Confronting Mortality and Wonder

How does one talk about death to a man who is infirm? What does one say?

So many of my teenage years were at their house, listening to CF’s father talk about unions, mathematics, and with me, writing. Her parents were “cool enough” back then to allow both girls and boys to hang out in their house, so, invariably, we used to show up there. Some of us making Maggi, some of us talking to her father, and some of us just chit chatting about things we don’t even remember. I have no pictures from back then. It was not the booming era of smartphones and Internet, anyway, but I remember everything in my mind as if it was yesterday. Her mother, though very strict, never shooed us away. We were always welcome in her house to eat whatever she was preparing. It was only until a couple of years ago, when some of my colleagues did not touch the food from my tiffin, I realised how, while I grew up my faith was not a concern to my friends, but suddenly it has become so for some people. Certainly, it was never a concern at CF’s house whose family has been Brahmin and yet, neither her parents nor she has ever treated me and my folks anything other than family. 

When I went to meet them recently, and I saw them old and frail, so many of my teenage years flashed before my eyes while I drove back home. Time stood like a solid block between the past and today. Our food was always shared, our festivals were always full of laughter, and our stories were always idealistic. We hoped to grow up and do the things we had dreamed of. We wished to fall in love and take care of our parents. We debated ideas and ideals supported by our parents, never once feeling like there was something different about us, that a pound of our flesh would have to be measured as adults. A lot of our lives have panned out as we thought, but a lot of it hasn’t. We live in different cities, we don’t talk often, and life has been unkind, as well as kind. 

CF’s father is so frail now that when he told me he’s afraid of dying I was at a loss for words. This man, this boisterous, rambunctious, roaring man who I remember pacing around CF’s house, calling my father for his birthday, teaching me mathematics, debating politics with us when we were 19 (as if we knew what we were talking about) was afraid. How was I to respond to that? I wanted to say that this life is not the end, it goes on, but how do I really know that for sure? I wanted to say God is merciful, but I couldn’t. I wanted to say that he couldn’t be afraid, he never was. I didn’t say that either. 

It is only now that I understand how progressive our parents really were. CF’s father was fighting for labour rights, looking beyond religious lines, and raising CF to be an outspoken woman. I can say the same about my parents. A lot of my peers had similar parents, too. But today, when I see my peers who are raising their kids in a deeply divided India, I don’t think they’re as progressive as they could be with the exposure and knowledge they have. They’ve become more narrow minded and their hearts have shrunk somewhat. They don’t have diverse friends nor diverse interests. Few of my school friends have children, and they tend to emulate how they were raised. My school sister (we declared to each other we were sisters) has a daughter who she is raising similarly; to be a human of heart and devoid of discrimination.

Despite his progressive and fearless views, life and the system has been unkind to CF’s father. I am not saying it is because he went against the grain, life was rough for him. As a country, we have not been able to move forward as society to uphold values of equality, justice, and above all humanity. How does it happen that when people are young they want to build a better world, and when these people become old, this idea of a better world does not come to pass?

Indian society has devolved into an orthodox, patriarchal, and casteist mess. The very ideas of progression that we used to debate have become fodder in the Internet comment section where people become more and more parochial, more regressive. They re-confirm their biases. They close off their hearts. Maybe that’s why we as a country are suffering, nay choking, in terms of quality of life. Our hearts are so small. Therefore, our minds and our imagination are shrunken. How could we possibly build better futures, when we cannot overcome the smallness of our collective society?

India’s poisonous social discourse, its insistence on amenities for only one kind of people, and its every day discrimination has brought many good people who raised their children well to see that perhaps, having an open heart means risking everything to fall out. And fall out, it did. Meeting CF’s father reminded me of how much we had set store by the future, and now that the future is here, it is contaminated and noxious. Now, we seek out privilege, so we don’t have to deal with the bumbling every day life in this country, the ineptitude of our public services, the slow poisoning of our social lives, and an overwhelming absence of constructive discourse.

More than anything, I think this is a spiritual and humanitarian crisis. I used to think I was being too radical in wanting better, in wanting more; but lately a huge wave of realisation has dawned on me — most people do not have the depth or the intellect needed to have these conversations. And those who do, are usually not at the table. Very few people actually have the consciousness or compassion needed to take our society forward, and they are inhibited by the worst of us. There is a reason they say “never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.” These stupid people, in large online and offline groups, have destroyed our chance at collective progress and prosperity. 

We used to talk about all these things with each other in college, with CF’s father, and as we grew older, we would do the same with the friends we made on the Internet. This was before the one-dimensionality of our Internet perspective had solidified. Now that I am older, I tend to set a lot of store by young people. And like all older people, I think of all the opportunities they have, that I did not. I hope they can make use of them in ways that we have not been able to imagine.

However, when I speak to young people, I find myself fascinated by how much they know about the world, and yet, how little they care for it. Of course, this is not the sum of all Indian youngsters, but it is enough of them to make me sit up and take notice. Their carefree attitude towards the world comes with the dispensable nature of their entire lives. They live in a world where meaning is hard-found and longevity is non-existent. For them, everything is quick and trash-able. Commodities, degrees, relationships, lifestyles, you name it. While I could say that society at-large is doing a disservice to these youngsters, they’re also responsible for the sorry state of affairs themselves. It’s almost as if they don’t need to challenge the status quo, that they’re dulled by their privilege and consumerism capitalism. Their parents did not have the struggles CF’s or my parents had; perhaps in trying to escape these struggles they have been sucked into the cocoon of numbness. 

It’s not that the absence of critical thinking or absence of hobbies in the youth that begs me to sit and take notice. It is the absence of both, critical thinking and perseverance, in most people I find alarming. It seems as though most privileged people in my country are bumbling through life with titanic incompetence but supported by three questionable-labour-driven-apps at a time. It seems as though cheap labour is getting work done for them, they’ve somehow mistaken it for their own competence. The class divide in India is almost shocking that it is now crowding all spaces increasingly devoid of human empathy.

For those who can afford the luxury, persevering towards a goal or a hobby, and dealing with the myriad of emotions that come with this perseverance is all but lost. To be able to sit with ideas, try to bring them to life, to fail and fail again, before even remotely succeeding is fast becoming a lost human experience. 

We want to regurgitate what we see on the Internet quick and fast. You can see this across our society. This is how most infrastructure, design, sculpture, policy, welfare, coding, roadworks, or anything is done in India now. We care so little about the outcome, we only want to get it done so that we can start on the new thing.

Nothing is built to last.

We are thoughtlessly destroying the old, and we are thoughtlessly building the new. We are afraid of sitting with something until it is fully formed inside out chests, on our drawing boards. We are afraid what is formed inside us will sit up and beg the question — can you expand your own consciousness to meet your creation in a place where you need to be? 

I used to think that with some power, I would be able influence my locus of interactions to talk and work towards creating what benefits us, what could change the course of our lives in small meaningful ways. I know now that I have been failing at it. Not because my intentions and actions towards the collective good are misguided, but because we don’t live in that kind of a world anymore. Seeing CF and her father reminded me of a lost time. A time when hope was possible, when we were not beset by all sides with the justification of injustice, and hoodwinked by transitory courage. 

It sounds forlorn, but I have not yet stopped romanticising the kind of life I want to live, and the world I want to live this life in. Life has tried to beat it out of me, I promise you, it did. There’s been enough blood on my teeth and mud on my knees, and there are scars till today. I will never stop wanting a “better future”. If not in this life, in the afterlife, I will keep wishing well, wanting lush gardens with clear waters, and a softness in the air that sits on my skin with love. 

We were born on a beautiful planet with abundance, sustenance, and wonder. As the years pass by, I seek out this wonder of living because I know there is more to my life than being trapped in the hamster wheel of neo-liberal capitalism. I was given the gift of words, cradled into a part of the earth next to frothy blue seas, provided with ability and small courage to build what I may. It would be a shame to waste this kind of wondrous life on anything other than the pursuit of meaning, expansion of my own humanity, and joy.