We are a brave people

We are a brave people. Try as hard as you can, we won’t be budged. Nine blasts in Bangalore, and you think that we will get panicked and our lives will come to a stand-still. No dear, we are strong.

How proud we are of this strength of ours. We keep saying these things, hearing these things. I remember listening to a reporter on TV after the Mumbai blasts that the brave city was still on its toes and what not.

But is it bravery or insensitivity? I agree that to get panic-stricken is not a solution, but is being unconcerned is? TV channels pouring news about blasts and we catch a glimpse of it while rushing for our next class. Someone got a little more engrossed and shouted “Oh shit, got late, will lose an attendance”. An attendance versus nine blasts in your neighborhood!
Are we brave, or are we just too detached from others। I am fine, my family, my friends all are fine- once I ensure that I get back to my daily chores. Could I have acted equally “courageously” had a friend of mine been one of the unlucky ones?

Oh yes, I know I have spent too long in thinking and writing this and have to work on a submission. After all I, too, am brave.

It’s my life… Is it???

I was walking down a road, met a person looked at him and moved on. I was walking on down a road, met a person said hello and asked him the way to the post office. I was walking down a road, met a person talked to him, exchanged numbers and are friends till date. We, the two people involved in each case, are the ones who decide what that meeting would result in. But who decides that we meet in the first place? I could have chosen some different road to walk, some different time to travel. But both of us happened to be in the same place at the same time. Was this a part of some pattern?

In my college there are close friends, casual friends and acquaintances. A and I became friends because we happened to be in the same section, B because we had adjacent rooms, C because we joined the same club. I never got to talk to X because we were in different sections, in different hostel blocks- none of which we chose ourselves. And I thought it was I who was choosing my friends. The fact is that this predecided script was given to me just to act upon.

I am introduced to someone. In two meetings we fall in love and in two months time we get married; and I think I chose my life partner. Who decided our first meeting?

We claim to have control over every thing in our lives. If we go just a few steps back we would realize that we had nothing to do in the decision-making process. The path was laid down well before we started walking on it. How could I have walked on the path if it was not built? We can’t even decide who does and doesn’t become a part of our lives, let alone the more complicated issues. Trying to assume that we do have some freedom to decide, life can at max be considered a multiple choice question- I can maybe choose one out of the four given options, but cannot write an answer of my own.

Nostalgia

Was flipping through the pages of an album. There were so many pictures of me with my dearest friends. I was in school at that time. We were a group of seven. “Hum saat saath hain”- we always proudly proclaimed. We were so happy together that we never needed anyone else. Others at school were jealous of us, and we laughed at them. That was the time of innocent love without any conditions. Somehow we thought that never ever would we part- used to talk so much about future- together.

Kids, we were. And very soon reality dawned. We all went to college- all in different parts of the country. We missed each other a lot, used to start planning the summer break together right from the end of the winter break. Thought that, although just twice a year, but we would always keep meeting, keep laughing together.

Still kids, hmmm… Today, three of us are married. So busy with the family that even chats have started becoming rare. Two of us are pursuing our master’s degrees- completely caught with the college schedules. Well, we do meet, but never all of us at the same time, at the same place. We talk about the days that were- the fun, the carefree moments, the wild pranks and the stupid yet sweet vision of future. But one thing we all have been lucky about- we all are happy wherever we are. The days of the past do bring with themselves nostalgia, but also a smile. We were happy with each other; we are happy about each other :) .