Friday, November 23, 2007

Faith!

"Faith is stronger than ur conviction"

Long back I had an argument with somone as to why don't I trust people..certainly even I wasn't sure why? for as far as trust is concerned I believe i had it on just 7 people in these 20 years and amongst those 7, the first one was me on any day. I retaliated "I do trust people..its just that I dont have faith on them"...."so whats the difference anyway?"..My addled brain went more flopsy... and I decided to be on a no trust mode untill i'd found what is faith!

yes there is a difference and a stark one. yesterday one of my colleagues at the newspaper agency called up and we spoke about the confusion thats presently hangling around nandigram. We decided we'l meet over a coffee and discuss about the article that has to be on print.
As we sat over a coffee...she narrated a clip scene from nandigram over which my article was to be writen.
"An eight year old girl(bali)...was trapped behind a burning bus..the local commotionist were on a random scurrage to burn and kill people, neverthless of their age and gender....(anybody above twelve was handed a gun to patrol...cause- he should be a localite and he should be a male..and any girl below twelve was either massacred along with her family or if she is over twelve she is raped and then murdered!) ...a local boy(16 years) watching from a distance ran to help the girl ... he was her neighbour... as he stood over the bus top..shoved away the gun and gave the girl his right hand so that she can hold it.....the girl replied "ab bharosa nai hai" (I dont have faith in you)...the boy not being able to decide what to do bent down to the possiblity of gripping her....the girl backed off...as soon as the boy jumped behind to pull her out...the state transport bus blew into pieces...burning them to ashes." all of this was filmed accidently by a fallen camera ..which presently happens to be the red witness for nandigram genocide.

I felt heavy.... for after i watched the almost blurred retaped vedio, that too half of it... I went speechless. balefully i asked her..."why the hell she did not trust him"... since my colleague being quite senior to me....she said somthing after which all came to one fix.... as if the pieces of my puzzle were all set. "she did trust him girl.....its just that she lost faith in him.....she wasnt scared of he being a non-conformist....she was scared of he beinge a human at all. she was scared of inhumanity"



You are born...you have sibblings...you love someone...you marry...you have kids....but even after all of these..at the age of 90 when u face a near death experience you first crave for ur mother...not because u did not trust all these people .... but the first person , you ever had complete faith on this earth is your mother. Be it 9/11 massacre or bhuj earthquake...people helped people not coz they trusted each other...or for that matter no body trusted anybody...it was one human faith that made a stranger ur life saviour.

when victims of beslan school massacre(russia) were treated at the JFK traumatic child caution centre...few unimaginable manuscripts came to define humanity...
amongst the two kids who were trapped at the school gym one being a grade 6 girl(rejevak) and another grade 4 boy (leo) ... who were sacked at the corner in a space of one school bag, they were almost one over the other....the scripts read..."he was on top of me...he wanted to pee...but he was scared for we were not allowed to talk....he looked into my eyes...without saying anythin i nodded.. he pee'd over me...the boy near me puked....and they killed leo"
when asked how did she find at all what leo wanted to say...rejavek herself did not know.
this was human faith....no body trusted anyboy.....all they did was to look at each other....they played upon what is known as emotional trasfix.

when Your human brain cannot act, by using senses...it shuts its receptors and switches on the emotional brain (Amygdala) ... and then its the work of amygdala to reciprocate..it can be a negetive response (as in the case of bali) or a positve one (as in rejaveks case)..but without the use of any physical response...since amygdala is in no connection with the rational brain(neocortex)...u actually never come to know how did u respond at all....it is this amygdala or the emotional brain that responds faith....and it is this neocortex or the rational brain that responds trust.
When u face death...when u feel love...when u act on the spurr of a blink then it is this emotional brain that makes u respond. This is magical indeed..for theres an instinct to kill one another for no reason and theres the other to stop it as well .. all in a sigle unit called human brain...

and we finaly came to consensus that trust is something which u can control....and faith in all reasons in uncontrolable...instinctive and gifted by god
you might trust a person for 40 years and then one fine day...he may walk over you. whereas you may havent even met each other before...but at the first sight u might feel a sense of belonging....i asked ... "is that what we call love at first sight"...we both laughed..but we both knew that of all the people we have met and we will meet, we ourselves were not sure who are our faith keepers..for till date all we bothered about was to win this trust game!

"unlike what u may realise it has got no connections with the number of years You have spent with each other.... its how many years you desire to spend more... that decides faith" - Helen Keller

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Comatose!

This is about two people iv known for sometime of my life....and for quite a long time i was in a limbo as to whther i should write about them or shouldn't I..but eventually as things stand today I don't feel any privacy attack even if I pen them down....so I start..I'v used nick names for the story is true and few are very much alive and living.

she was 5 when she had an acute asthamatic attack.. I saw her falling on the hard cemented floor of my school indore play room...she sweated badly...of the 64 of us who stood there not knowing what exactly to do...I cried as loud as I could...cause she was my best friend...and for that fraction of time I thought she is goind to die....my junior school principle came running....took her into her lap and then we all were sent to our respective classes.....As i started walking out of the class..i turned for the last time to see her...but was unable...i went back to KG II B. She returned the next week...all happy..more fatter...and honkering bashing to all the other desks as she reached mine ..almost shouting.." oye, Im back"... I was happy! this is the only scene that i remember of my kinder garten days! Me and "Tichhi" as we all fondly used to call her.

We have done almost everything together from knowing whats inside a room where all senior "didi's" from higher secondary used to go...where we being kids were prohibitted and which read something like "GCR" whose full form we didn't know at that time and eventually could find nothing interesting as it was just another "Girls common room"...to.... laughing and asking weird questions at human anatomy classes...we were great together!
Growing up was never a process to us..coz we never came to knw how we grew up so fast...right from famous five to GnR...from fancy dress competitions to walking at farewell ramps...it was fun..and by that i certainly don 't mean we never had a fight...we had...and sometimes bad ones too..but yes, they were never bigger than our yaari-dosti :)


Then on a sunday morning she called me to say she found a guy of 'her kind' with whome she likes just to be with or to be more precisely "faalen in love" with.....that night we partied like anything....played football till 2 in the night...got wet.....went for a drive...ducked parents while returning home in the morning....we'd done evry crazy stuff that was available to us...just to celebrate that one amongst us is no more single!!!
His name was CJ or thats what we used to call him....I'd met him once when we all partied again as CJ cracked AIIMS...was a real time brainy kid....yes, we were happy then for tichhi for CJ and for our dosti....two months passed after CJ went to med school...he used to be upset for not being able to cope up with his studies...and so we all used to cheer him and buck him we knew this was just a passing phase....but things turned out worse....CJ turned out to be a doper...we tried pulling him back from that "mess" of his life...but as fate wanted ..he went deeper and deeper into it....he lost it!
we realised that tichchi shouldnt be with him anymore for he was abusive...irrational and on top of it he was a druggist...


Another sunday morning and another call...it was from tichchy's mom.....that tichchi is hospitalised...i knew what she tried...its just that i din want me to believe that she has actually done what she said to me the night before "babe.. i think il kill myself"....i was sure she was kidding for i knew her not be a fool head....but yes i also knew she was damn into CJ...i went running...saw her resembling the exact color of a white bed sheet she was lying in....when she was up from the comatose...she told me Cj has been caught by police and she was scared!

"scared of what tichchy?" i did ask
"nothing babes..Im just scared"

she returned home ... all friends of ours planned for a trip to mumbai....we went.....had fun...we walked through bandstand...listening to november rain...went to cafe shops....movies theatres....we were the same as we were when CJ wasnt there.


we came back and another downpour waited to wet us all ...... we heard Cj got into an accident and was no more....

for sometime tichchy went blank....she started smoking... doping? I was'nt sure...but yes she wasn't stable.....all our night stays turned out to be a strike process for me and few more of my friends to pull her back from the "mess".....the more we tried ... the more she lost it....somehow we felt she wasnt the same one....or if im not wrong i just failed to understand her anymore...19 years of friendship came crashing in front of me...as she said "You know whats your problem....You are too much practical and too insensitive to understand even your best friend"
those words still shake me like anything....that night i came back at 2 and cried the rest of it in front of my dad...for all i knew that friendship is somthing that i'd never compromised!

another morning...another call.....her second attempt! I'd seen the room where she tried spilitting whatever she wanted...
5 days after, her dad took her someplace out of india..to her masi's place...for she needed treatment....of what.. even i din know.
it was 5th of june when i went to the airport to see her off....as she was checking in she held my hand and said "sorry babes....and..oye,I'll be back"......and she walked.
I couldnt stand there.. for the only person i ever cry to is my dad...as i was walking back to my car ...I turned back just to see her for the last time...but i was unable to...my school indoor games room came flashing into my memory..i ran back!
She did not return till date....occasional call's to uncle and aunty came to seize as i realised for them anything that associated tichchy was not to be kept in touch with....in an age where emails, Im's and fone calls are synonymous to existences..here we are...way far into different worlds. with no connections at all!
Even today when i look at my school ..I see the best of what I had and the worst of what i lost!
but life goes on..maybe someday..somewhere....as we said "right on the roof tops of empire state...we will party...boooz all night and look at the stars".

"Be a writer yaar...what fun is there in driving a car if u compare it to the power of moving emotions".... when i'd taken up engineering ticchy in her casual tone sounded something like that...and so not a whole novel but just a blog for her!

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Crash

my first drive..my first crash...my first loss...somethings cant be defined by words....this was few seconds before a crash!..though all escaped unhurt...but my first 'hello' to fear was then.....and each time i look at this...im speechless....write what u feel when u see this pic....let it be anything...and by that i really dont mind when u write 'whatta crap'. just post it as a comment!