HEEDING SILENCE...OF THOSE WASTEFULL DAYS...

When people are 14,15 or 16 years of age. They start searching for strange concepts. They start searching indirectly of what would appeal to them downright and that which would show them their true identity, they like to delve into issues that they can relate with and they always want to believe that whatever they believe in is right anyway. For some of them, what appeals more is television, movies and sometimes the movie stars doing matrix style stunts on TV. So they end up becoming movie buffs. For others the satisfaction comes in trying new things, the excitement is enough but the curiosity can be fatal leading to life skidding out of control at a critical time. For some, it’s all about books, studying, scoring good grades and doing what their parents think is best for them. others start believing that life is all about love and that your coolness quotient is determined by the number of boyfriends or girlfriends you are able to switch to. Cool indeed.
Then there were people like me around the corner. People Who liked to stay cooped up in their rooms for hours as long as possible while their classmates were busy splurging on clothes and running after other boys and girls. Not that I didn’t have a crush, after the st.joseph fate I did. Staying in my room the whole time after school was what I thought was best for me and suited for me. Sometimes I thought that if I was not under the obligation of going to school or for coming out of the room for food or other such necessities and if all my necessities would be confined within the boundaries of my room then I could happily live my entire life inside that small wood plank layered room of mine having a computer, a music system, a bed and just lots of shelves for books and cassettes without any desire to see the world outside at all. How unambitious…. I questioned myself. There were two places where I would be. School or my room and there was no other place in between. So what did I do all the time in my room ?.... no I was not studying my course books preparing for iit.


I had developed an overpowering penchant for western music, creative writing, western biography’s, Keanu reeves, and various philosophical books. Ever seen anybody read philosophy at 14? It’s odd and abnormal. I remember watching a documentary about the sex pistols. Hmm……. They messed up their lives big time over drugs and rock and roll. The documentary featured the lead singer’s mother giving an interview and crying on t.v. regretting why she never stopped him when he had started it many years ago in the first place. Hmm… how much did the documentary producers actually give her after the documentary release?... how much percentage of the profit did she actually get?...i reflected. ofcourse being the mother of a dead rock icon was good money already. But if she never stopped him in the first place for doing drugs until he was dead and she could come and shed some tears on national television gave way to my rising suspicions that may be she never tried to pull him out of the addiction in the first place or maybe she actually was the one who pushed him into it….of all the pressure of being rich and famous…. Being rich, famous, and sexy can have the gravest consequences in the real world. For there are way too many people who show you the wrong way then people who actually wait a while to show you the right way.
She said that She thought it was a passing phase of depression and that he would someday get over it. She thought that the sudden fame and the roving eyes of people on him had just made him a little uncomfortable. But he never did get out of it until he had completely lost it. And one night on a December night a legend came to a brief ending. An ending that was completely unjustified for a living rock icon. He died due to drug overdose. Simply “passed away…”… that too in sleep….without uttering a word to anyone. For the overdose was of excessive sleeping pills. Unbelievable.
Another documentary was about the hippie revolution in the 70’s. no kid in class watched documentaries as much as I did or even enjoyed it as much as I did. They seemed to me expressions of real art…. “moving art” I’d call it. Reality shown in a touching way that was plainly artistic and ambivalent in nature, Showing dark as dark and light as light. Well, literally. Khushboo’s dad who worked as a chief journalist in a local newspaper supplied us with huge stacks of national geographic documentaries…a treasure to show to your own kids someday when you’re all grown up.
So the hippies back then in the seventies depended on substance use and abuse to feel closer to god and to get downright spiritual in a matter of seconds rather than through meditation or Indian yoga practices which apparently took years to give the same results. The concept of taking in banned drugs to get spiritual or to feel spiritual. Amphetamine, hush, dope, heroin, cocaine…so many of them….so intoxicating….and the thought of being intoxicated, drained and emaciated…was so fascinating. What did it give them really?…other than the temporary high and the feeling of invincibility? Well you didn’t get spiritual that was one thing for sure but you did get AIDS, HIV, hepatitis B, and many more transmittable diseases and that’s what really took you very dangerously close to GOD….so close that you just had to go to him and you had no choice after that and you could take no step backwards if you changed your mind 
The first time I was introduced to western music was by an uncle. He gave a cassette containing a compilation of then greatest hits. There were songs by cher….”do you believe in life after love”… phill Collins, whitney Houston,… a newly emerging Britney spears and many more. I still have that cassette. “max 5” was the title.
There’s something about a depressive phase in your life that makes you wonder. It fills you with such unconcerned melancholy internally that sometimes you want to celebrate your sadness almost literally. Sad songs and rock songs sometimes give a picture into self mutilation. There’s a sparse pleasure in feeling depressed, it’s an intriguing kind of raking happiness. You gain a sense of freedom and non belief. I remember telling myself over and over again… “ I don’t care….who cares?...not you, not me,, not the freaking world…let’s just go drown ourselves somewhere so no one will ever know…”.
In such times the songs of choice would be the definitive not very well known rock bands that cried in anger and indignation over some loss or the other and made you cry with them. I came into the realms of oasis, deep purple, aerosmith, creed, death cab for cutie…. Some were English bands you had never heard of and whom Indian people were particularly not very big fans. But these artists had a thing for pain and self mutilation. All their songs celebrated loss, death, internal havoc, the desire to commit suicide, negativity and hell were portrayed as emancipation, and literally all had a history of drug abuse. The concept of death was particularly most welcomed. What was it with western artists reeling into drug abuse? that they just could not sing about anything positive or enchanting but they always reflected on their sad lives, their abused childhoods or the insults that the world had hurled at them and why they hated the world so much that they kept crying out loud in one of their songs….”burn me and burn my ashes to such intensity… boil my blood, … feed my bones to your neighborhood dogs….oh you think you can hurt me now?...not when you’re done with me…not when I’m dead and gone…not when I’m no more…not when the gates of heaven smile upon my emaciated face…not when I leave in a pool of my own blood under a shower blade….you think I give a damn about your selfish pleasures?... burn me instead I say…burn me and flick my ashes..”… that was deep purple………..really deep…..and really purple…more like black almost.
Whatever it was, and however insipid to most people it might appear. I related to the mirth, sarcasm and hatred. I guess that’s why people listened to songs such as these. it wasn’t because these songs were melodious at all but It was because they could relate themselves with the pain and rage that was being expressed. They could literally feel the ripping sensation on their skins when the singer screamed about heaving insults of some kinds and turning them into a symphony. Their hearts cried and their eyes could cry as well when the singer howled in agony. But this was art after all… it took effort as well….it took hard work as well…it took talent, effort, and creativity to be able to create the kind of music that could push people into sadness with you…. And I related to it as well… and at a depressed phase of life I remember sitting in my room spending all of my time in a pensive mood,,. writing in a secret diary about my feelings, reading philosophy, and listening to sad rock songs of drug addicted artists…. And sometimes while listening to such songs I reflected on my own sad little life which had not a speck of peace or sensibility about it and shed a few tears in silence. Was there anything at all amidst this madness that actually makes any sense at all?

“havoc and chaos everywhere.” I reflected. As if standing on the outskirts of a war field after the war had ended, surrounded by the bloodied bodies of dead innocent soldiers, someone’s arm missing, somebody’s leg missing, somebody’s body rotting in the sun with nobody to cover the unrecognizable face…. the smell of blood flooding the air in such a thick haze that you felt choked to your lungs and the remains of tanks and machines scattered around with the sky emanating in to a fiery red chasm like coloration of the darkening sunset….
this was how I viewed my life. Only remains of some outdated, life taking war which left nothing but open wounds to course at……..
The doors were always kept shut. For there was no use in crying in front of the world, and if I did cry before my father there was a faint recognition of the fact that he’d be too drunk to even notice or too incoherent to ask why I had been crying and what it was that i found brutally imperfect or wrong with my life.
Or even if he did know would he still bother enough to want to change things for me? I didn’t think so. Even if someday he did ask. He was too weak a man to accept that he was responsible for the infirmities and the insecurities of my life. That he had made my life miserable with his constant escapades of unfeeling selfishness. That kids at school taunted me that my dad was an alcoholic and that’s why my mom had left me and that I could not turn around and face them or even utter a world of defiance to them. I just remember laying my head down on my desk and doing nothing but pretending that I could not hear a word of what they had been saying about me. That I had been ripped off of my self esteem and that I was an almost friendless isolated child. I was an abnormal child. That I hardly paid attention in class. I could not concentrate. That I had given up on mathematics and thought I couldn’t do it anymore. That I thought I’d probably fail and that I didn’t care about it because again I thought I couldn’t do it and that nobody would help me out even if I would want to do it. That when i went to school I felt a ton of eyes staring at me with questions in their minds that I could not answer. That I wanted to run away from school every single day and that I hated my class teacher who was fat and ugly and very rude to me, the reason for her rudeness I did not know. That I missed my mom really bad and I wanted her to come back to me. That I couldn’t sleep at night when I had nightmares because I knew my mother was not there to hold... That I didn’t want to look at his face anymore in the future now, because he hurt mom so much that she had to leave without a word. That I had now given up the inclination to even speak to him anymore. That I was beginning to give up hopes of trying to live a better life.
Bad childhood, bad years, and bad memories …… I thought. i Wish I could just wipe the slate clean and start all over again. But I couldn’t, and this would be the story left for me to tell the world about my past and growing years. The kind of bad, pathetic stories that nobody really wants to hear about. Everybody has a nice childhood. Who has a bad childhood?. Apparently, lots of people. But how many actually survive it without losing a part of themselves and without getting irreconcilably hurt in the process? Wounds that might never heal, words that you might never forget, images you could never wipe out of your brain, faces you could not forget. Incidences and people who you might forgive, but you might never forget. events of the past that would resurface in front of your eyes again and again as you go about your daily chores. “Its all dead and gone”, you would tell yourself… but then if it is… then why does the thought keep coming back?...the strange fear that history might repeat itself ?
These are the wounds of the years that when inflicted literally engrave themselves into your blood and character so deep that they become a part of your scribbled identity which you have somehow managed to formulate with nobody’s assistance and it is but your fate and hard luck. That this is the way you are and this is the way you have become because of such pain and misery endured. “God help you”. J. krishnamurti literally spoke into my ears
I just wanted to consume myself into the present. Feel the pain and feel the burning sensation and also feel the insults…all the humiliations racing up and down my palm and cutting me up like blades…just as the drug addicted singer screamed out in agony as if somebody nearby was jabbing nails into his body…who cared anyway?. Better to stay cooped up in a room. I thought. There was no hope outside . the world is a gruesome place. Wolves are waiting outside to pounce at me and vultures sit on the beautiful pine trees waiting for me to fall down and scavenge my body so ruthlessly that nobody might ever know that I was ever born into this world.