the sandwiched room. And I loved it. The three of us sitting with their backs on the wall, with discussions ranging in everything in this world, and with a cigarrete being passed from one corner to other over me the non-smoker. Ask me how less I hated passive smoking on such nightouts. There are few people in this world you don't dislike even a bit; Sagar and Chetu are such.

And while after a few days, or may be, after a few hours, I might never see Prateek and Da again, I must say I'd perhaps never meet guys as modest as them. In future I won't let such people go with this little an interaction with me. Three years is a long time, and I must have spoken with them for minutes countable on fingers. Shit. Guess I'm getting nostalgic in advance.

1. People have different comfort levels with ethics. Nobody's is zero, nobody's is absolute.


2. Some people are brave, some are coward. The rest are only indecisive.


3. Life gives us only two options: either to live up to it, or to leave things to it. Most of those who are able to find a third one are found hanging on a ceiling fan.

........You never took an examination this dramatic......

The professor, 3 days before the majors, announces: “There will be a minor III, just after the major, and the best two out of the three will be considered. The same will serve as a re-minor for anybody who missed either of the two.”

This professor has quite cryptic ways of speaking.. (like, he won't ask you to be attentive, rather he'd say-"You know it's so easy to set a difficult question paper, but it won't be as easy to solve it.") And he has this unique way of evaluating the answerscript. Instead of giving you 4 marks for an answer (to a 5 marks question), he would write (-1). So he'd put -1, -2 and would write the reasons of these deductions beside the numbers. But, well, let's return to the major.

It’s 3:30 PM. Question paper is being distributed..

Maximum marks: 40

“Attempt 40 marks’ questions out of the 65 marks’ questions printed on the paper, in any possible combination of 5, 10, 15 marks’ questions.” Wow!!! Examinations were never this good.


It’s 5:30 PM now. Time over.

“There will be minor III, after 10 minutes break. Choice is yours if you want to take it or not. You can even leave with the minor’s answer script, at any time, if you think you can’t improve on your previous scores, because in any case, best two are to be considered.”



Minor III starts...
(I ain't taking it. I've entered in the examination hall 30 minutes late for the major, due to another extended major, and am still attempting the major (Of course, with prior permission to come late.). Also, I am in no mood of taking a re-minor after 5 hours of continuous exhaustion. Well, that’s a different story.)

Question paper is being distributed..

“Sir, it’s the major’s question paper!” says somebody.

“Yes, there are questions worth 25 marks, at least, that you haven't done yet, aren’t? Those who missed or want to improve on minor I attempt 20 marks in any combination (as it was of 20 marks); and those who want to take minor II, attempt 25 marks (as it was of 25).”

:O

The first week of May.. a few minutes of rain.. and the cool breeze afterwards.. The memories.. The last few days of the semester.. the same vellapanti.. the obsessive compulsion to write.. the inability to properly phrase a poetic thought.. and then the realization of its worthlessness in the times.. The continuous reminder to myself that there are better things to do.. What to do and what not?.. All those right thoughts at wrong point in time.. the majors' time.

"Soak yourself in work, Vikram, can't you?"