Dil To Bachha Hain Ji

It was the usual Sunday morning… I woke up lazily around noon, feeling good about a day of nothingness that stretched invitingly ahead of me. There’s something about Sundays that you love no matter how old you get. It’s one of those parts of childhoods that you never quite leave behind. You can become your own boss and work on your own time, but Sunday never stops being sacrosanct.

With this feeling of utter peace, I started my usual Sunday morning routine. The toothbrush was gleefully ignored and I plonked on the sofa and switched on the TV. One of my favourite movies, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, was playing. Soon I was engrossed in it. I’ve seen the movie many times, but that particular day, a dialogue stayed behind with me. As Hrithik irritatedly told Farhan to grow up and act his age, I couldn’t help thinking about this ‘Bade ho jaao’ dialogue that I’ve heard countless number of times. And the question in my mind is, why? Why this obsessive, compulsive need to grow up? What is the big deal about growing up anyway?

When you think about it, what have we achieved by doing this ‘growing up’ thing? As a child, the idea of being big and important was wildly exciting and wickedly delicious. Back then it felt like grown-ups were having all the fun. And childhood felt like the dues you had to pay before life could become one long party. Every time my mother fed me something unappealing or admonished me with her usual, “If you don’t eat properly, how will you grow up?” I consoled myself thinking that soon it would be my time. I was in a tearing hurry to live the grown-up life.

But now that I’m living that life, I yearn for those childhood days… Of leaping first and thinking second, of taking risks, of grabbing a dog’s tail just to see what would happen, of not asking questions because I was afraid of the answers… Because quite frankly that’s all that growing up seems like to me. The myth has broken, and broken hard.

As an adult, I can confidently say that the world would have been a far more beautiful, uncomplicated, uncorrupted and peaceful place if we hadn’t grown up. Children inspire love, adults create war. Childhood is about togetherness, growing up is about creating boundaries of religion, caste and creed. As children we don’t think of hoarding money, playing political games, owning arms or going to war. These are all things we were taught when we became mature and grown-up. We didn’t know how to deceive as kids because we weren’t ashamed of our actions, we learnt to lie as adults, because we don’t have the courage to face consequences. Children are brave—they invent and create. It’s adults who fear—the unknown and the unexplored.

As children, each experience was an adventure. We didn’t do things to prove a point or to move ahead in the rat race. We did things because they were fun. Because they gave us pleasure. All great inventors kept the child inside them alive till the very end. It was their childlike curiosity that helped them embark on each new journey without the baggage of previous failures.

 I wish I had that ability to be fascinated by life each day. I wish I could feel each emotion in my heart in its purest form—without rationalising feelings in my head first…

The pressure to grow up, settle down and take our places in the world order is all around us. The prototype of a responsible adult is dangled in front of us relentlessly, until we give in and join the queue. But every once in a while, I’m tempted to step out of the line and hand the reins to the child in me. As a child, my most prized possession was my cricket ball. It was my most favourite toy. But when I lost it, I did what every child would do—go an buy myself a new one. I wish I could simplify my life and my relationships like that once again.

I don’t want the child inside me to die. Some days, he comes out and plays on his own. Other days, I have to fight for him. The good news is that kids are resilient. I think somewhere inside each of us still lurks that little guy who is just waiting to come out and play. As a child, it was always a fight to get me to brush my teeth. And while the adult in me might make me brush every morning and every night, every Sunday, the child overrides reason and logic and does what he wants. Akhir dil toh bachha hai ji… Isse baccha hi rehne do.  

Zen And The Game of Football

Zen & The Art Of Football

It was his first football trip, we’d bought tickets for the Champions League finals in Munich on a lark, and thankfully we managed to make it to Munich on those dates. I’ve been to many football games before… I’ve travelled nations, crossed continents—the works—to witness history being made. But for my friend, it was a whole new experience, a whole new universe that had suddenly opened up for him… It was like watching Alice take her first few tentative steps into the wonderland. At the end of two days, my football-virgin friend was a convert. Watching my friend finding delight in football made me take a closer look at my own relationship with the sport I’ve spent almost two decades with. Football is so much a part of my life, we’re so deeply connected, that I’d forgotten the time when it all began. Spending time with a newly minted football fan led to a paradigm shift. Through him, I revisited the start of my journey, pondered about the long road I’ve travelled since and marveled at where I stand today. I realised that the game that I love so has changed me as a person, taught me lessons I wouldn’t have learned otherwise and has been a symbol of permanence in my life. It’s my own personal life coach, therapist and spiritual guru all rolled into one!

Let me start with the most basic of the life lessons that football has taught me. It’s taught me to push and break boundaries set by others. Think about it: when you’re sitting in Germany sandwiched between a man from Mexico and a woman from Vietnam, watching an English team owned by a Russian guy with players from the Ivory Coast, France and Portugal, playing against a German team with just 4 native players; what will you think about? At that time, Samar Khan, Mumbai, India, becomes a very small part of my identity. I’m a part of something bigger, and something within me surges to meet and embrace that new bigness of purpose.

The world comes together on a football field. Not just physically, but mentally. It’s awe-inspiring to be living an experience with people from more countries that one person can visit in a lifetime of travelling. It is exhilarating to find a friend in a pocket of the world you didn’t even know existed! A football field makes you realise the vastness of the world and the smallness of our lives… When we’re restricted to one small corner of the world, we start believing that our problems and our joys are bigger than they really are… That we’re actually just a very small piece of a very large universe… The football field is the best place to discover that the world and our lives don’t need to end in our backyards…

I’ve witnessed two football world cups and both times have been life-changing experiences. Your passport ceases to matter on a football field. You’re just two people, from opposite corners of the world sitting in the bleachers, sipping beer and possibly making a new friend. You might be supporting each others’ nemesis, but the love of the game is too big, all-encompassing and all-consuming to be tarnished by these differences. I wonder that if we can do it for football, why can’t we apply this principle in all spheres of our lives… Why can’t we break boundaries and be unified by a common love?

Football is what is common between 178 nations in this world... Each country has its own food, culture, clothes, flavours and weathers. But amidst all these distinctions, there is one common ground where all these countries meet—football. It is the one game that is played the same way all over the world. Unlike cricket, there are no versions of the sport, or different formats like in car racing… It is the same everywhere… It is the medium through which the underprivileged of these countries can come into their own and take their place on the world stage. It doesn’t need any fancy training or special equipment to play… It is simply a celebration of pure talent and grit. The games history is littered with examples of legends that have come from nothing and gone on to conquer the world with their genius in the game. Football is an equalizer. It treats humble beginnings the same as it would a kingdom’s heir.

Often enough, in our hectic lives, we’ve wished for the world to stop for a few seconds so we could get off the carousel that our lives have turned into. For me, football is that emergency lever that brings everything to a screeching halt. When I’m watching football, the world and its problems cease to exist and to matter. Football is my reprieve from the maddening world. The unadulterated joy after a goal, and even the crushing disappointment if my team loses, are like escape routes in a burning building for me. Those 90 minutes are the closest one can come to feeling an emotion in its purest form. Those emotions are not at the mercy of the aches and pains of the real world. The mind stops working and the heart works overtime. So there is no politics and no prejudice… Just pure love for the sport.

It gives me hope… It makes me believe that if I’m capable of loving a sport with so much passion, I can love many other things created by god for us… Thanks to football, despite the confusing and multi-layered world I live in, I know I’m capable of pure love and passion. Most of us lack that kind of faith in ourselves. I owe my reaffirmation to football! Its something that has liberated my soul

PS: If any woman ever feels that men can’t be loyal, make her meet a football fan. More likely than not, he still supports the football club he supported as a child! ;)

THE BUSINESS OF LOVE

Joey… that’s the name of the black Labrador that I brought home 7 years ago… They say dogs love their masters unconditionally… In many ways I believe that’s true. No matter how badly I behave or how bad my mood is, Joey always manages to make me feel loved. He doesn’t love me only on the good days…nor does he want anything in return for the love that he gives me. Joey knows only to give love…without conditions, censorship or limits… Every time I look at Joey, I wonder, why is it that an animal is able to preserve the essence of a beautiful emotion like love, but we humans have converted it into a business deal? Why do we treat love like barter between two individuals, in which both parties must give and receive in equal measures or else the deal falls through? Shouldn’t love be freely given, without any pre-conditions and exit clauses?

Our very first experience with love comes in the form of parents and then god. Society, our families and everything around us teaches us to love our parents and god. It is a universal truth and a norm in almost all cultures. In principle, we’re told, right from our childhood, that our parents and god love us… And they do… But is that love unconditional? And is our love for them unconditional either? 

My contention is that our love for god is based on greed and fear, two of the most negative emotions that we’re capable of. But I can’t even blame a child for viewing god through the prism of greed. Because when have we ever been taught to love god unconditionally? From the time we begin to understand things, understand right from  wrong, we’re told that only if we live life ‘a certain way’, will god love us and shower us with his blessings. We’re made to believe that unless we walk the path as prescribed by our religion and religious texts, he won’t love us and give us what we want… Who amongst us was taught to simply love god and all his creations? Who was told that god will love us back unconditionally, even if we choose to walk a path that others frown upon? That it didn’t matter whether you eat pork or drank whiskey or married outside your caste...god would still love and cherish you. Why were so many disclaimers attached to god’s love? Shouldn’t he love us unconditionally…irrespective of our mistakes or failures? Why is god’s love measured against a balance sheet…where only if my good deeds outnumbered my bad ones, would I be worthy of god’s love?

And why should my love for him be based on fear…fear of his wrath and its consequences… Shouldn’t at least the love for god be pure and honest…unaffected by what he gives us and when? It shouldn’t diminish when things don’t pan out the way we wanted them to, or overflow when we get exactly what we desired. But unfortunately, it does.

Next, our parents… It’s not a pleasant thought, but I don’t think that even a parents’ love for their children is unconditional… If it were, we wouldn’t constantly be pushed and prodded in the direction that they think is best. If we truly believed our parents loved us unconditionally, we wouldn’t always be worried about adhering to their moral code, principles and ideas. If we were secure in the knowledge of their love, we would be free to grow in like a tree…in any direction that we chose too. We wouldn’t constantly feel the need to prove ourselves worthy of their love. There would be no need to show how much we ‘loved’ them by doing things they wanted…

Most parents emotionally blackmail their kids into adopting their beliefs in the name of love. The love that they give their children while raising them is expected to show returns—with interest. Parents expect to be repaid in kind. Each sacrifice and every gesture is recorded so that they can be tallied later.

I do concede that even if we decide to chart out own paths instead of following theirs, most parents wind up accepting it, and more often than not, still love us… But somewhere deep inside, the feeling of disappointment and resentment continues to linger...and it erupts the moment we falter or fail. We’ve all felt the bitter taste of the words, ‘I told you so,’ at some point in our lives, haven’t we?

My point is, if the two most elemental loves of our lives—from the time of birth, to our growing up years and adulthood—are based on a carefully monitored balance sheet, how are we expected to love unconditionally when we grow up and have adult relationships?

Most of the relationships in our adult life are born out of our needs and not a desire to give or love without reason. We ‘love’ only those people who fulfill a certain need or requirement in our life. But that isn’t love, that’s simply a convenient and businesslike arrangement.

When was the last time we loved without wanting anything in return? It might be unrealistic and utopian, but wouldn’t we hurt less if we loved unconditionally? Because then we would demand and expect less from the people in our lives. We would give without the anticipation of returns.

Nature has a way of loving unconditionally… The sun doesn’t ask for anything in return for the sunlight that it gives… Neither does the moon for the calming serenity that its light gives us… Or even the rain for washing away negativity with each cooling drop. And I believe that god doesn’t want anything from us in exchange for his love either. So why have we turned love into a business? Why do we calculate love like we would calculate the profits and losses for our financial year? Why do we insist that people who we ‘love’ and are in relationships with, must behave in a certain way, do a certain kind of things and think in a certain way?

Some might say it is impossible and impractical. But I say, love is not meant to be practical or sensible… It is meant to transcend logic and reason…it only makes you feel… warm and fuzzy…just the way Joey makes me feel when he licks my feet even when I’m at my grouchiest worst. And even if I pull my feet away, he doesn’t sulk or withhold his love… He simply finds my feet again, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to do…and resumes licking them…without questioning my mood or wanting to change it. Joey knows how to give love and give it unconditionally… Maybe it’s time I learnt it too. 

The 28 year old virgin

He is a friend of a friend and at 28, he’s still a virgin… He lives in Mumbai, works for a bank, looks fairly decent and is well-travelled... So I was highly surprised by this declaration of ‘virtue’.
When asked why, his answer is simple—he’s waiting for the right one. That special someone. According to him, sex follows love. And unless he truly loved the girl, it wasn’t going to happen. In his own words, he’s ‘single’. And everyone else, whether with one partner or many, was not single. Basically, for this guy, sex was what determined your relationship status.And if you not celibate you not single .

Meeting this guy prompted me to think about relationships… And the definition of ‘single’. What does being single actually mean? Are we single when we’re free from emotional attachments? Or are we single when we have not one but multiple sexual partners? And at what point in our emotional and sexual lives do we stop being single?

Let’s break this down. If we were to follow this guy’s definition, the minute you become sexual active, you lose the right to call yourself single. But at the same time, the sex has to be with a special someone. So what does that make the people who are sleeping with multiple people, all of who are special in their own ways? Does that make them single or in multiple relationships? I think the problem is with the concept of ‘a relationship’. Why the finality? Why the boundaries?

For a lot of my friends, the day you get emotionally attached to one person you stop being single… In their words, when you stop exploring options, that’s when you can stop calling yourself single… Till then, technically, you’re footloose and fancy-free…  By that logic, if emotional attachment is what determines whether one is single or not, does that mean that people who date more than one person at a time or are “exploring options” aren’t emotionally attached to those people? Is that even possible… To share a part of your life, for whatever length of time, and not form an attachment for a person?

Does that mean that no matter what the depth of a relationship, unless it comes with the tag of exclusivity, it isn’t good enough? Is that fair to the people concerned? Even if we’re just ‘exploring options’, who is to say that ‘option’ means nothing unless you turn it into a permanent thing? Why are we giving anyone, whether it’s society, friends or acquaintances, so much power? Why does anybody but you get to decide how special a person from your past or present is?

Let’s link sex and singlehood. Does being single imply celibacy? According to my virgin friend, they go hand in hand. If we’re to believe that premise, we’d be hard pressed to find ‘single’ people in this day and age!

And what about people with multiple sexual partners? Are they single??? If they are, then that would imply sex without emotional attachment.Is that always possible??...to have sex without any emotions ?? Which Mr Virgin would say is a bad, bad thing to do. And if they aren’t, then the whole ‘a relationship’ theory falls apart. Because there’s no ‘a relationship’ here. I don’t think our man Mr Virgin would approve of scenarios two either. Damned if you’re single and damned if you’re not.

The problem isn’t with feeling too much or feeling for too many, it is with trying to find labels for everything. Why is it so important for anyone but the two people involved to know when a casual relationship turns serious?? Why does there have to be a marker in the relationship’s chronology that tells a third person the exact time when merely hanging out  turned into going on dates which then transformed into dating? And at what point does casual sex become serious?? Why have we drawn so many lines and boundaries in our heads?
Some would say boundaries make life easier, they help make decisions. I think they’re cumbersome.
Because with boundaries comes the fear of crossing them. And the repercussions. We behave in a manner compliant with the boundary because to do otherwise would mean to redefine a relationship.I have always been amused by women going to great pains to explain to a guy that they are just “friends” almost boxing the poor guy into corner!!

A few days ago I went for a singles party… A place for single people of both sexes to meet and mingle… There were a few familiar faces, and when I walked up to say hello …they were almost embarrassed to be seen there .. they  took great pains to emphasise, repeatedly, that they were there just to hang out and not to ‘look for love’. It was almost as if they were reluctant to admit that they were single!! Whether they were looking to date, marry or simply to get laid, what was the big deal in admitting that we live in a city where meeting new people is as difficult as finding open spaces? Why is being single a reflection on our ability to form lasting bonds? At what point did being single stopped being a choice and became a burden instead? Why should anyone be made to feel apologetic for not having a wife or girlfriend on our arm at the party? Or for that matter a different woman at every party !! Why is it so incomprehensible for a person to choose to stay single, to refuse to be tied to one person? Why is it a reflection on a person’s moral fibre?

Being single is a state of mind… When you’re free from the bonds that society has created… And the compartments that you’re forced to shove your relationships into. Do we have to define every relationship? Does every person have to be labeled as a friend, girlfriend, lover or just an acquaintance? And must everything that follows with that person follow a rigid path? Because every label comes with a long list of dos and don’ts… Instructions that govern us and that relationship. Why can’t we just let things be? Why can’t we let every relationship define its own path instead of giving it a map and a navigation system?
And let’s define our relationship status the way the government does. The census form has only three columns—married, not married and divorced. I’m divorced. ☺

WE ONLY HAVE 60 SECONDS

It was a weird kind of a Saturday… I witnessed the paradox of life… In one evening, I saw two diametrically opposite sides of life... First, I attended a prayer ceremony for someone who could have achieved so much but didn’t get the chance to… And later that same Saturday, I attended a party to celebrate success and the successful… A celebration of the A game, and people who had achieved the kind of success most people only dreamt of in their lifetimes. 

He was only 26… He wanted to be the best actor in the world… He wanted to make movies that the world would remember long after he was gone… He wanted to marry the woman he dreamt of… And there was no doubt in his mind that he’d find her someday. He wanted to do so much… And he was going to do it all… SOMEDAY.

But death took away Akshat without any warning… And along with Akshat went all his dreams and hopes for that elusive someday.

The 40-odd people that had gathered that afternoon to say their final goodbyes, could not help but remember the smiling face that greeted you whenever you saw him… He was gone, but not without knowing that he had touched at least these 40 lives that had come to mourn.

That same evening I sat amongst Milkha Singh, Kapil Dev, Dhanraj Pillai and many other sportsmen who had given us Indians many proud moments. These were people who had chased their dream even in their most impossible moments and made them come true… People who had not just touched success, but embraced it… These were people who had done what Akshat wanted to do—they’d made history…

Two events... The same day… But just one lesson… That we only have the next 60 seconds... So let’s make it count.

I’ve entered my 40th year… You’d think it would shake me up. Take a closer look at my life and make life-altering and uncharacteristic decisions. In a way, that has happened… It’s only not quite that dramatic. I’ve realised that the one change I want to make is to find time for my cricket. I don’t want to miss practice week after week till it simply becomes something I was good at once upon a time.

For the 3 hours that I practice, I’m doing something for me. It’s the feeling closest to unadulterated happiness, and I need that in my life. It’s a different kind of fulfillment, one that’s got nothing to do with work, profits, losses and deadlines.

I know I should have played more when I was younger… I shouldn’t have wasted my 20s and a large part of my 30s doing things that I didn’t enjoy. But I did. And the things that I really wanted to do were always put on the backburner. Tucked behind the excuse of there’s always tomorrow, the next week, the next year…

But now the years have rolled into one another, and I still have a long, long list of things that I meant to do… Someday. But Akshat’s loss made me realise that there might not be a someday for me. It might not be something as final as death. But maybe something will happen the next week that will take away my ability to spin the ball, to chase it across the field.

Aren’t most of us guilty of the same crime? Aren’t we cheating ourselves of happiness, of precious moments of joy because we’re waiting for another day to let them envelop us? It might be a small, inconsequential thing for the others, but for you it might be the line that separates the dark cloud from the silver lining. Why are we so callous with our happiness? Why do we keep putting it off? And what makes us so damn sure that happiness is going to keep waiting for us to give it a chance? Why don’t we realise that each second that passes us by is a second lost from the gift of life…

That the only thing that we can be certain of is that one day it will all be over… Time is a gift that comes with a sell-by date… Much like the pack of chocolate that has to be thrown away… And all that will be left is a big pile of regret, because we kept waiting for tomorrow to devour the chocolate bit by bit. And when that tomorrow came, we realised that the chocolate had gone bad. Is that what we really want from life?

Youth has a tendency to make one feel infallible… To make one believe that everything is possible… It gives one the arrogance to believe that ‘I am invincible’…  That feeling that nothing can touch you… Not even death… It’s only middle age that makes you realise that what you felt when you were young was an illusion and the reality is that we are here on borrowed time… And we have only that much of it remaining to make the most of… That the clock is ticking and we’ve still got so many people to meet and so many lives to touch… To give something of yourself to the people that came in your life… To make sure that the gift of life we’ve received is not spent in believing the illusion that tomorrow is ours…

I’ve realised that I want to spend each day not just searching for any great meaning to my life but in cherishing and making the most of every second that I have here… In just doing things that really matter to me in my heart… things that bring a smile to my face… Do anything… Make anything… The choice is mine… But do something...

Whenever I feel like I have too much time to make true the unfulfilled dreams… I play a game with myself… I look at my watch and concentrate on the seconds hand ticking away… I blank out all thoughts from my mind and just keep looking at it… As it completes one cycle and then another, I think to myself and realise, that no matter what I achieve, how much money I stash away in the bank, what position I reach in my company, there’s no way I can bring back the one minute that just went by. That minute of my life is over… lost and irretrievable.

That Saturday just reinforced my belief… WE ONLY HAVE THE NEXT 60 SECONDS, make them matter… To you, if not to anyone else.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

It’s a little late, I know… About 20 days late, but Happy New Year, my friends!

I’ve been wondering why we celebrate the end of the year the way we do. Why do we throw this big party on 31st December every year…? Is it to celebrate our happiness, achievements and the good luck we were blessed with in the year gone by? Or are we celebrating the hope that the coming year will bring us more, bring us better things? Or do we get piss-drunk and party like there’s no tomorrow because we feel like we really don’t have much to celebrate in the rest of the 364 days in the year? What is the reason?

For some reason, I was thinking about all these things as I sat on a lovely beach in Bali, waiting for 2012 to begin. Maybe it was the generous dose of magic mushrooms in my system, but I couldn’t shake off this one nagging thought: what was so different about  31^st December? For those who doll up and head out to party the night away, how was this night any different, any more special than the average Friday or Saturday night? Every weekend, we follow the drill: dress in your finest –high heels for women, best cologne you can buy for men, head to swanky club, meet friends, get drunk, stumble back home.

But if the 31^st IS special. If we’re saying goodbye to an important year, or welcoming a year that promises happiness, shouldn’t we be doing it better? Shouldn’t we be treating it with more respect? Treating the end of the year like any other weekend is like treating your Lamborghini the same way you would your Honda City. While both are machines meant to transport your from point A to B, theirs IS a difference, isn’t there. In the same way, while a Friday night might mark the end of taxing week and the 31^st might help you see the last of a trying year; and both might simply be markers of time, there IS a difference.

I personally believe that the last 31st of the year must be different. It should mean something to us. Because it’s important to at least start a new year thinking we’re going to make it count. And take lessons from the year gone by in the future.

When we wake up on the morning on the 1^st of January, nothing really changes. We wake up a little later than usual, go to work in the same office, sit at the same desk, meet the same people, deal with the issues we’d left incomplete, fight the same fights, hate the same people… Same relationships, same friends, same us. Just a different calendar.

But maybe it doesn’t all have to be the same. Maybe more the new calendar should be joined with other changes…

I think that every year should be treated like a chapter of your life… A chapter that means something in the story of your life… And the lessons from that chapter have to mean something as well… All of us make mistakes; sometimes they are minor blips, sometimes major blunders… I think we should at least try and use the end of a year to say a final goodbye to those mistakes and blunders… We need to flush them out of our systems and promise ourselves to at least try to never make them again…

I think the best way to celebrate New Year’s Eve is by using it as a day meant for spring-cleaning the relationships closet of our lives… Get rid of the dead wood that we’ve accumulated through the year and make amends with the people that we may have knowingly or unknowingly hurt. It’s the time to either build the bridges that we’ve broken or burn them for good.

Let’s start treating the end of the year as a time to sit back and take stock…  As a time to sit back and take a long, hard look at ourselves and our lives… It is an important milestone, one that arrives at its designated time with military precision.

Very often, we tend to sweep everything under the carpet… All our emotional baggage, our hurts, aches, disappointments… We sweep them off the bed and shove them under the carpet and refuse to deal with it until one day some of the garbage underneath begins to stink up the place and you end up falling sick.

Imagine if we were to start using the end of every year as an excuse to spring-clean our heart and soul… Emotional baggage is the heaviest to carry and it keeps us from enjoying simple pleasures of our lives. So every year it needs to be cleaned… Every year we ought to make sure that we get rid of the hatred and negativity that we carry within us for things, places and people… At least at the beginning of the year, our slate needs to be clean. Don’t we owe ourselves that? We all make resolutions, but how many of us actually see them through? Sadly, most of us end up treating our resolutions like fads…

Let’s make the end of a year and the beginning of the next one count for something… Let’s write a new end…  The end of what we will not be and do next year… And let’s write a new beginning … The beginning of some new life experiences… Let the start of the New Year be more than another drunken haze. There are 52 other Fridays and Saturdays for that! HAPPY NEW YEAR! 

ALL THAT WILL REMAIN IS A BBM UPDATE...

I was in sunny Cape Town and about 3 hours behind India, time-wise… So when I woke up that morning, I was surprised to see that my BBM was inundated with the same update over and over. Everyone was talking about Dev Saab’s sad demise… Some had his song lyrics as their status messages, others used a quieter, ‘RIP Dev Saab’, to pay tribute to him. But each and every person I knew back home was feeling the loss. And here I was, in a land far, far away from home… Amongst people who maybe had heard of Dev Anand, but in most likelihood had not, and were detached from his death… Unaffected and uncaring. As the morning turned into afternoon, the BBM updates turned to the mundane for fodder. Work stress, deadlines, schedules, joys, sorrows and fights demanded attention. And the time for mourning was clearly over. The world was moving on, minus one amazing man this time. And as I sat on the beach, looking at the sky above me, I couldn’t help but wonder… Is this what is to become of us all? That no matter how amazing someone’s journey, a common fate awaits us all at the other side of the finishing line… To become just another BBM update?

Dev Saab was a man possessed by the art of film-making and his love for cinema... For him, the celluloid world was far more real, more his own, than the physical world we all live in. And he enjoyed his world till the very end… making and talking films till his last breath. All his life, all that he’d ever done was to make films. Good, bad or unbelievable, he’s made them regardless of what anyone thought. And as I sat in Cape Town, away from Mumbai and the life that I have here, I began to realise that somewhere, we all do this to ourselves.

We become so obsessed with what we do... With our lives… Our existence… Our goals, purposes, wants and wishes, that we forget that there exists a huge world outside the box we call our mind… A universe that doesn’t really know who you are or what you do. A universe that doesn’t care about your achievements or ambitions… We forget, far too easily, that at the end of the day, we’re just a tiny little speck in the universe… And we start believing that the world revolves around the speck that is us. All our time is spent in thinking about what we’re doing and what our lives mean. We get so engrossed, so involved in our lives that we forget the larger picture... we forget that there is more to life than just us. No matter how big we think we are, there will always be a part of the world that doesn’t even know who we are or what we do. They don’t care whether our last film was a hit or not… Whether our client got media coverage or not… Or whether the actor is happy with his clothes or not… They don’t care what’s happening in OUR universe.

One of the things that traveling has taught me is that we shouldn’t take ourselves, our lives, our work and everything around us so seriously… We shouldn’t get so obsessed with it that everything starts revolving around one tiny cog in the wheel… Because when that happens, we tend to blow up and exaggerate that cog’s importance. Everything around it becomes larger than life. We lose perspective. And once you lose perspective, you’re in no way different from a headless chicken that clucks around in all directions.

I’ve witnessed two football world cups and travelled across several countries for it. And some of my most cherished memories from those times revolve around the people that I’ve met while travelling. I’ve met people from those corners of the world that have never even heard of Mumbai or Bollywood. Nor do they want to. I’ve met people who don’t give a damn about Shah Rukh Khan and would look at me like I’d sprouted horns if I started discussing the falling TRPs of shows on Indian TV… When you are in this large gathering of people from all over the world, people who don’t care about the things you do, people whose lives are diametrically opposite to yours, you learn to look at things the way an outsider looking in would see them. And most often, you don’t end up liking what you see. And things that seemed life-altering, stop mattering… The definitions change and the glass casing in which you had unknowingly locked yourself, comes crashing down. It becomes easier to breathe when that happens, doesn’t it? Because the air isn’t thick with the tension of failed expectations, mental pedestals and broken dreams. It is clean and pure. And infuses you with life, instead of sucking it out of you.

But it’s not just work that we use as the hinge for our precarious lives. Our relationships have an equal role to play. We become dependent on the people around us. Sometimes for material gain, sometimes for what they do for us mentally, emotionally or physically. What they say and do and think becomes prism through which we see ourselves. So a lot of our effort goes into acting in a manner that they will approve of. But we forget that our happiness is bigger, and much beyond the scope of what someone else’s perception of us is.

We lead such self-centered lives, don’t we? All we care about is what is happening within a radius of 2 sq. kms of our lives… The people who live there and the work that we do in that area… We obssess about it and make it the centre of our existence. We push ourselves, our bodies, our limits to reach that elusive thing called success… Something that lingers just an inch away from our grasp. We’re constantly climbing the hill, hoping that someday we’ll reach the top, that one day we’ll be on the number one position. We’re forever hungry for that look of appreciation in someone’s eyes… For that pat on the back... Not realising that it doesn’t really matter… Because once you jump out of the fish-bowl and into the pond, you will see a world that you had never imagined. A world where there will always be a bigger fish, a world that will make you realise that you’re just one tiny part of a large, complex, multi-layered eco-system.

No matter what we do, what we achieve and what journey life ends up taking us on, ultimately, it’s all going to come down to a one-line BBM update… And only for a few short hours. So let’s not think that everything begins and ends with us… Because it doesn’t.