The Other Side...

This post was written almost a month ago but was waiting for this day, the 26-11 to finally declare to the world that I was once on the other side too... Now I can say proud, I’ve seen it all... And this is where it all began...

It was a year ago...

I was on the other side...

The other side, the side which faces all the heat when all around people keep telling you to be cool...

The other side, the side which feels everything in the world is wrong when the only thing wrong is the belief that everything is wrong...

The other side, the side which doesn’t want to eat anything but needs to, just to survive yet another day... and god forbid, another... and another...

The other side, the side that always thinks bad things happen to bad people. I’ve always been a good guy... I’m gonna get good things in life...

The other side, the side which wants to go to bed with a smile on the face, sometimes in company of a good friend the muscles of the face even manage that, but once that friend is gone, they contract back to their anguished state...

The other side, the side which realises for the first time that there are good people in this world who’ll leave everything to be by your side when u need it...

The other side, the side where every day doesn’t rise with a sunrise but gloom of seeing it...

The other side, the side which reaffirms its belief in the Chaos Theory and Murphy’s Laws and the worst of all, requires a process much more efficient than the MSExcel rand() function to actually reach QED...

The other side, the side which after two months of mentoring and careful planning wonders what was it worth...

The other side, the side which experiences, at least in small bursts of time, a world where there are no friends... Only colleagues...

The other side, the side which no one wants to ever be on but everyone ends up being on...

The other side, the side which u enter a baby but emerge a man...

And so those of you just coming from the other side, all the best. Hope to see some of you there for us when we visit the other side in the coming months...

Btw, in case u are wondering what is "the other side" about... read this

Unilateral Love...

Just the other day I read a line that got me thinking: “I love you far too much to be bothered by what you say or do to me.” This, as with a lot of other things, got me into the philosophical mode. Now this is either un-human or a simple plain harmless white lie!!! Can any human being actually love someone and not be bothered by what they say? Doesn’t it talk of unilateralism? Can any love be unilateral? To this extent? And again, as with everything else, I tried to reason the philosophy with logic.

Emotions always have the potential of being unilateral. Many people hate George Bush. But can he hate them? I’m angry with the Indian Government for so many things – to the extent that I might try to evade as much tax as possible. But is it angry with me? It’ll still continue to offer me what it always did – the citizenship of a “free” country. While all around me is misery, I can be the happiest person in XLRI or even on the face of the earth and probably beyond. And the converse – while all around me are partying, I can sit on the table and hope I could disappear or rather disapparate to the small hole, 40 ft below the surface of an ice island, in Tundra.

But wait, all these emotions I talked about were my relations with the group. What about individuals? Can I have unilateral emotions towards individuals? And such Extreme? I could hate, really hate, someone but when they help me, I would not be able to stop the feeling of gratitude. I could be angry, furious, with someone but when they came to me with a sorry written on a sullen face, I will relent though I might not absolve the other person of all their crimes.

But love behaves quite different from these human emotions. It is, after all, divine. I reminisced how many times in history/mythology has love led to people being irrational. Love has caused wars and ended them. It is the single most potent weapon in the hands of a poor soul on the other side of anger. I finally concluded – love – more than most (or should I say, all) other emotions – can be unilateral. Next time, when it comes to it, I won’t hesitate to say, “I love you far too much to be bothered by what you say or do to me.”