Human or Humanoid? Who Am I and Am I Me?

How do I know who am I and am I me? Usernames, passwords, passwords for passwords, and passwords for remembering passwords have usurped my identity. The OTPs—one time passwords—make me look like an all time fool. But I console myself that my enemy has a constantly constipated look, not finding any password even for passing the wind. As I can’t bypass, and pass out many a times living by the leave of passwords, I wonder whether I will need a password to pass away.

Negotiating the maze of passwords transports me to the secret world of deciphering complex codes—and I live my adolescent fantasy of Sherlock Holmes’ cloak and dagger life. Attired in his trademark hat and overcoat, and smoke oozing from the curvaceous pipe, I follow the fugitives in the foggy eerie nights in London’s dark slippery streets shrouded in sinister shadows. Life is spooky—Corona or no Corona.

The toll-free number too takes its toll—“Please wait, you are in the queue… Kripaya intezaar karen, aap katar main hain…”. After waiting for the Godot, when I get connected—I am coaxed into playing a numbers game. For a 3 years old seeking electronic adventure—pushing 1 till 9 and hearing humourless recording over n over again could be thrilling. For me—having pushed luck all my life—it is the endgame. “For English push 1, Hindi me jankaari ke liye 2 dabayen”—whispers a melodiously morbid and monotonous voice. Whatever number I push, I hear what I don’t want to. I go on fishing from 1 to 9 till eternity—only to get disconnected. I repeat the cycle with sadistic pleasure yearning to hear—“Ab aap apna aur saamne wali ka gala dabayen… Now strangulate yourself and the woman at the other end”(men always put women in the firing line). Customer delight or customer fright? It’s death—digit by digit. One resigns, reclines, n recites:

“उम्र ए दराज़ मांग कर लायी थी चार दिन, 

दो आरजू में कट गए, दो  इंतज़ार में…”*

(I begged four days from life, 

Two I lost in longing, two in waiting…)

*Couplet by Seemab Akbarabadi

 While Corona kills—the sinners and the saintly, the gadfly and the godly—all are perpetually online. Appropriate all the inappropriate Apps—these are abundant and free. Tweet taunts and tantrums or face-off on Facebook; be an instant hit on Insta by posting the latest pics in bikini with a bunny or do Zumba on Zoom; endlessly forward ‘gyaan’ on WhatsApp making friends n foes writhe, wince n weep or be a darling dude on YouTube—you never lack social media choices. First these ‘apes’ tempt n lure, then they coax n cajole. Coercion from the likes of ‘WhatsApe’ apart, we continue to fall and remain in their trap for FOMO—fear of missing out. We can’t shake these monkeys off our backs.

Even emotions are electronic. Emojis express it all—anger or anxiety, love or lie, smirk or smile. Forget the back-slapping bonhomie—one can go hug a pillar.

The unescapable World Wide Web, Goggle’s googlies, and the machines on our palms, laps and desks manipulate us to download miracles, mischiefs n miseries without measure. WWW answers all our Whats Whys n Whos whenever we plunge into this unfathomable ocean. We wish to find one tiny pearl of wisdom, and it places millions on our palms—we don’t know where to begin and where to end. The plethora of goodies so confuse n confound that one leaves the humongous store without robbing it.

Bored with your life on this earth and on the web? You can live it up in an online “Second Life”. Then there is the Dark Web, which offers you A to Z of the ugly and the illegal—from arms and drugs to thugs. You are a nut case to enter it, and a gone case once into it.

The email story is astounding. We don’t talk or walk, we email—children email parents sitting in the same room, colleagues email each other from adjacent cubicles. We are so scared of others and ourselves that we put everything on instant electronic record. Hail email—it won’t fail, has a trailing tail.

As Ambani urges us to “Karlo Duniya Muthhi Me”—hold the world in your palm, and we ‘rely’ upon him to “Jio” (live) a life of ‘mobile’ dreams, life for most remains a static nightmare.

The binary life—can we ever escape its tentacles? Can we live a life of our own ever again? Digital life is relentlessly marketed and sold to us where we must have it all, else we are nothing. A perfect 1 or 0—everything in-between is meaningless, mundane, and oh…so middle-class.

Caught between being a human and a humanoid, I ask myself—who am I and am I me?

Image: pxfuel.com

Middle Muddle

I never meddle, but plight of the middle needles.

Mind-boggling, if not maddening. Amidst motley of ‘mids’, it’s a medley of ‘middles’.

Malady or melody…depends:

It is a mystery why the mid-wife is a wife only in the mid;

It is an enigma whether ‘midnight’s children’ are born on this or ‘the other side of midnight’;

Even if it is a wily woman lurking in the shadows, behind every shady deal is a sinister ‘middle-man’;

While one end devours and the other discards, the middle alone fights battle-of-the-bulge;

Facts: It is always the mid-riff which is reported bare on a bike; Middle names are lost like middle-ages; Medium-spicy always turns out to be low-bland, like mid-day meals;

Having lost youth’s charm, and lacking wisdom of the old, the misfit middle-aged try to be both, and land up in no man’s/woman’s land;

Caught in the middle, like pendulums they perpetually swing from end to end, as if caught between ‘goodbye’ and ‘I love you’;

The moment we mingle middle with class, we assign it to the mundane; sensing the mood, even Modi has abandoned it;

Glory is of the elder, love is with the younger, and leftovers of both for the mere middle;

The middle-of-the-road always gets it – hook from the ‘left’, hit from the ‘right’;

A hit is a hit, but it is amazing over the mid-wicket; Out is out, but it stumps when ball hits the middle;

The mean is never mean, the median adheres to the median, and the mode is always a model, yet the central tendency of being in the middle is scoffed at;

No one wants them (even though they have their advantages): middle seat in airlines, middle berth in trains, a puncture in the middle of the journey, a slap in the middle of the road; the notable exception being a fiendish fart in the middle of a politician’s lecture;

Even though it is the longest, you can’t raise the poor middle finger, lest you are booked for being illegal or immoral;

Whereas the mad flings with mids* or maidens cause the mid-air collisions, the ‘midsummer night’s dream’ becomes a midwinter nightmare for the jilted;

The middle-east today is so west, it has none of the middle and little of the east; And in that County why is it only Middlesex, even if no one is counting?;

Don’t come running to me with your mid-life crisis when I am in the middle of nowhere.  My signboard is succinct:

“Don’t disturb, I am in the middle of something” (read- I am enjoying ‘nothing’ more than I had enjoyed ‘anything’)

*weeds

Disclaimer: I have written this in good humour, not to ridicule anyone. I believe we can laugh at ourselves.

Pic: Gabriela Pala, pexels.com

Sundowners at Sunset ! My Lockdown & Quarantine Musings…Journey from Serious to Hilarious.

I suggest savour the end-piece before the beginning. As Jacques Torres said-“Life is short. Eat dessert first” 🍨😊

After enjoying more than 2 months of Guwahati lockdown, now I am relishing Bangalore’s 14 days mandatory home-quarantine. And I feel freer than ever…not suffocation, but spirit soaring in the solitude. The silence 🤐 is eloquent 🗣, the limits and limitations are liberating. What with the wondering mind, wandering imagination, free flying thoughts…you get the drift. 🕺

I feel my wants and expectations from self and others reducing, receding…while I delve into the nature within and without. When I have rendezvous with the nature in my nature, the soul breaks into song n dance. Whenever I embrace the nature outside…the sky painted in myriad hues 🌈, the distant blue-green hills 🌲, the silvery-golden moon 🌙, the gloriously orange sunset setting the horizon on fire 🌅, chirping birds 🦜, fluttering butterflies 🦋…the window to the world opens many a windows to my soul. Oh, is the wind caressing me, or is it me caressing the wind ?🌠

Deleting toxic thoughts in tandem with unwanted mails and messages, I am trying to clear the cobwebs crowding my mind. Living with myself and my life, in my time, on my terms…I am coming to terms with myself. Doing away with dependencies small and big, I am keeping and making others safe from me😜

In my own beautiful company and in the spirit of ‘Ekla Chalo Re’ (Walk Alone), I am delighted by the days, lighted by the nights, and always ignited by the thoughts 🚶‍♂️🤔

Not that I am drifting towards ‘Sanyas’(renunciation)…far from it, for I find ‘Nirvana’(enlightenment) in the things material which I love most…reading what I haven’t in my ever-growing list 📚and re-reading what I have📖, furiously writing my unadulterated thoughts, devouring chocolates 🍬like there is no tomorrow (oh..‘temptation’ is so tempting), smelling its exotic aroma while gulping down endless cups of ginger-lemon-mint tea ☕️, listening to unbelievably beautiful lyrics of a Guljar and heavenly music of a Rahman or a Chopin 🎼, and occasionally enjoying a classic movie. But one indulgence I sorely and surely miss is the occasional sunset sundowner with back-slapping, name-calling friends 👥🍻

I think I will always be materialistic as far as these things go; and I hasten to add dark sunglasses, blue blazers, silk scarves, and a hat-at-perfect-angle, to the list. I have no shame in voicing my hedonistically vile vices. Let the style adorn me, if not the substance 😎🎩

To me these material matters matter. For me it will never be “Mind vs Matter”, but: “Man Minds the Matter”. Sometimes material is immaterial, and immaterial is material…who can sit in judgment ? 🧐

I have no quarrels with anyone, but sometimes with myself…which find expression in my prose and poetry. To quote W.B. Yeats: “Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry”. And let me add: Out of love with others we weave dreams; out of love with ourselves we live life. So I dream. So I live 😊

From life flows death. Seriously in a lighter vein, I know none among clan or friends will have the heart to write my obituary.📜 So, to save you the cost, time and trouble of hiring a professional obituary writer, I pen my own obituary. Publish it posthumously by simply replacing ‘I’ with ‘he’, interspersed with ‘Niru’ or ‘bro’ (not ‘bhai’ of the supari fame or ‘bhaiya’ the milkman, please), and “Woh” (for those who were romantically inclined towards me 💗), to introduce variety in the mundane foregoing text. Be stingy in your praise by all means, but a bit you must shower (for it is customary not to criticize the dead, however bad, ugly or both) 😂. And don’t forget to add these immortal lines:

“Oft beaten by life n times, he was a man offbeat but not off-colour 🌈, hence can’t be written-off without an obituary. With many a wild whims and questionable quirks, he insisted on writing ✍️what people didn’t want to read, particularly enjoyed reading about farting habits of fat pet cats🐈possessed by pot-bellied petty pensioners, and freely prescribed pills for piles to priests, peasants and pedants. He was harmless enough not to be noticed, and observant enough to notice the bird-shit sitting quietly on the right of his left eyebrow 👁. He decided early on never to decide what decision was good for him, and that decidedly decided his fate 😔. Some loved him (not his fault), most disliked him (serves them right), and due to his mysteriously enigmatic and unlikely-likeable persona 🧟‍♀️, many are perpetually in the in-between space of neither here nor there…now reluctantly liking him for 23 seconds…then reluctantly disliking him for 43 seconds…and the reluctant cycle keeps repeating 🔄. May his soul RIP sheltered from self.”😎

Friends, Not Lovers !

Relatively speaking, all relationships except love and friendship are governed by legal, social, religious, economic or political sanctions.  Friendship and love have no written or unwritten contract (lawyers are too expensive). However, friendship flows naturally (despite unnatural tendencies in some), whereas love has compulsions (of unmentionable benefits). Let’s juxtapose these relationships:

In a love relationship, we love, sacrifice and give (do we have any options), but we also consciously or unconsciously presume, demand and take for granted (our birth-rights). In love, we care and cuddle (hoping quid pro quo), but at times we are mean and jealous (genetic predispositions), and subtly or not so subtly pressurise and control (natural instincts). Friends do not compare, compete or complain, nor do they expect, exasperate or exacerbate (who will let them without a contract).

A lover can leave one and take two, but you don’t discard a friend in favour of another. Either one is a friend, or one is not. In love the joining date may be blurred on the postcard from the past, but the termination letter is clearly and neatly dated. Friendship is neither by appointment nor is there any expiry printed on it. Oscar Wilde is succinct “Friendship is far more tragic than love. It lasts longer”.

I can indulge with friends five or fifty, but can’t eat, drink or dance with lovers two or twenty without having my skull split open on all sides. Can you imagine back-slapping bonhomie among your past, present and future lovers? As Nietzsche said “Love is blind. Friendship closes its eyes”. If I may philosophise further: falling in love blindly is an eye opener, and friendship is an open and shut case.

As friends we are at our unhindered best… nice, naked and naughty…perfect partners in peccadilloes. With friends we can let our hair down yet keep the chins up. Borrowing from Robert Bloch, friendship is like pee in the pants; everyone can see it, but only we can feel the warm tingling sensation inside.

Yes, friends are sometimes pain- in- the- ass, but never hemorrhoids.

I will take my lover (yours too if you like) as my friend anytime, but not vice versa.

(This is written in good humour and not to belittle any relationship)