Kartikey Sehgal

Many people pursue higher (master’s) education without thought

We often study to stay away from our passions*. Studying is comfortable and acceptable for parents as it lives up to their ideal of coping-with-the-west. Pursuing activities other than the hobby of studying makes them terrified and often violent. They are not proper parents in the sense that they will not encourage the child to do what his heart desires. Any extra-curricular activity must be an appendage to the ultimate goal of a money-making and a respectable profession, the latter being ordained by the sect of similar-minded people in a society.

Indian parents’ obsession with studying is determinant of a slave-mentality. It tells the kids that the only way you can measure up to the rich western nations is through studying. The foreigners, of course, can successfully take up professions that use their skills and wisdom and are not reliant on rote-learning.

Indian parents are not comfortable in sending their children to art schools, music schools and sports schools. The prevailing top-notch universities cater to a small minority of students many of whom rely on rote-learning to clear the tough entrance examinations. Our generation of parents and grandparents didn’t make many outstanding universities; another determinant of the slave mentality.

I shall now move to the scenario of a student enrolled in a master’s degree at some university. He has just bought himself two years of security; the parents would feel he is doing something worthwhile, never mind that their child is wasting his time in a course he doesn’t swallow with distinction; as long as there is some food on the table.

The boy, of course, would be confused during his studying time at the university, popularly referred to as education. Would he have time to first search and then pursue his passions considering he would be spending time learning things he doesn’t like? He could experience a feeling of guilt for being untrue to the textbooks and hence untrue to the expectations of his parents. Should he find a career in what he is learning—a seemingly safer option—or should he leave aside the pressures and pursue what he wants.

I think again of the first sentence.
We often study to stay away from our passions.

* in reference to master’s courses at universities

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Kartikey Sehgal

A conversation on the decision to die.
C and J.

“Want to inform you that I’ll commit suicide”, said C.
“Commit suicide…hmmm…” J muttered to himself, bit his upper lip and then relaxed.

A moment later, C put himself in the chair. Their black coats were the only colour in vicinity.

“Ok, let’s get over it. Reasons”
“Reason. My will has been amputated. I am not my person”, said C.

“So you know the reason. Extend your will now”
“It’s too late. I have realized it.”

“And so you must live. Had you not realized yourself… that…”
C smiled. “Had I”, he stated, “not realized it I would have lived on, unaware, but now I have the sense of being and I exercise a decision”.

J bit his upper lip.
“Yes. Since you know that you were subdued, you can kill yourself. Otherwise you would have lived.”

“Any more?”
“Yes. You have awakened. So live now, live your way”.

“I don’t know how to”.
“I could teach you”.

“Ok. In that case I may reconsider. Of course, I know that you can’t teach me. That’s not the actual word”.

“We know that”.

“And I trust that you don’t want me to not die but you want me to live”.
“Don’t ask”, said J.

“Alright. Come over for lunch. Spend a day with me”.
“Sure, I’ll phone you my schedule. I am pro life.”

“So am I, J”.

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Samata Agrawal

A Red-vented Bulbul has built a petit nest on the sleeping fig ficus bush that grows from a pot in the balcony. There are three or may be four babies of that bulbul lying like some chunks of meat in the nest. They vigilantly guard their home day and night long and feed the new-born from their beaks – which is all they pretty much do. Hard, soiled and pointed beak; it traps minute bugs which it transfers into the paper like beak of their infants.

They have built an artistic nest, half the size of your palm, in the core of the ficus where your eyes can barely reach. Feathery punk stars with a mohawk along the centre head-line, and bright red squarish block print at the tip of their tail on their silhouette like beautiful jet black existence, as they stand on the bannister with the sky and waters melting in the background.

Prior to them the pigeons had laid their eggs in the same plant. Sadly they did not get the chance to hatch them as they had been replaced by a ‘human’ hand to another plant, something that is unacceptable to the bird. Their inhabitancy was slightly perturbing than that of the discreet bulbul to dwell in our house in the balcony.

They speak of adaptability. Of survival in the insecure environment, much like us humans today. All of us creatures need a home. A space defined, enclosed, free and safe.
They also live their routine life, the same treadmill that I complain of.

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Kartikey Sehgal

[Fiction]

I dance to Tango. Only, I don’t know what it is. I had seen it once, in some movie. They raise their skirts, maybe they do. But that’s not the reason I liked Tango. The song had a bitter-sweet quality; like you celebrate the birth of a baby while reminiscing about your lover’s death. While the heart sings for the baby, the mind wishes the olden moments of love.

The dance watchers—who don’t dance—clap for the dancers. Then they are inadvertently drawn into the dance. They don’t actually dance; move their feet. But dance is participation. I imagine, while a red hot—meaning very pretty—Spanish girl dances, her Spanish lover, with or without that beard stares into her. The lady then dances to tease him, to show him that she doesn’t really care for his staring at her. The man, then, is also a dancer. He is partaking the Tango flavour of the lady.

Now an old man, who was just moving his legs, coughs, and sits on a chair. A young dancing girl pats his back and presents to him a glass of water. This is not breaking the dance. It is maybe taking a break from dance.

Life is a dance, then. In our sorrows and miseries, we don’t break away from her, we take a break from her. Then we see through a window, see the dancing children and ladies, and remember to dance again. Tango or not.

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“I held his hand for a few seconds but the waves pulled him inside”, says Siddharth Patil, a lifeguard at Mumbai’s Aksa Beach at Mudh Island, where Supujan Radhesyam Soni (age:14)  lost his life while swimming in high tide waves at around 1 p.m. on Sunday, April 26.

Siddharth was tired and angry after his attempt. “I had warned them twice to not go into the water but people here are like animals; they don’t pay any heed to safety.” Siddharth claims that this is the first drowning in six months at the beach that is known for death by drowning.

The seniormost lifeguard at the beach echoes Siddharth’s views. “They have no value for life. We plead and beg the people to stay away from water but you can see that they come in hundreds and defy every advice”, says Rajanikant S Mashelkar, who is in his eleventh year of duty at Aksa.

“It is easy to blame the lifeguards. You can see for your self the sensitivity of these people. They are in the water again”, says Rajanikant referring to the beach goers who were in the water five minutes after the drowning.

Siddharth seems appalled by this attitude. “Many of them pick fights with me when I stop them. They say that it doesn’t matter to them that other people die. And then we are blamed for ineffectiveness”.

The three kilometre stretch of the beach is patrolled by three lifeguards at any given time. “I have two swimmers in the morning and three in the evening”, says Rajanikant as he runs to shout at some boys who have gone deep into the water.

Aksa has no boat facility for rescue operations. This writer found five life jackets in the lifeguard’s cabin.

“There was no time to go for the lifejacket”, says a local sandwich-seller who has seen some drownings in the past. He continues, “The lifeguards may be ill-equipped, but larger part of the blame goes to the people who don’t listen to any warning given to them by the Police and the lifeguards.”

In some time two police constables arrived but they are unable to move everybody out of water. Finally, Rajanikant picks up the clothes and valuables littered on the beach. And then some people come out of the water. “It’s a tried and tested technique, sir”.

Also published in DNA (Link)

On entering the beach: The Spectators

The lifeguard comes back but without the boy

Tried but couldn't save the boy

The senior lifeguard at Aksa Beach

Five minutes after the drowning, people are back in the water

The senior Lifeguard tells the people to move out of water.

The drowning doesn't have much effect on people. "Many of them pick fights with me when I stop them. They say that it doesn't matter to them that other people die".

The constables show the stick and people begin to move

Some people come out of water only when he takes their clothes and valuables

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Kartikey Sehgal

Illustration: Kartikey Sehgal

I cannot accept the mirth of trivialities. Of a living below life. I’d rather joke with the honest labourer whose design on the wet brick is hardened by the sun; harmony between nature and men.

But I am given, and society has ordained, the acceptance of rooms without sunlight, precision defined within dark windows and glass doors. And I must accept this common code of subsistence and forgo my living. Non-acceptance could be a fodder for future regrets.

Society, reminds you,
you will shudder, without society.
But,
I cannot accept the fear of regret. Of a living below life. I’d rather soak the sun while it awaits me on green meadows. The flowers grown by the gardener; harmony between nature and men.

Often, it is simple, to romanticize. To think about harmony between nature and men. But the singular will wades through the collective of half-lives; the lively dolphin is placated by the sleeping fishes.

And if not romanticize, not think of the garden, the brick and the sun, will I not assume the role of the half-life? Of triviality?
But,
I cannot accept the mirth of trivialities. And I shall think.

Think. Think. And think about the garden and about going there. How long shall I think?

It is now that the lure of death appeals. A peaceful body, lying in the green meadows, soaking the sun, attended by the worthy gardener and the mirthful labourer. 

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