I Feel Like Destroying Something Beautiful Today (Part - 2)
Your Hopes.
When I was younger, I had a hard time pretending not to care. (Now I really don’t care, until I do.) There was a counselling session I attended during my IIT-JEE coaching classes, two years ago. I didn't really care much at that time. For the other students, it was a matter of do or die. For me, truth be told, it was a matter of do or do something else. Anyway, the session was progressing well when the counsellor, a narcissistic old man, asked me “Where do you see yourself six years from now?” I reflected on the advice of the seniors and told the truth. I don’t see myself at all. That would be scary. The old man could not let go of the question. He asked again, “You must have made some plans – what happens six years from this moment?” Even I couldn't make any sense at that time, about what I said. It was a subconscious response. But looking back, I wonder what if I asked him back, “Sir, where do you see yourself 50 years from now?”
Alright, your turn now. Where do you see yourself 100 years from now?
You see. That’s the point. You are rejected. You were born rejected.
The point is that there really is no point. And yet only a few are enlightened enough to see the randomness and pointlessness of life. This capricious, vicious, absurd, fatal life. Life is such an irritating thing you want to kill it.
You want that job? That girl? Those girls? That life? The luxury car? Many such cars? A villa to park those cars? The celebrity life? The followers? The shares and the likes? The viral post? If that life is not up to your refined taste then how about the simple life of a great saint? Or how about playing the family man who produces exactly two children with his soulmate and lives happily ever after?
Doesn’t matter. Either way it’s the same thing. All these lives have just one thing in common, and that one thing makes all possible versions of your life equal. They all end in your death. With your death. So, again, what’s that point you wanted to make? There is nothing you can do about life. Indeed, life is the possibility of many possibilities. But death is the impossibility of any further possibility. Nothing that you do comes to anything. There is nothing to do and nowhere to go and yet, here you are.
The world’s favourite villain says all it takes is ‘one bad day’ to realize that this life is a joke at your expense. Haven’t you had your bad day yet? And yet you shamelessly hang around playing the poor little you. Somebody must help you give up on what has always been a lost cause.
Now that I have pointed to the pointlessness of your life, you are free to do anything. ANYTHING. You can throw the garbage on the road and not bother about that irritating social routine of holding on to it till you find the next dustbin just because two bystanders were watching you. This world is your dustbin. Feel free to use it to your liking. To dust, you have always belonged. When the bin is emptied, dry waste and wet waste will be burnt together.
All this negativity, I can't stand...
Why not share it with the world instead? I am 100% positive that you will die. And you call that negativity? You see this whole culture of looking the other way (and taking a selfie while at it) has come to such a ludicrous state of affairs that you behave as if nobody ever dies. Agreed, it would be considered rude for a doctor to announce to a terminally ill patient, “Congratulations you are going to die and it would be lovely once you cross the waterfall.” But the doctor can say, you are going to die, we all do eventually. You do celebrate the birth of a child because that is the beginning of life. But isn’t that also the day the countdown begins?
There is the beginning of life. Then there is death. And there are a few inconsequential things you do in between. Once you have embraced the meaninglessness of your existence there is no fear of death. Not of your death. Not of anybody else’s. You live in a culture where it has been rubbed into you in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible thing. But it has never been a matter of life and death. Life is only a matter of death.
This is the point when you want to say let’s talk about something else. And you see that’s the problem. No one wants to speak about DEATH. But let’s talk about something else.
A handicapped beggar knocked on the window of my car. I gave him whatever loose currency I had in the car. ( Chooo chweet no? ) I wasn’t sure why. I was also not sure why the homeless and hopeless man wanted to live at all. Rather than knock on the windows, he should consider jumping right in front of speeding cars. (Not so sweet now, I know).
So, the point of creating this narrative is to emphasize again that there is no point. The beggar outside the car will die. The philosopher inside the car will die too. So, the beggar and the philosopher are equal in stature.
My negativity and your positivity both lead to the same neutral destination. Far away from the car and the cart. We are, in that sense, travelling in the same car. But death does not need teamwork. It’s for the individual achievers (More of an "I" thing rather than "We"). The honourable thing to do is to walk out of this raw deal. Or let someone else kick you out of it.
Life is but a game without rules...
You don’t need to try to live. Just like the sun does not rise because it’s 6 am. Your survival mechanism is inbuilt. That’s the game of nature. So, then, you should realize this is all a game and play along anyway – not to win because the game is rigged against you – but just to play. The best part is that the game has no rules. From the purest point of view, everything is trivial. You, a free man, can play with anything. Even life. Especially life. We all play with others' lives. Let's try our own, shall we?
I, for example, want to play with the RJs whose fake excitement for life makes one attempt to end it. I want to invade a radio station and make all the RJs read out from my script. ‘Song No. 1’ (then the song plays) ‘Now Song No. 2’ (another song plays)… ‘And that’s it folks. Hope you had fun. (Night!).
Also, if you are one of those people who sends me a message personally saying nicest things about my writing ('Greatest Writer', 'Wow! You write so beautifully OMG!'), and yet, don't even care to read my blog fully whenever I post it after contemplating for hours, thinking if my readers would like it or not (Oh btw, I have almost zero readers at the moment), I am coming for you!
There must be a limit to how much you can act randomly, after all.
On a (more) serious note, the freedom that comes from embracing your mortality can be spooky. Since nobody can save you from death you don’t really owe anybody anything. You also see no point in trying to distract yourself with jobs, bosses, love, lovers, anything, everything. Suicide or mass murder seem worthy pursuits now.
An Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi alumnus killed himself on June 8 last year by jumping off the seventh floor of a building at the IIT-Delhi campus. Anshum Gupta had graduated from the premier engineering institute of India in 2010 and had been joining and resigning from jobs while fighting depression. Since he did not leave a suicide note, it was not clear why did he choose his alma mater to end his life. But you and I know that anyway. He realized there was no point and the highest point in his life so far was IIT-Delhi.
The best part of the acceptance of the fatality of life is that you can also use this freedom to follow your wildest dream before you enter the permanent dreamless sleep. So, you can say, there is a lot of work I can do before I sleep forever. This includes sleeping less on Monday mornings, by the way. You got to void the void.
Not that it would lead you anywhere though. You can as well lie in a dark room and sleep your life out. Your choice. It’s your death after all.
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