Though I had this thought in my mind, it was not fed properly. As a result, the other thoughts, which were fed nice and strong, ruled most of my life.
I began thinking after I watched the movie ‘Mad Max Fury Road’ day before yesterday. There was nine-tenth of fire and blood, but the one-tenth that provided the base for the story was what justified the other bigger part of the movie. Sometimes it is the small things that we do in life which gives our life a greater purpose, or just a purpose, if it even exists.
“Where must we go, we who wander this wasteland, in search of our better selves.”-The First History of Man … was the quote at the end of the movie. Soon after that, people went to their houses and slept, while I came to my room and sat thinking about it.
I am sleeping happily under the fan and the air conditioner. On the other hand, the very cause, the fossil fuel, is at its vanishing stage. Coal’s life has almost ended. Uranium has taken birth. It will feed our hunger. It will rule the world, because the humans have now pounced upon it. It seems so confusing as to who is ruling who – we, “humans” ruling Uranium, or the Uranium ruling us, the “humans”.
My father says that they did not have to ‘buy’ water. Their wells were full and pure. He used to walk twelve kilometers to school. No problem of petrol, car, maintenance, pollution. They used to cultivate vegetables and fruits like sapota. The days were sunny and nights were calm and breezy. There was just the right amount of rainfall. People took pride in the number of relations they maintained and the number of needy they fed. It was totally different then.
He says that his mother had huge gold jewelry on her. Opulence was then measured in terms of the inner happiness that liberated out of every one and filled the atmosphere with oneness. Who would have imagined that some others far away had already shredded their human instincts and were about to devour the very roots of existence in harmony !
Using just the right amount of twig to brush teeth, sharing needed things with each other in the time of crisis, women from neighborhood coming along to help for a delivery, the pride one took in knowing all the slokas from scriptures, the school teacher wearing a dhoti – book in one hand, stick in the other, thick glasses and a khadi shirt, head balded by his intelligence, walking to forest and fetching eatables and wood for household duties, sleeping under the moon and many things come before my eyes as I close them, trying to remember where they vanished.
***
I stand near the railing of the terrace. There is little breeze, and the sky is red. Buses are horning loud and people scuttle through the irony locomotives to reach their homes as quick as possible. As this slow forest made of concrete surrounds me, I see how I made this myself. I did this myself, to myself. I wanted more. I did not listen to anyone. I did not want to wait in long queues in the bank, or wait for the pain in my head to recede. I didn’t even want to go to the shop to buy things. I wanted them right on my lap. I wanted to enjoy each and every moment without having to sacrifice bits of things. I was impatient. I relied on money. I made it happen. I made everything happen...
I wanted to be in the center of this existence.
I now remember that I have to ‘pay’ the ‘water man’. The cloud of smoke rose up the sky and thickened the red. But I was lucky enough to see the stars, still.
Earlier in the evening when I and my friend were having fruit juice while returning from a temple, some ‘intelligent person’ (because he was wearing the trendiest of dresses) blew cigarette smoke and my friend inhaled it by mistake. He coughed all the way to his room. I felt bad for my friend, and for those in this world who mistakenly inhale cigarette smokes. I also felt bad for us: we inhale vehicle exhausts, diluted by trees, so that we may live a moment more. But the concrete forest has no sympathy. It will devour everything. It will eat the trees and all that is natural.
And its artificiality will be believed by ‘us’ to be modern art.
I have heard of the past, I am seeing the present. And I am worried about the future. I am worried about you. I am worried about our children, our parents, our kinsmen, our brothers, and every living being dying to exist here.
Will my child resort to ulterior motives; cry for a drop of water; work like a donkey just to survive; steal petrol; wear oxygen masks; fight for food like dogs; have an indecent way of living and flaunt it as a ‘trend’ or ‘fashion’; get brain cancer due to dense e-mag rays surrounding him; suffer from untreatable diseases; injure himself of a road accident; have a harmful protector in his pocket; charge at me for scolding him; harm innocent living beings just for the sake of savoring their taste on his tongue; suffer due to ground water contaminated with radio-active wastes; get depressed, unable to tolerate the pain of rat race; not give due respect to everyone, everything in this universe; act like foolish scientist and increase suffering for you and me and everyone? Will he forget himself?
Is this a dream?
Is all this a suffering in dream?
When would I wake up?
Should I wake up?
...
