Making sense of the world.
Posts tagged Loud Thinking
Atonement.
Sep 7th
It happened almost 25 years ago in erstwhile Bombay! The memory however is still fresh in my mind. A group of visually impaired friends used to meet in a small room for an informal time of fellowship on Wednesday evenings. I was one of the volunteers, helping them with reading the newspapers or helping them with their studies.
There I met a young man named Prem. He was in his twenties. He was not a volunteer but a visitor in that campus. Whenever we met, we would exchange casual greetings of hello or hi and would move on. I did not know anything about him and we never talked. I could not get to like this guy at all. His very sight would put me off. Deep within I had some kind of hatred towards him. Whenever we met, I would put on a smile and say ‘hello’ to him, resenting him at the same time. This went on for several months. Face is not always the index of the mind!!
Time went by. One evening. I was at the Mother Teresa’s ‘Home for the Destitute & Dying’ at Byculla. The watchman opened the gate and I saw a yellow-black taxi pull into the courtyard. I was surprised to see Prem. He got down from the taxi. This time we did not exchange any greetings. He seemed to be in a hurry. I saw him open the back door of the taxi. There was a dirty bundle on the seat. With care he carried that bundle in both his hands and put it down gently. More >
You Know Jack!
Oct 20th
© Joe Tyson | Dreamstime.com
“Change can be a good thing if you have a plan” says Jack to himself. He is thinking out loud as he always does on Saturday afternoons. He looks outside his window at all the people walking by. He sees the pace, but no purpose. “What is the meaning of all this? Where is everybody going?”
In the heat of the day, he gets up to leave the room and realizes he is forgetting something. It is purpose – once so evident in his eyes but now replaced by longing. A deep longing for a life he only sees in his dreams, far from the real world.
“One fine day” he reassures himself “it’ll all work out.” He steps out under the sun and blames it on the weather. It’s always something. Something that he has but doesn’t need or needs but doesn’t have. ¬He feels quiet remorse for the life he never had – for the choices that were made for him. Not realizing that these choices made him the man he is.
He struggles from within underneath a putrid frustration, one that he is familiar with. There is too much at stake. He can’t afford to lose all this. Everything he has worked so hard to accomplish. Deep down he know these are just hollow shells of glory from an empty past alluding towards a pointless future.
His reason for waking up day after day in this futile existence is hope – that which no man can rob him of. Hope is his muse and his song. It carries him to places he’s never been.
“Change can be a good thing if you have a plan” says Jack to himself. He is thinking out loud as he always does on Saturday afternoons. He looks outside his window at all the people walking by. He sees the pace, but no purpose. “What is the meaning of all this? Where is everybody going?”
In the heat of the day, he gets up to leave the room and realizes he is forgetting something. It is purpose – once so evident in his eyes but now replaced by longing. A deep longing for a life he only sees in his dreams, far from the real world.
“One fine day” he reassures himself “it’ll all work out.” He steps out under the sun and blames it on the weather. It’s always something. Something that he has but doesn’t need or needs but doesn’t have. ¬He feels quiet remorse for the life he never had – for the choices that were made for him. Not realizing that these choices made him the man he is.
He struggles from within underneath a putrid frustration, one that he is familiar with. There is too much at stake. He can’t afford to lose all this. Everything he has worked so hard to accomplish. Deep down he know these are just hollow shells of glory from an empty past alluding towards a pointless future.
His reason for waking up day after day in this futile existence is hope – that which no man can rob him of. Hope is his muse and his song. It carries him to places he’s never been.