Guilt that was not mine

The grinding winter of January had blanketed everything from treetops to the soil pores. It was a typical freezing day. Everyone had plonked themselves on the bed, under the blanket to get the coziest feeling in the world. Unfortunately, dog parents don’t have this privilege, so my dog took me for a stroll (and not vice versa). As my mind was succumbing to the frost, I overheard a man pleading over the phone. He was Zomato’s delivery man. Someone’s order had got delayed by 10 minutes and they denied to receive it. The customer was fearsome and ready to lodge a complaint against him. The cold wind too became warm with apologies but the customer didn’t budge from his stance. I looked at my frigid cold hands. My unsympathetic fingers denied being opened straight. I wondered about the guts of this delivery man who was standing there with half-cold food, reeling under the responsibility.

I was stunned at the very thought that 10 minutes cost him his job?

Looking beyond ourselves

I feel asphyxiated on this journey of a capsule that we are traveling in. Everything’s jampacked. There’s no room for efflux. This life capsule is threatening to an extent that it strangulates humanity.

Life is not a personal thing. It’s the intertwining element of it that makes it more of what it is. Every day, especially in conglomerate societies, we brush past many lives, sometimes we care to ponder upon it and sometimes not. The vivacity of life is such that we don’t even realize how many cultures, castes, creeds, and gender identities we walk past while traveling in a metro or a bus. However, we feel it safe to be cocooned into our own physical spaces. On a typical Monday morning, while in the metro, how many of us care to look beyond our 6 inches screen to notice the proficiency with which a mother is managing her child and three bags?

The vivacity of life is such that you don’t even realize how many cultures, castes, creeds, and gender identities you walk past while traveling in a metro or a bus.

The hurl burl of stations, the glint of evening Sun on steel tracks, and fidelity of emotions on the face of passengers meld so well that it looks like an ecosystem. For a beggar, it is a place of hope; for a serviceman, it is a conduit to chase his dreams and for a laborer, this metro station is a smorgasbord of opportunities.

What is the motive of telling you this? Life is fleeting, we are witnessing everything, just acknowledging the very presence of things around us will make life a more wholesome experience.

Erred notion about progress

Covid era saw a substantiate rise in webinars on how to increase productivity while at home. Heavily paid advertisements engulfed my laptop screen. Why is productivity always linked to speed or race against time?

Focusing on oneself and taking out time with ‘ourselves’, to ponder upon our inner self is still stigmatized as being non-productive. We have estranged peace from progress when both can be conducive to each other.

A person who has had a hot day at the office attending meetings, forging his brain to meet the deadlines but still manages to retain his sanity till the end of the day is made to stand at a higher pedestal than a man who has worked therapeutically on lowering his anxiety levels or sustaining mental health. This diverging gap between calmness and progress perturbs me. We are so engrossed in increasing the palpability of progress that anything placid is not considered a part of it. Tranquility is the only thing after nature that humans have slashed.

Only if some people could be more patient, tranquil, and empathetic, that delivery boy wouldn’t have lost his bread.

I walked past his motorcycle with a guilt that was not mine.

I walked past his motorcycle with a guilt that was not mine.