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My Tryst with the Cyst Part 1 March 21, 2008

Posted by sauvik in Non-fiction.
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“Name–?”   –  “sauvik”

“Age –?” – “23”

It began with some casual questions and some curt yet tensed answers. I needed to value that 23 years of life, and show to the world I am as solid as the rock, let whatever comes up.

“Hmmm… a few cystic areas on the right femoral head, a well defined lytic lesion on the iliac bone” murmured the doctor, “ when was the last time you had the operation told me?” he asked me eyes peeping out of the thick framed moony spectacles.

“Around ’95, almost 13 years back and there has been no complaints afterwards till the last month.” came my ma’s reply, dry but hopeful. Dry because she wasn’t conversant in cyst terminologies and hopeful because she felt that the doctor must have been wrong somewhere.

 

“Hmm… your son has the same problem once again, the cyst that was there 13 years had come back, recurred, only that it has grown in size, and it just might be a giant cell cyst, but nothing much to fret about, he needs some surgical intervention , and it will all be okay, as good as new.” The doctor explained under one breath.

“Was the last statement really required?” I mean why he needs to give that finishing touch? To show he’s the god around in town? I stole a short glance at my ma, thought I read something, anyways.

“How long would it take for the recovery, i mean before I can start off with office?”

“More than 3 months, but let’s see nothing’s decided as of now”, the doctor obviously a bit disturbed by my impatience.

I looked into her eyes, she had hundreds of questions, she won’t ask, she needs to show that she’s strong at least in front of me. She can’t look into my eyes lest she sees the eyes swelling up, neither can I, same reason. Sometimes I feel like laughing at the situation we are in. When the eyes speak more than you can bear, it’s better not to look into them.

“I will write down some investigations for you, and the usual blood tests will be there, get these things down, we need to be a bit careful this time, and don’t forget to take the elbow crutch, the fees should be paid over there…” said the doctor.

“Appointment’s over”, I thought, indirectly yet politely. My dad did the remaining formalities at the counter and walked to me.

“Put your over my shoulders, till I get your crutch” I put my hands over his shoulders, withered yet strong, stubborn, as I limped back to the cab.

My thoughts were scything my conscience into thousands of pieces. I wanted to laugh at my fucking luck, but not even a smile came to my lips. A bird with “freedom”, “fly”, “high” echoing in its heart and wings ready to take off, shouldering all the responsibilities. This was the day I was waiting for. Suddenly I felt as a pair of invisible hand rose from beneath the ground, and choked me, cut my wings, wringed my feathers, as I lay bloodied onto the ground. When the bird could have flown high, nearly touching the North Star or may be play with the red ball of fire in the twilight zone of the western horizon, lifting it, coming out, going in to the depth of the clouds, grazing the air, against the hungry tide, unruffled.

It took another pain staking 30 minutes to reach home. I was almost silent during that time, but ma kept on talking, talking and talking, maybe she felt distressed that way, or maybe I thought so.  She talked about everything to nothing in between. About how things would turn out to be absolutely fine, about “no-nothings” at all, about family matters, about my childhood crusades, about Mumbai and about how I came to sleep beside her, in the middle of the night, after I had a ghostly nightmare. She gave me an affectionate smile and asked, “You still afraid of ghosts? Ha-ha”. She had this god-gifted talent of making people laugh even in the grimmest moments and how much I could run to see that smile in her face can anyone tell me?   So finally the much awaited smile came to my face; I was blushing, aware of my cousin’s scornful look. I almost blurred out, “No! Ma!! It was just that one single night. Did I lie?

                                                                                *****

 

“No rice for me ma nowadays that I am jobless as ever; you wouldn’t want a pot-bellied son or do you?”  I shouted as she kept herself busy in the kitchen.

“Don’t worry nothing will happen, see what you don’t to yourself, eating all those vada-pavs and idli-dosas” she stressed.

“But, ma, I am not doing any—-”              

  “You looked so beautiful when you were under my care, all round faced and all; look at you now, no girl will marry you!”

   “That’s good isn’t it?” I said triumphantly.

    “And what happened to her—?”

“Her? Who?”

 “You know who… in your school…you told me about… She’s left you? Aww!!” she chuckled.

“Whaat?? Ma, will you please change the topic? I was suddenly all red.   

“Here, have the milk then, I won’t talk about her, just close your eyes and gulp it down”

“Miiiilk? I hate milk, you better talk about her, than me having milk.”

“Okay!…then”

“No, wait, sorry, you don’t talk. No talk about anything or anybody. I ll drink it up.” I was almost devastated.

“Milk is good for health, more of a calcium diet, the doc prescribed you one.” Ma was saying.

I slumped into the sofa, I knew it was futile to wage a war against ma’s wishes, fidgeted with the remote control, switched channels, lazily, and thought, why can’t they invent a calcium enriched cigarette. Not only calcium, but vitamins too. All re-packed and re-branded. Then nobody would be going after us, for smoking around. Even if they do, we can happily give them a nice black eye.

It had been 10 days without a puff for me. God!!      

“A copy of jefferrey archer’s, “my prison days” lay carelessly by my side.

The Blind Watchmaker: Does “HE” Exist? June 19, 2007

Posted by sauvik in Non-fiction.
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[This piece of blog is my own way of a tribute to all those who believe in god's existence, and also to those who are non-believers]

What is GOD? What do we mean by god? An imaginary krishna or the allah, or buddha? A power which been made invincible by our forefathers and their fathers? A power which has weakened us from the roots, a power which has robbed us of our belief of infinte potential we possess. The idea has been spoon fed incessantly into ur moulding minds from the day we were born, that there is a power in the sky up there… who watches us constantly, HE who is the architect of this universe.

I still have some distant memories of this blind passion, and my childhood. A very common question for my mom was ” So what did you ask from HIM today?” and like an obidient boy i used to answer ” shatbuddhi, shatshahosh aar monerjor” (a good mind, courage and will power).

Now, the question is…why did i ask for all these things?

I was hardly 10 yrs of age at that point of time.. i neither had the mental maturity to understand god…nor the brains to understand what actually these things mean.

The answer is in front of your eyes. I was taught to ask these things. Now the reason is: I am just a face in the crowd. Scores of children like me got the same spoon feeding.

We have been so influenced by the presence of this invincible power that we have started using it as a crutch. the concept of GOD has made us disabled in this walk of life.

My first contradiction of the concept of GOD is

1. GOD is relative. When you take electric bulb to a very distant village in somalia(say) where technology is something unheard of… the very wide reach of science has never even dared to trod into the forbidden land, the people term it as a supernatural power, uncanny, god or the devil. or something very close!! There are somethings which science hasnt been able to prove till date, Now every one of us who are enlightend by the light of civilisation and technology can idenify between uncanny supernatuality and an electric bulb. My next question arises in the same respect. In our hindu scriptures and epics we have seen innumerable tales of supernatural powers being possessed by sages. But strangely for reasons unknown to me.. this innumerable istances of the display of supernaturality has decreased tenfolds in the 21st century. With the scientific proliferations holding the hands of technology. Every attempt of supernaturality has been proven wrong by science. Sealed into its coffin even before confusion rose. As in childhood tales i have been been fed some very strange tales of enlightened saints walking effortlessly in midocean. There has been absolutely no documented proof of any such activities atleast till now.

2. GOD is definately not the supreme architect of he universe For people who has the blind faith in the infinite power called god his strongest arguement can be the watchmaker arguement:

“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there”

The counter arguement here is that suppose you take in to the fact that there exists a watchmaker for this watch in the middle of nowwhere. Further down if i pich my foot on a shoe, in accordance with my prevoius answer there must be a shoemaker? Therefore, according to the analogy, created life must have a lifemaker, the sun a sunmaker and snowflakes a snowmaker. This implies that there are several creators in the world, responsible for all kinds of creation. Now if there was a shoemaker and the watchmaker there must have been their respective fathers. i.e, GOD has a father. This leads us a complex series of of the root of god’s existence.

The contradiction goes a step further to state that, since the watch is a complex structure, a true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind’s eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker. Natural selection is the blind watchmaker.

3. What do you believe in GOD? I asked my 18yr old cousin brother this question. His reply was prompt. ” I believe that god does everything you see around you, everything that you do, without HIM, we cant even do our everyday chores.” I was a bit shaken by the promptness and the confidence in his answer. I reconfirmed his reply.. “so you mean to say that if god wasn’t there we cant even perform our daily activities…” He reconfirmed my shock by saying “yes indeed it is god who gives us the power, the divine bestows upon us the fire within” Such is the level of passion, behind godliness of the belief, such strong has the roots gone, its a point of no return. You wouldnt dare to touch the concept, leave aside the change, the metamorphosis of my cousin’s and many others’ belief.

The basic problem lies elsewhere. We the common man mix religion and spirituality to such extent that in the process we lose track of our own abilities. Its this mixture of two very radically different things that has evolved to such a devil of a belief. I hear people saying, GOD is everywhere, god is the power within us. We pray for our loved ones who are sick, we pray for our friends, we pray for ourselves… sometimes miracles happen, sometimes (say) the prayers are answered, and we say that GOD has listened to our cries… HE is there. HE is the “aantaryami”. But yes times do come when our prayers go unanswered. what do we say then? Its fate; or its the result of your previous birth’s karma. This series of blind belief is endless. My cousin( as a miniscule example) with such blind and super confident belief about the Infinite Power will pass on this wrong message to his future generations, and the monolgue will continue henceforth. We claim that we are rational beings. But is this a sign of rationality? We are not thinking with our brains, what we are doing is we believe what our forefather’s taught us. We straight out refuse to re- think matters, with the science we have, but our forefathers lacked. Are we being any different from a tribal in a distant village of somalia who has seen an electric bulb for the first time in his life…?