Monday, August 20, 2007

Death - the wait

Uh oh...another day went by and it didn't come yet! Some extremely wise people have assured me that it will come one day, no one knows when. I must say people don't give death the kind of love it deserves. The nice dude that death is...it has made us a promise that it will come ...and in today's treacherous world if there is someone who makes a promise and definitely intends to keep it then I must say that I definitely respect this chappie.

I am reminded of an incident in college when I was listening to what the prof was saying with my eyes closed. There have been other occasions I must admit, when I have only watched and pretended to hear... but those were rare occasions when a lecturer turned out to be a beautiful woman. Now the incident that I am currently recounting was one where an elderly gentleman was saying things which my ears could aptly pick up without necessitating any interference from my eyes. Anyways, the reason why I bring this up is coz this professor asked me suddenly,"Are you dead or dying?". He just wanted to make sure that I hadn't dozed off. Now I did open my eyes and gave him a nod to reassure him that he wasn't as boring as he thought he was.

Interestingly, I just thought to myself...we are all dying every minute....we keep dying till we are actually dead. It's just another way of looking at things. I mean we say we are alive and living, we hardly say we are dying, though in a way, living and dying are the same thing. If we make birth our reference point then we are living and if we make death our reference point then we are dying...but both are basically the same thing. One defines from where we are coming and the other talks about where we are going.

Yet, as I mentioned earlier, people don't really seem too happy with this chap. They prefer to say they are living. Never mind, let them have it their way. Death doesn't have an ego you know; even if you neglect it completely and don't want to have anything to do with it, still it will come to you. It loves you! ...it's waiting for you!

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Memories

Memories are funny things aren't they?...often showing up uninvited and even more often failing to show up when most wanted!
Crazy, the way a phrase, a tune, a picture, a place, a smell and just about anything that might affect any of our senses might suddenly bring back a train of thoughts relating to the past - actually at times it brings back only a bogie...my memory is a bit weak.
Aren't we all losers? Don't we all, every now and then slip into this phase...often wantingly...replenishing lost memories. Mind you, our mind plays tricks too. It adds it's own masala to memories at times - for eg. maybe you are having pizza at Dominos and suddenly you get reminded of the time when your mom had made a pizza for you...and you remember your mom's culinary skills...and suddenly feel this wave of love for her - all this is fine but for the fact that your mom had actually made a big burger, it wasn't pizza at all...you are getting me?
Anyways, masala or no masala, memories still do capture our attention. Memories of our first love for instance. They say people never forget their first love. It's kinda funny coz it implies that everyone's first love usually ends up in a memory and nothing more...anyways, more on that sometime else. My point here is that people actually don't have an attachment to the person who was their first love as such - it's just that we remember the feeling. First love conventionally happens at an early age (this is not true for everyone...I know of people who fell in love for the first time only after they retired coz they didn't find time before that) and love brings forth a completely new set of emotions. Emotions which are equally tender and strong at the same time. Now all these emotions basically get directed to this one person (the one who would be on the way to becoming only your memory in future) and thus this idiot manages to stick to your memories of those feelings for a long time. It's the discovery of the emotion called love which is actually remembered though we are foolish enough to always link it to the discovery of this idiot.

Anyways, next time you remember something, make sure you also remember what I told you about remembering things and how they might not be what you think they are.

If in doubt about how to interpret your memory or if a certain memory is haunting you and you would want me to help you get rid of it, I am available. There aren't many things that a loser has...but hey, he has time!