A question of decency.

It doesn’t look like it (it is always the same case every year) but the consensus is that the annual cultural festival of IIT KGP for the year of 2012 has started. Today was the first day. And like every earlier edition this year too they had a Hasya Kavi Sammelan (transliteration: humor poet convention) and like every year they invited some of the famous poets. This year too, there was overcrowding towards the back of the OAT, while front seats were kept reserved for the “faculty” who were conspicuously absent. This year too, the poets arrived late, all in all, the event was every bit mismanaged, just like the earlier years
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However there was a change this year, a change which made me aware of the mob mentality of crowd, how they are like the pathetic sheep that need herding, and how they have such a low sense of self esteem that they feel proud of humiliating a person who is standing on the stage. Now before you start wondering what actually happened (here I am assuming that I am not the only person that reads my blog) I shall explain.

So there were 4 poets, who were invited this year. The first one to come on the stage had a knack of writing poems having intelligent humor. He was standing on the stage reading his poem, trying to mix it up with jokes, anecdotes just to make it interesting for the audience, and I think that he was doing a good job. Enter, a group of students (they were a motley bunch, of various colleges and states) and the drama begins.

Some of these people were sitting just behind me. These people starting mouthing off the poet, trying to add something vulgar, produced weird sounds when he was trying to say something and made obscene rude gestures. From their acts it looked as if they were never chastised by their parents or they never were taught the basic tenets of living in a civil society. Now that thing is also pardonable, there are some cases when even the best of parents can’t inculcate the desired quality in their offspring. What was not pardonable was the enjoyment, the satiation that I saw on their face, the smug look which conveyed how they pulled one over the person standing on the stage. What was unpardonable was how the most of the crowd took the leave of their senses and started a proud display of similar antics. What was unpardonable was their continuation of this when the seniormost of the poets- a septuagenarian tried to calm them. What was unpardonable was their blatant disregard of his age, his prowess, his mastery of sarcasm and even his requests to calm down.

There was a person in that earlier group of miscreants who I know; I wanted to ask him why he was doing what he was doing. But, I knew the answer that I would receive beforehand. I knew he would simply tell him that he didn’t like him. And I knew that he hasn’t even tried to listen to him, he just wants to have a centerstage among his group of friends, and that he wants to be able to boast about how he was better than the poet on the stage.

There was another person in the crowd who picked up the baton, who I know; I wanted to ask him why he was doing what he was doing. But, I knew the answer that I would receive beforehand. I knew he would simply tell him that he didn’t like him. And I knew that he liked the poet but the mob feeling, the crowd was telling him not to do so. And I knew that it was not in him to be individualistic, that he wanted to find conformity from the crowd.

And I knew that they both made me nauseous.

I don’t say that you don’t have the rights to boo someone when you don’t find him good enough, I don’t claim that you don’t have the right to criticize a performer (In fact I am a big criticizer of Twilight Series and Justin Bieber, and Uttran and Roadies and Big boss). But I say that unless and until you listen to him, you see him perform, you hear him sing, unless you see his feet moving on the floor, you don’t have the right to judge him. You can’t bloody claim that he is not melodious when you were sitting on your arse listening with ear plugs in your damn ears. You can’t claim that he has two left feet when instead of watching him perform you were looking at that pretty girl and were fantasizing about her. And even if you have listened and watched him you can’t shun your decency and shout at an old person who is requesting you to keep quite.

 If you are reading this, remember no one held you in high esteem for your behavior. Nobody applauded your efforts. The words of praise that were showered on you were interspersed with “Jaahil” and “Ganwar”. So take a long, hard look in the mirror and I know that if you have even a bit of shame left inside you, you will realize how despicable you were in that moment.

Adios… 

A scary feeling called love

It’s a disconcerting feeling when you start caring for someone beyond the circle formed by your close relatives.  You don’t even think about it and at weird unexpected moments your thoughts turn towards something that someone did sometimes. You feel a slight euphoria, the same kind which you felt when you had your first drink a few years ago. This giddiness is more pronounced when that someone is of the opposite sex.

The feeling of being disoriented turns to that of scare when you realize that gradually over the time you have stopped just 'caring' and have fallen in love with her. A bit of despair starts hanging around you after this realization. As you sink deeper into this quagmire of one sided love the despair grows. You try thinking ways of talking to her- a task which becomes more difficult because you don’t have any clue how to behave around her. So you take the refuge of the cupid of our times, yeah you scurry to your Facebook account and start visiting her profile ten times an hour, and wait for her to come online. Unfortunately for you she is not slave of virtual world and has a life beyond it-which is utterly incomprehensible for you, So you wait, and you wait for a long time and when she comes online you lose all the courage that you had built up during that vigil of yours, instead you update your status with innocuous remarks stupid comments about anything and everything under the sun. Then one day she pings up to ask for some casual detail, for you that’s like Christmas came early. That innocent chat has given you more excuses to have further conversation with her-online of course.

However the jubilation doesn't last long. You wait painfully for her replies, misconstruing her silence for her indifference, you shun food, you become resentful and start hatching desperate plots. You consider sending her a mail, and then after sending that mail you consider calling her up.  This thinking goes on and on and for you that’s painful. But you soon develop some camaraderie and are chatting every day. Now your helplessness take another shape, you lose any sense of purpose once you complete the daily chat quota, anything else in the day doesn't hold much of a promise.

You console yourself saying that this is not love, it will soon pass away and you try thinking about something else but your thoughts always return rabidly to her hair, her eyes or her smile. You have thought about other females in the past but those thoughts had lust written all over them, you try imagining her in such a scenario but try as you may that is not possible. You see her face, her smile and you imagine a kiss, that kiss- a tender caress of lips, staring at her eyes never breaking the eye contact, all the while trying to convey the depth of your feelings from that simple but potent gesture. And that’s when you realize that you are firmly entrenched in a quicksand up to your neck, your only solace being her ignorance of your feelings. True she might be having an inclination about it but she can’t be sure unless you tell her.

One day you receive a call from her, you are in a train travelling to some place to be away from the sorry state that you are in. You excuse yourself from the conversation you are having, and attend the call. She confesses her love for you.  You give a yelp of pleasure; however it takes all your self-restraint that you don’t start dancing around. You are beyond ecstatic.

But this euphoria soon passes away, and you start assessing your situation. You think back to those moments when you doubted yourself, the see through plots you cooked just so you can have a conversation with her.  And that’s when the nightmare strikes you, the despair that was lurking in some back corner of your mind descends upon you.

You feel like a marathon runner forced to crawl even when he knows that there is nothing wrong with his legs. The feeling is utterly debilitating, because you know that your love is not unrequited, however you have seen your descent to such despondence that you know that is not in you to love someone. And how could that be because you always had a logical mind, but you find this logical mind betraying you.

You don’t find in yourself to trust the other person, every fiber of your being already cursing you for becoming dependent on someone else for your happiness, of taking that proverbial crutch, the knowledge that you can’t ever go back to “playing” that carefree happy person you earlier were.  This helplessness forces you to think of her and the despair at that sorry state of yours doesn’t let you accept her.

It’s now, when you realize that you are deeply madly and irrevocably in love and that this feeling sickens  you to your core
Adios…