“The Greatest pursuit is that of finding oneself.”

Millennia worth of efforts in enhancing the comfort and convenience within our households has brought us to the world of today; a world presumably ready to fight obstacles of any magnitude. Nevertheless, in our incessant attempts to improve the external, we somewhat lost track of everything that is within us. This is not a tale of fiction or a euphemistic or eulogistic account, but a brief narration of experiences of the pandemic of 2020 from my perspective.

It all began on the 14th of March, when all of a sudden, my University announced that it was shutting its classes indefinitely. Although the fear of the virus was prevalent yet it hadn’t yet materialised for any of us at a personal level. The rumour of a nationwide lockdown started making rounds, coercing those from outside Mumbai to book their tickets back to their hometowns. I did the same. Coming back to my family under such circumstances was both relieving and worrisome since their fears became mine too. The pandemic hadn’t spread to a large extent in India till then. Yet, the uncertainty was terrifying. Though, not as terrifying as the thought of isolation and loneliness.

The pace of life today has made it robotic and monotonous, all the while making that monotony inconspicuous with the veils of ambition and achievement. At the beginning of the quarantine, we all resorted to virtual socialisation trusting the tested deft of the digital. It sufficed for some time, but after a while, it started feeling unnatural to me. Virtual could be a momentary substitute for the real, but never a replacement. Soon, my online classes and courses ended too. It was then that began my actual quarantine; one filled with solitary thinking, introspection, experimentation, and the pursuit of true and unrelenting happiness.

This wish of mine might be offensive to some. I would come to ‘whom’ and ‘why’ later. Firstly, let me start by saying Happy 74th Independence Day to those who have been independent for the past 73 years. I am excluding a few. Why? Because I don’t think they are independent. At all. Curious? Let me elucidate.
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Most of us are celebrating 73 years of Independence in our households with a general consensus of being free within the house. Look beyond that consensus. It veils the plight of the mother, who has surely not been independent for the past many years; that of the grandmother, whose only chunk of freedom lay in her ailments and age, which one day had her excused from the duties of a household slave. A patriarchal world can never be totally Independent.
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Talking about patriarchy, look towards the daughters now. Maybe your family is quite forward and has not placed any restrictions on their children. But what’s the gut feeling you get when a young girl in your house wants to go out alone after it is dark? If it’s that of fear, I am sorry to say that she is not independent. There is a rape reported every 15 minutes in the country. We cannot imagine the number of incidents not being reported. More than 50 lakh cases of crimes against women were reported in 2018 alone, including acid attacks, domestic violence, molestation, rape, Etc. Those who are afraid are not independent.
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Coming to fear now, there are still those in the country who are victims of fanatic violence. There are so many who are expected to ‘prove’ their patriotism merely because of their religion. Furthermore, there are those who are consistently facing the barriers of caste, language, etcetera. If you are afraid to speak your mind, if you are afraid of going to certain places, if you are afraid of socialising with someone else, if you are made to feel lesser than anyone else who calls themselves ‘Indian’, if you are still to find your identity within this nation, then you are not Independent.
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Identity… Yes… For more than 70 years, many of the people in India didn’t have an identity at all. If you exist but are told that your existence is illegal, I don’t think you are at all free. Even after winning the ‘legal’ battle, the one that exists in the social sphere is greater. Our society doesn’t understand the LGBTQ+ community. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have had to make a separate community in the first place. If insults are hurled at you, if there is a social boycott against you, if just generally you are not considered ‘normal’ because of your gender identity or your sexual orientation, I am sorry but you are not independent.
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So, this is just a summarisation. There is so much more we can talk about. Firstly, just like me, if you have not personally experienced the aforementioned, congratulations, you are independent. We generally tend to assess the world from the level of comfort and support it is providing us, ignoring others along the way. That brings us to why this wish of mine is offensive to a few. Many fear that in the process of making the world comfortable for a few others, their own comfort might be usurped. They are the ones who get offended by the very idea of someone else’s plight, simply rebuking it. They either corroborate the differentiation by re-iterating it viz. ‘Girls should wear longer clothes’, ‘If you are not free here then go to XYZ country’, ‘We gave ‘them’ reservation, they are the privileged ones’ or ‘How can you love someone of the same gender?’, Etcetera; or they take offence and start abusing you for seeking freedom and in this case even me. These are the ones who are definitely independent in the country. So, once again, to those who are independent, it is time to compromise a little of your comfort for the freedom of others. And to those who aren’t yet independent, the fight is not over. Jai Hind!

After a decade of experiencing the innately patriarchal Indian Society and witnessing certain chauvinists and misogynists dominate over specific females of modern India, a group of four heterosexual male friends had taken a latent yet resolute oath that when-so-ever any of them would be granted the grace and opportunity of a female partner in life, he would let her superintend the general decisions and hence bring balance to the natural ways. Roger and his three best friends. This is a narrative of certain events, recent and past, entailing the experiences of two of the other three. Their names are Andre and Simon.

It was the dawn of the month of February 2015. Roger and Andre sat in a corner of Roger’s house. The usual hookah and the melancholic melodies drew teardrops out of Andre’s eyes, just like every other yesterday. Roger had to play the role of the best friend and act bothered and hence he was compelled to put forward the query “Why are you crying, bro? She’d come back to you; you know?”

“I am not crying… I just feel something getting on my nerves…” Andre said, fidgeting through his statement.

“Come on… Chill bro. She has just left you to concentrate on boards. She’d come rushing back to you right after the exams…”  said Roger, trying to ward off the gloom out of the room.

“But why did she leave me in the first-place man? All those years of dreaming to be together… and towards the end of my high school, our relationship was on a new high… then suddenly she left me. Why? She called me obsessive… called me desperate…” Andre said.

Roger replied in the routine fashion “Dude… you have been neither obsessive or desperate… Although I don’t call either of them insults… I mean Gandhi and Lincoln were both obsessed with the idea of freedom and desperately tried to achieve it through their patient means. Don’t worry… everything would be fine… Okay, let me check on Simon… It has been almost an hour since he hasn’t tasted the hookah. I wonder what he is doing…”

“He must be having those gushy pushy conversations with her… why do you think he wants isolation?” Andre followed.

Roger left the room to go and check on Simon. Co-incidentally, he entered the room right at the moment when Simon had hung up his silent conversation. Before even inquiring him about it, he came up with the reply “I just got fudged, man”.

 

 

 

Amidst the symphonic shimmers of the endless evening traffic, a dull set of footsteps, pierced asymmetrically as if on a scout for a particular destination. It was Amar. The dejected soul failed by life all over. Too afraid to think of a future because of a frightening deterring past, Amar had given up. After some thoughtful wandering around the place, he finally gained the so-called ‘courage’ to enter the tall premises of the huge skyscraper. He walked past the reception, hiding his face in nervousness, and stood against the elevator door. A translucent oscillation in his dizzy vision accompanied a strange echo in his ears. Suddenly, all the echoes were halted by the pinging sound of the elevator’s arrival. There was sheer silence now. He waited for the door to open. As soon as it did, everything went back to its normal pace for him. It was the moment of truth, to enter or Not to enter.

The clique around him rushed towards the lift, pushing him ahead. He tried to control his body but was being manhandled with a push here and a shoulder-thrust there. He then gave in to the force and took the voluntary step forward; but while entering, his shoulder banged with some strangely dressed old man exiting the elevator, gazing down his eyes all the while with apparent suspicion. Amar’s nerves had now become more tensed and he stood amongst the crowd perspiring endlessly as the door closed shut. Ignoring it all he tried regaining his breath and also wiped his forehead. The panel showed a cluster of numeric buttons ranging from minus five to sixty-one. Everyone started pressing their pick. Amar resented from making a move due to his anxiety. He restlessly waited for everyone to get down at their respective floors so that he could select his floor number, the last floor, Sixty-One.

Yes, he wanted to reach the end… he wanted to end his pain… he wanted to end his life. As the last person got down on the forty-third floor, he slowly leaned forward to push the button. The lift started climbing again as soon as he did so. This time, to him, it seemed much slower than before. Every time the screen above the panel incremented the floor number, the climb became seemingly slower and slower to him. Amar started becoming more anxious with each floor, with each increment signifying the countdown decrement of his life’s end. When he reached floor fifty, he panicked and de-selected the sixty-first floor followed by pressing the ground-floor-button; but the lift kept climbing. He pressed the zeroth floor again, but, strangely, the sixty-first-floor-button got auto-selected this time. The elevator started speeding up its climb. He started pressing random buttons on the panel in a hurry, yet the lift kept accelerating vertically. Soon, to his horror, the elevator reached floor number sixty-one but didn’t stop. The number on the display kept on increasing further. Amar became afraid. He pressed all the buttons on the panel but the acceleration continued. The speed increasing… seventy-five… ninety… one-twenty… one ninety… three hundred… six hundred… nine hundred… one thousand… fifteen hundred… The elevator lights were fluctuating and the floor was vibrating heavily. The quick climb, getting quicker by the second, was creating immense physical pressure on Amar’s senses. He soon started blacking out. The last thing he could see with his fading vision was the floor number seven two nine two, and the lift door slowly opening.

***

A blinding brightness unveiled a faint shadow. Against it lay Amar, with his evanescent recovering vision. The shadow started coming closer with near-soundless whispers tickling Amar’s ears. A smile broke through the Penumbra with a light giggle. Amar was still lying with an expression of shock. He gained his apparent consciousness and immediately started trying to drag himself towards the shadow, but to no resolve. He wasn’t able to move an inch.

“Madhu… is it you?” he inquired with an elated aura in his expression. The shadow completely uncovered itself to reveal a woman. He observed carefully to find that her little finger was being held by a small girl.

“Saisha… Oh My God… Come here and hug your daddy baby…” Amar said. The girl tried to step forward to reach for Amar, but the hand that she had extended started fading.

“What happened beta?” Amar said. Just after that, an infernal fire engulfed the girl and she started screaming. Amar struggled to go forward to help the girl and called for the woman to do the same. But neither of them could move regardless of their efforts. The ground started shaking as the girl kept screaming in pain. The ground below the girl broke apart as she was submerged inside it. The entire place rubbled and suddenly came to an untoward still. Amar lay with high nerves. He heard a faint whisper again “We are ought to be apart”. The ground turned over and the place fell apart. Amar could barely hear his own voice when his senses shut off. He immediately woke up gasping, this time in a stranger world.

(Trying to regain his breath) “What is th… That dream again…” Amar said in a restless tone. He looked around to find that he was lying on a muddy bed-like structure with his legs buried in the hard mud. He wasn’t able to move around at all. He tried getting up, using all of his strength, but he failed miserably. There was no more strength to put in his efforts. Once again, he was giving up. He tried comprehending as to where he could have been, and he could not see much in the dark. He heard a loud clank from outside and laid down in pursuit of pretending to be still unconscious. He heard a pair of two different footsteps enter and stand beside him, chatting away in some unheard tongue. Then, all of a sudden, another pair of footsteps came inside. Amar tried to take a glance through his semi-closed eyes. It was a huge muscular man with a large fire-torch in his hand. The visibility inside the room had increased. The huge man was followed closely by a small woman. She came in and instantly caught hold of one of the two who had entered the place before, who in turn was also a woman. She caught hold of her hair, said something in her language in an aggressive manner, took a knife out of her back and cut the other woman’s hair lock. She then placed the knife against her throat and seemingly threatened her. The other woman burst into tears and fell on her knees. She tried running out but was intercepted by the muscular man. The woman with the knife now walked closer to Amar, conversing with the huge man simultaneously. She then kept her knife over his exposed chest and raised it above her head. Amar was alarmed and he thus spoke up “Nahi No Nooooooo! Please No!”