Let it rain hard

About a dozen years back, I started writing blog posts out of sheer boredom in office. The work was repetitive and the bosses were menacing. Not the fault of bosses as much as the systems put in place. It was a real-time world and you perish in seconds or become a hero. No, I was not a stock market trader, but close.

I was perhaps in deep agony. I had left my family members, my root, my friends and my culture. Those years were the most important in my life, the early twenties. I was free for the first time. Free to do whatever I wanted to do. It was a lot of pent-up sexual energy really looking for an avenue to be released. I found my moksha in creativity, especially as my office colleagues started appreciating my writing, albeit with no hint of grammar in it. Slowly strangers came to my blog and I visited theirs and we became friends. And then I started connecting with people far away from my place, across oceans. With one I became friends for life – Ian Vincent Mulder. But that’s another story.

Why I wrote that time I really don’t know, except that something in me asked me to write. Looking back, I think those were, 2005 to 2007, the best days of my life as I tasted bliss in creativity.  

After that, I changed the city and came to Mumbai. The work environment, the lifestyle here sapped all my energy and creativity and slowly I started drowning into the abyss of averageness. That continues to this day. I occasionally tried to fight back, but it all took a toll on me. Slowly I realised I was reduced into a cog in this giant machine called Mumbai.

And one day I stopped fighting at all. I settled down, got married, became a father and now I have purchased a house here (actually 50 kilometres and two hours commute from my office). I now dream of seeing my daughter having a secured life. Gone are the careless days of tossing concerns out of the window, of not caring for my job or even life. I have become a scared man now, very scared, like all family bread earners are supposed to be.

Like an old man looking out the window, I engage myself in reminiscence. Of good old carefree days, of my friends who walked strange paths, of lovers – both those who loved me dearly and those who I loved like a crazy (and yet I can’t relate to them anymore, the bird has flown). I am a tired old man in a body of a 37-year-old. I look back to myself of 25 and get sad, or even perhaps jealous. The most common feeling though is that of disbelief. I can’t simply compare my present self with my old one. They say we change every seven years. I feel it is right.

And that’s the miracle of writing! Now I know why I used to write. Writing those irrelevant rants revealed the truth to me. I used to write to find a solution to whatever was happening around me of which I didn’t have any answer. My world had changed upside down that time. I was afraid and excited and at the same time in deep trauma. I wrote to console myself, I wrote to forget, I wrote to calm myself. Writing had the same effect on me as many witnesses after meditation. It calmed me.

And this is the same reason why I started writing today after so many years. I simply fucking don’t care about anyone now. I am dead tired of my life, and I know for a fact that I have been a failure of a husband and a semi-failure of a father. I get shocked every time and amused too when my wife asks for my guidance on anything. And she does it all the time. I make a straight face and baffle her with my bullshit and turn around and think, really? There is at least character in this world who takes me seriously? Luckily, my two-and-a-half year old has recognised me for what I am. She treats me like her manservant and does exactly the opposite of what I plead her to do. Not surprising enough, she is mostly doing the right things, which I realise in the hindsight. And my wife's life is even messier than mine.  

I am a failure of a good office worker too and yet, I have the audacity to lock myself with a mortgage loan of 20 years. I am not only a failure; I am a stupid too.

But should it be surprising that I entered into a 20-year loan agreement? Whether I want it or not, I will have to continue to be a husband and a father at least till my daughter doesn’t find her feet in this world. Let her decide what she wants to do with her life after that, but at least she should have a stable life till her early twenties. It is a long-term commitment that I will have to fulfil and I want to fulfil that. Only thing is I am not a strong person. To hide my fickle mindedness I try to convince myself that I am an intelligent person and like all intelligent people, I don’t have a fixed worldview. Keynes said my opinion changes with the fact or something. Basically, Keynes was a large fickle-minded fellow than me.

So fuck those around me who think their browbeating will take care of my fickle-mindedness and laziness. I have travelled so far and God will guide me to my end by the path She has chosen for me. Let the dogs bark, let life show me its teeth. I am not going to change myself. Ghetufool will remain Ghetufool all his life. Isn't it that we have a symbiotic relationship?

All that I can do is keep him that way. I think, like my duty towards my baby, I have a responsibility towards Ghetu too!