Stuck

There are way too many things happening at the same time, and yet none of them are getting done - not really. I have a distinct feeling of being spread too thin (no pun intended regarding my girth), and yet, the results elude me. Day in and day out, I put in the hours, and somehow, I do not feel the jubilation that comes from having completed something. And I muse over the idea that I am not putting in the effort in the proper places. I am not utilizing my time in a smart manner.

It has been exactly an year since I joined NSU - almost to the hour. A year has flown by. My list of accomplishments for the last year would read something like this:

• Have become a father - My son is the apple of my eye. And yet, does this count as an achievement?
• Survived an year as a Lecturer - well, I survived. More like scraped by. It is not the glorious sort of thing that I can brag about.
• And?

So it is a pretty short list. And a dubious one at best. I miss my school days, when each year, you would get promoted to a new class. It was plenty clear what you were out to do - it was spelled out nicely in front of  you. However, now that I am done with those years, there is an ocean of choices that lie in front of me, with nobody to hold me back. They call it freedom, right? So I drifted, from a shipping company to a soap making company, to an ad firm, to a sweater factory, to a university. What does that make me? To the rest of the world, I would say that I have been in training, throughout my career, so I could one day become a great teacher. But at night, with my head on the pillow, it is a very different scenario. I have a hard time selling myself the story I tell others. I beg myself to believe, and yet, my mind begs to disagree. I have spent half my life, and I still do not know what I want to be doing 2 years from now. When I juxtapose myself against my friends from undergrad years, I see myself as a lost soul.

Pulling oneself together is proving to be a very difficult stance. I have been telling myself that "This is it!" for the last 2 semesters - I am going to be a teacher. But in this, I am a newbie. It is not only teaching students in a class - there is a lot more to this profession. I need to pen some articles (read tons more before I can even begin), start attending seminars and symposia, etc. I feel like a misfit among my peers, who are all so much more well-read and versed. I feel like a trickster who is out of depth in their debates.

I need that push. I know that nobody is holding me back - but that is not the issue here. I need somebody to push in headlong into this thing, so I know there is no turning back. I need to grow that conviction, that teaching is not just another fad that will cease to define my job in a few months or years.

Mindless

At the end of the day, when I finally put my head to rest on a pillow and close my eyes, funny little notions come up, seemingly out of the woodworks, and irritate me to no ends. These seemingly innocuous questions have recently started to bother me. They’re not the type that makes you wake up with a sweat, or the type that gets you up in frenzy. Rather, they’re the gnawing kind, one that persists and makes you sad.

I realized that I do not even take an hour off each day for myself. That I do not remember the last time I went somewhere that I had truly wanted to go to. I seriously cannot imagine when it was that I crossed over to the side where everything has to be “socially acceptable”. Being myself is a struggle that I gave up on. Doesn’t that mean I gave up on myself? Extrapolating that, am I not lying to myself? Am I not just cajoling myself along a path that I do not wish to be on?

Then the question arises – why then would I do it? Social pressure? I sincerely cannot say so, because in my lifestyle, I do not consciously make decisions based on “what others may say”. That makes the problem worse. The social pressure factor now has been sewn into my DNA. I guess then the little thoughts are my subconscious’ way of letting me in on the struggle.

Am I even making any sense anymore?

Late to work

The morning started unlike most others – I could barely move my neck. The incessant screams from my cellphones tried in vain to wake me up earlier, and I finally I came to just past nine in the morning. The breakfast remained on the table as I trudged into my comfy hush-puppies and went to the lift door at 9:57 am. Stepping into the lift, I was still dozing, and so it took me all of 20 seconds to realize that I had not moved. Thanking God that the elevator would at least let me out, I made it to the car, and started off for work without much further ado.

God is a comedian, I keep saying. I realized that I didn’t have cash on me, and that my car needed to be fed. So another detour and 20 minutes later, I was back on track, praying to God that I don’t get stuck in the horrid traffic while low on fuel. Think I must’ve made it to the pump on fume alone.

Interestingly, I was in a sprightly mood, and nothing could ebb that. The tension of shipments getting delayed, worker crisis, frequent power-cuts, drops in gas pressure feeding the boilers – all these were there, registering, but not having the regular effect. I got the impression that today was meant for something grander. I was going through the day waiting for that “something” to materialize. Buoyant on the good vibes, I got to work at a comfortable pace, with uncharacteristically low traffic on the way.

I guess being happy is just a mindset. You can be happy despite a zillion problems buzzing around, or you can decide to be morose while riding the crest of a wave. There is so many things that I am thankful for – it is easy to be happy if I just acknowledge them.

online fokir

Living in Dhaka, it is impossible to ignore the beggars out on the streets, at your door, on your door window in the car, in the buses, trains, steamers... on the way to work, on the way from work, on the way to the restaurant, in front of a snacks joint... they are omnipresent.

For me, they invoke range of emotions, based on the milieu. From sympathy, to empathy, to utter disgust and disappointment on the other extreme. For most, it is a way of life, this is what they do for a living. From looking at them, you know that they have adapted it as their permanent means of livelihood. And what is alarming is that they start off early. The horrid stories you hear about parents leaving their kids with the "bua", only to find the child being "rented out" to beggars who would use her as a ploy to get more. There is a steady demand for young children among the beggars. Then there's the group with the missing limbs - I keep thinking that Slumdog Millionaire did not portray is correctly. People cannot be that cruel. But the more I think, the more plausible it sounds. Why is it that all of them now a days sing the same songs?

I had gone to Cox's Bazar a few months ago - all the kids by the beach asking for handouts guised it well. They would walk up to you and ask - in their most serious voice - "Gaan shunben?" And before you can react, they would start with a track from the popular movie Monpura. Each and every one of them would sing the same songs. Did they attend a school somewhere? What would the curriculum be like?

It is unsettling that so many would flock to Dhaka each day (as per yesterday's newspaper, more than 2000 new people flock to Dhaka everyday!), only to resort to such means. And I don't know how to react when I find it is not only in third world countries like ours where such things happen. Maybe it is not that obvious in other countries, but now that we are blessed with the digital revolution, it has taken on a different form. Now we have online beggars!

I read an article that came out in the discovery website (http://news.discovery.com/tech/panhandling-hits-the-internet.html) and was amused, to say the least. The predominantly streetwise business has taken off, into the cyberspace!

crossroads...

there are times when you feel as if you're at a crossroads in life. there lies two paths in front of you, and to walk through one is to negate the chance of ever venturing into the other. you tend to want to wait, for some sign, as to which way to go. you analyze, contemplate the possibilities - all on the premise that you actually know what lies at the end of each of these roads. however, more often than not, we actually don't know what lies out there. isn't it thus futile to even venture a guess as to how life might turn out if a certain path is chosen?

i'm not being fatalistic and meaning to say that trying to decide is dumb. rather, i'm saying that over-working your brain with limited information is of no use. your brain would tend to fabricate information that it needs for you to reach a particular conclusion. and us being emotional, would tend to ignore the fact that such key "information" is what we base our decisions. ideally, we would like to sit at the crossroads and sip a cup of coffee. wait. but we don't have an ideal world - we get tossed around by the dynamic elements of our lives. we often have but a split second to decide on something that may alter our lives forever. sounds too dramatic i guess, but didn't you ever have such a moment? i don't mean deciding to swerve the car at the very last moment to avoid an impact - that's instinct. but lets say the decision to switch jobs. it occurs well before you actually put in your resignation. or deciding to ask someone out. i believe every decision we take has to progress through a labyrinth in our brain before we get the "GO" signal. but we don't always get ample time to reach the logical conclusion - our thought processes are cut short.

right now, i'm faced with just such a situation. and being the arrogant fool that i am, i've decided not to decide. not yet. not this time. in my mind, i'm visualizing a series of dominoes falling, and then this one irksome piece, not toppling like it is supposed to. and then it occurs to me - dominoes don't just fall. a force needs to be applied to the first piece of the train. so now that i've decided to stand still and not topple, who is to say that i can find the push when i decide to move forward?

i am being very apprehensive right now about my life, and am thoroughly confused. figured it might be a good idea to try spread the confusion!

and so it seems.....

so this is what it has boiled down to....

i am doing well, trying to fit into the new role. in all earnest, things are going my way. but there's this beast sitting inside me, gnawing incessantly at the walls. there's this queasiness, one that borders on being painful. you don't quite cry out in pain yet, but the persistence makes you want to howl in anger, throw a proper bitch-fit. i'm tottering on edge, walking a fine line - cautious lest i leash out at the unsuspecting person crossing my path.

it is something i can't talk about with just anybody. it isn't something that i can ignore or overlook. it is something that is bearing down on me 24/7. it isn't something that shows any sign of letting go.

the veneer to niceties and happiness runs very very thin with me right now. all i can muster is a look of sombre disinterest in all matters.....

how did everything get so badly screwed up?

Road rage

I heard the term "road rage" for the first time about ten years ago - and it somehow felt good to know that they have a term for it. I always felt that I was a bit impatient and very unforgiving driver/rider on the road, but to be able to belong to such a group - a sense of belonging washed all over me. It is like being understood in your native tongue in a far-flung distant land.

Trespassers will be shot, survivors will be shot again - I saw that sign somewhere in the net. I don't know many people who can keep the smirk off their face when they see it. Well, I would not want to be at the wrong end of it, but frankly, I can understand the sentiment! Think of the times when your recently fixed-painted-polished car gets that nudge from the rickshaw behind you. Or when the old rickshaw'wala is trying to navigate a turn, and leaves a thin white line on your door. I understand that it was not done with a malicious intent, but that does little to soothe my fury.

And what happened to abiding by the rules? Why is it that the rules are only supposed to be applicable to the people who get hit? The others can be on their merry way, leaving us eating dust and paying up for the repairs.

In Dhaka, the drivers have brought it down to an exact science. When two cars are vying for a single lane, the one on the left has a certain advantage - the one with the "right of the way" is scared of being pushed into the road-divider. But the actual decision is made based on which car is the cheapest. The cheaper the car (or the more broken down the car), the more preference it gets on the roads. It can be likened to letting a war veteran with battle scars go before you in the lift. There are those taxis who are soo bruised, I'm often scared that if I don't let the car pass, the driver might pick up a part of the car and throw it back at me!

On the roads, I do not roll down the windows anymore - lest I decide to reach out and grab the offending party by the neck. As of date, I have been involved in more than a few incidents where the police had to intervene. Although I maintain my stand that I was not at fault, I got into "almost fights", and had to make a promise to my mom that I would never try to drive in Dhaka by following the rules ever again.