Saturday, September 18, 2010

a dark rollercoaster

I had only seen people suffering of insomnia in movies, often these characters are either drug addicts, murderers or both. These movies tried to convey the mental torture that insomnia inflicts, but it was never clear enough till I lived through. After 6days of loosing sleep you simply loose track of time. I was already bed ridden because of the viral & the medicines weren't helping either. After a point you start to dream when you are awake, even once u open your eyes & try to shake it away. It plays in your head like a broken records, over and over again. I try to shake it away, try to think of something different, but the only thing I can think of, is what I am dreaming right now. Its as if you are watching the "machinist" & "trainspotting" back-to-back in repeat mode. But does it count as a "dream" if I am awake? I sit on my bed, hoping that would help. I do not have the energy to go up to the washroom & wash my face.

I give up & try to make sense of what I am seeing. I had hoped that if I had left the city & come home things would change. The first 2 nights when I had this fit was, when I was in the city. I saw it being played in my head with both my eyes open & closed. Finally I had to give up on my attempts to sleep & get out of bed. But, the recursive, meaningless dreams followed me home as well. Yes, dreams are always not meant to be meaningful, but they usually contain other people, some dialogue, drama, action, something like a movie which plays in your head. But my recursive dreams had just some odd shaped empty boxes. The sequence kept repeating in my head in spirals, I felt I was falling down Alice's rabbit hole but even that had an end.I tried making sense of it during the day only to give up trying & comforting myself that at least the boxes were not shaped liked coffins. Now that would have been freaky !!

A high dosage of antibiotics along with the highly sedative cough medicines mixed a tired body & mind can play tricks on you. You feel as if you got the front seats in a roller coaster ride which is heading straight into an iron gate reinforced with steel, lead & anything sharp you can find. The mind had already been hit bad thanks to the work. They say you shouldn't burn bridges, but at times you just know you have to blast that bloody bridge with enough dynamite to light up the sky on a full moon night. The thought did bring a smile to my face. And that is when the body gave in to the viral & here I am trying to twitch & turn in bed, to find the position which would give me the least amount of pain, while I try to sleep. I got some sleep yesterday after 6long days, I hope I get some tonight as well.

My health is showing minor improvement, so hope to be up & running in a few days time. Lot more medicines to have & supplementary foods to take up. As for the mental health, it will mend, it always does. Now that the sword is already pushed in, I'd rather pull it out from the other end. I really doubt if this would make sense if I try reading all this again. But these are memories & words, which I might forget once sanity kicks in.
Like TP says "its official, u've gone demented"

Monday, March 08, 2010

The Atheist - Rejected by Heaven & Hell


Last week was quite painful for me. My best friend died a slow death which was painful to bear. I knew my friend for the past 3years, used to be always by my side wherever I went, from the bakery next door till the long trips I have been. My friend managed to make me smile & helped me get some sleep during all those long journeys. My friend, my T430 Transcend mp3 player. Ok, jokes aside, come to think of it my mp3 player was really like a friend to me. I have read that these days with the invent of interactive computer systems, we have started considering electronic gadgets to living entities. So yes, I did feel a sense of pain when my mp3 player's sound output started faltering. Maybe I didn't shed a tear, but I still didn't feel like throwing it away even after I got a replacement.

While talking about replacing electronic gadgets, it is common for many of us to replace our laptops, mobile phones quite frequently these days. Though we love & adore our gadgets during their term of use & safeguard them, we do not often give much time to think while replacing them with another. It makes me think, will we also be replaced or forgotten by the ones around us. Even more scarier, do we have the same fate as a broken mp3 player or mobile phone. Lets accept it, the universal law applies for everyone & everything. If born one day, you definitely have to die one day as well. But do we also just "switch off" or slowly rumble on & die like one of our machines.

Now, the theists have their different versions of "paths" after death. Despite the religious differences all these paths can be summed up as either "Heaven" or "Hell". Like they say in most SMS jokes, the doors to either is guarded by somebody by the name of St Peter who has a log of your deeds while on planet earth. Now, I don't want to go into the details & point out the various absurdness they have, as I always do. To tell about "Heaven" & "Hell" there are quite a lot. For some its a place where angels float around among the clouds, usually your grandparents are there (I never understood why !!) , they have good food & everybody is dressed in white. For some others Heaven has virgins (not sure male or female) inhabitants for company. Hell is usually where the infidels, the cruel, the lawyers & "evil-doers" (borrowing the word from Jr Bush) are punished to go. The place is said to be extremely hot, with boiling cauldrons & you have Mr Devil staying there as well, who will whip you for no apparent reason.

But what happens to the atheist? I know for sure that the theist's heaven nor hell would let us in. So without heaven or hell, our lives (& path) would end like turning off a switch. "Puff" & gone? Gone in 1 second? Is that it? Though this does scare me, I am able to see the good side to it as well. We atheists needn't worry about our deeds during our mortal life. We do not have a hell & you can't possibly push us into a molten cauldron once we die. I can only pity for the poor theists. We can lie, cheat, break rules & we just have to go "puff" when our time is up. Its nice, though it makes me feel no different from a machine. Both machines & human go through their repair cycle whenever the time is near & then it reaches a point repair cant help much. That's when we are given up on.
While writing this, it is being more clear to me on the million possibilities just opened up ahead of me. When you are free from the consequences of your actions, the concept of freedom & thoughts become clearer to you. You can do whatever you want, not fearing about the eyes in the sky. You do not have to do the "right thing" or as per "god's will" but what you feel is right. After all you are Heaven's & Hell's reject.

Note: The author does not advocate "lying, cheating or breaking rules". Consequences of your actions while still alive is very much a reality.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

to all those animal welfare activists


Decided to write this piece after a discussion with a colleague over lunch. My colleague is a vegan & cannot stand the thought of a non-vegetarian dish. Today, he was giving me the reasoning behind his decision to not consume meat. According to him ( & many others, I am sure) it is not "right" to kill an animal & consume its flesh. Just because they cannot respond back, doesn't mean we have right to kill & eat them. Well, he was almost echoing the thoughts of the animal right activists who are presently protesting against killing of animals for consumption. Earlier these protests were mainly for cruelty towards animals & their killing for recreation/product manufacture. But as per the newspaper, new rounds of protests are against consumption as well.

Surprisingly most of these protests are against the killing of cows. There has been no mention about killing of chicken, duck, pig or even fishing. Evidently our nation's dear animal activists do not care about the pigs, goats & chicken, though they are being butchered & consumed in much larger numbers. In spite of cows being butchered in very less numbers for food in the country, focus is primarily on them. Makes me think, is there a hidden religious agenda behind this "animal welfare". I always knew that people are distinguished always on basis of their religion, caste, creed color. But did they start a caste system in animals as well? Interesting.

And an even interesting was an article which I read in the newspaper yesterday morning. I had to do some googling to get a web article of the same. I wanted to get the attention of our dear animal welfare activists on this particular piece of news. It seems thousands of rams & bulls were sacrificed in a temple in Kushtagi, a village 6hours away from Bangalore - the silicon valley of India. Villagers say that children were made to stay indoors, so that they dont see the gory scene as rivers of blood flowed through the temple grounds. While I read through the article, I wonder "where were the animal activists doing on that Sunday morning?". This was not a surprise party which the villagers decided to throw, but a practice which have been followed for years. But then, like I mentioned before, our activists are only worried about the cows & not surprisingly no cow was harmed in the sacrifice !

It doesn't require a lot of intellect to understand the "animal welfare" in the country is driven more by religious sentiments rather than actual love for the animal. Killing for the sake of consumption/nutrition is being banned while the law looks the other way when mass sacrifices are being made. With the large number of activists fueled by religious sentiments to their godly animals, the future of tasty food looks bleak for the minority non-vegetarians. For the time being I will have to survive on chicken in a land where, Lion is not the King, the Cow is !