Ennui or indifference or just acceptance…

Imagine you are in a car, it’s evening, the sky is red, but a hazy red, partly because of the pollution. The city road, barely two lanes wide, sandy, choked with dust and a phalanx, of vehicles, like an overgrowth of mushrooms. Unhindered. Unabashed. Untenable. Ugly. Bikes crammed against the rickshaws crammed against the cars crammed against the buses. The blaring horns, the cacophonous songs, on the radio.

Snailing vehicles through snaking roads. The ambience, discombobulating.

Nauseating. Vexing. Agitating. Angering.

And your feeling of discomfort and discontentment here is even more profound if you have experienced such routine ordeals rarely, until now.

A couple more such experiences, and your righteous, angered, indignant self is humbled into submission. Rendered helpless before the circumstances, the realities we often avoid facing, compartmentalizing and tucking them away, far away.

The irated hollering demeanour is replaced by that of a calm discontentment, consternation is whittled down to just resignation, and in some cases, the sense of submission is so true that those people start finding fun in the ordeals, and looking at (actually squinting at and groping for) the rare positives.

But for others, it’s just ennui. Enthusiasm is further than the farthest cry. And it’s constant. That feeling of tiredness people often keep complaining about. That feeling of mediocrity. Those sporadic bouts of sadness, those pangs of failed dreams, which can strike anytime, and terrorize you, and then abandon you.
And this… is not just the traffic or the dust or the honking. It’s everything. Everything which relates to adult life.

The systems we created as we accelerated into the future, those constructs, rituals, those practices, attitudes, choke us now.

Kids, they are fresh, they look at things simply, call spade a spade, find happiness in simplest things, have very basic, simple emotions. Until. They start learning the ways of the world.

And boy! Are they good learners.
But in us adults, the emotions, the acquired traits, learnings, attitudes, make our personalities so complicated, facets struggling among themselves for precedence. A constant battle. And so, with time, and circumstances (which we and our predecessors were unable or not brave enough to change), everything changes.
And people learn to live with it, ennui, wade through it, smile through it, somehow. Maybe it’s our innate ability to fool ourselves and put our hands up in the air if things don’t go our way. Maybe it’s our fear to live on our own terms, or to challenge the existing conceptions, constrictions, constructs. Maybe, it’s the realest form of indifference.
We are accepting the modern ways, attitudes, fads, the future, so rapidly. Like an insatiable void. And we are not shunning those obsoletes as rapidly as we should. Just because they are too big. Just because they were actually applicable at a time, but now are just prevalent, and hurtful.

This… this complicates things. This creates a suffocating, marshy present that we live in. And we have more or less surrendered, accepted.

We are too indifferent to oppose, to resist, to rebel, to repel, to renounce, to repeal. Or maybe too submissive now (even if we care).

We look at these words above with such contempt, and fear. For these, to us, denote conflict, and such inconvenience, and pain.

But these are some of the very fundamental ideas and ideals of human existence and sustenance if looked back at from a neutral perspective.

But as we have seen, and been led to believe, resistance, and revolution and rebellion has brought in many sufferings, deaths and pain to this world.

And to avoid that we are ironically resisting our own human nature from blooming.

We are becoming mere slaves of the rusty reeking constructs we foolishly think to be true and absolutely firm.

And thus we smother the radical, the righteous, the rebellious, in a sea of inertia, insecurity, and submission.

Everyday a possible revolution is bedraggled and pummeled to just a feeling of discontentment, and a dream. Everyday.

Thus the ennui, then the indifference, and then acceptance.

Why do we have to squint to find beauty in an Indian marriage??

Marriage.

Ideally- A communion of two souls.
Happy? Very.

Colorful? Exuberantly.
Sacred? Depends.
Though it understandably warrants some  serious reverence and veneration.
Now.

An Indian marriage has everything. Period.

It’s like a small-scaled simulacrum of India. Of us. So many dimensions.

You can see everything. You could see nothing at all. Depends on what you want to look for. And when. And where. Or do you want to look at all?? Just letting everything carry you. Nudge you. Push you. Yank you. Caress you.

You could see a multitude (that’s a small word) of people you have to be polite to. And cringe in revulsion. Or you could see a lot of new faces, new friendships in the offing, you could observe, overhear, it’s… entertaining surely, if not anything else.

Though, I prefer the second set of glasses, but I’m stuck with the first. (Introvert issues.)

By the way. A grand party, a grand scheme of things, a grand days-spanning preparation, where people move erratically, talk profusely, trample over each other to have a photo taken, gyrate in mass hysteria to utterly obnoxious (or so fucking amazing) drum rolls and dholaks and even crackers can be hell for an introvert. Or all this could be his or her initiation. The blooming moment.

You could see the incredible amount of money wasted (spent) on ridiculous (fun) rituals, ceremonies and cringe (revel). You could see the plethora of food items which taste the same (or uniquely amazing).
You could see gaudy, kitschy costumes, blinding (vibrant) sarees, sherwanis, glistening coats and choke (or smile).
In all this, you judge, you feel people judging you. Those eyes, you can so easily sense it. Relatives, uncles, aunties, kids, opposite sex, which is your age. That’s a lot of pressure ( or a lot of fun.)

You could see the amount of work that needs to be done, it’s always huge, and you can lend a hand (or you’re told to.)

Or you could find nothing that interests you, so you lie in corner (whatever space you get) and wallow, and pull faces and curse yourself, as people pay no heed to you (not that you wanted it anyway.). And you keep on scrolling that phonescreen, or just write something you have excessively thought so many times. I was talking about myself.

But as the focus, gravitas on actual wedding, those mantras and havans, I do’s and kubool hai’s are subsiding. An excessive and exaggerated attention is being guided and tethered to the secondaries and somewhat needless and flamboyant and ostentatious revelries, (That’s the ever continuing trend.)
You …. You find it hard to find some actual priceless moment of innate happiness and those moments of unaddled beauty.
Yeah. Beauty could be someone who looks actually beautiful. (Away from the rat race.) Beauty could be a smile. A gaze. A tapestry. An anecdote of an old lady. A  joke from an unlikely source. A differently beautiful song in the background (Not what they play now-a-days.). The look of actual happiness when you see your relatives, and meet long lost friends and forget those drab formalities and cordialities for a moment.                           And dance. And eat. And laugh. And cry. And what not. That beauty.

Marriage… huh! It could be the synonym for happiness. Only, it isn’t.

 

It’s so intimate. Yet so inclusively social. It’s emotional. Very emotional. It’s aesthetic. NOT materialistic. It’s about two people. Two hopeful, smiling, beautiful souls.

 

Why don’t we just focus on that, and that only?
Because marriage is about people. About our inner beauty.
Nothing else.

Opinion. Belief. Adherence. Dissent.

Every one of us has an opinion. And there are so many factors, so many variables that shape it.

That opinion can be objective, or visceral. And its yours, and only yours, so is the reason that shapes your opinion. 

In this world where we are so fundamentally identical and so uncannily unique, our opinions and our reasons are the brightest and the biggest beacons of our individuality.

The best thing about opinions is that they change. With time, with experience, with a greater perspective, sometimes with a sudden change, a sudden revelation.
And it’s never wrong to voice our opinions. Never.
  What’s wrong is denigrating others and their opinions. What’s wrong is the intent to influence others and robbing them of their opinions. 

And we have to draw that line ourselves.
Conviction is a stronger proclivity. It is much more visceral. Changing an opinion is much easier than letting go of a belief. Because, though intuitive sometimes, an opinion is a more factual outlook and a more balanced conduit to express oneself.

You are not always associated to your opinion. You are not always identified by it. You are not your opinion. You are how you teeter on that edge of changing and sticking to your opinion.

And a belief brews when you stick to your opinion, despite its flaws, you view it unilaterally, you believe.

A belief is very hard to let go. There has to be some sort of epiphany. Or a serious trigger which topples the palace of your inclinations, thoughts and value systems.

Adherence to a belief is not harmful, unless it bypasses and overlooks the unchallangeable entities and constants. And that happens more often than not.

And with social media joining the fray, the whole world has transformed into one big sea of opinions and beliefs to find our answers, and maybe ourselves.

Conflict arises when your opinion is not in congruence with the opinion of someone else. And it gets ugly when when your opinion is pitted against a belief.
 Its not a conflict anymore, as

Dissent is viewed as an insult. Question, as an insinuation and even blasphemy!

And if a belief goes against a belief? Hallelujah!