Rahul’s position in the universe…..
Well, imprisonment is a strong word. It can be used in absolutely all context of life and has a strange power to distract you from the thing that you are doing right now. Like, for example….I am trying to write on my computer. But in the back of mind, I am contemplating that, “since my computer is on, why not I play a couple of songs…or play a game and then resume….”. That is the way every single soul has been imprisoned by the technology of the internet, the LAN and the worst disease…or the virus….games.
Here goes Rahul’s famous and mostly crude hypothesis. He is a shy, content, small, simplistic, sometimes ambitious, subtle human being. Very intelligent and sometimes very dumb. Decision-maker in his own repertoire of judgment. Sometimes, I love that bastard and sometimes just laugh out loud about the innocence of his judgment and talk. But….he is nice in all his idiotic adventures. About his hypothesis…..remember that I am talking from a third-person’s point and from a very idiotic talk over a cigarette.
He used to gaze at the stars at night whenever he used to have a spare time to reflect on his life. He enjoyed this simple pleasure to spend it with silence, with beauty, with the moon and the stars, and most importantly….about his glorious future and his dreams. He exact words were, “ I still remember the times I spend on my corridors lying silent and watching and gazing at the beautiful universe…made me feel like I am a part of this universe”. Then I asked him, with what context and circumstance was he saying this. He said, “ Yesterday, at 1 in the morning….when our net got cut and my Counter Strike game got halted….I did the same thing. I went to the parapet…lay there and smoked a cigarette. But this unique thing happened. I looked at the sky and the stars like I used to when I was a kid. And suddenly remembered the dreams and ambition I used to have….and now I suddenly forgetting those and getting cocooned up. Roomed up. Prisoned up. Literally…..getting bottled up by words like selfishness, rat-race, cunningness, unfaithfulness, supremacy, power, hate, rage……What have we become? Have we become the prisoner of this strange society? The society which we wanted to build for our own convenience. What’s suddenly wrong with us?”
Rahul said that. For one moment….I was grinning….because I could never imagine a guy like Rahul to come up with a philosophy so strong that its inconceivably true. What have we become??? We have become a prisoner. A prisoner of our own prison. We hardly read books nowadays. We hardly read the newspapers. We hardly communicate. We hardly refer to the dictionary. We hardly talk. We hardly………there is so many things that we have stopped doing since a person called Bill Gates revolutionized what we call Windows XP. Well, its not his fault for sure.
That day, I had 3 instances when I thought, I should seriously write it. One, was Rahul’s out of the blue philosophy of life. Second, was my sister….who called up all the way from Detroit just to tell me, that she was online and would like to chat……that hurt. Thirdly……well, it may not sound cool or forward….just might sound pathetically unworthy of note…but it touched me…..this poetry was in Hindi but I had to translate it into English. It’s the lines from the movie Munnabhai-2. It literally told me to write this piece.
“For all of them who running in the city,
If that’s the life then what is death.
Complain about the train being late due to the first rain,
But do you remember the fun in getting drenched in that same rain.
You would probably know everything about the serial characters,
But don’t have the time to care about your mother…..
For pleasure you took a carefree walks on the beach sand..
Now, there are 108 channels…but do you enjoy them.
Connected with the global village through the internet..
But cant know who’s in our neighbors.
Life’s full with mobile and landlines…….
But don’t have that line that connects you with your best friend.
Remember the last time when you saw the sunset.
And remember when the evening is over.
If this is life then what is death…..”.
dylan's "the times they are a-changing"
