discard labels... be humans

I hate boundaries, I always have... Restrictions suffocate me, so do some unexplainable rules. Division of humankind on basis of states, countries, continents and even casts, religions and races make me uncomfortable. Maybe I'm immature, maybe completely mad, but I really can't digest the concept of nationalism, can't understand what on Earth people try to achieve by fighting for boundaries, ruling other nations, or by killing for religions casts and some strange beliefs... and even by saluting to some flags. Can't there be a constitution bigger than the constitutions of each and every state and each and every nation, a constitution of humankind? Can't there be a big flag representative of the whole of the humankind rather than that of a tiny fraction of it? Can't there be a sacred book sacred to people of all religions? Can't we remember the fact that we're humans before we get labeled as members of some tiny community? Is it mandatory to waste resources such as money time and manpower and to sacrifice lives for fighting for little causes like what little immature kids do? Is it mandatory to look at our near and distant neighbors as our competitors, and to set our goals as to overpower them and to make them to lose, especially when we know that there are real problems out there those we need to tackle as humans? Can't we be partners instead of being rivals and work as a team using our differences to compensate for the weaknesses of each other to reach to a common goal of making human life better?

It sounds good to focus on a tiny part of a system and to feel dedicated to it, as it sounds easy to improve the tiny part than improving the whole system... but it'll be a foolishness to ignore the fact that the tiny part is a part of the whole system, and any damage to any other part of the system is bound to cause at least some harm to the part we feel we're dedicated to. Even if we happen to live in an isolated community on an isolated island, still there are things like pollution global warming and altering balance of the ecosystem which can affect us directly or indirectly... and most of us aren't that isolated. A citizen or member of some community is a bigger word than just an individual, but it's much tinier than the word human as we all are members of humankind.

It seems hard to think of equality when things aren't really equal; there are differences in geographic conditions, educational awareness, health and hygiene, availability of resources, faiths and belief systems, extent of social pathologies like money mindedness and corruption... and many more; but we're always free to grow, to introspect and overcome our weaknesses; and instead of looking at others as obstacles in our path or as potential threats to our existence or as something we've to overtake, we are free to look at them as other part of our world and learn from them and seek help from them to overcome our shortcomings while simultaneously helping them to overcome theirs. We're always free to choose to be helping humans instead of acting as area or dominance driven quadrupeds. I think that cooperation rather than competition is the key to success, satisfaction, and evolution; but it requires more strength patience and dedication, and an entirely different mindset... and fortunately all of these are achievable by practice.

seeking for a balance

"Daydreaming isn't good, even dreams during sleep shall contain something useful, meaningful and practical, like study, questions papers, answers, scoring in exams, and thoughtful planning of career and of life overall," once upon a time I used to try to threaten myself... I used to feel embarrassed about the wild absurd ideas completely irrelevant to the syllabus, and to the path of my career, completely useless in current educational system and apparently irrational. I wanted to be a really good student, a scorer, topper, disciplined doing the homework on time, mugging up the details in books for writing in exams without getting bored, fitting perfectly in the norm, thinking within the square, fulfilling each and every criteria of a good student... a teacher pleaser, a parent pleaser, a people pleaser...

"Cats don't talk, they don't make friendships with dogs, there's no such river anywhere in the world that would heal every wound and make you immortal on having a dip into it, chocolates are made in factories, there are no trees that could have readymade chocolate candies as their fruits; heaven and hell are things in religious books, they are not traceable in real; carpets lack the shape, form and machinery that would enable them to fly," I used to attempt hindering my fantasy trips when I was a preschooler and when I was in primary school, it was long before my mind got occupied with fairies, witches, giants and aliens, Bermuda triangle, Maya culture, space life, alternate universe and parallel worlds... again I was wise enough to enforce myself to remember their non- existence... Why was that I couldn't focus on the facts and details given in syllabus books? Why was that I couldn't be a student that I should be...? Why was that in my night dreams I used to be (and that's the case today also, miserably) a worrier princes, an angel or a mad but successful scientist instead of being a gold medal winner? When exams occur in dreams, the dreams are inevitably nightmares! I grew up little bit and got captivated by mind, thoughts and their origins, consciousness, self awareness, free will, love, hatred, selfishness and altruism... "though we can attempt explaining some of them using findings in neuroscience, most of these are enigmas, unsolved things... not much useful in practical life," I tell myself hundreds of times, but alas, as usual, I'm not of my own... not an ideal student, not an ideal doctor, not an ideally practical person. I continue dreaming of my dream world, boundary free, rich, happy, healthy, curious, adorable world, getting governed by emotions of love and altruism, and by knowledge of facts without any ignorance.

Thinking of practical ways to achieve such impractical dreams unexceptionally leave me confused, fatigued, and above all embarrassed. Do I have some serious anomaly in my brain, some serious imbalance of neurotransmitters, excess or deficiency of some kind of neurotransmitter receptors, or is it the neural structure that is abnormal? I got from an article that having lesser latent inhibition in brain makes you to do such absurd things, makes you more creative, but it’s the same thing that’s found in psychoses... the only difference is the ability to detect the boundary between reality and the contents of the dreams. But the boundary is painful, it mocks you, reminds you of your absurdity every moment you see it. Before I would start dreaming of being completely psychotic and enjoying the heavenly pleasure of living in your dream while leaving in some asylum, I decided to write novels to quench my desire of creating a better world, my desire of creating special characters and living with them... a desire of solving mysteries of life. It does soothe me to some extent... but as my parents say, writing a novel is a useless job, having no practical implications, if you wish to create something new to this extent, create it in real (and as you lack the chances to do it, stop thinking about creating)!

But imagination or dreams are not that useless; I feel that today's dreams are foundations of tomorrow's real world... I've experienced certain incidents in life a long before they really happened; they won't believe in this but I know almost all of my best friends since more than a decade before I actually met them. It's like I dream about strangest things and they're out there in this world waiting for me; I don't search for them (thinking that they're absurd), yet they come to me hinting to me that dreams no matter however strange can come true... It's like as if dreams are predictions of mind about the future, about the chances of occurrence of some of the endless possibilities, or maybe they're just some wild constructions of semiconscious mind, and the world or destiny itself is equipped with such wild semiconscious mind.

Currently I'm stretching my limits, trying hard, moving heaven and earth to attain a balance between being impractical and practical at the same time, to believe in my dreams without ignoring what that is real, to allow my imagination to contribute in building the future world which I want to be a photocopy of my dream world...

to search someone

Crisis isn't a good thing to have, but it's the same phenomenon making us stronger, tough enough to survive it, and making us to introspect, to search the reason of tolerating, the meaning of being alive; it's the same phenomena forcing us to get introduced to the stranger hidden in our mind. It's not a stranger in reality, it's we only, but years and years of masking it and hiding it from ourselves, the practice of assuming a normal appreciable suitable personality makes us strangers to ourselves.

To me, crisis is the incidence when the focus is lost, and the sense of direction is lost, when hopes are dead and we don't see what's ahead of us leave apart the finish line, when we search but don't find the zenith of our dreams- making us to believe that it's absent, when we stop believing- believing in ourselves, in others, in anything we used to believe, when we stop loving ourselves and then our loved ones, when we start thinking of life as a meaningless co- incidence or as some disgusting existence, when every single activity becomes a war against ourselves, when we start making mistakes while attempting to find solace, and when we become depressed, sad and destructive after finding out that there's no solace... when the soul is getting crushed every moment under burden of some unexplainable pain, when tears of loneliness get circulated with every beat of heart, when we are losers, tiny loathsome miserable creatures unable to make any difference in ourselves and in our filthy surroundings, when there's no beauty in sight, all smiles are artificial, kids are annoying and adults selfish... the problem is in us, to us we're unlucky mortals destined to be failures.

In other words crisis is the time to clean up our minds of the layers of dust of bad feelings, to get introduced to the beautiful sweet confident winner hidden inside, who's never dead, and who thinks of life as a chance or as a mission, and her loved ones as gifts from heaven, who finds beauty in even ugliest minds and rays of hopes in darkest situations, who knows herself and has endless faith in herself undeterred by adversities, who believes in smiles, in innocence, in good purposes and in her dreams, whose heart is a heaven itself or is the endless sky wishing to protect the innocence of every mind she comes in contact with, who's not ignorant to pain but believes that it can be erased by helping healing other wounded souls, who knows that she's not some static or stagnant thing but is a dynamic human having a capacity to be better stronger and more helpful to the world, and her activities are bound to make difference in her life and in that of others... she knows that she can always choose her response to the situation... she can always choose to be an angel when she can be some lethargic inactive sufferer or even a demon.

These are two extremes, and crisis gives us a chance to move from the bad end of the spectrum to the good one... and we can always choose to stay at the good end by not allowing the bad feelings to mask the depth of our minds.

a reason to survive

Baseless, formless, ambiguous, and directionless...
I had no idea where my little life was headed,
I had dreams those were so foreign
to my environment and my being
that I had got convinced,
they were never going to get fulfilled

I had started mocking my desires,
had become sarcastic to my own feelings....
Too many failures kill the hope;
too many adversities mutilate the soul
Traumatized, mutilated, and yenning for escape
my heart feared, had it lost its face?

Skeptic, pessimist, and dreadful...
was it really life or was some punishment?

Wonderful world in my dreams had got shattered...
there was darkness and were oceans of tears.
Reality was there, still intact
what that had got damaged was my idealism.
Rigid, immotile, frozen and shaken
my mind was searching ways to get rid of its existence

Was it some reward, or a dose of success
that would heal my mind and bring back its pleasant sense?
Did I need drugs, or some psychological treatment,
to make the heart of my hopes to beat again?
Or was it some god or a flying angel
destined to make me happy and to stimulate?

No reward, no success, idle gods and mythological angels
Life had become completely hopeless...

But then something unexpected happened;
during a listless, aimless, and lethargic stroll
my mind bumped into my lost dreamland.
It was flourished and was so alive...
I found my vigor, my reason to survive;
and it is to make this world a better place for humankind!

diary or an attempt of it

I don’t know what the government wants to achieve by building such primary health centers and by compelling us new doctors to work there as bonded medical officers… do they want us to forget our medical knowledge, ethics, and to learn to manipulate the situation, to exploit the lack of knowledge of others? What’s the role of a phc? Aren’t we there to take care of their health? Or are we there just to satisfy illiterate whims of the village people? Isn’t health education mandatory or at least necessary? Why the useless, old age, antique drugs still exist in phcs? What the doctor is supposed to do if nearly all of her patients refuse to follow health advices and keep on demanding ‘magic drugs’ that would cure everything within time period of minutes or even seconds?

How nice it would have been if I were ignorant, not a doctor, or even illiterate… I would be able to live. Drunkards (mostly village politicians) come here, fully laden with alcohol, and say to me that, “alcohol causes dehydration. I’ve consumed two bottles of it in morning. You must administer intravenous saline to me.” When I tell the ailing to open their mouths to examine oral heath, I encounter tobacco, pan masala or paan blocking my sight to their pharynxes. Even kids have these things, leave apart male and female adults. Even if I give strict warning about avoiding cold foods and drinks kids go for infective ice candies on street as soon as they get out of the hospital after taking treatment, that too in front of me and then blame me for giving them ineffective tablets. People laugh at me when I tell something like, “smoking would deteriorate your lungs.” And get disappointed and even curse me when I don’t examine their arthritic knee or shoulder with stethoscope.

Is it advisable to administer IV drugs like metoclopramide and dexamethasone to everyone, even when they don’t need it? People are addicted to a ‘saline’ (a formula having a bit of many drugs in NS) and they want me to administer that ‘saline’. One of their superstitions is that tablets and capsules are useless and to get ‘cured’ and to gain some strength you need a saline and some injections, the only injectable available here is chlorpheniramine maleate. Doing private practice in government hospitals is a common trend; people hate me when I refuse doing that. I have no words to describe the corruption in this field, maybe I lack strength, or maybe my brain freezes when this topic comes into my mind. The only one person I can keep away from this dirty business is me, and I do it successfully… but still… it’s very very hard to handle everything, and still be able to think.

I feel like an alien, an outsider. It’s very hard to blend in this business… also it’s very hard to convince them about the small acts of taking care of their health… I keep on trying… but I’m not some deity, I’m a human. And I get frustration too. To the world I’m a successful person, a medical officer, with a staff of ten working under my command… but to me, I’m as helpless and depressed as I was never before. I even can’t call for help, because I don’t see anyone… In fact it’s so dark here that I see nothing.

Maybe… one day I’ll be able to think, to find some solution, or to seek some help to change the situation… till then the biggest challenge before me is to keep my dreams and my own innocence alive.

to get it or to forget it

Satisfaction is a strange word, or it’s vague, obscure having no clear meaning… or it’s some ideal condition unachievable in real situation. It’s a stimulus driving some strange humans to do some strange things. Not all people are mad for it, but for sure it drives those people mad who strive for it. It’s not money, not pride, fame; it’s not security, position, not physical pleasures, not even love… but alas, it’s not ‘nothing’. People get tricked when they search it in the above things, they sell their self esteem, sacrifice their innocence, do the bad things, get corrupted to feel secure to get some money, position, fame or anything they think will make them satisfied, and die in the end unsatisfied, worried, hungry or forlorn.

Maybe it’s different for different people, making it a useless term. Maybe some humans exist who get satisfied with piles of currency and luxurious facilities and fame they don’t deserve… maybe some hearts do achieve eternal peace in filth of corruption… but mostly such people are unsatisfied, misguided or blind worrying for what they lack when they have nearly everything… or they are scared, weak, unable to change the situation, unable to achieve or to find out or even to search for the missing thing that would fill up the emptiness in their lives.

There are people with personality disorders, neurological and psychological pathologies making them blunt minded, or ignorant to others, or extremely selfish… but it would be really a horrid situation to think that most of the people in society are affected with such miserable conditions… Is it really a ‘normal’ thing to be corrupted, to get black money, to cheat in exams or in other things, to do things that could harm others for our own benefit… and if it’s not why is it acceptable to the community? If satisfaction a tell tale or a mirage… and if it’s not why it’s not getting any importance in human life?

Maybe satisfaction is a highly personal thing, depending upon the value system our parents and the society has imprinted in us, or on the situations we’re exposed or on our experiences in our life… maybe it depends upon our motives, our goals in our lives, our intelligence and our ability to feel others. We can’t expect a beast to be altruistic and yet be happy… but we’re not beasts. We need not to be beasts, we can still live life of human beings; and it’s our responsibility to stop the evolution of the community in direction of being that of beasts.

I may be too young or inexperienced to define something as complicated and abstract as satisfaction… but I guess it’s a good feeling, it’s a strange joy, the strange feeling we get when we make someone happy really for nothing, when we sacrifice our most beloved thing for joy of someone else, when we fight for justice for strangers, when we tolerate for benefit of others, when we protect our self esteem against all the temptations… the list has to be big, as satisfaction is a big thing… though it’s vague, it does exist.

Why violence

It was a pleasant moment, some joke had happened and was blessing everyone with a smile, was trying to relax their tired minds… but the moment ended, and their minds screamed, the smiles disappeared, and the faces got covered with that regular fear. The horror occupied their hearts. The older ones were so adapted to this fear that fearful expressions were tattooed on their wrinkles… because this wasn’t new; this was a usual scene in their house.

I don’t know whether it’s insecurity, or lack of confidence, whether it’s some kind if epilepsy, or some prefrontal lobe lesion… effect of media or wrong concepts of manhood; I don’t know what makes people so violent that too to their closed ones, to those who’re extremely harmless and even useful. Why on Earth is domestic violence so profound? What makes them to make their homes most dangerous places in the universe and most painful and harshest to survive to their own loved ones?

Is it some kind of territorial display or is it some effort to show dominance… an effort to hide incapacities, or pathological method of gaining some confidence? Or is it some revenge of some mighty harmful person around, directed to the harmless ones? Are those acts thoughtful or are they just thoughtless tantrums thrown for some thoughtful purpose? Why do they get isolated from their family, why do they suspect their family? Why do they wish to ‘own’ their family members instead of thinking of themselves as a part of the family?

The questions are endless and they don’t have good answers. Maybe it’s the mixture of everything above… whatever it maybe, it’s very painful to have a home that lacks safety. Insecurity stimulates the efforts to survive and they are not always good ones. Like a genetic disorder violence spreads from one generation to the next and like some epidemic it also haunts complete societies. Media, movies celebrate violence… and it takes just some little anger to convert a human into a blood thirsty ghost.

The future of this violence is dreadful… we don’t want to be an extinct species killed by their own pals, we don’t want to end up in low intelligence species consuming most of its time in fighting and then recovering from the big injuries. This must end somewhere… but who’ll end this and how?