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Thursday, July 17, 2008

Jazz-hands and little razz-matazz


‘Flight SR-1108 from M***** to D**** is ready for takeoff. All passengers are requested to proceed towards boarding.’

Krrrr. Static. Click… click… click… the remote never seems to show anything interesting on TV. Everything is a god-damn reality show. Everything is prime-time news. Every channel is playing the same music. And every TV is watching the same people. It’s getting boring.

But they have a definition for what boring is too. “Claustrophobic?” screams the advertisement. Young men with rippling muscles and a few girls in attractive jeans or something drive an SUV through a puddle in a jungle and exhort you to take your life back. Another exhorts women to go out and become who they are… different and unique and show them as back-packing hitchhikers and inspires them to become flight cabin crew as a means of earning emancipation. Huh. Emancipation and freedom? What do we know about these things? When have we learnt about them?

I was born in an average family. Middle-class… and stayed that way. Mother said it was important to come first in class otherwise father would get angry. I tried. I studied. I was never inspired or motivated beyond avoiding a thrashing at his hands. Come to think of it, I never got a thrashing either. Nothing happened. Ever. I went from one classroom to another, from one class-teacher to another. I passed out of school and went to college. I got a job and have remained there ever since. I have never really had a passion for anything. I try to sound intelligent when someone asks me about my hobbies. I wonder how time really passes me by. Yes, every now and then I like to watch a film or listen to some music… but so many years could really not have gone by you know. To me everything looks the same… how could I have become… you know… old?

I think time runs differently for different people. For people like me…. ordinary men with ordinary lives, it just gets bored running at a normal pace. So it just skips through our lives like it was on fast-forward or something, and before we know it we are dying.

Emancipation and freedom? When have we ever learnt about them?

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