Censuring Natural Myths

I don’t know the exact moment when this thought struck me. Maybe it was while saying Goodbye to Papa as he rode left from CISF towards Bareilly, slowly waving his hand with words of blessings ‘May you be successful’. I suddenly felt lost as I took a calculated right turn and drove on towards my office in Noida.

My eyes were on the roads, a part of my brain speculating best ways to dodge traffic and reach office faster, but my mind was entirely consumed by a notion so spontaneous, it infected every quantum of my conscience in that time bracket – an ‘Aha’ moment indeed.

The notion of certain natural myths we accept as a part of universal truth.

‘I’ am not one. But many.

Our lives are intertwined so complicatedly, it blinds us to how delicately each action, each moment binds us to an action-reaction couple with every single entity around us. In theory “I live for myself”. But this is like the ideal gas equation – so restricted by assumptions that it never can be true. Like ripples on surface of water, our life is always in dynamic equilibrium. Vibrations of my ripples impact my parents, siblings, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and enemies; in fact even those I might not even know. And but obviously theirs impact mine equally symmetrically. The intensity and nature of this impact varies. But this is what stands to define ‘Life’ at any single point in time. I visualize this as mad commotion on a water surface hit by small and big stones, each ripples an event, and each intersection of crests and troughs that mutual action-reaction impact on multiple distinct lives. This lack of constant, and persistence of disturbances in space and time gives birth to the concept of being alive – something that no science can ever perfectly mathematically model.

The x=t isn’t Infinite.

I confess being fooled by this subtle fallacy everyday - the fact that I’m going to live forever. Even when I do realize the naivety of my agreement, I face a failure to relate exactly to the concept of ‘Not being alive anymore’. The culprit is an apparent ‘slowness’ of time and the fact that we rarely look at the mirror and realize we’re a day, a month, a year, a decade older. The fact that yesterday and tomorrow seem so indistinguishable makes us extrapolate the similarity and forget to notice how our physical and mental contours entirely transform between any two points of time. Hence from when I was a kid learning to eat and speak and walk, to when I was leading conferences, travelling miles across states, and solving complex calculus - scarcely seem contained in one single life. But such is the beauty of time.

‘Infinity’ would never exist for me, not for my loved ones, not for you, not for anyone – is a painful disillusionment.

‘I will do X one day’ will never happen.

I often have unplanned talks with myself. These talks mostly concern what I’m doing and what I want to be doing. And seemingly, it is so easy to fool the heart and say “That day will come.” And so life moves on. And so life did move on when I was 12 and wanted to play infinite Tekken-3 matches, and told myself ONE DAY I’ll install a full console machine at my home when I’m grown up and earning. Life did move on when I entered college and told myself ONE DAY I will be so filthy rich, I’ll ask my mom and dad to stop working crazy hard (as they have been doing all their life), gift mom exquisite gold jewelry, dad a beastly Harley, and surprise them with exotic vacations. It is still moving on today as I sit in my cabin working on product optimization, thinking ONE DAY I’ll pack my travel bag and leave for a substantially unplanned world tour, far away from the ecosystem I’ve naturally adapted to.

Does any human ever like the concept of being fooled? Ironically that’s what we do to ourselves all the time. Though, interestingly, and painfully so, the picture isn’t entirely black or white. Such transitory dreams may mostly never convert to reality, but they keep something alive which is like fuel to our engine – Hope. It’s but unrealistic to assume everything we launch forth towards will become true. So for those who enjoy the odyssey, life is a gift. It’s that gift which makes powerful phenomenon like ‘tears of happiness’ possible, even if we’d never actually reach the destination we planned for. So at the end of my short stay on Earth, it is these moments of subtle permanence that I expect to relive in memories with eyes closed and cracked lips smiling. An endless list of God-fatherly times to the most notorious secrets which’ll perish with me.

I brought my bike to a stop in the underground parking area. Then slowly looked around. Cars were carefully parked everywhere; some had drivers sitting inside with mysterious expressions. I walked towards the entry door. Just before stepping on the stairs, I paused and looked behind. Amid the black and grey and deep blue herd of cars, my white Twister shone like a majestic unicorn.The parking guard looked at me suspiciously as a stood a minute longer than usual. Everything around me was the same. Everything but me.