Machines

After snoozing the first two alarms kept for 6:30 and 6:45 AM, Zaac (Zacharia) was enjoying the last lap of his sleep. Call from Milana, his colleague woke him up by 6:50, asking for the photo of the stocks which he had already received from the warehouse personnel. With the background of a few cursing words he forwarded those photos to her. He was still sleepy but he felt the urge to check if Hiba had replied to his message. Group after group, app after app he tried his best to stay abreast with his pals. The usual replies, greetings, photos, videos, likes, comments, friend requests he got extra 10 minutes that day to reinstate his position in the virtual social groups and platforms. 

The wash room made him engage for almost 30 minutes, mostly lost in the worry of the client presentation scheduled for later that day. The misplaced scissors took away considerable amount of his time. The mirror did disappoint him, reflecting those upward trends of his hair line graph. All throughout, one thought came repeatedly “why Hiba didn’t reply him back? Even though the last message in WhatsApp got those blue double ticks”. Thoughts of Hiba gave him added enthusiasm to groom him up well and bath in the torrent of fine droplets from the perfume bottle. He did come back twice, once to get his laptop charger and another time to recheck if he had locked the door. The mirror in the lift reminded him to hold up his stomach inside, cursing his habit of eating every other meal from restaurants and thinking about the date of renewal at the Gym which he joined 5 months back and went only for 16 days in toto. 

He went back a third time to his room to pick up the mask which he only got reminded when he had hit the street. The worries about Covid had engulfed most of his lock-down time. Now that he got forced to go to office he hardly had an option. He purposefully avoided the reminder from his health App that he needs to drink two glasses of water to keep his body hydrated. The App did strike the chords of regret by not meeting the previous day’s target of walking 2 KMs. 

The beauty of Gulmohar bloomed trees failed to turn his face which was glued to the screen of Apple iPhone 11 Pro. He was busy forwarding the pictures of streets covered with fallen Gulmohar flowers to Hiba. Social distancing has stretched the queue at the metro station to snake out to the neighboring streets. One episode of the series Money heist took care of the snail paced queue as well as the journey in the metro oblivious to the sun, the sky and the skyscrapers. As usual he missed out those anxious eyes of Filipino girls projected out to the crushing candies and at times extended them to his phone screen and confirmed that they had watched that episode. The mask has helped covering up those grumpy faces, expressionless and marching out of the metro station like an army of robots. 

The lady at the exit kept repeating “Slowdown - Stop Covid” just as any parrot would do. The plugged up ears totally cut Zaac off from the surrounding sounds. While getting out of the station he bumped onto the hoarding on the sidewalk and cracked the glass of his Tissot Chrono XL Classic watch. He almost felt as if he lost an arm and that the whole world stopped for a second. He kept checking for options to get his watch repaired until he sat for breakfast at the eatery next to his office. 

It was already late for office and by the second bite he received the call from his friend Roy who was suffering from cough and cold. He managed to finish his breakfast advising health tips to Roy and the importance of screening for Covid. Suddenly he felt so much satisfaction as all the research he did during lockdown about corona has finally paid off.  While paying at the counter Zaac stood thinking confused what all he just ate for breakfast until waiter Ali reminded him. 

Good morning….Good morning….Good morning lowering the mask and fixing a plastic smile Zaac wished his colleagues and checked their well being more like a ritual. Nowadays he got used to the thermometer guns directed at him by the security personnel at every nook and corner of the building. Zaac often sympathized with the machine-like life they carry out. At the office his eyes got busy with the MacBook. 

The frequency of chit chat at office has drastically reduced except the updates from his teammate Rahul which has gone up. “India has surpassed China, overtook Germany, giving a tough fight to Italy” he closely follows the World Covid Match and his concerns come out as commentaries. Often the commentaries paved way to avenues to display the mugged-up ’knowledge’ on Covid-19. It was tough to beat Rahul on the Corona front but at the conference room Zaac took the lead. Every client would fall for the relentless flow of information during Zaac’s presentation which could compete with any google on earth. The reward for feeding his brain with every other information from the time of his kindergarten days. Zaac tried his best to convince his boss that he was worthy enough to get paid that huge sum by the end of the month. He sat for extra hours as it was getting tougher in these times of pandemic. Most of his friends have lost their jobs and the worry has started taking a toll on his sleep. Like a sheep he kept blatting for the orders of the top management.   

He walked back to the metro station under the moonlit sky replaying the instagram story of Hiba. By now he played the same story many times, still he couldn’t identify that guy’s face in her selfie. What makes her so busy that she kept disconnecting his call? He thought “may be she didn’t like him asking her about that guy”.  Back home another episode of his favorite series gave him company while ‘enjoying’ the dinner delivered by Uber eats. He didn’t forget to update his family and friends boasting about his eventful day over the video calling Apps. Dreaming the days dawned with the red of Gulmohar he slipped into a deep sleep. 

The machine called ‘Zaac’ has temporarily stopped working and will reinstate its function by next day 7AM!!!

When every other activity becomes mechanical, when every other moment is lost in thoughts how do we enjoy being human? Are we anything better than a machine with good Artificial Intelligence?  

Outsourced all the windows of human skills, borrowed the emotions of the virtual media, crammed information making the heads to droop down, closed the doors to wisdom we have all turned out to money making machines.  

To feel the earth with the bare foot, to caress the early morning dew on the grass, to cherish the fragrance of jasmine blooming by the evening, to hum a few lines from the age old melodies, to bring a smile on an unmasked face of a stranger, to relish a bite from the homemade carrot cake, to converse with the birds coming at our window, to watch the sun set behind the Gulmohar tree bloomed in bright red…. do we have time for all these staying some time away from the rat race?. To break the chain of ‘routine’ and free him from the shackles of a ‘pattern’. Covid won’t be enough….We need a sea of consciousness and awareness to make a man wake up to his humanity. 

The Sheep

Wiki says a role model is a person whose behaviour, example, or success is or can be emulated by others, especially by younger people. While I was in 11th grade I never knew this definition of a role model or is it that I never felt the urge to imitate somebody?. When Beena miss asked this question “Who is your role model?” I was forced to come up with a name. She started calling the names one by one. Megha told Mother Teresa for her interest in selfless service. ‘Sachin Tendulkar’ it was Darshan, a die hard fan of Sachin and Cricket, he didn’t even had to think twice. For Sajeer it was his father, that he also want to become a Cardiologist like him. Then it was my turn, I stood up recollecting all the famous names from my past encounters, the dearth of reading books left me with just a handful of names. The prominent and best known one was Gandhiji, the essay I wrote in the 10th annual exam was quite fresh in my memory that I talked about truth and nonviolence there by lying in front of the whole class. 

Why should I imitate someone? Why can’t I be myself? 

This call for imitation was there from ever since I could remember and the role models kept changing as I grew up. Starting from my cousin, my mom would say “be like your cousin”. Instead of a model’s, I always stitched a villain’s costume for my cousin. At school the teacher would try fitting the top performers of the class into that same villain costume. My grandmother’s favorite costume which she would like to see me in was that of a doctor’s. 

It would have been convenient if we could come up with moulds to bring up the children to become something or someone. It was my uncle asking me some months back about the trending jobs in the market. “Which stream should I make Adib, his son to choose after 10th that he would have a great career?”. I said “Leave it to him, let him study whatever interests him”. He prodded me with a statement “It is your duty to guide the youngsters”. “Yea, I can guide, make them realize their areas of interest, not beyond that” I said reluctantly. 

The aspiration to grow upto the role models has become quite evident as man started playing with the genetics of plants and animals. 30 liters of milk a day, designer eggs, BT Brinjal the list goes on. The predictability, the yield, the reduced lead time we made parameters to measure our success. Measuring every trait helps in managing them with better efficiency. Are we trying to replicate it to the human traits as well? At least in India the parents could be compared to any farm owners. Striving to bring out the maximum yield out of their offsprings. 

I have always seen Varghese as an example to a role model in his reference groups. We met in the swimming pool of Sports Authority of India, in Trivandrum. Soon we became good friends. We both were in the initial stages of our career. While I stood clueless about the future, he had a concrete balance sheet to boast about. The sheet goes like this: getting married at 27, he is already in talks with one of his junior from the university, same religion, same sub religion and that too the only daughter from a rich family and he claims it to be pure love. Then he would change his job to a bigger city to a better position. The first kid at the age of 29 and second kid in a difference of 2 years. ‘So that they can farm them better utilizing the economies of scale and scope’. By the time he reaches the age of 50 his kids would be in a position to earn and look after him. At that tender age I felt disappointed that I don’t have such a clarity about my life. I was happy meeting my mom’s ideal ‘human being’. The funny part is that it has been more than a decade after establishing this life sheet and he has managed to stick to it so far with at most accuracy. 

What is the level of free thinking empowered with our youngsters and their capacity in grasping things with a free mind? One gets attributed to a social role and we keep comparing him with the other performers of the reference groups. The list of reference groups is never ending. We run poll to pillar to qualify and retain a particular tag, the first act in any farm so in human race ‘branding’, but not with a branding iron but they have other ways to segregate. The role of religion in branding is huge. It was only couple of years back I asked my mom why she didn’t let me learn music though she claim that I had showed interest in singing as a child. She proudly said ‘’ It is haram (forbidden) for muslims to sing and dance”. One is not supposed to read or even think beyond the limitations of his religion. If a particular activity is not part of the reference group it is considered as a vice and they have strict measures to control these vices. They would go to any extend and if needed they would adopt the last measure in a farm if the animal is uncontrollable ‘culling’. The ultimate reward for free thinking. Thoreau once said ‘Most people die with their music still within them.’

Apart from branding and culling there are many more terms which are quite common in Animal Husbandry world, getting attributed to the so called social animals. Very recently the not so familiar word ‘quarantine’ is becoming an everyday affair. How painful it is to see the nature practicing ‘weeding’ in human population. May it as tsunami, earthquake, flood or Covid. When the human thoughts lose the capacity to contain its population and keep following the heroes from a different millennia or an era, the nature is waking us to our human nature, to that capacity to ‘think and act’. At least the nature is giving opportunity to go away from these herds and letting us confined to individual pens to experience that solitude and to come out as human beings. But he found ways to satisfy this ‘follow instincts’ through instagram, twitter, tik-tok the list goes on. We don’t mind spending hours to stalk and imitate what our peers are up to, but we hardly find time to observe ourself and follow our own instincts. 

We should respect our heroes, their values, their contribution to the society, the revolution they brought in. Any effort to outperform them in these aspects has to be encouraged. It becomes detrimental when we start following them blindly that we assign role models in our social circles, in our tribes that we look up to them for every decision we take. Trying to imitate them to every extend possible. Attributing more value to the teacher than his teachings. A level of imitation were we loose our individuality our natural talents our aspirations getting subjugated to somebody’s path keeping our freedom at stake. 

Isn’t freedom such a beautiful feeling or have we become so comfortable in letting somebody to define me how I should take every step in my life? We are taught to find pleasure in social appreciation and recognition. Like the animals in circus we base our self worth on the praise and acclaim we receive.  

Defining limits and borders to our thoughts and actions how long can we remain as a frog in the deep well, and keep digging further deep?! We prefer to play safe by imitating somebody and assigning someone as our role model stuffing our thinking faculty into the freezers. Blindly following a prophet or a business tycoon or a guru just as any sheep do. We are all mere sheeps.

Basking in the Baltic

The countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are called the Baltic states, in the shore of Baltic sea. My journey through these countries were bit complicated. The whole planning was done based on the availability of cheap tickets. On 17^thJune noon I reached Riga, that night I had my bus to Tallinn to reach there by early morning, same day a round trip by ferry to Helsinki. These were the stretches of my journey where it actually tested my limits. These were the occasions where a pilgrimage differs from a tour which brings in a positive transformation to one’s life. 

I got almost a day to spend in Riga; the capital of Latvia before my late-night bus to Tallinn. Ajwad’s (my host) place in Riga is little bit far from the city that I had to take a bus followed by a tram from the airport. The journey was uneventful until these ticket checkers asked for my ticket in the tram. The checker an old lady in her sixties told me that the ticket I am carrying is already used in the bus that I need a fresh ticket for the tram. I couldn’t open my mouth and stood staring at her for a few seconds. I was in a belief that like Berlin a single ticket would take one to the destination; neither have I confirmed it with my host. ‘’I am a tourist and I never knew about this’’ I tried pleading her but it all went in vain. Another male checker also joined her and asked me where I am from. He tried mocking me by talking in a form of Hindi. Some of the fellow travelers mostly old ladies and kids gave me a stare of mixed feelings; sympathizing, blank and some looked at me as if I am a criminal. I had no choice but to pay the fine of €20. An embarrassing stretch of events, took some time to recover from this shock and I kept cursing till I get down from the tram.  A hard-learned lesson, after this incident I made sure to take the tickets during rest of my journey. 

The apartment was in the fourth floor without any elevator facility. All the buildings in this place looked alike which were built during the Russian period. The comfort and hospitality at my host’s (Ajwad) place made me forget the unfortunate event. We got to know each other better over a coffee and some snacks. It was around 2pm and I was too tired and sleepy. By the time I woke up at 5pm Ajwad had left for work as he is doing the evening shift. To find a host in Riga was never difficult, there were many people from India studying in Riga, surprisingly my host and his friends turned out to be from my home town. They have already mastered the art of hosting people by accommodating travelers from different parts of the world and it was evident in their walls with photos and writings. They have a dedicated board for the travelers to write about the experience at their place and going through those writings brought a smile on my face. I left my backpack at Ajwad’s house as I am coming back to Riga after two days. It was a great relief to travel without the backpack; I had taken all necessary things in my side bag. 

The sunset is late; by 10pm and I have enough time to see around the city. I went straight to the old town; there was a sea change in the ambience inside this area comparing to the stretch I traveled in tram. Unlike the other cities one will find a space for themselves in these Baltic cities. I picked up the rhythm as I walked inside these streets; the street musicians at every corner did a fantastic job and I thanked them with some coins. I walked past a beautiful garden, park and a lake to reach the other side of the bridge. There were small crowds in front of the churches and the people looked different from the rest of the cities I travelled in Europe; the Russian influence was quite evident in all walks of life. The sun has already moved to the western horizon and I want to see it getting engulfed by the Daugava River. I didn’t check the google map; the universal landmark itself showed me the way. 

On my way I passed an old church built in the Soviet architecture and a few lonely streets. The TV tower is a piece of wonder which stood in an Island in the river which kept pulling me towards its vicinity. I enjoyed its beauty from the side of the river where a few guys were engaged in fishing. The fishing in the backdrop of TV tower and setting sun was the perfect frame for my lenses. The German shepherd, their dog didn’t like me enter his territory and showed his discomfort by barking and jumping around.  I got introduced to their group who only speaks ‘Russian’; they gave me a new name ‘Liopold’. Talking to them realized the pain the British people might have gone through when they first came to India; Vladimir an ex-soldier in the group was trying to converse with me in English. “The animal eat you?” Vladimir asked me in broken English which I figured out that he is asking whether the mosquitoes are biting me. They offered me a local beer and a couple of smokes and I accepted them with much gratitude. I bid adieu to those wonderful souls and walked back to the city center. It was close to mid night but the sky was still lighted up so like the bridges and streets with lights. The streets were almost empty except in some corners, people were still enjoying their evening. I reached the bus station an hour in advance and my journey to Tallinn started at sharp 2:30am. All the buses inside the Baltic countries were booked in EcoIines and they have done an awesome job.

It was just four hours journey to Tallinn; I slept all the way till a police officer woke me up somewhere in the border. It was around 4am and he took my passport outside to his van. As the time elapsed, I got really worried. I lost the continuity of my sleep and kept looking at the police vehicle waiting for him to return my passport without any trouble. The view outside was stunning, the location was perfect. It was in the middle of a wheat field which stood bathed in the pre-dawn light. On a normal occasion I would have got down to click some pictures. This uninvited event didn’t let me move a bit from my seat. After a solid 30 minutes one lady police officer returned my passport without saying a word. I was relieved and within moments I slept off only to wake up when the bus stopped at the main bus station. The station was not at all crowded; there were stationary stores and cafes. My ferry to Helsinki was by 10am and it was only 6:30am. I comforted myself to a corner of a couch next to a power point. I slept cuddling my side bag I am carrying only to wake up for my alarm at 8am. Grabbed a coffee and walked towards the direction of Patarei Harbor where I need to board the ferry to Helsinki. It was a 35 minutes’ walk and I decided to do it bit relaxed. I passed through the fruits and vegetable market on my way, as those are the first shops to be open in any city. The whole market was studded with the berries like strawberry, blackberry, blueberry and cherries. I bought some strawberries, blueberries and cherries. I tried some local breakfast from inside the market mostly cheese breads, omelet breads and some meat; I didn’t forget to take some parcel as well. I have read that things will be expensive in Helsinki that I should not be buying anything from there.

The journey through the baltic states will continue after Helsinki...