I've about a million (Okay, okay, ten (Fine! Five (Will you leave me alone if I say three?))) tracks running in my head. Of course, being a slightly (more) aware human, I also know that this is the case with majority of the population (Unless you're the brilliant one-track mind minority (Or worse, a hundred million tracks (Sidebar: not those tracks) kinda person)). So, while I could choose to write about "Why I hate being around sensitive people" or a follow up to that "My mean streak is getting weaker" or a thought provoking (You know provoking the kind of thoughts that would endanger my life because you would want to throw bricks at me for spouting utterly useless opinions) piece about "Is the opposition's job to oppose everything?", I will write about the concept of "Hell and worse than hell".
At some point in the first year of our plus two (First PUC/Eleventh grade/so on and so forth) we had a hindi chapter titled Mein narak se bol raha hoon. The lecturer decided to gauge what we thought of the hell/heaven concept.
This lecturer had also asked us, as part of the introductory exercise, what we wanted to become in the near future. While everyone else replied with "Brain surgeon" or "Software programmer" (yeah, I know) or something similar, I replied with "A better human being" (Yes, THAT was how lost and clueless I was in plus two (Please go ahead and tell me you were too, just to make me feel better)) and I'm still striving and failing. This little paragraph has no relation to what I actually want to write about (Are you sensing a pattern yet?).
Anyway, returning to the other question - What did we, with all the wisdom of seventeen years, think hell was. One of the girls (the kind whose brain matches her face (in a good way)) said "Bihar". I turned around and gave her a rather incredulous look. At the age of seventeen, pretty much sheltered from the outside world and knowing Bihar as only the state somewhere in Eastern India, the idea of a place on Earth which was equivalent to fire pits of the netherworld was difficult to digest. I understood the terrible law and order situation there (Dad still loves to talk politics with me) but I had faith in humanity. Certainly the world couldn't be such a terrible place, could it? That optimism was broken again and again and then some more.
A war here, a war there. Women unsafe everywhere. Economies crashing. Nut-job politicians, their scams and their insensitive statements which make people wish for authoritarian rule (I've heard more than a few people for it and my arguments for democracy always end up ringing hollow at some level). Escapism helps but just for a while. You could stop reading the paper, stop watching the telly, shut down your computer/smart phone and ignore social networking sites, turn into a monk (not the kind who teaches yoga and accepts ridiculous amounts of dakshina) or a nun. But you can't escape the horribleness of human existence. Which leads to the question - will hell, very neatly described in most of the religious doctrines, be much worse than some places on Earth? I belong to the group of people who are brought up by religious parents but who have been given the liberty of selectively ignoring some aspects of it (not too loudly or too openly, mind) so I would have to say - hell no.
I like keeping conversations light, these days. I used to freak people out by asking gory details. Turns out you lose friends with/without asking for details but hey, why make people uncomfortable by talking when you can do that with silence? If this seems off topic - I don't understand much of how the world functions, or which country owes which other country how much money, or which country's bad karma came back to bite it but when I do discuss it with people who seem to understand quite a bit of all these things, it paints a bleaker picture than before.
Some three-four years ago, my funny bone became elastic and tightened around my jugular because of which I lost most of my sense of humour and now I only think of terrible things happening all around. A few years since the QLC but its after-effects are still in the process of wearing out. So, try not to mind the ramblings. They'll keep coming of course. But try not to mind them.
