Categorisation- A double-edged-sword

Being a part of the ever growing population of an over populated country has led to a common habit in the masses- to categorise and put people in clusters, groups or sects, so that they can tackle the huge number of people with ease. This method of stratified sampling is indeed remarkable but only as an extent of management process. But the government gave it much significance and used it extensively, anon it developed as a habit in the public as well.

We categorise boys and girls as a separate class and everyone, we believe, possesses certain characteristic just because they are 'a boy' or 'a girl'. Instead of scrutinising people in the basis of their own merits or demerits, we simply form a bias beforehand and tend to work our way accordingly. The girls will keep on saying- guys are flirts, they lack emotions, they never consider a long term relationship, they prefer cricket over their girlfriends, blah blah blah. All I want to say is, your father is a guy too, have you ever considered that before making a generic statement?

The government, I believe, is to be blamed too. They still follow the age old method of reservation and only consider whether the person belongs to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Classes. I feel that they should look into every single application made under this 'privileged' category and then decide whether the concerned person actually deserves the 'special treatment' of being born in a Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe or Other Backward Class family.

We have been brought up in a society obsessed with generalisation. We form a bias on the basis of religion, region, gender et cetera. A few examples from a particular class and the prosaic conclusion comes down to one, every class member is such. We create classes, then we pick out a few bad examples and then we form a bias against the whole class. The irony of all this is maddening.

"He's a politician, must be corrupt"

"The Indian cricket team lost, the match must have been fixed"

"The singer/actor died, it would definitely be a case of drug overdose"

"The young guy crashed his car, must be drunk"

All I'm trying to say is, why don't we look into each matter explicitly, instead of generalising. Each individual is very special and unique in his/her own way. Respect that and try to know the other person as they are!

"We are much too much inclined in these days to divide people into permanent categories, forgetting that a category only exists for its special purpose and must be forgotten as soon as that purpose is served." ~Dorothy L. Sayers

A crazy thing called LOVE..

Love- the craziest feeling a person can experience. The loveliest moments spent, whether in solitude or in the company of your love. The feeling in which the sun seems to be replaced by the face of your desired one and the whole world seems to revolve around her. When your smile gets synced with her and the tears flow in unanimity. When the happiest moments are the ones spent in silence, looking deep into each other's eyes, with a smile on the face and a feeling of utmost content in the heart. When the thoughts do not let you sleep at night and the day dreams cannot let you work. 

The heart is the strongest magnet known to the mankind which functions on its own accord. It reaches out and attracts not the most beautiful heart, but the most compatible one. The heart does not have its own pair of eyes and so it only feels the other heart. If we close our eyes and feel someone, we do not find any flaws, we only feel the warmth. So is the case with this lunatic piece of an organ. It does not consider the consequences, or the difficulty in trying to achieve the love back, before attaching itself. The heart has only one simple rule - to find the one which will keep it busy. 

A very famous saying goes like this, "Absence makes the heart grow fonder". With certainty, this is not something I would disagree with. The heart aches in the absence of the love, making the feeling grow more stronger. The absence is felt the strongest at nights, for some reasons which we might not be able to prove scientifically. During such nights, my heart writes:

Wish you were here with me tonight,

your loving hand by my side,

easing me, comforting me,

wiping tears I can, no longer hide..

Wish you were here with me tonight,

the smell of your skin on my shoulder,

getting warmer, our bodies together,

as the night kept getting colder..

Wish you were here with me tonight,

your pristine silhouette nearing me,

the long stares, the quiet talks,

no one around, just you and me..

Wish you were here with me tonight,

holding on to me so tight,

none can change the way I feel, 

just want this to be an endless night..

Love makes you do crazy things- to stay right there beside her, to feel her presence, to see her smile, to lose yourself in her eyes, to hear the sound of her laughter, to read her thoughts, to smell her perfume, to tuck her falling strand of hair behind her ear. Wherever you look, you feel she is there. Your eyes start searching for her even when you know she is not there. Her absence makes you stare at her pictures, reading her old texts, waiting for a "Hi".

Love, whether expressed or unvoiced, is the most beautiful feeling in the world. The feeling of having your own little world. 

Happiness and Women

I think it must be really difficult being a woman as there are a number of things that must be constantly going through her head, no matter how big or small it is. She is always aware of who is checking her out and who is following her. She knows whether her lipstick smeared or her kohl has smudged. If her tee is untucked from behind or if the fringe of her hair is falling exactly at the desired angle from her forehead towards her eye and if the volume of the fringe is perfect or not. Is the hand bag's (which should be called the hand baggage keeping in mind the size of those things these days) label clearly visible to the other chic passing by her. She needs to keep in mind that the typing speed on her cell phone should not be fast enough to damage the tip of the nails. Her steps should be quick enough to show an urgency in her walk but keeping her high heels from breaking. When sitting in a cafe, pretending to read a book, her lip should have a pout, which should not seem like she is trying to kiss the coffee mug but enough to boil interest in the guy sitting on the opposite table, while making sure that she doesn't make eye contact with him. She is to smile looking at her phone at least once in every five minutes even if the God damn gadget is out of power and switched off, so that nobody realises that she is alone and bored.

This is the price that a woman is willing to pay, because this makes her feel happy. And as we all know, happiness comes with a price tag.

According to her:

She is either fatter than her gym partner or more petite than her gym trainer making her eat less or work out more. She is either in a relationship where she's putting in too much effort to make things work out or she's in a relationship where she lacks space and privacy. She never has clothes for a party which she realises just minutes before leaving. She is always upset after a great evening or a lovely dinner because her man gave the waitress 50 bucks more than she deserved as a tip. She keeps nagging about her computer not because she is tech-illiterate but because her colleague's computer is better and faster. She sleeps early at nights because she is tired, but her man sleeps early because he did not want to talk to her. She watches movies and soaps because these are emotional, sensitive, heart-touching and requires hard work to be made whereas football players or cricketers are a bunch of lunatics always running behind a silly ball. She is always happy after buying an expensive dress till she gets to know that her neighbour bought a more expensive dress. She starts hating her newly bought pair of shoes if they are being sold at a discounted rate at the end of season sale. She feels disgusted if she is eve teased and feels unattractive if no one notices her when she goes out. 

The life of a woman is that of struggle and endeavour to be happy. But a happy woman seems to me a myth. She is never happy nor content. She is always at the receiving end of life's misery. 

A man gives many question marks, however, a woman is a whole mystery.  ~Diana Stürm

Nocturnal Nights

I would not call myself insomniac, but I am not the kind of person who can sleep very easily. There are nights when the time seems to stand still, reminding me about it's strong influence over our lives; if the time passes hurriedly, we feel incompetent to enjoy the most of it - and when the time feels to pass sluggishly, we complain about not making the most of it. We, therefore are always under it's control, feeling powerless and demoralised.

The night is a cruel mistress. One can never spend too much time admiring the night's beauty without being left intoxicated in a world, too far from our own, alone and depressed. The night doesn't stay with you for long, no matter how much you beg for it to stay. The equanimity and the serenity which I associate with the night is all but temporary and the morning sun comes blazing up sooner or later, ending the harmonious period of silence, calmness and stillness.

As for me, I feel like losing myself in the abyss of thoughts during such nocturnal nights. I like staying in a vacuum for as long as the brain can take it and then getting dissolved in the night with the body and the mind. The feeling of absolute numbness, when the mind is locked in a world of thoughts, unperturbed by the real world- it is the moment of internal peace. It is the pleasure that hours of meditation or massage cannot bring.

I don't see a reason to let myself go off to sleep, because I have none to wake up to in the morning. I don't want to stay up as well because at times the solitude is a bit too much to handle. As a result, most of the times, I am neither asleep, nor awake. Lost in the transitional gap from being awake to falling asleep. This is the time when the mind is completely blank, thoughtless, emotionless, lifeless. 

People say that an empty mind is where a devil resides. I somehow disagree. An empty mind is where thoughts are left free to wander. These thoughts takes you to places where you do not want to go- to your past and to your future. The past is always a confined place which is a harsh reminder of- where we had been, what we had done, how we had behaved and what we chose to do. Whereas the future that these thoughts throw light on, is the future that our current path will lead us to. It shows us where we are heading. Thus, we realise that we are the real devils. The devils who have the ability to choose between right and wrong, but always choose the latter before the former. We, human beings, the only species to have the power of reasoning, who fail consistently to use it positively. 

The night has turned out to be a close friend and a closer foe in the recent times. It brings a mixed emotion of pain and pleasure. It has helped me understand myself, but has led me to understand others even better, which is not always good for relationships. But whatever I do, I always feel overpowered by this cruel mistress.

"Night, the beloved.  Night, when words fade and things come alive.  When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again.  When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree."  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry