Guest Column (I)

A friend of mine asked me to write about the thanksgiving night get together we had. Great food at Evan's place, bowling thereafter, couple of movies, senti talking, morning breakfast, no sleep and a lot of other things. Too much for a descriptive person like me to write. Hence, I invited him to write an article which I would 'host'. A new concept for me, I should say. This space has been mine and would be mine. But it never hurts to have people jump out from the comments section once in a while and start talking on your front page. So here goes his version of the events..

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We all need mirrors to remind ourselves who we are… I am no different.

So it turns out I have to write some stuff for this friend of mine who wants me to be a “guest writer” on his blog. Hmm… guest writer…not quite my niche, but hey, when has that ever bothered me? One of my favorite movies actually had this line that went like… “Life is a box of chocolates… you never know what you gonna get”. So lets see… here goes something.

One question that naturally comes to mind when we are talking about “guest” writers, is the issue of who the “host” is. Well let’s see... Not too far away lies a big fat guy, with a big fat beard, with a big fat ego, with a big fat mouth and yet a big fat heart, who actually considers me a “bro”! So this other day I am talking to him and make a remark as to how fake he is. Then all hell breaks loose. This sonovabitch turns totally honest (kinda freaked me out). And henceforth follows a very interesting conversation.

Have you ever tried to find the meaning of life, love and religion? If you did try, and didn’t get too far, then you need not worry. Mr. Host has got all the answers! (atleast most of them). So its 2 in the morning, and there are 3 of us trying to figure out what the hell is going on. It turns out, one of us is agnostic, another one atheist, while the other is religious. Holy shit… what a predicament! So here’s the difference in opinion… the atheist thinks God is just another tool to explain the inexplicable, the agnostic thinks God is a means to achieve mental peace through the belief of a concept that is too abstract to be true, while the religious one thinks God is the source of all our feelings, strengths, and life overall. Hmm… that sounds pretty neat. The religious one asks the atheist whether he has ever considered a new approach…in other words…tried to keep some faith in a concept called God. To fully understand the implication of this we really need to get into the atheist’s mind. Here’s how the atheist thinks…if the very premise is non belief in God or any supernatural being, then how can one ever even try to take a different approach. The fact is that it becomes next to impossible to force someone to believe in something that would make the very premise change. If your premise says that the summation of 2 and 2 gives 4, then it becomes pretty damn difficult to convince you to abandon that premise and make you believe that the summation actually gives 5 and not 4. Yeah, sure…one may try…and try…and try… and try till the day he dies…but the premise stays the same… 2+2= 4 != 5. What’s funny is that it is possible to even fool yourself to change the premise, but deep deep down, nothing changes.

Likewise, the atheist asks the religious one whether he would like to consider abandoning God (a different approach)… Now there lies the premise. When the premise is so strong that you base your entire life around it, change is not exactly the easiest option around. So the atheist and religious one hold fort. The agnostic still remains in the ever confusing world of questioning. Is there a God, or is there no God? How the hell does it matter? What matters is that you stick to what you believe in, and don’t force your ideas on others. See, the moment you start forcing an idea on others, it means those ideas and dogmas are at the risk of perishing (and that goes for both sides). For the atheist nothing could be more true than the what Karl Marx had summed up in a beautiful line… “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, & the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”. Hmm…opium of the people… you feelin’ high already?

So the conversation moves to other stuff… for instance LOVE. Ok, now…what could possibly be wrong with LOVE?… oh boy… a lot actually. It turns out again that it all depends on the premise itself. Here’s what happened. The agnostic thinks that love is actually a convenience. In other words, there’s no such act which can be described as a selfless act. If X loves Y, it’s because X needs Y. Hence X is selfish. So is love a selfish need? A convenience? What’s amazing is that, this is just one point of view. Here’s another one. The atheist thinks that love is merely a feeling one has no control over. So now we move from selfish needs/convenience to feelings. So are all feelings selfish in nature? That is the real question. What makes those feelings? Here’s the way the agnostic likes to look at it. We all have certain characteristics, features, or qualities. At the same time, we are all are compatible with a certain set of qualities. Think of it as pre-requisites to arouse any feelings whatsoever. The concept is that once those priorities and pre-requisites are met, one eventually starts needing them. It is this state of mind, or feeling that we define as love. Hmm… so after all, love is just not a convenience. It is a feeling aroused simply because some priorities were met. That is how we end up caring for someone. In the process of loving and hence caring for someone, we are actually caring for our own selfish needs. So the atheist quickly points out to the agnostic that this line of thought would only be true if we believe in the philosophy of the self only. Philosophy can predominantly be categorized into 2 types…one where an individual believes in the self and the world around it. The other would be where the individual believes in the self only. What makes this conversation more interesting is that the religious one is actually a person who might believe in the former line of thought (the self and the world) . So here comes the question from religious one… Is it possible to feel love without having any “pre requisites” met? Good point. Is it possible to care for someone without having any selfish needs. It turns out it all depends on the philosophy itself. If you only believe in the self, then the answer is NO. If you believe in the self and the world around it, then the answer is yes. Its just 2 sides to the same coin. Bottom-line is that love is either one of the 2 depending on who you are… for one person love is a feeling with no basic origin or premise, while for the other, love is merely a compromise… and bloody highly overrated.

6 AM… that’s the time. Spent 4 hours listening to people etch out their perspectives, while making my own heard. Neat… time for some tea. So we have Mr. Soon to be drunk wake up from his short lived sleep and order him to make some tea for us. The bitch goes to work immediately and makes some amazing tea. Seriously, I really mean it. Some really nice tea. “He” would make a good wife. What follows next is a flurry of laughter and jokes. Pictures from a recent potluck party are taken out… and there’s not a soul in those pictures who hasn’t been humiliated by Mr. Religious (no pun intended). If only there was some telepathic way by which the cartoons in those pictures could hear what was being said about them!!! Well… too bad…Chomu.

Soon, daylight breaks… and it’s a brand new day. A really interesting day lay ahead of us…

People start their regular “workouts”… some pushups here and there… wait wait wait… hold on…this really deserves another write up… so I guess I will write about this next time…

(to be continued…)

Guest Writer signing off…

With a song… its called Hey God…

Hey God

Hey god, I'm feeling like I'm falling apart.
Yet I have started to believe in myself more this time around.
Hey god, are you trying there, trying just like me?
or do you just look good enough trying to mock me down?
Hey fuck, would you consider this to be my gain?
Is this okay if I try and fuck everything the same?
Bad luck, you counted on me, and this is all you gain, all the pain.
I know, fight back, do nothing and it's all the same.
Hey god, feeling like myself again.
For once, come around and start to feel my pain.
Do you think you could make me hurt anymore?
Do you think I would give a fuck anymore?
Hey fuck, would you consider this to be my gain?
Is this okay if I try and fuck everything the same?
Bad luck, you counted on me, and this is all you gain, all the pain.
I know, fight back, do nothing and it's all the same

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