Monday Musing
[ Asok Pillai ]
They wring you out from within – the gathering uncertainties – till all the things you cared about, all the rose-tinted dreams you had, as if crumple up into a bundle of nerves in the back of your head and hang there like some unsettled primal fear – darkly…
My thought pattern has become mercurial, my heartbeats are off-kilter, and my sense of humour isn’t what it used to be. I feel like a stranger in the strange land that my country has become, my head an industry of rusty thoughts crashing into one another like atoms freewheeling inside an accelerator…
What good is all the time, energy and devotion we put into living?, the thought occurs, when one considers the fact of our uncompromising betrothal to death. – Ridiculous. Yet we take it all for granted.
On the flip side, if life is precious because it is, on a cosmic scale, rare, shouldn’t all lives be equal? But there you hit a wall. In every society some lives are more equal than others – and now, on top of all the tintinnabulation over status disparities and all the hullabaloo over caste, colour, community, race, religion and everything else in between, we have a ‘new normal’ of discrimination. I suspect it’s an amplification of the already existing scepticism we instinctively harbour against fellow humans: You are the unnoticed neighbourhood person as long as you are robust. Once you’ve contracted ‘the virus’, however, you become a pariah under a spotlight. People – some of them who wax lyrical on being worldly-wise and broadminded on social media – will turn primitive on you in the blink of an eye.
So, in a general sense, what’s the point in reposing trust in people’s better nature?…
… Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeeeet’s – TAAA AAAAAAAAIIIIME!!! –
UFC 250: “The main event of the evening!” Amanda Nunes bashing the hell out of Felicia Spencer on TV.
It’s strange the layers the mind has. I’m following the fight without missing a jab while ruminating on the strange mutability of human affairs (as Charles Dickens put it) and engaging in an internal monologue with myself in the second person at the same time.
All sorts of ideas bubble up in my mind when I’m watching TV, only to go up in smoke the moment I sit at the computer to type them down in an organized manner. This may be the reason why some people write so much on Facebook: posting their thoughts urgently, so that they might not forget the precise wording later.
And speaking of Facebook, I’m particularly bemused by some people who post these thoroughly insipid quips on their timeline, and start fuming when they don’t get a reaction out of everybody. They fit the basic stereotype of preteens with temper issues, such folks. Every now and then they will issue a threat, saying they are going to get rid of people on their friends’ list who do not participate in long threads of inane conversations.
Fellas, here’s a little tip: don’t sing it, do it. All it takes is three easy steps to unfriend, and believe me, it works. I’ve tried it myself; it’s like saying it best without saying anything at all. Think of this counsel as a gift from me on the eve of the World Social Media Day.
Ah, well… I wish there was a point in all this babble, but there isn’t: just the ramblings of a mind in the balance, meandering out of true. These are words, and words are a dime a dozen.
Cabin fever – it gets to you in the end. Day after day after day in these rooms, with the TV on and no one to share my hopes and fears with but myself and the neighbour’s cat, whenever he comes around. No wonder I’m losing my head.
