Another Mortal Life

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.