Set It Free

Somehow there are a faces you don’t want to see… for instance, there is this yesteryear actresses’ daughter who tries to strut out of her mother’s legacy in an attempt to establish her own presence; yet, the sad thing is that she neither has the essence nor the stuff that her mother had; no, not one bit and every time I see her on the screen, I flick the screen as if in auto-mode and if she appears on some magazine cover, not by her merit but through her PR efforts, I flip the magazine into the nearest garbage bag… where I think she rightfully belongs. 

Another instance that I recall, while talking about puking at the memory of a person was someone I admired quite intimately - who at one point of time, a long, long time ago, made me forget my name… once. Cursed with chemosensory memory, I remember people and recollect events through olfactory stimulation and I distinctly remember this person’s smell… a concoction of talc mixed with cheap, teenager’s deodorant. After years, while straying in the aisles of a supermarket, the same mixture of talc and deo filled the air – must be someone who tried to sample the concoction, leaving behind the trail… by now, what once enchanted me, disgusted me. Looking for the nearest exit, in a frantic attempt I rushed out and threw up. 

Memories can be delicate and dangerous – a double-edged sword – can slay the reaper as well as cut the keeper. How I wish we had a pen drive-type memory box instead of the God-given hippocampus… to turn on and off memories that we wish to keep, restore or destroy completely at our will.

The sad part of memory is that unlike energy, memories, can be created as well as destroyed… never replaced. Yet, the memories attempted to be replaced, filters through the phenomenon of truth; where an enforced lie cannot replace or gaslight memory. Memory, is personal, is internal and uninfluenced as this storehouse sits comfortably relying to be influenced by amygdala - the powerhouse of emotions; emotions, that spurs out of experiences - both painful and pleasurable that are personal. This wiring of God, is irreplacable. A dark tunnel that allows only the keeper to enter, explore and exit. 

The very common mistake that people do, is when in a superficial mode to overcome a strong overpowering emotion, thrust an external pressure to convince a person that the memory they hold is incorrect and subject a person to their perspective of what the other’s memory has to be. But why would anyone try to replace another person’s memory? Well, it could be a passively jealous sister-in-law, a conniving lawyer, a greedy mother, a purposeless brother, a corrupt family that may see the pinnacle of selfishness as the crux of success or even an aimless therapist who for reason’s (only) their own, recreate a world that suits their convenience for their victim. But then, truth cannot be destroyed. Though reciprocatively one may agree superficiously for the influencer’s sake, truth, when suffered, erupts when one needs peace the most. At the end of the day, our mind effortlessly remembers what is true and was experienced rather than an enforced effort to replace it with a lie to grab things beyond our reach. Truth, will set you free.

So How Far Are You From Home?!

Politics... organizational politics, dirty politics; where cheap, slimy, worthless slithering reptiles crawl; understanding well that they will be unfit to exist anywhere else. Given space, most work hard on trying to figure out how not to work instead of finding ways to work; if only they would invest their time to boost their productivity...

Lesser said, it is not less often that I wonder how interesting life would be if it were a little slower like in the good old days of my great granddad who perhaps toiled in the fields and the sweat at the end of the day would do to show the work rather than some silly result from an administered performance appraisal; and when HR management was seen by the way people would drop in the next day at the door for work even without having to sign a lumpy contract; and the care shown by the grandma who would make the snacks and tea for their break-time munch was seen as good enough to retain the proletariat rather than a carrot at the end of the stick the management holds out to the ever-greedy, ever-needy generation today that tries to grab it till the end of their career-precisely the way it was intended to be.

Today, I look at the speed at which the world runs for my children and am unsurprizingly amazed. A father who goes to work early and too busy focusing on what to do when he gets there that the morning drifts off just as early as it started; by late evening he gets back and with saddles of work removed after running around like a panting labour-horse,  hardly finds the strength or the energy to hug his kids; The mother who gets to know all about the dirtier side of the world through the little window of the apartment and the newspaper that is thrown in through it and who quite understandably protects the children like a jailer protects his territory; The children who perhaps made no mistake to be born in this God-forsaken, devil-breeding, "I-Hate-This" place that makes me wonder... "Why the f*$k am I here?!" in the first place.

Just as a friend to many, is a friend to none, a place that belongs to everybody belongs to none. This mixed feeling of purposelessness to exist in a particular place is often shadowed by our unjustified reason to blame it on the future of the kids which we seldom realize is destroyed rather than created. It is tempting to say, "Home sweet home is the answer"... yet again, too far and hardly reached, with identities changed and hardly recognized, home too is redefined as the place where one finds love is... It is our greed, greed for power, status, recognition, and to run-away and start fresh as a stranger in a distant land, to be free and feel liberated that makes us lose more than we could possibly gain and to end up earning to go back from where we started even if it has to begin right from the scratch. And at times, a pragmatic reminder of reality and a shaken yet not stirred dash of utopia with a sprinkle of idealism is all the concoction one needs to stay dazed in a busy, pointless world; nothing matters any more and life is just a drag to bear till the end of the grave...