The story teller

Few are the stories that become timeless, i.e. time fails to fade these stories and generations after generations listen to them with the same curiosity. Authors of these stories thus achieve immortality through these timeless stories. But there are selected few who become immortal by narrating these timeless stories to everyone, I think that’s what their job is, to narrate stories.

“Kathna waale uncle” (uncle who was born in village of Kathna, Bihar) is what we called him, and was one of my dearest uncles and probably my childhood hero. He was an old man and I have always seen him the same, not a single extra or less grey hair, probably people like him, never age beyond certain age. He visited us at least once a year, never got chocolates for anyone, stayed with us for couple of days and would go away. I always wondered why he visited us all the time but we never visited him at all? I wondered it would be so cool to find where he lived, so that I can visit him at my will for something that made him one of my favorite uncles. But, my mom always said, he lives very far away and probably takes seven days and seven nights to reach his house.

Narrating stories is what he did and kids loved him for his stories and his experiences with life. When he visited us, I used to wake up on time, go to school, skip playing with friends and rush to him to hear his stories. As far as I could remember, he never repeated any of his stories and each story was uniquely interesting in its own way. Once the night would fall, even elders would gathered around to listen to the stories of great kings, bad daemons, brave men, gods and goddesses and many more. I would fall asleep listening to his stories and would often dream about being the hero of one of his stories.

He never denied anyone if asked for a story and every kid or adult in the village would call him uncle; even my parents called him uncle. I used to argue about how can he be uncle to everyone and as he lived in our house, no one else had rights to call him their uncle. Later we moved to a city and slowly he faded in my memories, or I’ll say he got fossilized to be excavated once in a while. I would sometimes ask my mom if she had any clue about where he might be. I would wonder, after my family moved to city, he might have visited our village as he did every year and how he might have felt not seeing anyone in the house to greet him, no kid dying to listen to his stories.

Eventually I discovered few things about him and now, I respect him even more. Throughout his life he travelled from village to village narrating stories to everyone. He never had money hence he would never get any chocolates and had to walk miles before he could reach the next village. When the evening would embrace him, he would just knock at someone’s door and spend couple of days with the family and narrate his stories to everyone in the village and then again start his journey to the next village.

He had been doing this all his life. Almost everyone in all the villages he visited, knew him and the news would spread like wild fire if he camped in any one village. He was a very wise man and people would not only come to him for his stories but for seeking advice. He was wise probably because he had seen life more closely than anyone else. His stories were just not a craft of his fiction, but based on reality and always had some lessons to learn. He would stich his experiences of life around kings, gods, ghosts and everything else to teach people about how to live life.

My mom always said, he had centipedes tied in his feet which would never let him be at one place. Few said he had mole on his sole of the foot and people, who have it, spend lot of time travelling. But now I know, none of it was true; he travelled because he chose to do so. He thought, it was his duty to teach people the difference between good and bad, and he chose stories as his medium of instruction. As he would always travel, he never got married and never thought of settling at one place as everyone else did, he sacrificed his life for the benefit of society. He spread his storied through travelling because in those days there were no televisions, newspapers or any other modes of information exchange but to physically be amongst people.

One day I learned that god wanted someone to narrate stories to the almighty himself and hence, he is no more physically amongst but only in our memories. I still wonder how adventurous his life would have been, travelling all the time, meeting new people, narrating his stories, and feeling happy about his stories creating change in lives of others. He had no money but was not poor, had no family still was uncle to everyone, never possessed anything yet always had shelter. I think he lived larger than life and has become immortal to everyone who listened to his stories.

In this modern era, are there any more people left who still keep telling stories, still keeping the characters of the fiction alive in the heads of kids? If not, how will the authors of those timeless stories ever become immortal in absence of such selfless story tellers?

In god we trust

India has been the heart of spiritualism before time itself and probably will continue to be in times to come; can this be the reason for having 330 million Hindu gods in India? Population of India is approximately 1,170,938,000, dividing this count by the number of gods we have, it is shocking to know that we have one god for every 3.5 Indians. Some Indians don’t worship Hindu gods, making the ratio worst, probably one god for every 2 individuals (and they say that we are on verge of human population explosion). Few gods are much more popular than others and hence have more than 2 devotees, i.e. there are some gods who have no devotees at all. But this is not the point, the point is, why do we have so many gods to begin with?

I generally don’t bother myself by thinking on these non-trivial issues of life, I offer my prayers to couple of Hindu gods and go about minding my own business. As I like the concept of Hinduism above any other art of living philosophy, I always believed, more the number of gods directly proves the richness of Hinduism and the open mindedness of Hindus towards recognizing skills of people and occasionally start worshiping them and ultimately making them gods. As I grew older, I realized that most of our gods are result of our fears. Humans feared fire, hence a god for it, we heavily rely on rains, and hence a god for it and the list goes on and on. Probably these might be the reasons for having so many gods, but why do we have so much faith in our gods? Making a new god is probably easy, we have already done it 330 million times, but developing faith in them is probably hard, I am still puzzled about the fact that we all indeed have some faith in our gods.

After two years, I finally went to India on a month long vacation and I “kind of” understood the reason for having so many gods and such a strong faith in them. Life of people belonging to middle class and lower middle class is hard. Everyone has numerous dreams but not everyone can realize them, may be because of unavailability of opportunities. People have very less control over their own life’s, they are not sure if they’ll return home alive after work, not sure if their efforts will get noticed or will fall pray to local politics. People die just because ambulance couldn’t reach on time, or doctors go on strike or are hooked up to duplicate medicines or just because no beds are available. We have so many tropical diseases that don’t even exist in the western world, and one falls ill because of contaminated food or water. Every day is a struggle as there are thousands available to do the same task keeping everyone on their toe. There are more reasons to be worried than to be happy, there is more dissatisfaction than being content.

Where shall a common man go for help or whom shall the sufferer cry out for help, probably to god? We pray for almost everything, occasionally, even for the buses and trains to arrive on time. We pray for exam results, better future, wellbeing of loved ones and everything we can imagine of. People and the country literally runs “Ram bharose”. With millions of wishes lined up for god to answer, just one god is not enough, and hence we need million gods. Chances are very high to be lost in the enormous pool of people, and it takes miracle to exist, probably that’s the reason why we have so much faith in our gods.

Give me a week!!

I was in my third year of engineering, that too not in a glorious engineering college (it’s a different story how I got into it). Campus recruitment was a rare occasion in our college, deserving candidates waited for companies like vultures wait for a famine. Fortunately or unfortunately, my scores were always low making me ineligible for any campus recruitment. Third year of engineering was soon to be over and I had no job in hand yet, very few companies come in the fourth year. Pressure started building on me for finding a job before I graduate. I used to get dreams of being jobless and asking for transport fair from parents to travel for job interviews. Really horrible days were those, and adding to this were senior students with jobs. They always kept telling me, “Prakash, if you don’t get a job before graduating, your shoe will wear off looking for jobs and you’ll find none”. From the center of my brain an Idea popped (I’ll say, I had an awesome brain fart), “if my grades can’t fetch me a job, I must do something that will make me little different from other jobless candidates”. Thus I thought of learning a new foreign language. For some reason I thought it will add the missing value to my resume which my grades could never add. Out of excitement, I enrolled for a course with Mumbai University to learn German.

I was already in my final year of Engineering now and scoring high grades was important, at least to score a first class (my grades from previous semesters, even a first class was a farfetched dream). I had to manage time for learning German and studying for exams. It was kind of wearing me off already and my parents kept wondering that they have lost their son to insanity. My dad could never understand the justification for learning a foreign language all of a sudden. Weeks and months past and I was doing alright with both German and engineering, suddenly came the preparatory leaves for finals, I studied harder for my exams and German language started getting side tracked. Soon, I started missing out from German lectures, and fail in German exams, and one day I said to myself, fuck German language. Even until now, my dad keeps telling me “see, I told you, you won’t complete the German course ever, but you never listen to me. What is wrong with your generation?”

At the end of my engineering, I had scored a distinction in my final year exams and I also got campus recruited to a company (It was the only company I was eligible for a campus interview). Life was on track for a while, and work was kind of under control. It’s some law that says, once a person is satisfied with personal basic needs, it’s when they work towards personal development. I soon became a victim of this law of life; I thought it will be great to learn to play a musical instrument. The question was which musical instrument to learn?

I had a slim physic and I partitioned my hair well, hence carrying Guitar would have been a problem as well as it would not have suited me. If people would know that I can play guitar, they would have lost their faith in other guitarists. Well, my dad is super fluent with Sanskrit, and since I was a kid, I have seen him chanting Sanskrit sholaks, it always fascinated me. I always thought of being as fluent as him in Sanskrit, some day in my life. I questioned, how about learning flute and composing symphony for Sanskrit sholakas and playing it over a flute. People say listening to flute is like listening to prayer, I made my mind to learn flute. My parents scratched their heads wondering what was wrong with me, they thought, getting me married would be the only way to save me, but I was young for that and hence left them with no choice.

Hunt for a flute instructor started, how hard would it be to find a flute teacher in India? I started going to theatres to look for any relevant advertisement. Found many, but when I tried to reach them, I got a constant reply, “as no one ever shows up for learning flute, we no more teach flute”. Finally after a month, I got a call from a teacher, she informed me that one more person is ready to learn flute and hence she would teach both of us. I was super happy, went to ATM, got some money and enrolled right away. She asked me to buy a nice G# flute, and I immediately questioned if I can buy it from her right away? How expensive a flute can get, it’s just a piece of bamboo which is already hollow, one just needs to punch some holes in it. I took out the remaining cash from my pocket and started counting, she said, “son, it will be Rs. 10,000 only”. Whaaat, you got to be kidding me, was my response. Can you suggest me a shop that sells cheap flutes because I am just a learner and I’ll buy a professional flute later! I finally found a shop selling G# flute for Rs 1000, I also made a custom canister to carry my flute around.

With my full sincerity I started learning flute, started practicing my lessons at home (I was allowed to practice flute only when no one was at home, everyone used to get irritated by the melody and thought it was a noise). Months passed and I was good at it, looking at my progress, I thought, it was a good decision to learn flute as I am born to be a flutist. Suddenly my GRE scores were out and I had finalized a university in US for my masters, I got my VISA and tickets were out. Unfortunately I had to leave my flute career in its peak and came to US. Now my flute hangs as a show piece on my bedroom wall, obviously intact within the canister. My dad still tells me “I had told you, you’ll never learn flute, but you never listen. First was German and now flute, I hope you don’t do stupid things in US”.

I came to US at a time when recession was taking a toll, internship jobs were rare and also by the US laws, I was not supped to work off campus for first 9 month in US. If one comes to US in fall semester, its summer before 9 months end. Summer was approaching and I had no internship yet. Summer in my university is a complete 3 months of no school. I was wondering what to do in these months and an idea sneaked in my head. In absence of flute, I decided to learn guitar. Bought a $150 guitar, downloaded guitar tutorial videos, bookmarked few youtube videos and was all set for summer. Two weeks before the school would shut for summer, I got internship opportunity in Qualcomm. I could hardly find any time to learn guitar all of summer. After summer came the pressure to complete thesis, then came pressure to find a full time job and now its 2 years since I own a guitar and I haven’t touched it yet.

One fine day, I decided to learn guitar, and I did learn couple of nodes on it but I realized it’s a little difficult task. I saw couple of my friends playing keyboard instrument and they play it as if they were typing a document using a keyboard. I write code, and I have good control on the keyboard, hence it will be easy to learn a keyboard instrument. I somehow managed a keyboard instrument, but it had its power cord missing and I was supped to buy it. It’s a year now that I own a keyboard and I haven’t even bought a power supply for it. I am glad my dad has no clue of these things; else he would have completely lost all hopes in me.

Anyways, a week ago, my roommate was teaching me how to do bodyweight exercises without going to gym. Few of the exercises he showed me were very hard to learn (according to him), thought I was doing it for the first time, I was good at it. He asked “Prakash, do you do yoga? I mean, it took me a week to do what you did in your first attempt”. I said, I learned few yoga exercises in my school and since then I haven’t done any. He asked me to do few hard yoga exercises and I was surprised that I still remembered the procedure for doing it. I was happy with my memory and I thought, people spend money learning yoga and I know few exercises already why not to practice it, just a step closer to living healthy.

I wondered how cool it will be to do yoga at the pool every weekend. I wanted to buy a yoga mat now and I searched online and in stores for a perfect yoga mat. I was about to make a purchase and it reminded me of my dad saying to me “you won’t continue doing yoga for more than a month, you have done stupid things in past and you’ll do it again”. I stopped myself and stepped back, I thought, I must wait for a week, and if at the end of one week, doing yoga still rings a bell in my head, only then I’ll buy a mat. After a week I did buy a yoga mat, it got delivered to me today and I did some exercises on it (not at the pool but in my apartment). The challenge for me is to see, for how long will I continue doing it? I think giving a week was a good idea and I will keep the passion going. Just in case it doesn’t work for yoga, I am sure "give me a week" will work on something someday.

The Juggernaut

Juggernaut [Juhg-er-nawt, -not] noun

1. ( often lowercase ) any large, overpowering, destructive force or object.

2. ( often lowercase ) anything requiring blind devotion or cruel sacrifice.

When I try to imagine time, it appears to be in numerous shapes and sizes, but the most frequent dimension that appears, scares me a lot. Time to me appears like a giant wheel, probably made of unbreakable stone that spans to whatever extent my eyes can see. It appears to be constantly rolling, slow and steady and at a fixed pace. I don’t know who powers it but it knows only one thing and it is to roll endlessly for crushing everything that comes in its path. No matter what you do, when the time comes, it will come for you and will crush you. The rolling stone has no feelings but is very cruel. If it crushes you, it will be no fun; hence it starts with crushing what you cherish the most.

I find myself in its path, and also see my dreams, wishes, goals and everything that is close to me. I know that this roller will eventually crush everything I have, until I am left by myself, and leave me to run as far as I can so that it can smile on my desperation for escaping it, but it’s just a matter of time. Many times, I already know the outcome of few things and I am well aware that no matter what I do, what tantrums I throw, this stone will shape things in a way that my efforts will get washed away and the outcome will be what I expected to begin with. The question arises, why do I put any efforts when I already know the outcome?

Probably I put efforts because my imagination dominates. I think, I will be so sincere in my efforts that when the rolling stone comes to crush something that I cherish; its heart will melt looking at my efforts for preserving what I have and it may change its decision. While I am busy putting efforts in preserving it, I forget that time has no feelings; it will see nothing and will keep doing what it is good at. Suddenly, I realize that signs of the expected outcome start appearing and more desperately I try to preserve at least what I can. Not to mention, the fear grows; it’s just a matter of time that I’ll see my dreams crushed and helplessly I’ll see it happening.

Sometimes it feels, wish I could have put just a little more effort; I could have avoided the outcome. This bloody feeling tries to eat me from within. Hence, I try to put all my efforts in no matter what I do, so that if the outcome is in my favor, I’ll celebrate it just because my efforts have earned it to me, and if it’s not in favor, I can be a little satisfied that at least I did the best I could.