Midnight Musings - Is there a remedy for human apathy?

So much for a star running over a life in his drunken slumber of power and position. A lot of hue and cry over the loss of human life and the very obvious neglect in considering the gravity of the act. Yes, it was a heinous offense considering life is precious and invaluable. But is there a difference in the value attached to life based on whether it resides in the physical form of a human or that in the form of the four legged creatures precisely termed as animals? Is the apathy involved any less in this case? Or is it the fact that taking away human life in your senses amounts to murder translating into a punishable offence while taking away the life of an animal is of no considerable consequence? Does that make life in the form of an animal any less valuable? I can't help but raise these questions and would preferably scream out the same if permitted if it helps put some sense into creatures who like to call themselves humans, but apparently have no sense that I would consider remotely human. 

I walked in home to the utterly heartbreaking news of this apparent human apathy today. A stray dog, who lived in and around the entry gate of our apartment, whom we lovingly named "Fan", was run over by the car of one of the residents of the apartment in an appalling display of complete lack of regard for non - human life. 

Fan owed his name to the unusual way in which he wagged his tail to welcome and appreciate the presence of all humans in the vicinity of our apartment. Instead of the typical horizontal motion of the tail which is generally referred to as wagging, Fan had his unique style of a circular motion to denote the same J. He was a favourite,  not just of the few animal loving people of our apartment, but of all the shopkeepers in and around the area, the watchmen of our building and all the kids. He was one who was always happy to be with his human friends. One could never find him barking at people unnecessarily, growling, fighting or showing any other signs of aggression. He was happiness and love in his entirety. When I offered him biscuits during my evening ritual of feeding the strays around my building, he would first demand a couple of minutes of petting before taking the first bite. On my return from office, as the cab neared my apartment gate, Fan would somehow figure out that it was me in the car even before I stepped out. He would keep running about near the door and around the car delightfully, much to the surprise of the driver at times J. Sometimes he would follow us upto the elevator if his request for some petting was ignored. Fan was one of the only dogs I have seen, who enjoyed the lights and sound during Diwali. Not even a tad bit scared, he would accompany the residents and the watchmen in the celebration while all the other dogs would be hiding somewhere safe till the festivities ended. Never did the residents have to worry about their kids pulling the ears or the tail of a pooch and get bitten in retaliation if Fan was the dog in question. The kids adored him as much as all the others did. He was loved by all.

But the life of this bundle of love on four legs was brutally crushed under the wheels of the car of a callous and inhuman resident. The incident as narrated by the watchmen showed how cruel and insensitive some people can be. Fan was resting on the side of the pavement like he and the other dogs in the vicinity usually did during the day. He wasn't lying in the middle of the road and the colour of his fur clearly made him visible so there isn't a possibility that one could just miss seeing him in broad daylight. Apparently, the resident drove out of the apartment gates at a high speed which wasn't required and advisable in the first place. Next, instead of taking the center of the road he chose to drive his car through the edge, that being the spot where Fan was resting. The front wheels of the car went over Fan who was caught unaware but he wasn't hurt until then. He just went under the car and could have made it out safely from underneath the middle of the car, if the driver had applied the brakes at that instant. However, this insensitive bloke, inspite of realizing that he was over the dog, chose to drive through and in the process he ran over Fan, crushing him under the rear wheels of his luxury carriage. He didn't even care to look back and drove away without a care. The watchmen rushed to Fan's aid but he was fatally injured and there was nothing they could do to save him. Fan died in about ten minutes. The shopkeepers and the watchmen arranged for his body to be taken away L.......

I do not drive, but I am forced to wonder and question - is it really that difficult to keep your eyes open, watch out for these innocent creatures and avoid causing them harm or injury while you use your mode of transport? There are countless such incidents of animals being hit, run over and left to die on the city streets that we come across everyday. Are all of them mere accidents that were unavoidable or are they the result of evident indifference and insensitivity towards life in the form of an animal? Would this person have behaved the same way if it was a human life in question? Quite obviously, the answer is no (unless he is Salman Khan). Who gives human beings the right to place a price tag on life as one being priceless and invaluable and the other not even worth looking back at? 

A humble request to all those who drive - Please do exercise a bit of caution in considering the importance and value of life while you drive, irrespective of the form in which it exists....

A life full of love and warmth lost to the insouciance of human beings......RIP darling FAN....run free and happy on the other side of the rainbow!!!

A Paradoxical Enigma....the Elixir of Love!!!

Emotions are dangerous to the point of being deadly.....you never know when these stupendously powerful feelings can lead you to hysteria.....there is nothing more commanding, compelling or controlling than genuine emotion.....they can in fact lead you to places and situations you can never imagine.

Such is their power that they can make or break a personality.....they can reduce the best of the lot to ashes....reduce the mighty to dust....and of course in the goodness of their strength they can also make phoenix rise from the ashes.

All emotions....love, fear, jealousy to name a few, are equally potent in their own right....however, of late, I have been driven to evaluate the emotion of LOVE very meticulously, primarily because I have encountered this emotion in varied situations producing drastic results. 

Where the love of a deceased spouse has led one to lose herself in an imaginary world where he never left her, the love of a mother - in - law for her daughter - in - law who took care of her and held her close till her last breath, made a mother wish that her daughter accompany her in her last journey as well....

Where love reformed a boy who was deemed to have been destroyed for life, into a successful professional leading a happy, accomplished and content life with the one who transformed him, there was also one who plunged into the pitch dark world of drugs and dipsomania as a result of his unrequited love....

Where love pulled an utterly dejected, demoralized and resigned soul from the hell hole of an ill - fated survival to a promise and a hope for a new lease on life.....the same love when marred by betrayal, and stifled by blind societal norms and pressures....threw her into the clutches of a never ending battle with herself to free herself of the same emotion that liberated her.....it turned her into a feeble, faltering and shadowy version of the once confident, stable and hearty soul that she was.....transformed her from the responsible, mature, sensible individual to a delirious, unbalanced sufferer for life....it muffled her most cherished dream of a good life forever.....destroying her very faith in the values of loyalty, trust, commitment and above all humanity......transforming her into a living dead.

Such are the hues of love.....the progressive and the adverse eventualities of possibly the most potent emotions of all "LOVE"......captivating yet poisonous!!!

When I cry, it rains words....

A few days back I chanced upon a random quote which kind of stuck on to me…..a part of it went as follows “When I cry, it rains words”….and oh is that true or not…..the past couple of months have been a rather tormenting whirlwind of emotions and alongwith the steady outpouring of tears, this has also resulted in an upheaval of words inside me and it has become a little difficult to let them be holed up within any longer and so  here I am, using my favourite mode of expression, writing…..writing my heart out.

To put the recent past in a nutshell I could say that, one, I learnt some lessons about trusting people, having faith, giving it your all, the really hard way and it has quite literally left a lifelong scar on me…and two, I lost three very dear and near ones and all in a matter of two weeks. Quite simply put if you look at it, but in reality, it has a lot more to it……loads of memories, hurt, pain, loss, grief…the list could probably just go on.

Talking about the first, well I have learnt a lot through the better part of the years that I have survived so far, but I never quite lost faith in the concept of humanity or trust. But this experience kind of shoved the fact down my throat that what you see is not always the truth. There are masks people hide behind all the time, they can fake a lot of things, lie while you keep thinking that all of what you see is genuine because honestly you can’t even fake a greeting to somebody if you don’t honestly feel like it. But turns out, the world is not quite like that. If anything, I have learnt that you can hardly trust anyone apart from the very close circle of people who are truly your own, who stand by you through thick or thin, who keep the promises they make, and who walk with you unconditionally, without using situations as excuses to run away no matter how difficult times may seem to be. The ones who are truly your own fight for you like you are worth all of it. They don’t treat you like dispensable objects that you can do away with the moment your need for that object is over. I learnt that people are constantly looking for opportunities to win, to have fun, to enjoy and for a multitude of other reasons and it doesn’t bother them at all if they had to play with emotions to get what they want. I learnt that you don’t let people get close enough to hurt you and hurt you bad. No one apart from what you call your family deserves to get that close to you, to make a mark that could hurt for life. I am thankful for having a family that I can count on….specially my parents and a life partner, who have always been more than what they are and for being the friend that I have needed during all those rough times.

Well if that wasn’t enough, a few more huge emotional blows were just getting ready to hit hard, harder than I would have ever imagined them to hit. The loss of dear ones can never be easy on anyone for sure, but what probably made it harder this time was the very short time frame during which it all happened as well as the very close seat they held in my life in their own measure.

The first to go was Chotokaku….that’s what he was to me, to the world he was my father’s younger brother. It’s difficult to sum up all that I can say about him, I owe a lot of things I learned, a lot of my first times, a lot of things I developed an interest in and an ocean of memories to him and as a matter of fact I even owe what people know me as, to him, my name – Jasmita. This was probably the first gift he gave me apart from all the others throughout the years, material or abstract. Chotokaku, as I and all in our family who have known him closely, remember him as a person who can be termed as an enthusiast. While in his hey days and also till the dreaded disease hadn’t confined him to bed he was the one who brought in the fun element, be it to family gatherings, a simple lunch or the pandal hopping during the Durga Puja. His was always the best gift I received on all my birthdays. He, without fail, even during his ill health remembered by parent’s wedding anniversary and the customary gift, even if they themselves forgot the day at times. Atleast a yearly day off for the ladies (which included my mum and my aunt) from the daily chore of cooking was Chotokaku’s rule which called for that lunch to the best hotel in Shillong during the Durga Puja. More than my father, it was Chotokaku who made sure we were taken to every trade fair, book fair or any other odd form of entertainment that occasionally visited the small town of Shillong that it was way back then. I owe all the hundreds I scored for handwriting in school to him for it was he who taught me the art of cursive writing. I owe my interest in the ghazals of Ghulam Ali, Jagjit Singh….the first English songs from Lobo, Abba, UB40 that I had heard in my life to him. I owe a lot of my hold on the English language to him, to the interest in solving those weekly crosswords and jumbled up words in the Sunday Telegraph, to all those elocutions, debates and recitals that I participated in at school that were polished and corrected by him. I owe my interest and whatever little I learned of the Guitar and the Keyboard to him. Chotokaku was skilled in playing not only these two instruments but also the Saxophone and the Harmonium.  All of this to even the way I dress the salad I put on the dinner table today, I owe it to him.

A state level chess champion who had won numerous titles at his organization and the state level, Chotokaku had also participated in multiple national level chess championships. Probably this was the only quality I couldn’t imbibe from him and I regret it, always. Today, I carry one of his books on chess and his personal magnetic chessboard that I remember him sitting with for hours together playing games as both himself and the opponent, in the hope that may be one day in this lifetime, although in his absence, I will be able to play a game of chess with myself.

Chotokaku was always the fun – loving person and he brought that into the very mundane things of day to day life. I remember the pictures and my mother telling me stories about how Chotokaku would dress up in her saree just to cheer up my mother and my aunts. Being the only child I was quite the selfish little kid when I was my tiny self. I remember tying up all my toys in one of my mum’s sarees and carrying it around the house lest someone should get their hands on any of them. To teach me a lesson, when I wasn’t around, Chotokaku would tuck in the heavy iron that was used in those days to iron clothes into that bundle. Once I got back, I would try with all my might to pick it up and fail miserably and Chotokaku would be sitting there smiling mischievously J. He had this unique way of petting me and my cousins and even the pets….it was by poking our nose with his thumb, just like pressing a button, while he uttered some impromptu gibberish which was supposed to indicate cute. When bottles in the kitchen needed cleaning, he would put up notes on them when my aunt wasn’t around which said “Amader ke snan korano dorkaar” which means “we need a bath” , or when fruits or vegetables in the basket were left for long he would put up a note saying “Amra poche jachhi, amader kheyaal rakhun” meaning “we are rotting, please take care of us”J.

This was Chotokaku…..he left us with these and an ocean of memories that I could go on writing about and never stop. He left us too soon…..and with him he left a gaping hole that no one can ever fill.

The next to go was Didibhai……Didibhai for me and Grandma for the world. Didibhai was someone I still remember as the frail - looking but strong lady who tirelessly worked throughout the day. She did not have a single grey strand of hair until the day she died. I have to admit, I was pretty scared of her when I was young, she was a tough task master and although I met her only during my winter holidays on alternate years while I was growing up, she made sure I got my dose of her lessons. That I can read and write in Bengali today, is due to her. She taught me and made me promise that I would send her letters in Bengali. Initially, I remember writing to her by spelling the Bengali words in English and she would save those letters and when I visited her next she would tell me, I want the next one written in Bengali, and I did, of course with a little help from mom.

While one half of the world knows me as Jasmita, the other half (which includes primarily my family, my neighbourhood and people who know me since I was a kid) know me by my nickname, Rupshi which is the Bengali word for beautiful – “Rupashi” as it would be pronounced…..this name, I owe it to Didibhai. The strong lady that she was, married off at an early age, which was more or less the norm in those times…I guess she was 14 then, she went on to raise six kids, one of them, being my mother. So, in a way, not only do I owe her my name but also my existence through my mother.

The death of my grandfather hadn’t broken down Didibhai as much as seeing two of her three sons pass away before her did. It was heart breaking to see the tough lady that she had been all her life turn into the weak and frail frame of bones in her final years. Whenever she met me, she would say, I have lived my life, seen more than I was supposed to, now it’s time to go……and she left…..once again leaving us with a swarm of memories.

The last to go was my dear old Tuna…..my boy…the fighter who fought till the end. I understand that many people will not be able to relate to this as an emotional trauma of considerable measure. He was after all an animal, to be specific, a cat….just a pet. But to us, Tuna was family, who was with us for more than a decade. He was never meant to live, he wouldn’t have if my aunt hadn’t picked him up from our neighbour’s house. When he first came, he was a kitten, but way smaller in size than an average kitten of his age. He continued to be of a size smaller than the average for a couple of years to begin with and then suddenly he grew up to be the handsome boy that he was. An adamant, angry young boy who didn’t fancy being carried around or being stroked at the wish of his humans…..he allowed such acts only when he pleased J. Tuna was one cat that could be termed sassy in the true sense of the word, always spick and span and with his own unique attitude. Even a dreaded infection which led to his ears being clipped at an early age couldn’t dampen his fighting spirit and he lived and ruled our hearts till his last breath….till he crossed the rainbow bridge.

The past couple of months have been difficult and it still isn’t an easy sail through the storm……it took away a lot from me and taught me a few lessons as well, the hard way of course.

Three lives gone in a matter of weeks…..leaving behind trails of endless memories and irreplaceable gaps in my life as an individual and our lives as a family.

                                                                 

        

                 RIP Didibhai, Chotokaku and Tuna……sorely and forever missed.