A Candid Commentary

As chauvinistic as I might sound to you in the next 10 minutes, let me tell you that this is serious stuff. If you're not into it, you’ve not wasted much of your time. The rest of you who happen to “know” me or even slightly relate with me, please go ahead.

Yesterday I thought of catching up on a movie to compensate myself against the week’s exhaustion and ended up watching a recent one- Holiday.
The movie as the trailers suggest, pertains to the lives of the soldiers of the Indian army. Having known that, I was dead sure that it is going to contain plenty of action sequences which is certainly not my taste. Owing to the freedom of stopping the movie anytime in between and switching on to a seemingly better one, I gave it a try.

As the movie began, my overactive mind kept on imagining what would happen in the next 2.5 hours that would not make me discontinue it midway and I may have a good word to talk about it.

The movie, in a nutshell, revolves around the rationality, wisdom, honesty and dedication of the protagonist, who is a part of the Indian army. He has his ways of dealing with the terrorists and has it all in the end, after going through a LOT.

The film, apart from accommodating patriotism and cheesy Bollywood romance, also provides a room for effective thinking.

I remember being a part of an educational trip in my 9th grade which included visiting a BSF camp. We, a bunch of notorious students, were warned against demanding the soldiers to take us across the border before unloading the bus. What we were also told was to not to ask them anything about their relatives. Yes, these were probably the only Indians who hated talking about their families. The reason being, that remembrance would only bring melancholy and heavyheartedness to weaken them. The reason also being, there is a love greater than, much greater than the hatred they are subjected to face when they are reminded of their families whom they get to meet in ages. As we sat there in front of their tents asking naïve questions (we were not allowed to ask mature questions, remember?) and still getting them answered, there was this unfamiliar biting silence uniting us which we were all helpless about. There must be so many things they would have been reminded of. On seeing us, they might have recalled their own children; on smiling back at someone’s smile, they must be struggling to fight back their tears, and that they were, trust me.

The trip now remains only in some of our photographs and temporary memories and the movie shall also meet the same fate. However, what keeps me going to back to it now and again is the fact that our generation has failed to realize the necessity of those people who happily compromised on a comfortable life and chose to dwell miles away from the cities.

We crib about momentary issues. We only like to “like” stuff on Facebook that demeans our nation and projects a better picture of other nations. We are simply fond of sitting on our couches and cursing the nation for what has been printed in a daily. We only like to loathe our country for its downfalls and we are 24*7 available to debate about them on any given platform. We can never appreciate something unless its absence makes it essential. And this absence, I suspect, is going to be very awful by all means. I wish to make a small but meaningful change in our mentalities by incorporating my thoughts with real events. There is no offense intended personally, or to any group of people, but if I rebuke your arguments and challenge your conscience in this context, I am happy doing so. For there are humans like you and me (or not much like you and me), keeping up all night, in order to shield us, irrespective of our likes and preferences, religions and languages by sacrificing all of what we usually take for granted. Next time before you go ranting, put in a little more thought and you will be compelled to thank for your state of existence.

Feedback is welcome,

Thank you.

The Friendship Business

Hello people! Yet another long stretch of no blog entry, I admit. But I am not grumbling about not having sufficient time or thought to scribble about (or perhaps I am). 

So here we are on the first Sunday of August, better known as- International Friendship Day. The day was proposed in Paraguay in 1958 and since then has been creating a great amount of delirium all over. The spirit of the day is refreshing and manages to drown us in the pool of nostalgia and sentimentality. What I recall when I hear 'Friendship Day' is the Fridays and Saturdays prior to the D- day back in primary section when all our minds had to concentrate on were the belts in our bags and on our lower arms. Studies and everything associated with it were absolutely secondary then. I have memories of the well- planned outings meant for purchasing the bands for our so- called friends who would probably be denied oxygen in case we fail to tie a belt around their wrists. Girly chains, fancy belts, decorative stripes, masculine bands and what not! We hardly ever bothered about what would happen to that useless trash before decomposition. I also get reminded of the physical agony we gladly chose to undergo, courtesy: more than a dozen bands clung to the wrists extending towards the elbow.

The joy we experienced in flaunting was magical. The pride we took in moving around with them- immense. And the pleasure we derived out of all that in entirety was simply irreplaceable. 

Be that as it may, now that we are a little more competent, I retrospect upon all those events and pity those who still believe and follow the tradition religiously. The whole idea doesn't please me. On the contrary, a friend would avoid inflicting pain (which he/she is precisely doing by means of that band) in any possible fashion. A friend would genuinely lend a ear when you need to share something. A friend would be a part of your ecstasy and even be the reason of it. A friend would usher you through darkness to the best of his abilities and hope for nothing in return. A great friendship can take years to build up and a single day is just not enough to prove our friendly feelings to anyone. 

Why don't we pause for a while and give this a thought? Over the decades, has our sensibility been so lazy as to not even allow us to think rationally? To all those crazy fellows wasting the time of their lives exchanging belts and cutting cakes and flooding their Facebook/ Twitter/ Instagram profiles with countless snaps, i honestly think you should 'grow up' in real sense.

 Having a few quality friends, with unsaid promises that they will be there for you no matter what, is going to add more substance to your life than congregating "likes" of total strangers and gaining their adoration.