Uff.. Ye Breakups

One of my close friends came to me crying like as child. I asked “What happened?” and to make him feel easier and draw a smile from his face I conjoined another question “Did you have breakup?”

He was dead serious and replied “Yes, how did you come to know Abhay?”

 I said “What!!!”

 “When did it happen? I was just kidding”

He replied “A year ago!”

I exclaimed “What!!!”

“You didn’t tell me for whole one year. I never saw you unhappy either. One year is long time and even if it would have happened, you must have got over it by now! What happened today?” I fired several volleys on him.

His succinct reply was “I tried to keep it dormant since past 12 months but she keeps up popping every time I try to forget her. Now today the threshold has crossed, you are the first one whom I am sharing, please help me get out from this miserable condition. Please make me forget her”

I became perturbed seeing the terrible condition of my friend. He seemed inconsolable.

I thought for a moment and replied “Well, you have all my sympathies. I can do whatever is possible for me to do for you. But since I have never experienced such situation, I think I am not the right person to make you forget her”

He quipped “All the time you talked about yoga, spirituality and so many things…Was all of them fake? Doesn’t all this have a solution for my problem?”

I became silent.  I have helped quite a few times to some people. Sometime I helped them is passing semester exams, sometime some financial help etc. But this was unique help asked from me. I offered him to go for a dinner and assured him that we will discuss tomorrow about this topic and probably will reach to a solution.

We had dinner. He told me the whole happenings. I paid proper attention to him to each and every story that he was narrating.

 I realized, sometime attachments can be very excruciating.  In this world everything is nonpermanent, comes with an expiry date but when we recognize the other thing as our eternal belonging, then problems creep in.

We returned home. I drove him to his home.  I returned to my bed. Lying on bed,  my eyes were wide open. I thought, I have told him that I will talk tomorrow about how to be normal and forget her, but in reality I simply don’t know what to tell him, how to make him feel normal.

“Should I ask this from my spiritual mentor? No..No..what will he think about me!!! ” a thought reverberated in my mind.

Seeing no other alternative, I thought of turning to a universal Guru “Google Guru” and I am not joking and my intention of mentioning it is not to dilute the gravity of the situation, but my helpless condition where I was put in by my friend, seeing no alternative and the ubiquitous nature of the problem I thought “Google” might come handy. Actually, it was not Google, but one of its subsidiaries “YouTube”.

I switched on my Lap Top and typed the URL “www.youtube.com”.

A lot of suggestive videos came just after typing the URL. It was mainly those videos which I watched frequently. It was of cricket, politics, some funny videos etc etc.

A lightening has struck my mind. “YouTube has also memory” I murmured. Well, this was not unusual to have in YouTube or any other shopping sites. They use the technology called “BigData” to see our browsing pattern and then they floods with similar content, but since my friend was grappling with one memory issue (of course not of memory loss) this usual pattern seemed unique to me.

Machines are made to behave as humans. That is why artificial intelligence is a buzz word now. Isn’t it? If you are not convinced search two words “Sophia” and “Qiu Hao”

on Guru. You will get to know the extent where we are heading.

Anyway, coming to the point, I thought YouTube has a unique feature called “Delete History” and you can also customize it by deleting  memory of past hour, week, month etc. . If we delete history, problem is solved. No Suggestive Videos of your previously watched content. All new, Fresh and Pristine.

Alas! My friend doesn’t have that setting called “Selective Deleting of History”.

Memory can be a reason of serious pangs in life.

Disclaimer : I know, you all will treat it as an act of fiction, but from my end its my duty to convey the same that it’s fiction only 🙂 Happy wala Sunday Guys 🙂

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Simplicity? Not Really..

Simplicity is considered as one of the great virtues that we as a human hopes to strive for. Everybody claims that they are simple or wanted to be simpler but ends up in being complex.

So after hearing my argument on a contentious topic, when one of my friends told me, “why you are complicating things even when it is simple”? At that time, I did not respond immediately and looked at the case and asked myself, Am I really making a mess out of it? With a little reflection I came to the conclusion Yes, I was making it messy, even though I was not intended to do so.

When I sit alone, I find myself at my best. That doesn’t mean I am having homosapien hysteria. No, absolutely not. The only reason for that is my ability to think independently without any pressure and prejudice of the society increases manifold when I remain in seclusion. So on that day when I sat alone and asked myself why sometime I become complex even though I don’t want to be. After a lot of deliberation and discussion to myself, I devised a hypothesis and would like to share with you all that why we become complex despite knowing that simplicity is the best way to live a peaceful life.

I find society, where we live in, has a great role in it, if not all. Remember your childhood when we were least complex. We loved to play, sing and even study without any fear or pressure. As we grew older then came the notions and process to turn a simple plain person in to most sophisticated and complex being.

You have to score more to get recognized in class, then you have to submit sophisticated projects to get accolades, then came the big IIT, NEET exams, where more and more complex problems to be thrown at you, if you able to pass these complexity then you get respect in society. If you want to look rich, then you have flaunt complex gadgets. If your house has complex architecture then it will give you additional reputation in the society. If you are able to speak something that was only understood by microscopic minority, the so called intellectuals of society, then you are considered as a great orator.  etc. etc.

I observed, we hardly aspire anything simple and yet want to be simple. How is it going to happen? Contemplation on complexity and sophistication will only make us a sophisticated robot, certainly not a simple human being.

If we want to be simple we have to recognize and value simplicity in every walks of life. But before valuing, we must recognize what the simplicity really is?

Who is responsible?

Technology has shaped the human civilization in a way that it seems an irreversible process now. Many of the technological tools such as mobile phones or televisions have become necessary in modern time and they are no longer construed as luxury and rightly so. Few of us can even ignore hunger for a day, but can’t suppress the urge to check the notifications of various applications of our cell phone(s).

Technology has helped us immensely and made our life much easier than ever before. We can definitely say that our present human civilization has been the most comfortable society in materialistic terms in compare to any of the past societies.  (I am not saying that, at present, we are the happiest of all as comfort and happiness are altogether different phenomena). But at times technology shows its other side, which may not be pleasant at all.

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Few days ago, I had a trip to Bangalore or Bengaluru as now they call it. During my stay, I used its public transport system “the Namma Metro” on quite few occasions. It was overall a good experience except for one instance and that one instance was not inside the metro but at one of its stations. In whichever cosmopolitan city of India you would be in, one aspect will always remain common and that is huge crowd in all the public places. Banglore is also no exception to it and neither was its metro system.

So on that day when I was entering to one its station, like many others, I also preferred to use a “technological tool” called “escalator” or the moving staircase to get down. You would presume that what is special about it, it is so common these days. But I have mentioned it with a reason here. The reason is that it was overcrowded on that place and it deviated from its usual performance. Have you ever thought or experienced what will happen when a moving stair case would abruptly stop? If you never experienced, don’t wish for it. Because, experiencing the Newton’s First Law i.e. “Law of Inertia” on escalator may not be pleasing one for sure.

So on that day, when I was unprepared like others, the escalator suddenly stopped unexpectedly. The experience was just like as someone has applied a power brake in your car on seeing a possibility of collision. But we are generally prepared for the brakes in vehicle but remain casual on escalators and never expect a brake.  Everybody on board became shaky and some even fall over. I was fortunately holding the side railing which prevented me from tumbling. But suddenly someone from back fell over me. When I turned back, it was a young beautiful lady! I saved her from falling on the rugged staircase, I was proud of my achievement.

But, she was embarrassed, ashamed and whispered “I am sorry”. Without thinking too much I said “Thank You!!!”  She became puzzled and retorted “What? What did you say?” Sensing here unease, I quipped “You have made a wrong choice of words, instead of saying sorry, you should say me thanks as it was not your fault and since I have saved your beautiful face from getting defaced, I might be obliged by a Thanks rather than a Sorry”. She smiled. I thought my sense of humor worked and there was an instant reward for it. She asked “What’s your name?” But before I could have answered her there were huge uproar on the ground. Few people were shouting vehemently in a language that I hardly could have understood, but I could sense their anguish. There was a hurdle there and in mid of the hurdle a lady in her mid 30s was crying profusely. Taking the advantage of my height, I tried to peep in the hurdle, but since the language was alien to me,  I couldn’t understood what was going on there. I thought she also might have fallen from the escalator, but there were no visible mark of injury no blood on the floor, no mark of scratches on her face. Then few minute later, someone from the crowd spoke the language which I could have discerned. He said that the lady was pregnant and due to abrupt stoppage of the escalator she fell off from three or four steps atop and now she is agonized about her wellbeing of her impending child. I saw a lot of people were consoling her, but she was incessantly crying. This is probably one pain which half of the population could not have understood.. I realized, only signs of scar are not the sole representation of the pain, some pains are too heavy that scars can’t depict it. Since I had a preoccupied schedule, I had to leave that place. But few question kept hitting me?

Who should be held responsible, if something mishap had happened to the child, who is still not in the world?

1. Government?
2. Metro Authority?
3. Operating Staff?
4. Manufacturer of the Escalator?
5. Technology itself?
6. The lady herself, as she was not holding the side railing as precautionary measure
7. The Karma of the Child, as Sanatan Philosophy says that one’s fate is also decided by its karma in past life.
8. Or, combination of all these factors

I didn’t find the answer of the question, even after pondering it over and again. I reached my accommodation at night after having an eventful day, through the same metro route and via same station where the incident has happened. I was checking the notifications on my phone  and then suddenly remembered something “Someone had asked my name today!!!”

 

Note: Needless to say to my readers that I some time write fiction, inspired by some real events. You are free to Judge which event was real in this story and which one was my fictitious narration.