Life..

I am republishing one of my older posts. This I think is one of my best. Do read it. I know you will enjoy it.

As soon as a man leaves the womb of his mother, he commences his study of the world, or rather the study of his world. At this time his world is very simple. It comprises his mother, his father, his sibling(s) and some other smiling faces which float in front of him whenever they think he is not sleeping. They fondle him; make peculiar shapes with their fingers, their noses and with their eyes. They try to make him laugh. He is confused. He doesn’t know how to react in such situations. And so he experiments. Initially he giggles. He thinks that this would satiate the face in front of him. But the face gets excited. It is overjoyed and does the coo chi-cooing even more fervently. Then the real drama starts. The baby starts crying. He thinks this would ward the face off. But he is once again unsuccessful. To his dismay some more faces join the party and try to do various other things that the baby completely fails to understand.

As the time passes by, the baby gets accustomed to such exotic behavior and sieves off the faces he want to ward off by his usual wailings. By that time he also gets to learn one more, more effective strategy to shoo away the previously mentioned undesirable faces. What he does is very simple: he simply lets the smelly wee-wee out of his bladders. Sometimes, this feels to be a little bit painful because he has to hold himself from hosing out the thing within till the time the face decides to hold him in its hands. But the pain nearly always results in a clandestine mirth and a feeling of supreme satisfaction. The face contorts in a familiar fashion, looks into the face of the baby in yet another familiar fashion and then rushes off to the familiar place where mum usually makes him do the real wee-wee. Sometimes the baby ends up loathing the face so fiercely that he decides to poop some yellow ethereal paste on its body. If his luck angels are around him the face then never ever shows itself again.

After a certain period of time he gets bored of wasting his wee-wee and doo-doo on so unworthy things as smiling faces and starts concentrating more on himself. Even then, they fail to stop themselves and try to teach the baby-boy pronounce weird words and manifest unusual shapes and sizes of his fragile face. He nevertheless gets on with it and tries to behave normally. But water level gets too much high and he fails to hold his composure when they call him chhotu, motu, munna, shona, chickoo, tiku, miku, tolu, molu and with many others out of the world appellations. He initially behaves that he is not listening to them but finally decides to compromise because he cannot afford to lose so huge a lump of chocolate. Surely he doesn’t know the famous saying about donkeys and fathers, though.

Time runs fast and the baby turns into a boy and soon comes the day when he is donned with a bag at the back and a bottle in the front. He is also given a nice rectangular Tiffin box and instructed to eat the stuff inside when the bell rings and other children eat theirs. He starts going to school. But he does not get surprised when his teachers force him to mug up strange alphabets and stranger words. He likes the school very much as there are people who understand him. He plays with them and enjoys laughing and sharing and bartering pokemon cards, chocolate frog cards and other stickers and labels that are contemporarily popular. He also likes to sit near the driver in his bus and chat with the driver about the latest adventure of Winnie the Pooh and the bat which his uncle brought for him a few days back. This is the time he gets his first cycle; with a small tire attached sideways. He zooms past his mummy and daddy in the garden, flaunting his new means of transport to his jealous friends.

The clocks around him while away their time while he shoots up like an overfed bamboo tree. Slowly but surely, the responsibilities multiply and so do the tensions. He gets to know the famous Darwinian law of the survival of the fittest and embroils himself into this competition. He is ferociously trained for what they call life. Sometimes he loses his heart because he has to compete with others while training with them and competition means sporadic failures. But he stands up again, like, they say, a tiger, and continues with what, they say, is training for life.

Soon the boy leaves his boyhood and enters teenage. He feels bored at home and feels an urge to explore the world around him. But his mummy and daddy which by now have converted to Mom and Dad kindly explains to him that he still has a lot to learn before going out into the world. He wants to retaliate with an argument that that is exactly what he wants to do by going outside, but hastily composes himself and stays quiet. Then he shuts himself inside his room and tries to learn about the world and life through television, computers, music, magazines and porn. The distance between him and his parents decreases and he finds more satisfaction among his friends.

This is also the time when his body undergoes some hormonal changes and he feels hair grow all over his body. His mindset also changes. He becomes more confused. There are many decisions to take and yet he is not allowed to take them independently. He feels dejected. There is a career to make. There are parents to follow. There is a girl to appease. There are professors to amuse. There is his body to shape and build. Then there is a bike to keep up. There are his friends to heed to. He feels that life is complex and yearns for more control over it.

But then there are many moments when he feels ecstatic. Like the time when he gets his first multi-functional digital watch from his Dad. Like the time when his friends throw a surprise birthday party for him and forget to invite him to it. Like the time when he spends his first lonely moments with the girl he loves. Like the time when his team wins a crucial match because he fell down on the best striker of the opposite team and injured him from playing further. Like the nights he spends in canteens arguing with his friends over something he feels strongly about. Like the time when his favorite professor announces that he is the best student in the class and the very next day throws him out of it when he finds him sleeping on the first bench right under his nose.

Life is definitely worth a try.