A small step for me, a giant leap for my world

(Published in Khaleej Times dated 1 March, 2022)

Last week, for the first time in two years, I stepped out and gingerly crossed the frontiers, into a world outside that probably had taken many cartwheels since the last time I took a flight. Normalcy on the exterior had probably started returning to human lives many months ago, and the pandemic had receded into the shadows for the most part. Trips and tours had once again become routine for people, but we in the family waited for 24 months before venturing into the virus-ripped world once again.

A lot has changed in the inner prescincts in this interim, and a lot, I reckon, has remained intact. Life outside might also have altered much. Yet a lot might be the same as I had known and seen before 18 March 2020 when the shutters closed behind us, right after an hour we landed in Dubai.

In the months when everything around us reeled in inexorable chaos, and life had become a synonym for death, we were ensconced in a cocoon, spending half the time in paranoia and half in prayer. It was hard to put a date to when the air will clear and when we would flap our wings once again. But life always leads us out of the dark alleys whenever it deems right and my trip to the mother land and to an aged mother came to pass recently.

Pre-travel jitters, of which I am an eternal victim, found new levels this time as I prepared for the outing. Flying suddenly felt like a new experience. Almost like a fledgling first-timer, I struggled with things at the airport - getting bag zippers stuck, fumbling and dropping documents, forgetting how to get past the smart gate, wishing I had an extra pair of hands to hold the bags, the jacket and the rest that I had lugged along. I suddenly remembered the adage, 'less luggage more comfort' once again. I will never learn, alas!

As I filed past the formalities, feeling the dull ache behind my ears, I vaguely sensed that the familiarity of travel had left me, and it might take a bit to get back to it. Inertia and lethargy had set in firmly in two years and it might take some time to shake them off. The spirit of travel has gathered mildew and it will need all the native sunshine to get rid of it from the bone marrows. The boundaries of my comfort zones will have to be redrawn and I must learn to breathe freely once again, albeit through the impeding layer of the mask. A pitstop in New Delhi, a nostalgic trip home and a big fat wedding are what I have been banking on to reinstate a semblance of 'all is well' to our rattled, dislocated lives again.

As I strolled aimlessly through the lanes of New Delhi soaking in the nascent summer, and boring through the incessant car horns, I realized with a sense of dread that some months ago, this very atmosphere was heavy with the smell of corpses. These very streets had echoed with the sound of sirens and wheezes from strained lungs. All the dystopian scenes I had seen on TV screens had indeed occurred here, in these lanes that now bear little signs of what had happened. If anything, the masks were the only reminders of a past catastrophe, apart from alternating tales of surviving and succumbing to a wicked virus. Tragedies are such sneaky, self-effacing brutes, I thought.

In the next few weeks, I will be out and about, testing the muddied waters that are now beginning to settle. After a freeze of two long seasons, I am now warming up to live the new-born moments of an open world, seeking inspiration in every little experience. Among them are some instants so glorious that they deserve to become eternities. But moments are mortal and they have to pass. Death is in their destiny. But then again, moments are noble. When they depart, they give us parting gifts to embellish our remaining days. They leave indelible memories. It is in our memories that the legacy of our moments lives. We put them in small crucibles and carry them with us as keepsakes wherever we go, to stand us in good stead when the things around us begin to look bleary and boring.

As I prepare for my outings in a post-covid world to collect memories and craft stories, I know that a lot has changed, but a lot still remains the same. Like the Air India’s Maharaja with whom I flew again, for instance.

Can we love humanity like we love music?

(Khaleej Times dated 14 Feb, 2022)

The day Lata Mangeshkar moved on, it was as if a whole generation of Indian music lovers had lost their melodic moorings. It was astounding to see the deluge of sadness that descended on them. From nostalgia and gratitude to sheer devotion and love, the overwhelming sentiments that was made public by people who loved her singing made her immortal in their memories. Some merely wallowed in the dismal thought that the nightingale would sing no more. Some others considered it an irreparable loss to humanity.

What amazed me in particular was the fact that not all those who mourned her passing were connoisseurs of music. Not all had practiced do-re-mi nor had a major understanding of raga and rhythm. Yet there was something that united them all, and it was their love for the beautiful voice and the mellifluous strains it produced.

What brought an entire legion of music lovers together was not their understanding or knowledge of music but an unconditional acceptance of its universal appeal. It was a great moment of connection and coming together of human souls, not based on refined tastes and discerning, but of finding a common spot that defied logic.

I am a mammoth music lover, but I cannot decipher musical details, except identifying a few favourite ragas. I meld into a symphony like ice in water but haven’t the slightest clue of its grammar. What then connects my heart with the soul of music? How do I appreciate something that I do not understand? If I can absorb music into my life without knowing what it entails, why then can’t I connect to people without trying to know or deconstruct them?

I am prompted to compare this link between music and men with the connection between people and wonder why we depend gravely on understanding people to establish human connections. Despite our best efforts to know what is on our minds and communicate it to our fellow beings, we have ended up grossly misunderstanding one another, jeopardizing human relationships and causing mayhem in our lives. Is language and misplaced social intercourse to blame for this slow disintegration of relationships?

It makes me further deliberate if it is because of our dissection of human nature that we have ended up at logger heads with each other, picking up quarrels and sabre-rattling at the smallest instance. Do we try to read beyond what is apparent, find meanings that don’t exist, transmit ideas that we don’t genuinely believe in, speak when it is not necessary and attempt to establish authority over the other, when all we need to do is acknowledge that the other person is an entity just like us, whose anatomy need not be understood nor his mental fabric be scrutinized.

With the evolution of language and the growth of communication channels, we have probably become more adept at analyzing human beings than accommodating them in our lives. And that, in my view, is an irony. We often use our speech to disagree and punch holes in one another’s emotional fabric. Our words are often our nemesis.

Before we cement an association, we tend to put people under the scanner, read their cellular structure and judge them one way or the other. Eventually, the connection either sets or dissolves based on perceptions than on a natural propensity to accept. It has been the way we have built our equations: using our brains. The love that we speak of in glowing terms has slowly begun to move away from the heart to other practical territories, perhaps.

Our predilections are finding newer ways to consummate. We are trying to understand and infer more than to accept and attach. It is nothing like the abiding sentiment we all harbour for music, where the strains are subtle and spiritual, and the affinities are non-cerebral. We don’t try to know what goes into a song as long as it takes us on a flight and puts us among the clouds. We merely allow ourselves to capitulate to its all-pervasive ethos.

If human language will be a barrier to loving unconditionally, of what use is it to our life’s fulfilment? If our communication will only create chaos, of what purpose is such speech? If our relations are aimed at decoding one another, of what value are our affections?

If there is anything that I have learnt from my embracement of music of different genres without mastering it, it is this: only when we anchor ourselves to a seminal connection that transcends our limited comprehensions will we find true love – both in ourselves and in the other.

Finding a valuable purpose for our love of money

(Opinion Page column published in Khaleej Times dated 31 Jan, 2022)

Like many people in this world, I have had an ambivalent attitude towards money; an approach that wavers between the old belief that money is the root cause of all evil and a logical understanding that money practically makes the world go around. Even today, I flinch at advertisements and advice that offer a way to make a quick buck and at the same time, slaver at reports of people having won the weekly lottery.

Our relationship with wealth has always been a tricky one and it has hugely influenced the way we conducted our lives. ‘Is wealth good or bad?’ is a question that we all may have asked at some point of time or the other.

Creating wealth that facilitates a good life is what drives most of all human endeavours. Much of our happiness is derived from our comforts and often there is no limit set to our affluent dreams. We tirelessly keep pushing our goal posts without knowing how far the ground stretches, without even sparing a thought to the purpose behind it all. Setting material goals is certainly essential for us to stay robust in this game of life but knowing how far we must push ourselves and to what end might probably help us immensely in managing the inner turmoil that we face in our gold rush.

Time and again, I come across news stories about the random acts of benevolence by a leading Gulf-based tycoon from Kerala, who dishes out compassion so copiously to strangers in need that it makes me look at wealth in a whole new perspective. His deeds are not planned philanthropy designed to enhance a rich man’s profile, but they are impromptu decisions made by a magnanimous heart to make a difference to another man’s life.

The true power of wealth is realized only when it leaves our immediate precincts and it waters the parched land of the other man. If I have desired for money in excess, it is for this privilege of being able to dispense it at will to struggling hands in my vicinity.

Looking back, life has always provided me with enough, but never an excess. Conservative living has been the mode ever since I remember, and the trials of the pandemic years have only made money dearer to me. As I clawed my way back after being pushed off the cliff suddenly and began to cobble things back, I once again reset my priorities; of knowing how much we need to sail smoothly and of setting our boundaries and goals accordingly.

Once we had set the criteria for what entails a decent living, it was not difficult to put a figure to how much we must strive for. The basic essentials apart, we need small indulgences to keep feelings of deprivation at bay, and I see no rationale in denying us a few good things if the winds are blowing in our favour. If tough times demand austerity, then better times must provide reasonable pleasures too, for I do not advocate compulsive abstinence in life. We don’t need to be monks, nor do we need to own a Ferrari.

The idealists may contend that one could be generous even without being affluent, that sparing a penny when in dearth is the ultimate show of genuine charity. But let us face the truth - it is not easy to practice self-sacrifice in these times when we are fighting for our own survival. It is good to be ideal, but it is impractical. Life is all about knowing the difference between the utopian and the pragmatic confines of our material world.

I am still hiking my way up from the crunch phase, but I now clearly see the difference between enough and excess. Enough for our use and excess for others’. Someday, if there will be a windfall in my life, I know that my heart will open its floodgates. For this, I shall covet wealth. Money is now an endearing word to me owing to the infinite opportunities it might give to help people in need, which currently I am constrained to do, thanks to the bills waiting.

Hankering after money for purely selfish needs is what probably made it an evil in the eyes of old orthodoxy, and notions of extreme selflessness reduced it to being a futile thing. By slightly tweaking its purpose and by separating our needs from our extravagances, we might just be able to give money its due credit and true respect. Somewhere between avarice and altruism is a neutral zone where we can strike an amicable deal with the timeless allure of the lucre.