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As he was arguing with the offender on the road…I saw that almost everyone in the traffic had a grin on face! I murmured… “Someone’s tragedy is someone’s comedy”.         

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In the veil of the concept of ‘society’, we have created an unnatural system binding individuals through a notion called humanity.

Although it has been pushed into us through a consistent hammering of values, morals and ethics (read education), yet the animal-ness inside us surfaces whenever one is alone or in a mob (in mob, individual accountability diminishes, thus one becomes as safe as ‘alone’).

In such unguarded moments, we are as ‘individuals’ (as good and as bad) as animals – perfectly capable of doing everything that is prescribed to be avoided by humanity…seeing emotionless as a bystander, enjoying sadistically or even taking advantage.

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It is only in one’s worst moments does one realize the futility of having endlessly spent needless energy on maintaining the status of a social being.

They say that…the mind (mann) piggybacks itself only on comparative concepts of ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’…and loses identity in the absoluteness of ‘in the moment’.

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Attending a cousin’s marriage is a perfect get-away! You suddenly discover that your pet-name is more popular (and melodious) than the one printed above your designation on your cards, and also…that time does fly…

But amid all the enjoyable chaos, I could see one of us feeling out of place. Well! If compared, he has got much more from life than those who were dancing off-beat, and still, for years, I have never seen him being there – ‘for someone’, ‘with himself’ or…‘in the moment’! He calls himself ambitious.

Well! We are the victims of our own dreams! We bring ‘restlessness’ inside us to achieve what we are attached to. However, when we achieve it, we discover that now we are attached to the restlessness itself! There starts a vicious circle…ending on beginnings.

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Far worse than being a cannibal is…a ‘cannibal who is masochistic’!

I usually let ‘people on cycles’ go, than to scare by a potential crash and have my way.        

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The reason is simple! Like many, I also rode bicycle up-till the 1^st year of Graduation.

…and I know how it feels to push the pedals hard and gain momentum, only to be interrupted by an automobile. While all it would have taken that machine is another push on the accelerator, it takes you double ‘the heart and the leg’ to begin all over again.

Well! Yesterday, on a square, when I was being my usual kind…one of the imbalanced cycles almost caressed the car; and I shrieked angrily! As I saw my eyes in the inside rear-view mirror…those were not the eyes of the same man I was a few moments ago.

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Well! I guess, something does change about people, as they get distant from the road under their feet…

Festivals are a social concept, and happiness…a personal one!      

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Years back, in middle of the festive season, I had gone to meet one of my relatives at a diagnostic centre. I was waiting for him in the lobby when…

…a man came out of the room with a report in his hand! He was wiping his tears and trying to soften his sob…I don’t know what was in it and whether the file was his or of someone his own, but he just sat there…staring blankly into the roof! Then, hardly in a minute or so, he got up and rushed out.

Although he disappeared from my sight but I could imagine that as he had walked through the busy roads and chaotic crowds, how every bursting cracker would have added to the shrieking silence inside his marrow…and how the brazen brightness of every flashbulb would have intensified the frightening darkness in his nervous system…

Well! Grief has a knack of suddenly rendering you utterly ‘lonely’! And then…you may be surrounded by all festivities of the world, but…can still listen to sound of your own breath.

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Well! No festival is ‘happy’…if you aren’t! So when life blesses you with any happy moments …live them festively; don’t wait for the calendar to highlight a date.

But if you still want an excuse…Well! It’s here…Happy Diwali 🙂 

It seems…the true measure of ‘the development of a city’ is the ‘amount of time one spends waiting for traffic-light to get green.     

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As you wait for the light counter to come to single digit, the wheels stop but the life comes alive! Relieved from the perception of people coming at you, your mind looks at the people who have come around…

…the ‘uncle’ absorbed in thinking while the ‘aunty’ keeps speaking at him…the ‘Sir’ looking at a ‘Pretty Young Thing’ while his wife is busy looking at the jewelry on the hoarding…the ones with the new wheelers busy assessing how close was the cyclist who just managed to find a viable space between them and the divider…the ‘newly-weds’ giggling on a joke they shared in their secret codes….the self-appointed Most-eligibles busy adjusting the mirrors to set their hair…

…and amidst all that, an infant hanging from his mom’s arm, looking at everything, with the calmness of an enlightened being on his face – as if he is aware of the transitory nature of this hustle-bustle.

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I guess, in such moments, the life hints that…

“Do stop in life every now and then, as…then only you discover that life is in that ‘now’.