Faith & Fate are two {different} words. So what ends tomorrow?
It has been lingering on for a long time now- the thought of
the world ending on 21st December 2012. Some folks believe in this
phenomenon and some say it’s irrational. Some say it’s an end while some look
at it as a beginning of a new era. We certainly can’t claim that we haven’t
thought of it. A world ending, how abstract of an idea or how real of an
idea! We use this term so assertively without really defining what ‘world’
means to us. Frankly, I would be turning twenty two years old in January but I
really don’t know what my world is, so if someone asked me what I think of 2012
phenomenon, I would say, “I really don’t know which of my world might end!” is
it the world I live in with my family, the world which I believe is and not
sure if it does exist at all or the world my Grandfather suffering from
Alzheimer’s lives in. Which world do you or I mean?
While I was growing up I met all types and kinds of people,
I still meet a lot. Everybody who came into my life showed me a new world, I
dint question because I liked the world they showed me. Today those worlds are
in the form of sheer photographs or some have no evidence whatsoever and got
drowned in the waves of belief and time. To begin with was the world I was born
in, a very small town called Karad; growing up with my sister and lot of pet
dogs, grandparents to tell stories and a great-grandmother as a companion. Then
my world moved to Pune in a new but small house; new friends and a new school
leaving behind a world I thought I would go back to. I am the youngest in the
family and I have seven sisters with whom I saw around the most in my growing
up years. I have two brothers who I dint see that often as a child. I always
got very inspired from my sisters more because they were more intelligent and
more articulate. Then from a coed school I moved to a non-coed school which
totally changed my way of thinking and being a convent school it was a very
strict one. I spoke very less and made a world for myself which only I knew of;
I cared less to know anyone. While at the previous school I was involved
majorly in theatre and dramatics which I eventually gave up, that world died a
premature-death. Today I am in touch with very few people from that time. In
the meanwhile I met my art teacher who painted a dreamy world for me; I liked
that world a lot. In all the growing up years my mother and two sisters were
constantly by me. I have been very close to my mother and we share our own
world. While I was at the convent school I was very scared of the English
language and ofcourse Mathematics. I spoke Marathi at home and was more fluent
and comfortable with it and why wouldn't I, people close to me spoke to me only
in Marathi. I would fumble a lot while speaking in English and eventually I
made a world which was eerie. I decided then that the last thing I would do
with my life would be; becoming a writer, I hated it. Maybe because nobody was
there to make that world for me. Not even my family.
I spent those dreadful years of school and finally walked
out for the good after completing my tenth standard exam. I decided not to go
there ever after. But I did go there a few times and got very nostalgic because
now that I look back, there was nothing fearful about that place. If you fear
the world and show that you are scared you would destroy your own existence.
That was the first time I changed from being naïve to being rebellious and
doubtful. That world has no evidence of being there but it is alive in
memories.
At that time a new world was waiting for me, a world that
dint last for long though; my junior college years. Now this was the time I
felt free and different. I went to a college where I did not relate to anyone
except a few friends I made there. I miss that world now and it ended when I
was done with that place and chose to go to design school- the world that
finally looked like a world. I wanted to meet people I could relate to, I did
initially only to realize that a design school projects itself to be very permissive
and believes in free existence but the truth of this world is that it is not
even remotely close to being either. Why should it even be? It has normal human
beings just like any other world but parallel to it; it has a ‘made-to-believe’
world as well. I have believed if you show you are different no one would
relate to you because this idea or charade of design is about relating to people
and making people relate to what you do. I wouldn’t generalize but that is what
I want design to be for me. Also this world introduced me to some people I
would want to treasure all my life. I was introduced to writing for the first
time and it opened a new world for me; a world I thought would never welcome
me.
And so on and so forth many worlds happened and passed by
every single day. If I keep writing right now, this small piece would become
into a novel, a very boring one. So the reason I wrote this was to say that
while you read this piece was anyone able to keep a track of how many worlds I
mentioned and these were just the ones that came to my mind while I was
writing, there are several parallel ones as well. 2012 is an idea which made me
write this today and strangely I do believe in it but what question remains is
which of my world is ending and which one is beginning? Call it science,
belief, joke or just a thought; it still keeps the world on its toes!
Coincidentally just a day back I read a long article on Late
Pt. Ravi Shankar’s first wife Annapoorna Devi which gave a very different
insight to his life. Not a good one. The
‘world’ knew probably one of his ‘worlds’ which mattered to the ‘world’. In his
book ‘Raga Mala’ he contradicts Annapoorna Devi’s views on him and their
relationship. After he is gone today all this wouldn't really matter to us
because we would choose to remember him for the reason he was meant to be
remembered. Maybe Annapoorna Devi was right in her world.
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