Wednesday, December 28

What Do You Want To Be Remembered As?

I know Ive written part one of a random doodle and the part 2 is pending,
But then I could not let go the oppurtunity of being even more random and unintelligble !
Though, for once I hope I come out with something at least remotely connected to sense , intelligence and common sense.

I had made a resolution not to touch the blogger again, until I completed my deadline for this month ... every one being on leave has made the work slower and more frustrating ... I send a score of mails a day and recieve out of office replies, infact even friends to whose official Ids I mail to have these out of office mails that keep getting triggered.
So very frustrating, very frustrating indeed ...

and then, out of sheer frustration I open TOI, which I give the status of an elevated toilet paper .. except for the cartoon strip in there.
The first page features Mr President as a guest editor and in the course of something he says ... "What Do You Want To Be Remembered As?" Scores of famous personalities come up with various answers ... the question is such that I cant but stop thinking, and me being me , need to jot down whatever I think, so here I am..

Would I ever be remembered for anything? Would I ever be remembered as anything? Would I be remembered at all? Questions galore ... but answers?

Would I ever be remembered ? This in itself is a difficult question ...
May be my family , for a couple of generations down the lane would remember me , a couple of people who loved/hated me , some people whose lives I made miserable would remember me ( yes , they would ... the act of inflicting misery is like a "Kick Me" sign on the behind, you dont want it , but you cant ignore it either )
Who else would? would you? may be you dont remember me , even as Im tyiping now ... more importantly, would I remember myself? I dont remember myself when I was 2 .. I vaguely remember a loser Arpan at 10 (then I wasnt this self styled Arpz yet), I do remember not myself, but my sense of being a loser and a sense of inferirity at 12 ... not myself, not entirely.
Then how can I expect others to remember me? When I dont remember myself, let alone others?

What would I want to be remembered as ? A girl? A tomboy? A human? A loser? Arpana? The Offering? A dust in the cosmic eye? A QA? A CA? What !! For heaven's sake as what ??? These are generic terms, for isnt half the poulation female? isnt the half of that population a tomboy? arent there hazaar Qas and Cas? then whats so special about me?
My lecturer at my college used to say, the fact that you are born shows you are special .... there are dozens of ovum released, millions of sperms released, the fact that a particular gamete was formed , and the rest had to die shows that you are here with a reason. Now WHAT exactly is that reason?
My fav God Krsna sits in a printout on my softboard and says thus to Arjuna "Karmanveyadhikarste Ma Phaledhu Kadachana" forget the "phala" part... the "karma " part of it is what Im interested in ... What exactly is my karma for which I am here? What will I need to do that this Karma is carried out with utmost diligence and what is this karma that will make me be remembered?

I remember an incident ... which landed me (by my own hand) in the ICU , this is cos I was angry, I was desperate , I was lonely and I was a loser ... (I still am all of those , the acceptance level has increased , thats a different story) but then, today though Im all of that I live with it , carry it along with me , the sense of being a loser increased in some aspects, decreased in others ... but then that is what is to me .. what to the world?

Every time I see a child working, a man begging, the pleading eyes of these sellers and hawkers being thrown out of these "posh" roads where only Lancers , Octavias , Innovas and Zens can be parked ... I feel a sense of desperation , isnt there anything I can do to stop it . Shouldnt I as a human ask for justice on behalf of these people? Ought I not give up a few luxuries or comforts I have , if not help them , atleast to feel empathy towards them?

I say no, the voice within me says yes . I can, even if I dont sucseed , I can atleast try, but I dont , becuase Im too busy with my work, with feeding my family, with worshipping capitalism, with buying all the luxuries, with chasing my ambitions of owning such a car which eventually will be parked on the empty stomach of some street hawker ...

When Im this hypocritical, do I have a right to ask to be remembered?

Yes, thats the question , DO I HAVE A RIGHT to aske to be remembered? for today who remembers the great people who once worked for the people? When my Vivekananda is not remembered, when no one remembers the sacrifices made by the great humans .. be it an Indian or otherwise, can I ask for rememberance?

What Do I Want to Be Remembered As?
IF someone somewhere wants to remember me , even for a moment , let him/her remember me as a loser who wanted to do several things, but remained a mute heartless spectator, maybe even a passive supressor of humanity, not as a girl, not as a girlfriend, not as a daughter, not even as a human being, but as a hypocrite ... as some one who thought and felt the pain of the world's suffering , but helped the world inflict the pain and suffering on itself. As a person who held lofty ideals in heart, but in practise understood that lofty ideals have their place above and it is pragmatism that works to survive .... and least and the last as a lone soilder in the face of adversity whose main aim was to get a decent post retirement life to the two individuals she owed her life , a Bschool education that she dreamt of to her brother, a person .. who tried to bear all that life gave her.

This is probably what every man in this world will go down in history as , irrespective of caste, sex , location or religion ... and I shall hope that there are people who shall strive to be remembered for things other than these , for these are the ordinary.

Edited For People Who would not want to be remembered at all , I salute them , cos they can be (according to me - correct me if Im wrong) 1. Either without any strings attached - the perfect sanyasin , one person I can think of is Leo Tolstoy - he was the poet who wrote of an unmarked grave which no one visited ( i had deemed him mad and foolish then , i now realise the true value of non - attachment ; a quality that was markedly visible in my grand dad) 2. The contented, lazy lack of ambition kind of people who wonder why they ever came on to this earth, and while dying .. think if life was worth the pain of dying.

Edit 2 - The 1st kind of people in the above edit truly and fully believe in the statement that forms a kind of proplogue to my blogh "Names dont matter ... thoughts dont ... words dont ... nothing ever does ...even this world, for we are but a passing dust in the eye of this Cosmos ... and dust has never mattered. No, never...

Not that I dont believe it, I believe it and thats why its there on my blog, but then Im trying to implment it !

1 comment:

arpana said...

@Zeex ... hmmm :|

@brij , sale tu to baat hi mat kar mere saath