Colours

Spring season is here. The birds should be singing. The flowers should be budding. The world should be wearing its colorful underwear on the outside. But not in Bangalore. Here, there is no natural flower budding. None. Zero. All you can see are flowers on pots—trapped, tamed, and terribly lonely. And all these pots spring from high-storied buildings like rebellious children hanging out of windows. There are hardly any colors on the ground. The ground is gray. The buildings are gray. My mood is also slightly gray. In Bhutan, at this time of the year, it would be a celebration of spring. Indescribably beautiful. The kind of beautiful that makes poets weep and photographers bankrupt their SD cards. But here? Here we have Holi hangovers.  Holi, the Indian festival of colors, has come and gone. But its fever still lingers—like a relative who refuses to leave after a wedding. You can still see so many nooses of flowers in florist shops. (Nooses, because at those prices, you might as well hang yourself.) And many raags—bags of color powder—displayed proudly on roadside stalls. You can also see many college students with faint, unwashed colors on their faces. Some look like rainbows that got into a fight. Others look like they lost. Colours make our life. They add beauty to our existence. We love colours. We crave them. We chase them during festivals, weddings, and the occasional Instagram filter. But it seems one of the teachers in my previous school was damn dull when it came to colors. The teacher simply didn't care about them. And this is where our story begins.

In one of the final exams back in 2008—math paper, believe it or not—there was a question on coloring different shapes: triangle, circle, square, and so on. For class one students. Little kids. Innocent souls. Some students were provided with colors. Not enough, of course. Many didn't have any. I didn't know how poor our education system was in some remote schools—like Tsirangtoe Lower School in Tsirang. I learned the hard way. Before the exam, the storekeeper said something that still echoes in my ears: "Government can't buy everything now." He said it with a straight face. And he was damn right. But where could some poor students get colors in their lives? That was another gripping story. The kind that makes you stare at the ceiling at 2 AM. But good things had a turn after a year. Farm roads soon came to Tsirangtoe's villages, bringing in a good amount of cash. People started working, selling products, and even the poor began sweeping hundred-rupee notes from their hands like autumn leaves. Government has a way, always. I knew from this instance. Slowly. Painfully. But eventually.  Now, coming back to that colour exam. A teacher also has a way, always. So the teacher slowly dictated to those who had no colors to write the words—RED, GREEN, BLUE, etc.—inside the blank shapes. Problem solved. Creativity killed. Moving on. Helen Keller knew all the names of the colors. But she hardly knew what red was or blue was—because she became blind before she could grasp the full perception of the color world. And here, in Tsirangtoe, we had children with two perfectly good eyes who were being taught exactly like Helen Keller.

After the exam, I pulled a student aside—behind the exam building, like a secret agent conducting a sting operation. I gave him a little test. I asked him if he could name all the colors. He did. Perfectly. Like a trained parrot. Red, blue, green, yellow, purple, orange—the whole rainbow. Then I picked up a blue rose from the nearby garden. (Yes, a blue rose. They exist. I hadn't seen one before either.) I asked him the color of it. He gave the flower a deep, long look. Like he was searching for answers in its petals. He hesitated for a moment. Then he smiled—a little nervously—and said, "...Umm... red, sir." I smiled back—the kind of smile that hides a small internal scream—and said, "Roses are not always red. There are blue roses, white roses too. This is blue." The student then directly cussed me. Not with bad words, but with something worse: honesty. He said he didn't care about anything besides marks in the exam. And he confidently announced that he wrote whatever the teacher dictated. He was true. Just marks would do. Nothing else mattered. Not understanding. Not learning. Not even a beautiful blue rose.

And this was it. Our students—a few unfed, under-resourced students—if asked to name, could name all twelve different colors. But if asked to identify among twelve different colors, they had no choice but to think hard and say blue for red, green for yellow, black for white. Because, because, and because—they have not seen practically. Even if they have two big bull's eyes staring right at the object. Our teaching lacks practicability and applicability. We are made of theories. We build castles of words on foundations of air. There were many instances where computer degree holders couldn't operate a computer. What a shame! Jobs demand experiences—not so much theories, not so much dictating from chairs. Some of our Lyonpos and Ministers are simply speaking good poetry. from their chairs. Beautiful words. No soil. No roots.

The purpose of learning is knowing something. Isn't it? Knowing. Not memorizing. Not repeating. Not parroting. The colors. How can children develop cognition and recognize things? Whose weakness was it? The concerned teacher? The storekeeper? The examination system? Or the entire education system of the country? We must think of it. And avoid being blind—despite having our two bulging eyes to identify all. A good shot here: Helen Keller was blind and deaf too. But someone colored her life. Someone showed her the world without showing her a single color. If she could learn, why can't we teach? Let us not raise parrots. Let us raise children who can look at a blue rose and say, with confidence and joy, "That is blue. And it's beautiful."  

Fry in the Summer

Though this lousy summer is still a little far on the calendar, I feel this damn summer is already here in Bangalore. It has arrived early—like an uninvited guest who refuses to take off their shoes. This year, unlike last year, the weather has become much hotter. Last year, it drizzled at this time. Gentle rain. Cool breezes. Hope. This year? Nothing. Just heat. Dry, miserable, soul-sucking heat. And everybody's talking about how lousy the weather has become. It surely is! Damn this global warming. Damn it straight to a cooler place. Last week, there were two holidays. On Tuesday, it was Holi. On Friday, it was Good Friday. And you bet it—they were goddamned holidays. Not because holidays are bad. But because I never celebrated either of them. They were lousy holidays spent on my lousy bed in my lousy room. Sitting on that bed, I tried to engage myself as much as possible in my own activities. The problem was, I didn't know what those activities were. So I did what any sane person would do: I opened the internet. Then I closed the damned laptop. Then I opened it again. Then I flipped through pages that were lying scattered next to my bed—uselessly, like a confused penguin. I read some phony writings. I walked to and fro in my room like a caged tiger. I wrote something bullshit (and when I write, I type on my keyboards—plural, because I have two and use neither). I opened the refrigerator and drank a cold drop of water. Just one drop. The rest was too warm. I visited the toilet. Came back to my lousy bed. Then did it all over again. Goddamned it. I felt I was inside a cell. I did. Then I thought: I need to do something. So I gave myself a long walk. In the sweaty, blistering sun. Brilliant idea. Outside, children were playing cricket. Running. Shouting. Sweating. Enjoying themselves. It really killed me. How could those little craps bear the heat of the sun? They have no sweat glands? No sense of self-preservation? Are they secretly lizards? I walked to a shop to read the temperature. The number on the wall flickered. It was 31. Not so bad, I heard. New Delhi had just reached half boiling point. Some other parts of the world were even worse. I don't know how people live in those blistering places. The thought of it killed me. It did. Right there. Next to the shop selling cold drinks I couldn't afford. The room has been sweltering like anything. The fan's blades cannot be seen when they move—they become a ghostly blur of disappointment. So you look for a cool shower. You imagine it. You dream of it. Cold water. Relief. Salvation. But the shower is not as cool as you expected. The heated warm water drizzles out heavily. Bet me. The warmness is enough to make you sweat more than before you entered. You step out dirtier than you went in. God, I hate that. I hate that with the heat of a thousand suns—which, ironically, is the problem. By evening, mosquitoes dance all around like they own the place. I don't know where they come from. I close every goddamn tiny hole. I seal windows. I block doors. I stuff socks into gaps I didn't know existed. Do they come from the sink's hole? The drain? The neighbor's soul? I use coils. Sprays. Creams. Electric bats. Ancient curses. Nothing works. They always loiter around, hunting for prey—and I am their buffet. They literally kill my sleep. Night after night. Bzzzz. Bzzzz. Right next to my ear. That sound. That evil, high-pitched, demonic sound. One day, I woke up in the morning and saw three mosquitoes sleeping next to me. Permanently dead. Their tiny bodies were filled with red blood. My blood. I nearly puked. It killed me. I meant it. So here I am. Hot. Tired. Mosquito-bitten. Waiting for winter in a city that forgot what winter means. Damn summer. Damn Bangalore. And damn those three little vampires who died happy.

This World is Yours

The sun has the whole universe

And you too have all

In front of you a vast stage;

To play the game you have never played.

You have all;

Generosity, merriment, cry, hurt, love, care, good, bad, all.

It’s how you see…

How you go…

To me,

You are always joyful and have a piece of good heart!

You are optimistic as you are,

And powerful as a man needs.

And a person’s personality.

Shine through joys and goodness.

Good in all, to become best you try

And sometimes in life- independence

Bother not what others do

And bother what you do.

Let no one hurts you at last

Let others say well

Self-hope sometimes uplift you

You need that expectation.

Your future is as shiny as coral

As you have everything

That a man sometimes doesn’t have

Health, wealth, character, good rapport, confidence, persuasiveness

That will really win through the life

And may God bless you always

And my wish is the god’s wish, my son.

The Canned Dream

People care about the fruits, not how a tree is nurtured and taken care (I wrote a similar topic in this blog called ‘The Roots of a Seed’)

What do you feel when the most expected fruit comes as a disaster? Or worse, even so, axing the whole tree, or rooting out the tree from the soil.

The hope of life is the root and if the root is rooted out, there is no hopeless hope than this. Likewise, for someone, the most desirable thing in life comes as what many friends called as ‘killing the life,’ ‘demoting the life,’ ‘what is these?’ all blames, blames and more blames; blames to your life, blames to the people around you, blames to God!

A few of my friends time and again blurted out often, “I know everything, but what’s wrong with this result?” It’s like saying, ‘life is empty, but what’s this suffering?’ It’s almost time to complete courses, and for many dreamers, the end of the course will be the end of their lofty dreams. Not so. Never end. I tell myself, always. My house owner was once a rickshaw puller. He narrated it to me. Now he has twenty-seven buildings of his own. He eats gold, I think. No one can say life. Just dream and relax, and jump and hold tight when that dream knocks at the door. But my door always remains open to welcome dreams. I hope I have not missed the dream. Sometimes, the future, which seems illusory and out of reach, does not concern me at all.

Anyways, I mock those ‘canned dreamers’ and think to myself, ‘Nobody knows everything, only God knows.’ But deep in the heart, I ask many times, that how unequal is it, that God doesn’t know some people, (those people who deserve) but there is always ‘BUT’ in life. Why so contrast and comparison in this life. God is the one, say politicians. But if you ask any layman, he/she would say their god is the best, meaning others are false. That is a huge debate and to answer for an unseen thing like the god. I give up.

But, everything is unequal, and let me leave with George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ book, “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

Sometimes

Sometimes, darkness can be too dark

Not having a single spark

Dingy, long unending days

Seems no light at the end

And all things look empty and vain

Things fall apart

There, I wish hope.

Sometimes, silence can be too silent

Without any rustle or any breath

In a lonely place, and alone

And feeling and sensing so down

Feeling so diffident and so forlorn

There, I wish love and joy.

Sometimes, stresses can be too stressful

Without any prospect of solution

When troubles are troubling

And things are all in a hotchpotch

There, I wish peace and homely beauty.

Sometimes, love can be so hurtful

When a wounded heart breaks into pieces

Spread; all round me everywhere

On the carpet, on the sofa, on the pillows, the beds

Everywhere

There, I wish a truelove

I wonder why I am the only one at fault

Alone, bearing all these pains

My mind goes over the brink

Where will I set the foot?

Where will I rest?

Why do I get sucked into this tunnel?

So often

So dark, so indistinguishable

I try to hide

But especially from myself……. DARKNESS.