“Somebody said that workers in Western countries work like Slaves and live like Lords, but here they work like Lords and live like Slaves.” (7 April, 1982)

College started on a rebellious note. It was my first taste of freedom. If the class was boring, one could ask the guys to attend by proxy and later photostat all the notes, keeping judicious view of the resources, of course. I felt like a fish out of water in Biology. To dissect an earthworm, a toad, a fish. Yuck! Trouble was brewing, not only for me. Those were the years of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Tiananmen Square, the aftermath of Mandal madness, Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, the Gulf War and our own version of tribal vs non-tribal ruckus. In other words, I was perfectly tuned to my surrounding vibrations of breaking the rules and defying them.

There was a certain professor in college. One of the rare few who was a little inspiring, who seemed to have a little fire in his belly. Once, in the middle of another strenuous session of calculating the value of phi in terms of Greek alphabets, he quoted a phrase that touched me. Touched me right there. He said, “The more we learn, the more we know. The more we know, the more we understand how little we know.” I think he expected us to ask, “Then why learn at all?” And then he would have treated us to another lengthy homily. Unfortunately, the class was too tired to draw him into another intellectual inquiry and let it go. Only I didn't. The question haunted me. Like the quaint female I used to see in the marketplace when I went shopping with Abba. We only stared at each other and it was nothing but a gentle growth of awareness brought about by seemingly tiny things.

Movies struck so many chords in my heart, budding with strange dreams and a mind filled with galactic ambitions, fuelled by passionate discussion with friends and images from foreign magazines at the State Central Library. We were disgusted at the way things were around us. I was indignant at my own parents, and the whole of society by which I seemed surrounded and trapped. It just does not allow us to be ourselves, I thought. They can be ever so cynical and one track minded, suppressing us continuously just to perpetuate the tradition of social respectability. We all lose our freedom even before finding our individual selves, as we go on accepting false notions. Conforming is easy but braving the challenges to prove our worth, sounded like the real business of living. I was determined to show them a thing or two.

Oh yes! I had fallen in love by now. She was the simple unassuming girl next door in a sleepy neighborhood and my infatuation never seemed real enough, although I spent many sleepless nights with her thoughts. The poor girl was so surprised to find me extending a preposterous proposal from out of the blue but I guess this was only warming up and a dress rehearsal for what was to follow. Afterwards, I had to face the music of her brother's wrath who was nonplussed for what I did, and cringed at the thought of how she replied to my overture that unholy afternoon.

I got my marks sheet at the end of the term with dismal things written on it. I was set back for a year and found consolation in Debonair, a poor cousin of Playboy. I did not notice any marked difference between male bums and female bums but one had to read it very squeamishly!

Adolescence was an age of experimentation and the results came by default. One had to suffer the consequence of so many contretemps, only for the alluring glamour of success, always emulated by somebody else. Deep down, my soul was rising in revolt for personal space and emotional freedom. It gave expression in mundane things as trying cigarettes, whiskey, pork chops and flirting with a few girls. I looked like a clown. A distorted vision between the person they wanted to make of me and the person I longed to become. A corporate executive. Yes!!

“Friends
to dream together,
Fantasizing
of all that glitters
in the eye
and is gold
they haven't discovered.
Young and free,
psyche mirrors
teasing each others reflections,
Sharing silly jokes
about serious people
trying to curb us
like caging free birds.
But we were
disappointed broken pieces,
and each had to go
their own lonely way
to find that dream
we talked about one day,
which brightened our eyes
when we spoke
so long ago.”

A strange sense of euphoria accompanied the painful departure, going towards an uncertain, though bright future. I wasn't keen on becoming mature, if maturity implied getting conditioned to one's circumstances, compromising biased social objectives and going their distorted way. Very often, I would see others becoming sober, losing the reckless abandon and enthusiasm under the glaring eye of peer pressure. There had to be an order to accommodate each and every individual, regardless of any consideration but we were growing up to an age where breaking the norm was allowed, where traditional myths were collapsing everywhere. There was so much injustice, so much imbalance, so much that was undesirable, we knew they were wrong but all we could do was stare helplessly at our predicament.

One could always debate it though. Should we be more tolerant of each other? There would be unanimous consent, but how far do we actually go? Especially, we English speaking modern Indians whose parents had lived to see the gory division of the country on the lines of language, caste and everything else that could divide human beings in every possible way, so that their suspicion about human beings was the hallmark of their outlook in life? On our own, we had no problems. We made the most of all the funny quirks each of us displayed by virtue of belonging to a variation in the species. Variety was indeed, spice! Bungalee, Ohomia, Khasi, Garo, Mizo, Naga, Nepalee with a few Punjabee and Marwaree thrown in for fun. There was so much talk about that burgeoning culture, and I was not spared either. I had to fight that battle too. Defending the true principles, giving up some outmoded ideas and adopt something new, whether it was for buying some home appliance, learning computers or frowning at arranged marriage and refusing to give dowry. What I had to say did not always tally with the folks, though. They were mired in their pessimistic gloom that human beings were basically cruel and life is even more cruel and it was all going to come to a terrible end, qayamat, a pralaya.¹Period.

Perhaps it was the pace at which it was all happening. We were being treated to a jamboree of things and ideas while our social body was yet to catch up to swallow and digest the first delicious bites of change. It was time to question the yardstick with which we were being judged all the time. What made it the ultimate gospel truth beyond doubt? I was frail in my scheme of logic which had a place for everything - all the dreadful misery, the breakers of the law, the unscrupulous manipulators and the unaware manipulated, going back to the roots where everything converged beautifully. It was not so for the traditional or the so called 'traditional.' They all wanted to go to heaven excluded from all the rotten people and there was a mad rush as to who would get there first. To me, they seemed selfish in shunning the non-conformist.

We simply needed a total reconstruction in our society, our country, this world and it included undoing what has been done since the time of the Buddha! Striving for a vision, we were headed to become mere careerists. Something made us restless. Not just winning a cricket match but to dream a big dream and wake up to the task of making it reality. Enough of fiddling with trivial selfish pursuits. There was challenge at every step of our task, in the way we conducted ourselves, in our silly fears and half-hearted emancipation.

(.*_*.)

1. Qayamat, pralaya – end of the world