I am sitting unsure of what to do Waking up to the unfinished chores Sleeping on the unwashed plates Unable to create a routine for myself I am sitting unsure of what to do.
People with migraine on their side – know of the times they wanted to bang their heads. How many times have I wished for Picking up a hammer and smashing my head? Or drilling a hole right through my temple?
Nobody knows why life is complicated With responsibilities stacked all around. One after another it gets added on to- the things that I am yet to finish.
It is hard to explain what it feels like. So I clutch my head and roll on the floor. My life starts to spin around; blocking my dreams from being born.
The days I smell of Vicks; I fail to recognise myself. It is always like a dragon inside Waiting to open fire on the slightest glitch.
I press my head down on the pillow Holding my breath to kill my brain. But reality pulls me back again and again; to the wheel of life -full of pain.
Death was very young. Like everyday, he draped his black cloak and left home. He had to meet the girl by the river. It was her last day on earth. When he approached , she was playing with the water. Her laughter was like a sweet melody. He floated towards her like a wind. Suddenly she turned back and smiled at him. He stopped in his track. That moment something broke inside his heart and he fell in love for eternity. He hugged her tight with over pouring emotions. She gave him a friendly embrace and left the world. Since then, each life Death took reminded him of her. Now Death is the first to weep in every death.
Days and years are flying . Then came “Dark“; Making all of us wonder, how time is playing with us. The more we try to mess with it the more we end up in a mess. But at some point in life, we all would yearn for a time machine, so that we can go back and change the way we lived.
The small second hand in our watch is running tirelessly, taking each seconds away from us. It does not promise a new second in return. Consider ourselves lucky, if we get one. On each new year eve, we stare at the clock and wonder where did all our time go! When the grey hairs become more visible, we start to question ourselves; “what did we do in our prime?”. Time is like snow in our hands. It will melt away.
We take photographs, to freeze some moments for eternity. But years later, those frozen moments, will emerge us reminders for the days we can’t get back. But won’t it be better to have an attic full of frozen moments which we can visit often, than a dusty, empty and forgotten one?
Noone has ever taught us what to do with our time. We were told every day to do everything for the future. Ultimately, we become someone who doesn’t have any past. We were so invested in making a brighter future, without knowing that the future we were looking for, came by and left.
None of us have the time machine. So better freeze some moments and make some memories to create an eventful past and a remorseless future.
We are strange creatures. We can’t just live on food, air and shelter. We need a place for our mind to do its deeds. A space , which each of us create somewhere inside our head, and expand as we grow. This imaginary spaces of each individual are somehow interconnected that those transcended generations as information. Now we have reached a stage of looking at us, as an object made of a tangible physique and an invisible mind.
Our animal instinct had taught us how to keep the tangible component healthy but the answers to taming our mind is non existent. Yes, there are successful stories of people who did. But I am afraid to say, it works for them but not for others. They may have mastered their mind. But they don’t know a single thing about others. Each mind has its own path unseen by anyone else – how can someone else tell us how to tame her?
We glance towards our zen garden and it gives us a momentary calmness. But, it is an illusion our minds want us to believe. But it will burst like a bubble, within seconds. Because, our mind currents are too strong to be handled by a stranger’s wisdom.
Everyone can’t be Buddha. Because, no one can be someone else. It is our duty to find our own philosophy that can create the symphony to sooth our minds. Each book we read, each look we receive, each word we hear and every silence that passes through us is a lesson. But we will be cheating ourselves, if we believe in the words of the wise as the ultimate truth. It may be true for them. But not for others.
We often end up copying others in search for our peace. We simply adopt their methods, their inspirations. We wake up in the morning and create a schedule just like them. We can pretend with ourselves and others that, it is working. But it never will. Because, our mind is not shaped to fit into other’s design. Every answers to all possible questions we have is within us. We were born with an empty mind, which was floating in the emptiness. It is our senses, which filled that void with everything we came in contact with. Therefore, only we can break the code to our mind; we just forgot how. It is up to us to find our own meditation…
I closed my eyes in search of my roots. It was pitch dark. I wished I had a candle. I started digging all around my trunk. I had to find the tip of my roots. Now I wished I had taken some tools with me. The soil was hard. My nails got torn off first. Fingers started to bleed. For the first time in decades the soil became wet. But the colour of my blood dripped down away into the unknown. That unknown is where I need to go. Suddenly the earth cracked asking me to climb down. There was no time to spare. I ran down in to the womb of the earth and I crashed into something. It was made of glass. My mind lit up and now I could see. And someone was looking back at me. It was a mirror. “I need to find my roots, please move away”. Mirror gave a sarcastic smile. “Your quest is fake. Look at me. I am the core you are in search of. You need only accept it. You need only open your eyes”.
That’s when I woke up in a room flooded with light. I was blinded by my eyes. I had closed my lids and pulled the cover of darkness over everything around me, whenever I had a chance to find me. I let the society define me, muting my own voice. I was afraid of being an outcast.I let others tell me right from wrong. I allowed them to squeeze my pride. I forgot the basic rule; in order to find my roots I had to be me first.
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Only half a year is gone, but it has brought us sorrows of a century. The horrible deaths of Jayaraj and his son Bennicks is a new violent chapter about the disturbingly repeating accounts of police brutality in India. I could not finish listening to the distressing account of the alleged custodial torture which had allegedly led to the death of father-son duo, the first time I heard it. It was so horrific that, I had to stop listening to it in between.
Like many, I also want to believe, this year does not exist in my timeline. We saw migration of human beings for kilometers on foot, with no food and water; with nothing left in their hands except marks of hard labour. Their flesh burned on the tarred roads. We saw people dying in huge numbers day by day and the leaders immersed in throwing dirt at each other. We saw children eating grass. Then we also saw government looting people in the name of poor, and the rich being spared from spending their wealth. We saw man pleading of breath under the chockholds of power. We saw people being killed brutally, torturing ech inches of their body by the men in uniform, who had sworn to protect them. We saw our lands being encroached. We saw denials. We saw miseries, everywhere.
But the fate Jayaraj and Bennicks had suffered surpasses all boundaries. Is there any humanity left in us? As per newspaper reports, father and Son were taken into custody alleging that they kept mobile shop open beyond the permitted hours. What happened next is beyond human imagination.
Brutal custodial murders are not isolated incidents in India. It is a recurring phenomena. The Hindu had reported that, 1,731 custodial deaths happened in India in 2019 and that would mean that five deaths happens in India, in such manner daily. This is the outcome of a rotten and barbaric policing culture followed by many of the police officers.
One of the main reasons for repetition of these incidents are the lack of evidences, which makes it impossible for the prosecution (if any) to win. This gives a feeling of security to the criminal minds present among the police. Marshal Miller in his article ‘Police Brutality’ has listed the reasons for lack of success faced by the prosecutions in cases of police brutality. According to him “evidentiary problems render prosecutions of police officers difficult to win and thus infrequently brought” and “institutional pressures work against local criminal prosecutions”. He adds that this is “because of their close working relationship”. That is the reason why cleansing of the police department is as important as prosecuting the accused officers. Because, most often the undemocratic and corrupt elements present in a system will actively work towards rescuing the offenders.
Custodial deaths are not the only thing to be prevented. The police force all over the world are being accused of unwanted arrests, custodial rapes, harassment, non-registration of cases and the list goes on. Strategic reforms aiming at removing the criminal and illegal elements from the police is the only effective solution for all these.
Discussion on police reforms is not new in India. It started even before independence. From time to time, new suggestions were put forth and few of them got implemented as well. The first post-independence committee on police reforms were set up in Kerala, in the year 1959 and many other states followed suit. In 1971, Gore Committee on Police training was appointed and thereafter, in the year 1977 National Police Commission was appointed. When the recommendations by the National Police Commission were being ignored, seeking implementation of those, public interest litigation was filed before the Supreme Court of India. This resulted in the iconic judgment of Prakash Singh v Union of India (2006) .During the pendency of said case two committees were appointed, namely Ribeiro Committee in 1998 by the Supreme Court and Malimath Committee on reforms of Criminal Justice System in India, 2003 appointed by the Ministry of Home Affairs. Apex court had issued seven directives in Prakash Singh case for Police reforms. They include, constituting State Security Council to ensure that to prevent State Government from exercising unwarranted influence or pressure on police, appointing State police chief based on merit and through a transparent process ensuring at least a tenure of two years, separation of investigation and law and order wing in police, Police Complaint authority to enquire into the complaints against police.
But many of the States were reluctant and slow to even pass laws for implementing the Supreme Court directions. The Supreme Court had to appoint a committee to monitor the steps taken by states, after two years of monitoring the implementation process by the court itself. This committee had once expressed its dismay before the Supreme Court stating that only 17 states chose to enact an Act, to implement the directions in the judgment. This shows the attitude of the Government towards reforming the Police Force. Incidents like Thuthukkudi deaths shows that, the reforms are yet to reach the ground level. Even now there are many promises of reformation are remaining unfulfilled.
The reluctance to remove criminal elements from the force has cost us many lives . It is threatening the security of the citizens, thereby negating the very purpose of having a police force. It is high time to take steps. The training given to police should also focus on instilling humility and constitutional values in them. The should be focus on rescuing the force from intrusion by corrupt elements and punishing the offenders in Uniform.#justiceforJayarajandBennicks.
When she blooms in the night, like stars in the night sky , she used to fill the air and my heart with an alluring scent. When I was a child, my neighbour had a Jasmine plant. Her long hands had grown in every direction hugging a dwarf mango tree. Every girl in my locality was an admirer of her. Every day, dressed up like a bride, she will uncover millions of white buds. We were jealous of her beauty and we all wanted to steal at least a part of it somehow. But we could hardly convince our neighbour to let us pluck her flowers.
When I saw the picture of an indoor Jasmine plant in a pot, all i could think was about the beautiful Jasmine my neighbour had. Many nights I had waited just to watch her buds bloom, since her fresh scent was intoxicating. We used to hang around her, for the flowers she might drop. We used to groom her and bend the branches of the Mango tree for her to reach. How devastated we used to be, when many of her limbs get broken during every monsoon. But she would always come out of every trouble, and regain her elegant self quickly.
As I grew, and as she became older and older, it became so easy to forget about her. When I saw the online picture of the Jasmine plant, I tried to recollect “when did she die?”. I don’t know. May be someone did euthanasia.
How we forget about things that mattered the most to us? Broken glass bangles used to be treasured by us and now we dump them in a trash can without a second thought. Remember those days, when we used to keep the peacock feathers in our notebooks, for it to give birth? Though, we knew we are being stupid, it didn’t stop us from dreaming about beautiful colourful little feathers born out of her. Today, we plan our dreams, using calculators. Sneaking out of house, from the watchful eyes of mother just to play in the rain used to be our fun. Today, we curse our fate for leaving home without an umbrella on a rainy day. We have changed .I think, growing up is synonymical to losing touch with who we used to be. We let our little self die inside.
The little kid in us used to be happy about the little things we have. Even a torn cloth was enough to built a castle. Now we have more than enough but nothing is enough. Because we feel nothing is going as planned; missing the beauty of uncertainties. We need some reminders in our life, to keep in touch with our childhood, so that, we don’t stress out about the unwanted things we need.
So I decided to bring a small Jasmine plant home to get a piece of my childhood back.
My brain is exhausted thinking about completing the unfinished write -ups. They keep popping up randomly, and I just can’t focus on one. So when I sat down to write, between my fingers and keyboard, words went missing. I just can’t find them. I think they took my imaginations and ran. Here I am, hitting nook and corner of my keyboard and I just can’t formulate a meaningful sentence. So, the number of drafts grew and piled up like non-degradable waste.
I opened my window and wished for something inspiring to happen. Nothing happened. How strange it is, that sometimes we have allot to say, and our mind starts to buzz with so many ideas, but we end up confused and say nothing? I think, we need to just throw all those ideas in to a dust bin, so that there is a clean space for us to think.
So I started reading all of my unfinished drafts, one by one, to decide which one has to be thrown out. It was a bad idea. My intention to declutter and my self, cannot work in harmony. Each draft gave me new ideas. They multiplied like virus. They infected my mind. When I was about to choke to death, a new realisation hit me; words are not workaholics. They don’t understand schedules and plans. They are free spirits. They will only visit, when they feel like. We need to vibe with the words. It is a genuine relationship that can’t be forced. Pretending to be someone does not attract them. It scares them away.
So I selected all my drafts, and pressed Delete. If they are strong enough, they will survive. Now I am waiting, for the words to come back to my screen.
Colours! some dark and some bright; Some like a garden and some like a night sky. They are vibrant varieties of rays travelling with its own unique wavelength. Their contrast and their similarities, their willingness to blend together and then diverge into thousand perspectives make our lives intense.
To the human world, colours are not just the images that fall on our retina. They carry many more meanings. Languages adopted colours to define times and explain moods. Politics took up colours and changed it into ideologies. Colours became festivals. Colours got converted into moments caught up in pixels.
But the colours, that mean no harm were destined to carry unfortunate burdens as well. World got divided into black, white, brown, red and yellow. People with same emotions and similar dreams got split. They were thrown into pits filled with hatred and anger. Colour decided right and wrong. Colour enslaved lives, and started wars. Colours, that are supposed to merge with each other emerged as a barrier.
Some among us have become so senseless that, they can no longer see beyond colour of skin. They have turned our lives into a mess by preaching about greatness of one over the other. They could have held hands irrespective of the colour and led our generations through a peaceful history; to an optimistic future.
Lives are blooming in different colours. These variants are meant to strengthen our society and nurture our culture. More lives will be lost and more dreams will be crushed if we just refuse to believe it. It is painful to see humanity pleading for breath under choke-holds. And I am terrified of the chaos it will uncover.
Colours are characters with pure souls. They are spread out for us to see the beauty in all things. Do not get fixated on one colour. Let us not make our lives a monochrome. Fill it up with every colour. Remember, all colours together make this world alluring.
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