I have utter contempt for a man who is not passionate about the work he does; I am at loss for words to decipher the enigma of this world and its subtle nuances. Its really intriguing at the same time quite disturbing to know that there are people who consider the world a mundane place. It’s inconceivable to think that people are ingenuously assuming the shred of indifference. Permit me to feel flattered for being bestowed upon me the onus of enlightening the kind of people that were ostracized for centuries by the society of the enlightened, the kind that were never kind to themselves, the kind that wished to liberate themselves from all the desires that besieged them perpetually.
History tells us that the people who managed to think beyond the obvious were invariably rewarded for having put up the act of thinking. People who lived on this planet earth 2000 years prior to now, had enough food for thought. An incredible amount of friction existed at every step they took in the evolution of mankind. The kind of confrontation that prevails today can hardly be considered appropriate as food for thought. Is this the rationale behind people being indifferent to the happenings around them?
This kind of portrayal of the people might sometimes be mistaken as being inconsiderate to the feelings of the all the people on this planet but the niche of people that are innately competitive.
I am a journalist by profession. Last month, I went to a remote place in Afghanistan,. I was overwhelmed with joy, when I met the oldest lady alive of that place. She was aged 48 and in her lifetime she gave birth to 13 children, though 12 of them could not even make it to the 2-year-old genre. It should have been very gratifying for her to learn that her only son alive married 6 girls and fathered 22 children of which a whopping 6 made it to the 4-year-old genre. Her grand children are now studying in the country’s most reputed institution. This institution trains students in subjects like gunfire, guerilla warfare, hostages and negotiations, ambush the bush, slaughter the weaker, breed the stronger, etc.
I had to go around the place a bit, so I asked a guy, if I could hire a cab somewhere. I was perturbed to know that they don’t use cars to commute instead use them to practice firing at a moving target. Apparently, I learnt from the man that they hardly get to see cars in that place, the last time they blew a car was in 2002, needless to say the guy traveling in that car was an American.
I then took a horse cab to a hotel that had a sinister kind of a look. I wanted to pee, and so asked the owner of the place to show me the way to restroom, the guy seemingly innocuous showed me out. It took me a while to figure out that the open barren land was what they called the restroom. well, I hurriedly opened my zipper and started to take the piss. I was perturbed to see a woman with pendulous boobs came yelling at me in a language that was undecipherable. It was now my turn to stop taking the piss and ingenuously stare at her.A guy assuming the role of an interpreter told me that she was yelling at me because she would not approve of a guy with bigger penis take a piss in the surroundings that she lived. I knew that my little one was something that she never encountered in her whole life, but I could not conceive as to why she didn’t want me to exhibit it particularly when it’s a forbidden fruit. The interpreter made me look at the surroundings. At first glance, it didn’t occur to me, but then after a while, I figured out that there were young girls hiding behind trees and niches literally gaping at my fly. Now, everything was falling into place.
The interpreter walked me into the hotel, I hired him for a couple of days, I then checked in and asked the guy as to why there was no television in the room. He told me that he knew what I meant by a television. He had seen it twice in his life. He was so considerate at my discomfort and told me that there was a theatre just 150 kms and a railway station just 20 kms away from that place. I asked him if he knew the movie that was being screened in that theatre. He said he knew and that he had seen it too. King Kong? Now I became really inquisitive, because this was pretty incongruous. When he proposed to enlighten me about the one movie that he thought had changed the face of Hollywood, I was convinced that it was the original movie of the 40s that he was talking about.
He also told me that they watch bond movies. He went on to explain the enigma behind the gadgets used in the bond movies and was pretty pleased with the performance of the emerging bond ‘Sean connery’.
The next morning, I was taking snaps of the places around, I enquired the bemused interpreter if he had one too. His reply brought me back to my consciousness. It was unbelievable to learn that the country’s only camera was at that moment being used to shoot a movie and was not expected to be back for another 6 months. I knew that adding local slang would emblazon my writings, but not this time around. The most popular slang he quoted were ‘bush sucks, America stinks’. When the trip was over, I was pretty convinced that saddam hussain had successfully precipitated the idea of radicalism down to the grass root level. Mind you the subject ‘radicalism’ is not an elective in the schools there.
These are the people who consider us the lesser mortals and would be pleased to know that they are true. I am wondering if the people of afghan can live happily with the knowledge that their enemy is still alive and that they don’t possibly stand a chance to win if they were to go on a war with them, what sustenance can the people of rich countries provide to their claim that world is a mundane place and hence they lack passion for anything and everything.
I am not making an endeavor to belittle the people who enjoy all the materialistic riches. Love or hate them, but we can’t possibly ignore the perpetually besieged comforts around us. I am not asking anyone to shed tears at the plight of the people who do not have access to the materialistic comforts, but make an effort to contemplate as to what we have and not as to what we do not have. I would prefer seeing a glass half filled than half empty.
The mind sees what it chooses to see, mind can change the color of the room that we remember seeing 20 years prior to now, but the belief that the room exists can never be erased from our mind. People like us show the tendency to lack passion in our lives. I reckon it’s because we consider ourselves incapable of competition, incapable to compete with the ones who don’t want to compete. I am not arguing that the only way to live life happily is to have passion for passion and contempt for contempt, there are other ways too, but perhaps this way of living life is better than the other plethora of options to choose from. I am not insane, but I might be considered so, if were to judge myself by the standards articulated by my fellowmen. If I were to judge myself, the yardstick I choose is my inner self, I could not even in my displeasure contemplate the horror of judging myself by the standards choose by someone else.
I won’t let people dictate terms to me. I swear by my life and the love of it that I would not live for the sake of another man neither would I ask anyone to live for the sake of mine.
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