Sometimes the strangest things can ignite your minds, thought process and get you thinking. Over the past one week, a lot of random thoughts ignited out of various situations have led me thinking
Boring life or Age ?
It was a Friday evening, and I was catching up with my friend who has just returned to town after a long stay in Chennai and she insisted she wanted to eat at Mc Donald’s since there wasn’t a single outlet there. When I walked into that noisy and crowded Mc Donalds outlet at Parle, I just couldn’t handle the people, the noise, I wanted to get out. Some how we found a place to sit down, and as I waited with my friends college going brother as she stood in line to get the food, I remarked,
“Its so funny, some years ago I was a part of this chaos and noise, and now I cant handle this anymore, I think I am getting old”. He smiled and said, "You have not got old, but its just that you have a boring life, working in an Corporate office, if you quit your job and do nothing else, you will enjoy the noise and chaos”
I kept thinking about what he had said, did I really have such a boring life? Didn’t I do interesting and adventureous things ? After all i am this adventurer who those the craziest of things
Survival
I was reading one of the interesting short stories, and I came across this story called, Hope, which was about this rickshaw driver in Delhi narrating the story of his life. How he had walked over 500 km from his village in UP to come to Delhi to find a job, he walked 25km on a daily basis to work in a mill, and he was jobless for sometime after the mill closed down, worked in a printing press earned good money and then was jobless again after the new automatic printing machines came into existence.
A couple of days later, I was watching a show on Discovery called Colours of India, which was on the poster painting artists of India. In my school days I remember seeing the artists at work painting the latest movie posters or advertisements on the hoardings. This art has now been replaced by the computer. The paint brush of the artist has taken a backseat and all that this artists have are fond memories of the glory days where they were the biggest advertising agencies themselves and now left with some trifle work assignments from abroad.
I kept thinking of the rickshaw driver & the poster artists, how difficult life would have been for him, but they learned to survive, Imagine how you would feel if your source of livelihood is taken away from you.
For the poster artists, so many would have buried their talents behind to take up jobs as delivery boys, or waiters or whatever they got for survival
Marriage as Life insurance
One afternoon I was catching up with two of my married friends over lunch. As we chatted about this, that and other, they talked about their married life, rather one of them constantly bitching about her husband, while the other, the experienced of the lot was teaching her to learn to work around situations. I smiled inside, and told them, that I was glad I wasn’t married and didn’t have to worry about all this so called nokjhoks. To which I really liked what one of them said, “Marriage is like life insurance, just like you invest money for you future, when you invest in a relation like marriage, it’s a little difficult initially to pay the premiums, but when at the age of 60 you need companionship this premium will prove productive” I chuckled and said, your analogy is great, coz just like life insurance there is a risk here too, if your partner dies, the premium has gone down the drain
Singledom
I happened to meet one of favourite elderly friends to pick up some investment papers. As we chatted over Chai, he suddenly said “From my experience I can tell you, being single can get lonely sometimes, and it doesn’t mean that your unhappy, but you just get weird, like sometimes if you have people around, you wouldn’t want to talk to them, and if you are by yourself you will always keep wondering about having company” .
Well on my way back home I pondered about what he had just said. All my life, I have always been single, I grew up as an only child, I remember envying my friends for having siblings, and complaining to my Mom, for not having any brothers and sisters to play with . But as I grew up I got used to my singledom, I liked it that way, I did like meeting cousins, but it was only for a short while, after sometime I wanted my space and my peace. Even now I still do enjoy traveling alone. I don’t think too much if,I don’t have company to watch a movie or a play or to eat out or for any activity I wish to do, I just go ahead do it by myself. Although I do wish, I had company sometimes, and when I do have company sometimes I wish it was otherwise
Childhood
This is something I am constantly reminded off, when I see the little boy serving chai at tea stalls, or when I think of sweet waiter in Rajasthan who had abandoned his studies to work at the hotel we were staying at, or the school boy who missed school to manage the camel we were taking a ride on in deserts of Jaisalmer.
More recently I was cycling through Charkop area, and I saw this huge Maruti van , which was covered, all I saw was these group small children all clamed up together, they looked no different from the beggars we see on the road, I guess they were being taken to some place to be sold or to be trained to beg. As I looked at that van zooming passed me, I wondered what will happen to the childhood of these kids. Thousands and thousands of such children come into this city escaping from their homes in search of a brighter future, leaving their childhood behind
