Philosopher

My end was near, I could almost feel it.
Lying on the bed, I just wished I could move again.
For all my near and dear, it was a sad time;
For I had made their lives and they had made mine.
‘The philosopher’ is what they had called me all the time.

I know I was scared, about the after-life;
But I had to let it go, for there was no other choice.
And then I could feel it nearing, the mourning getting louder,
Things started getting blurry, I thought something was trying to hold me.
And then it gripped me completely, I was lost for some time,
The noises started fading, and I knew it was over.
‘I will miss you all’, I thought,
Hoping that it would reach my folks somehow,
For I knew that I would never see them again,
Memories would be all that we would have.

The transition was painful, but another feeling gripped me more.
The feeling of curiosity, as to what lay beyond this.
And then I saw a white light, and it surrounded me all over.
It seemed like I was moving, but how was that possible?
I tried to move on my own, but it wouldn’t work,
I tried to look around, but nothing other than white I could see.
And then it stopped, leaving me at a magnificent place,
I looked around in amazement, and that is where I saw Him.
All the words I knew, could not describe His warmth
Was this what he really looked like, or was this just his form?
‘My life is over, my lord, and I thank you for making it a happy one,
What now?’ I asked my lord, for I wished to know further.

‘There is one thing to do, my son’, said the Lord,
‘One last formality before we proceed.’
I flinched at that, for I knew that this was it; the Judgement Day.
‘Tell it to me right-away, my Lord.
I am ready to accept whatever you give, for I have faith.
You are the sole Creator, and you are the best judge’, I said.

‘You have to live your life again, my son,
But this time as an invisible man, bound to your Self,
The world won’t feel you, and you won’t feel it,
And day and night, you have to watch your life
With you in it; exactly the way it was’, he said.
Confused with this kind of a judgement, I couldn’t take it anymore.
‘NO my Lord’, I said in anguish, for I had waited long enough.
‘I am ready to accept any judgement, my Lord’, I cried,
‘But please don’t make me do it all over again’.

And to that the Lord answered,
‘But this is for your good, my son.
I am giving you a chance to live the good times,
Live your life again, and enjoy it all over again.
Your mother’s warmth, your father’s love,
Your friends with those great moments.
The first time you ever laughed, the first time you ever felt love
The first time you ever made a friend,
Who you know would stay with you till the end.
I want you to live those moments again, my son.
I want you to see how you felt, when all of this happened
I want you to know for yourself how you lived it.’

I knew I had lived a happy life, I knew I would enjoy it all again
But couldn’t I get a few answers, before I went on my journey again?
For I thought I should not waste the opportunity,
Now that I had come so far.
‘My Lord, I thank you for giving me the pleasure again,
But before I leave, can you at least judge me?’, I pleaded.

‘No my son’, He said, ‘I can’t do that.
But I am going to leave that entirely to you.
In your journey this time, you shall discover your true Self,
You shall see your Self as you,
You shall see your dark side too.
The times when you cheated, when you spoke lies,
When you ignored the call of your brothers,
The times when you chose the shady path.
I want you to see your Self do that.’

Realising the Lord’s intention and yielding to it,
‘And what after that, my Lord?’, I asked,
About to leave for a long journey.
And that’s when God gave me his final words,
‘All your life, you asked me trite,
What is wrong and what is right?
For I never gave you the power to judge,
But today I give you that power, my son.
Whether your Self should be punished or blessed,
You decide for your Self.
It is completely going to be your own choice.
You, on the other hand, my son,
Can come back and be a part of me again,
The knowledge and wisdom that you earned,
Shall be yours forever.
And you, my son, my dearest son,
You shall be mine forever.’

And thus I left, for another long journey,
This time to make a decision for my Self.
I closed my eyes and felt something move.
And then there were noises, here and there.
I opened my eyes, to see my father standing.
A nurse entered the room with a baby, and handed it to my father,
My father looked at it and smiled.
A tear trickled down his eye.
I moved closer to look at the baby,
And happiness filled me completely,
When I saw myself as the baby.

Wannabe Comedian

"Friendship is a very weird thing to have. The main aspect of friendship is where you draw the line. The line is the limit to how close you can take your friends to yourself. For some people, this line is very close to them. And for some, including me, this line is very far. Some might argue that there is no such line for them. And they might be true. But I can always make my case by saying that the line still exists but at an infinitesimally small distance from you!

We of course have multiple lines i.e the line is defined separately for each friend of ours. Typically, you tend to put a group of people at one level and then another group of people at another level. For example, your school friends. Since they are your friends since childhood, they might be placed behind the line closest to you. Of course this is valid only unless you had an experience with them which, after your sexual enlightenment in college, you found out was supposed to be awkward.
Then there is a set of college friends that you have. Even though they have been with you for a shorter duration of time, they enjoy the advantage of being more interesting to you since you are at the so called "embedding" age when you meet them. These years are those of teenage or adolescence. This age is called embedding because you tend to embed things that you learn during these years in your life thereafter till you lie on your deathbed, guilty. The principles that you learn, the habits that you develop during this age stay with you. So do the people that you meet during these years. However, a fair judgement would ask you to keep these people at a line far away from your childhood friends. But then fairness also asks us to do other things like respecting our elders, drinking milk every day, going to bed at nine and waking up at five, etc. Not that I am saying that these things are wrong. Just that one can always question your 'being fair' by saying that why not be 'really fair' by applying 'being fair' to every aspect of your life.

Coming back to the main point, most of us don't realize that like we have drawn our lines, others too have drawn theirs. And I would define an ideal friendship as the friendship in which the distance at which both people place each other is equal. But then that is hardly ever the case. We rarely find such a pair. One such pair is the Swat Cats. But then they are not for real. I wonder why I even thought of them. You have to give me a break though. You can't blame me for being interested in the lives of two cats who get along with each other so well that their team work actually ends up in them building a jet that can even fit things which look bigger than itself and also fly at the same time faster than all other jets. Moreover, with a blue exhaust gas coming out of its tail.

I am sorry for deviating. But I have to talk about this one. ‘Swat Kats’ was and still remains to be one of my most favourite cartoons. Oh, the music, the concept and most of all, their gadgets! However there is one episode in which I got a little confused. The concept says that the Swat Cats built their awesome jet out of scrap. And they actually have missiles in the jet which have diamond tips so that they can penetrate deeper. And that's when I wondered who the hell threw diamond away as scrap!

Anyway, coming back to the main point, we rarely see an ideal friendship around. And it can be proved, even mathematically, for those who really give a damn about what I am saying. And now comes the important question. What do you do when you find that your friendship with someone is not really ideal? What do you do when you find out that someone is invading you or that you are invading someone? By 'invading', I mean going closer than what the line allows you to go. Sometimes we can just change the lines accordingly. When the disturbances are minor, you can even neglect them. The bolder type of people open up and say it out and discuss such things. And the one thing about discussing such things is that they are self-driven. The moment you talk to your friend about changing his or her position on your line map, the position is already changed. That's what I believe. Because many times, it is the thought or the feeling that counts.

Anyway, I wasn't really giving you a solution. I was just telling you a problem. I know I sound like I am soon going to say something wise. But believe me, I am not. I never have. And according to my mother, I never will. But then I believe that the secret of being a great orator is to maximize the time for which you can fool your audience into thinking that you are a wise person. For those of you who want to enter politics, this would be my sole advice. And I don't think there is anything wrong in it. Everyone needs a boost to perform well in life. If you can provide that boost by simply being a hypocrite, then go ahead. However, most of the times you will find that people are smart enough to know that you are just a man or woman of words. Unless you do what you say, nobody will listen to you. We had better leaders in the olden days. You didn't see a king giving a war cry and then going and sitting in his castle while watching his men fight for him, did you?

So, I guess I have deviated a lot by now. I don't really remember what I was talking about. Something about lines and geometry and all that stuff. Oh forget it! Let me just get the hell out of here. Take care people. See you soon again."
And he left the stage to a mild applause.

Comedian

The restaurant was filled with people. It was five minutes to eight. More people were rushing into the restaurant. The waiters were busy making seating arrangements for the newly arrived customers. The tables near the windows which opened to the park beside the one storeyed restaurant were quite in demand. However, the tables nearest to the stage were the ones which filled first. The bartender on the other side of the stage was working hard to make drinks for people, most of whom he had seen before. The waiters were taking orders for food. Nobody opened the menu. Nobody needed to open the menu. It was hardly possible to be a citizen of the city and not know that this place served wonderful sizzlers.

Five minutes passed by soon. At sharp eight, the spotlight was switched on and focussed on to the stage. A man sitting on one of the tables nearest to the stage got up and went up to the stage. It was him, the Comedian, as he was known. There was a mild applause. He started.

“Hello all. How are you, people? It’s been a long time. I would like to tell you all that I am with my friends here today. Those four sitting at that table that I was just sitting on are my friends.

Yes, I too have friends. And for those of you who don’t know, ‘Comedian’ is NOT my last name and ‘The’ is DEFINITELY NOT my first name. I was sort of feeling insecure about my image in public. People are slowly forgetting that I am a person. The other day I was in the city mall and a guy with his son walks up to me and says, ‘Hey comedian, my son is feeling a little depressed. Can you make him laugh?’

What the hell was that? Am I an instrument to make little kids laugh now? He could have at least asked for an autograph before asking for a favour! Humour is an art. It needs a lot of homework. At that moment, the chances of me making that little kid laugh were as bleak as that of his father having a heart! For all I knew, I could take him to a corner and tickle him to death. But I hardly think his father would have appreciated that. But then, you never know. These times of global economic recession do tend to bring the worst out in men. You wouldn’t be fully wrong in expecting the father to say ‘Dear Lord! That is a fortune saved. How much do I pay you?’ after you tickle his son to death.”

There was a mild response from the audience.

“Yeah, I know. Most of my jokes are based on exaggeration. I hate the person who invented that word. Now my jokes are described in chapter two of the joke book, the title being exaggeration jokes. I hate being classified. It is bad for the business. You see? People tend to like things that they can’t really describe when it comes to art. We get to hear expressions like ‘i have no words’ and ‘i am speechless’, etc. Now I will never get those types of comments on my jokes. Now they will always be like ‘yeah so what?’ and ‘been there, done that’ sort of comments because people have a word for my jokes now, the word being exaggeration.

So anyway, coming back to my life, I brought my friends here today because I wanted to prove it to everyone that I too have a life. I too have friends who come all the way from different parts of the city to watch me perform even though they have such tight schedules. Younis, for example. That tall and thin guy sitting there with a philistine smile etched on his moronic face. He is a computer engineer His job is really demanding. Do you know why? I will tell you. His job is to go to the city theatre every Friday and give a review of the latest movies to his colleagues. And there are many constraints while performing this overwhelming task. One of them is that he has to take a girl with him every time he goes. He is really good at his job. In fact he was just giving me a briefing of what he learnt from the latest movie 3 Idiots. It seems he learnt that he should never try to hide anything that he is doing FOR his friends FROM his friends, just for the sake of surprising his friends. It seems a guy did that in the movie to surprise one of his depressed friends but then before his surprise was ready, the friend had committed suicide out of hopelessness. Poor guy.

Anyway so Younis today told all of us what he is doing for us behind our backs so as to make sure that we know that he will always be there for us. He is doing a lot for our friend Rahul there, the guy wearing goggles AT THIS TIME OF THE DAY. So anyway, Younis has been doing a lot for Rahul behind his back to “surprise” him. He is thinking of buying night-vision goggles for Rahul. Yeah. Night-vision goggles. It seems they cost around fifty rupees. And Younis is going to buy one for Rahul, who by the way does not carry a handkerchief because he hasn’t found one which costs more than five hundred bucks. Rahul acted all surprised and happy when he heard of this.

But Younis, I must tell you one thing. I don’t know how to say this. The only way of putting it is, if you care even a little bit about Rahul’s welfare, please, for God’s sake, don’t buy the goggles. It is a horrible gift to buy for a person like Rahul. I mean, look at him. Just turn to your right and look at him. Look at the way he is wearing that jacket over his body tight T-shirt, the way his denims are torn at the right places, the way his hair is spiked. Look at him and just ask yourself the question, why should this creature not squeeze the blood out of me for getting him night-vision goggles. I mean, there are more chances of Rahul dying out of depression after getting that gift.

By the way, Younis, if you have already bought the goggles, I can suggest you a person who you should gift it to. Our very own Abhay. Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to introduce Abhay to all of you. He is a very close friend of mine and he was the easiest for me to persuade to come here today. I told him that we get to dance with a lady of our choice from the audience after my show. Abhay, I am sorry I lied. But more than that, I am sorry your mother dropped you on the head on a hard place when you were a kid. Who gets fooled like that? I mean, these are real royal people sitting in front of us. How could you even think that I was telling the truth? I say the same thing to tempt my pre-matured twelve year old kid and he will say ‘Nice try, Dad. I am twelve’. You need to stop trusting people man. It’s always been your problem. You trust people very easily. Remember that time when that guy on the street said he could make you fly if you get undressed. Thank God I came there on time. What? What is it Abhay? What is it that you are saying? Heights? Scared of heights? You are scared of heights? Okay let me get this straight. You are thanking God that I came on time because you had forgotten that you were scared of heights and did not really want to fly? God that’s sad. You are real sad man. I am going to write a book on you. And it’s going to be titled, ‘The terrible consequences of having hard places in the city’.

Anyways ladies and gentlemen, time is running out. I better start my apology speech before it’s too late. I would like to thank my friends today for coming to my show. Younis, Rahul and Abhay. Obviously the things that I said were not really true. I just want to thank them for being there for me always. That’s from my heart guys. No jokes there. Thank you people. Hope to see you again soon. Take care.”
He left the stage and went and sat with his friends. A singer came up on the stage for the next performance of the evening. The comedian had a peaceful dinner with his friends and soon left.

Life

We came here alone.
And we shall also leave alone .
Not a single thing in our hands,
But memories as vast as desert sands.

Life is too short to be screwed up;
And too long to just give up.
So get on your feet, shake off the dust,
And take the path which is completely just.

Buildings will be built,
But eventually they will tilt.
Roads will be made,
But eventually they will fade.
But once see your loved one cry,
And that memory will never die.

Never stay low; never feel bad;
Never hate anyone; never be mad;
These are all just traps for the mind,
They will make you go mentally blind.

Get taken advantage of; who cares?
Happiness will go to the one who shares
Life is as simple as that you know?
And with that I shall take a bow.

We came here alone.
And we shall also leave alone .
Not a single thing in our hands,
But memories as vast as desert sands.