thought piece

There’s this lady that works at the Reception of my gym who really doesn’t like me. She has never been overtly rude to me, but every time I approach her, her face turns stony, her gaze glacial and her tone borderline obnoxious. I would think that perhaps that’s just her personality, except that I have seen her laughing with and being nice to other people. So, what is it about me that sets her teeth on edge?

I’m not a rude person. If anything, I am extra polite. Being in the service industry, I can’t help but be nice to people. It’s a default mechanism. Every so often however, I come up against people who take a dislike to me. Some, like the aforementioned woman, I have minimal dealings with. Others, who after a certain amount of time spent in my company, find that they truly cannot abide me. My overriding fear at times like these is: am I horrible person?

Now, I know that I am not a horrible person. I am just an ordinary woman living an ordinary life, and in the course of this life, just as I accumulate people who love me or like me, I am equally likely to accumulate those who don’t. Yet, with a writer’s predisposition to analyse everything, I’m truly perplexed when these instances crop up.

I examine my behaviour. I go over words, actions, expressions; tooth combing them to see how I may have caused offence. In short, I over think everything. Then I swing the other way, trying to feel blasé, as though none of this bothers me, when in reality, it does. It’s exhausting.

I wish I could be that person who lives and thrives, irrespective of others’ opinions of her. I wish these tiny slights or major snubs didn’t dent my self esteem and send me into a spiral of self examination. I wish I had the ability to not take everything to heart.

Yet, without any of this over-sensitivity, would I be the writer I am?

Perhaps that is the trade off.

Every nation has its Achilles heel. If in America, everything big and shiny and new is aways seen as an improvement, then in Britain royalty and any connection to it confers an automatic superiority over lesser mortals. I’m sure such like must exist everywhere. But in India, there is a fascination with dynasties. In the absence of royalty, we have lineages.

I grew up in India. I grew up in a household that had supported the Congress party. Up until the time I could think for myself, my allegiance lay in the same place as my family’s. Later, as the party fell apart, and a certain family name became inextricably linked with it, I started to wonder why, as Indians, we placed such importance on a bloodline. Did having the same genes make you necessarily better at the same thing as your forefathers?

A recent row that erupted in the Hindi film industry, also known as Bollywood, was over nepotism. That ubiquitous practice of promoting family regardless of talent or merit. Bollywood is rife with it. Millions of rupees are ploughed into projects with star sons or star daughters. So rarely do they bring any returns. And yet, riding on the coat tails of their ancestry, these talentless no hopers survive and thrive. If an outsider happens to question this practice, they are mocked at, shunned and publicly humiliated. Then life carries on, pretty much the same as before.

Be it the Gandhis in politics, or the Kapoors and the Bachchans (amongst many others) in films, there is an automatic presumption of accession. Yet, what if nature does not provide that which nurture wishes to promote?

Cricketers’ sons do not automatically become cricketers. Writers’ children don’t always write. Artists’ progeny may have no interest in art. So, why do parents or society see it fit to shoe horn people into professions they may have no natural ability or aptitude for?

There is no denying that amongst those that DO have the interest and the inclination, not forgetting the competence and faculty, ancestry can play an important role. Here, the foundation is laid and the environment is conducive to progress and excellence. Support, mentoring and an understanding of the profession can be invaluable. Nature and nurture can work in tandem.

Sadly, more often than not, its the chaff not the wheat that gets pushed to the forefront.

Perhaps it is time for us to abandon these idiosyncrasies, and celebrate talent, intelligence, courage and competence wherever it occurs. Perhaps it is time to relegate nepotism and favouritism to the rubbish heap where they belong.

Or perhaps, it is just time to get my head examined. Utopia, after all, exists only in the minds of the mentally challenged.

We have a strange relationship with time. As children, it seems to stretch out in front of us, endlessly. Days are long, oft monotonous, and the routine of school, homework, exams seems to be a never ending loop with no end in sight. We can’t wait to grow up, to govern time, to make it do our bidding.

In our youth, time is still on our side. With the careless optimism that fills our days, we match our step with time, outpacing it sometimes with our feckless, buoyant energy, ignoring it other times in our sleepy, enervated lassitude but always, always taking it for granted.

When jobs, marriages, partners and children jostle for space in our lives, time is in short supply. We race from one moment to the next, barely pausing for breath. Days, weeks, months, years fly past and we can scarcely keep count.

It is in our twilight years that time once again slows down. Our days are numbered but they are no longer filled with a hurried urgency. We don’t have the luxury of an entire lifetime. We don’t have the insouciance of youth. Our fruitful, fertile days are history, and all that lies ahead is the certainty of death.

What is time then? Is it a friend that helps us grow, change, develop and experience life? Or, is it a foe that eludes us when we need it most, and stabs us when we aren’t looking?

Time is both and neither.

Time is a silent companion that knows only to march forward relentlessly. It bows to no one. It turns back for nobody.

The sad truth is, that by the time we come to appreciate its worth, it is nearly always too late.