Sometimes it all gets too much for me, and I have to withdraw. Yes, even from my family and friends. Mumbai’s frenetic pace can mesmerize you into thinking that manic activity is normal. That we have always lived this way. But I guess, deep down where we carry our legacy of freedom encoded in our being, we know that this is a lie. The truth is…

Mumbaiites have not always fought for every square inch of space. We have not always attached a monetary value to every aspect of our lives. We have not always had to feel the do-or-die rush of toxic adrenaline as we gear up each morning and evening to engage in choiceless battle with our fellowmen on Platform 2, or automotive anarchy in the rush-hour traffic.

We have not always had to walk our streets with wary caution, our bodies clenched like fists do reduce the space we occupy to a bare minimum. We have not always had to have mastered the skill of looking through others as if they don’t exist, hoping only that they will be considerate enough to return the favor. We have not always had to traverse this city with one hand on our wallets and the other one clutching a kerchief to our noses.

I have learned of a saner Mumbai at the feet of Dadasaheb Lohekar, who occasionally holds court at the local park where I live. The man is 91 years old and looks every day of it as he sits there with his decrepit Alsatian. However, his memory is as sharp as a Grant Road pickpocket’s blade and he has some stories to tell of this city.

Of course, he’s not old enough to actually remember some of the things he talks about, such as the days when Mumbai’s only inhabitants were the Koli fisher folk. Yeah, the people we resignedly make way for in the locals today, as they climb on with their noxious baskets, most of us unaware of the fact that Mumbai is named after their patron goddess Mumbadevi.

But Dadasaheb is old enough to talk authoritatively of them, and the standards of coexistence they adhered to. He is old enough to remember the Parsi, Gujarati and South Indian Hindu families, that lived together peacefully here at one time, when property was not an issue of power, and the sharing of resources not restricted to partisan community pockets.

His eyes, already filmy with advancing cataracts, cloud over even further when he regales us with stories of a Mumbai we would never recognize today. I don’t blame him. I get sort of misty-eyed myself. And so, on some nights after the daily struggle to emerge intact from the teeming human anthill, I take off on my old Enfield and look for evidence of Mumbai in the urban apocalypse. I leave my suburb behind, aware of the fact that the bike’s exhaust is not doing much to improve the pollution I often complain about.

I see a different Mumbai emerge after midnight, though the city truly never sleeps. This Mumbai tosses uneasily in its half-awake somnolence, the relative quiet after a day of commercial convulsions probably allowing it to reach back into its memory and remember that another order once existed.

For some reason, I always end up staring at Haji Ali bathed in the moonlight, glowing an eerie, timeless green. Its aloofness from the madness of the mainland seems to tell me that one can be part of the chaos and yet be apart from it.

As its walkway disappears under the tide, I understand that I, too, need to occasionally deny the city access to the essential me. The rat race churns on less than a hundred yards away, but Haji Ali finds an island of detached peace just by drawing up the bridge once in a while.

I’m up by seven, my mind already strategizing the commute to work and the uncertain odds of another day in Mumbai. I’m bleary-eyed but ready. The most profound insights of a Mumbai night cannot match swords with the realities of the city by day….

There are days when my family and I are don’t see eye to eye on certain things – like the validity of my life. On such days, I generally do something spiritually uplifting. The guilt-trip scene has limited entertainment value and fails to fascinate me after the first three rounds.

Anyway, I had such a day a couple of weeks ago, so I went to a local church and lent my ear to the priest’s message. Yes, I do that sometimes. It’s not a religious thing – I go to any place of worship where I can possibly learn something of value to me – or at least get a couple of hours of quality time with someone other than me and mine. I’ve attended Muslim discourses, Hindu satsangs and Christian sermons in equal measure.

Well, this evening I was startled to see a rather prominent local Hindu octogenarian sitting in the meager congregation. I usually meet him only when I visit the local park, where he’s something of a permanent evening fixture. He’s a fascinating old man, full of the kind justly acquired wisdom we spend our lives trying to find shortcuts to. I nodded at him with a weary smile and sat down to listen to the sermon.

Not surprisingly, it was on sin. Sin is a very marketable commodity – the more painfully aware you are of yours, the more money some people seem to make. Sin never goes out of style. It keeps us in line, the awareness of sin does.

Anyway, the good priest quoted extensively from the Bible’s Old Testament and generally served up a generous helping of fire and brimstone. In particular, he belabored the various transgressions for which God flash-fried his people before society invented the judiciary, the Income Tax department and organized religion to do the job. I peered over to the old party to see how he was taking it. It was my guess that he did not go much for such stuff. He’s old enough to have outgrown religion and found God instead.

He was looking thoughtful and even nodded geriatrically at some points of the sermon. At other points he grinned toothlessly, the way a grandfather does when his grandson makes a foolish but cute juvenile statement.

After the sermon, I gathered my flayed senses and left the church, one virtual eye peeled for lightning bolts from heaven. My people back at home make it very clear that I will pay for my maddening non-conformism eventually, but they never mention a specific timeframe….

“So what did you think of the sermon?” I asked him as we stopped for tea outside the church gates. He also untied his fleabag Alsatian, who is at least as old as he is in doggie years.

“Oh, very nice,” he replied. I kept a good two feet between us as we talked - he tends to spray people with whatever he’s ingesting if they’re too close while he does sibilants. He doesn’t believe in dentures.

“I mean, did the priest have a point?” I pressed on. “I don’t think about it much, but my family and I have been discussing my failings over the last two days. If they’re right about them, I’ll be out of the reckoning soon. The Man Upstairs has me in His sights.”

He looked out at the thronging crowd on the main road long enough to convince me that he hadn’t heard me. I was about to repeat the question when he turned to me again.

“I agree with him that sin is what distances us from God,” he said. “What we perceive as our sin fills us with guilt. What we perceive as others’ sin fills us with self-righteous pride. In either case, God is kept at bay.”

I listened carefully, knowing that this was a very important moment in my life.

“The priest also says that God can save us from sin. All we need to do is turn to Him and call on him as a friend. Is it that simple?”

He laughed so hard he almost choked on his last sip of tea. His dog looked up at him worriedly.

“I’m sure it is. But then, how many of us consider God our friend? Sin leads to trouble for sure. When we’re in trouble, we turn to our friends, right?”

“Uh… yes, of course,” I replied.

“Well, who do we turn to first when we are in trouble? First to ourselves - we all consider ourselves our best friends. In our hearts of hearts, each of us believes that he or she is the ultimate standard of human virtue and excellence, and that our own resources are the best. When no solution is available within us, we turn to others – starting with our next-closest friend. When finally not even the last person we consider a friend can help, we do what our pride has prevented us from doing until then. We go to last person we’d ever consider approaching. Who is such a person?

“Hmmm, our enemy?”

He nodded sadly. “Yes, the one we obviously consider our enemy – as a last-ditch solution.”

“Who is that?”

He smiled affectionately at me.

“You tell me, my friend – but didn’t you come looking for Him in church today….?”

Religion has almost always been more about going through robotic motions than about lifting one’s soul to the One Above. The world over, we see people engage in pagan substitutions for true worship to Him.

Is He impressed? I don’t know, of course – and not just because the Bible states that God’s thoughts are as far from ours as the East is from the West. I don’t know because if I knew the mind of God, I wouldn’t fear Him. If I didn’t fear Him, it is a pretty safe bet that I’d do whatever the hell I please. Also, if I knew the mind of God, I wouldn’t ask Him for help. After all, knowing someone’s mind is on the same level with being an intellectual equal – and who takes help or advice from an intellectual equal?

So, no – I don’t know the mind of God. Nor does anyone else.

However, try telling that to the ritualistic religion freaks of this world. For them, God is some kind of half-witted alien entity into whose good books one can bribe oneself with puerile temporal offerings. They probably hope to lull the Man Upstairs into the same drone-like state of mindlessness that they work themselves into with their waving, chanting and head-nodding. God knows it has mesmerized ME into somnolence at many a church and temple event. ‘Sleeping Gods don’t bite’ seems to be the logic – so let’s all sing him a lullaby and give him some confectionary to chew on. Sugar improves OUR moods, so why not His?

No, I don’t know the mind of God, and I don’t know what turns Him on and what doesn’t. All I know is that I have this recurring vision that makes me squirm in mortification. It pops up on my mind’s screen every time I attend a church do, puja or, for that matter, any format of Upward-directed mass petition.

The vision is of a bearded Geneva psychiatrist, long in tooth in age and experience, responding to the call of a group of schizophrenic, bi-polarly disordered or otherwise fuse-blown inmates at his facility. This bunch has summoned him for any, all or a combination of the following reasons:

1. They want to tell him what a NICE doctor he is, because they feel that currying his favour will somehow get them out of the mess they’re in

(Do we really think that treating God like a snotty kid who will do his chores if we give Him a pat on the head is an option?)

2. They want him to pass on ‘Hi, how’re you, I’m just fine, sorry-for-pooping-in-your-soup-while-you-were-with-us’ messages to previous inmates who got discharged

(I think it’s logical to assume that the dead take no messages, forgive nobody, or do much of anything other than stay dead)

3. They want him to fix it so that the tummy/foot/tooth doesn’t ache so much anymore

(Can we agree on the premise that pain exists for a reason, and that we need to find that reason to ensure it doesn’t recur? If God would take our aches and pains away, we wouldn’t survive as a human race)

4. They want him to either discharge or lobotomize that punk down the hall who keeps stealing their rationed ciggies

(If He is God of all, what makes us assume that He will cook someone else’s goose just because we don’t like his/her looks? What if he/she made the same request about US?)

5. They want him to rearrange things so that they get more dessert in the lunch hall than any of the others

(Again – if He is God of all, what makes us assume that, on a planet with limited resources, He will hand us more than our fair share if it means taking them away from someone else?)

6. They want him to take them home – but not at the cost of all the benefits they’re enjoying in the nuthouse

(It’s the old conundrum that nobody’s found a satisfactory retort to – everyone wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die)

7. They want him to know that they know how he runs his practice and that they approve of his methods, but that they have certain suggestions for improvement

(Yeah, right. The day God needs the approval or self-serving suggestions of a terminally flawed race is the day when He’s not worth worshipping anymore)

To manipulate him into giving in to their demands, they reverently hand him bits of leftover food and knickknacks they have made from stuff they don’t want anyway. They also sing him some droning madhouse ditties that feature him as a caring father who will NEVER let his kiddies down, no matter how out of their gourds they are.

I envision this seasoned observer of human lunacy nodding solemnly, agreeing to everything, clapping warmly to their nuthouse renditions, thanking them for their worthless gifts and encouraging them to share more – because sharing their twisted ideas of reality is so THERAPEUTIC, and what else can they and he do anyway?

They’re never going to be cured of their delusions, and he can’t give them what they want because what they want doesn’t factor in the Big Picture – the more-or-less smooth running of a mammoth mental institution literally crawling with similar cases…

Can we picture ourselves dispassionately in such a light when we light that votive taper, plunk that piece of ‘prasad’ down in front of a man-made idol that represents nothing more than another created being? Can we really LISTEN to ourselves as we mumble the rosary, chant a mantra or go ‘Ooooooooom’?

What makes us think that Someone worthy of being called God can be manipulated, cajoled or challenged into doing what we want? Folks, it’s just us – us trying to change our destiny with a hocuspocus routine that some half-witted clergy has approved as The Real Thing!

What are we left with if we abandon our mad rituals, self-serving and short-sighted beseechings and pathetic bribes to the One who made and owns everything? Again, I find the most profound answer to this question in the Bible – anonymously tucked away in entire chapters dedicated to rituals and more rituals. In the entire book, these are among the few words I can wholeheartedly believe as being God’s own -

“Be still – and know that I Am God….”

Shootout At “I’m O.K. – You’re Not O.K.” Corral

My valued friend, I am complete
Don’t add to me, or take away
You, who sit in judgment’s seat
On behalf of the moral elite
And think you know a better way.

There’ve been a thousand instances
I’ve faced the Critic’s Crew
I’ve heard each kind of remonstrance
And faced each disapproving glance
Now show me something new…

Don’t ask me what I think of you
I’d only spoil your day
It’s sad, of course - your hot wind blew
When I was trying to stay cool
But hot wind finally blows away.

Hell is full of folks like you
Each one has cursed and died
Go on and curse - there’re blessings too
Maybe you should learn a few
Invest a bit on Heaven’s side……

Let’s thank God for each point of view
This world would be a bore
If we resolved our differences
And united in our nothingness
To agree for evermore…

The Tacky World Of Full-time Victims

There is a certain class of people who have jinxed all possibilities of a fruitful and satisfying love life. There is no hope for them in terms of full-fledged relationships – they lack the necessary equipment and are limited to bouncing from one futile rebound caper to another – and to a series of breakups and one-night stands.

They are the victims – the ones whose loves lives are little more than self-fulfilling prophesies of doom. At a subconscious level, they have judged themselves to be flawed. For whatever reason, they do not see themselves as anything worth relating to, falling in love with and cherishing.

It may be because their parents told them they are useless; it may be because they have chronic sexual performance anxiety; it may be because they are the ignored younger siblings of a sexpot sister or hunky brother; it may be because they simply have no life. Whatever the reason is, they do not see a love relationship as a desirable destination – the only thing that fascinates them is the dubious pleasure of a perilous journey down a thorn-raddled road.

Such as state of self is, of course, an untenable thing to allow to percolate into complete awareness. One likes to believe, after all, that one is basically better than everyone else, only misunderstood – a gem consistently mistaken to be an ugly piece of rock. We can’t have ourselves owning up to the fact that we are somehow at FAULT, now can we? After all, we have to live with ourselves even if nobody else wants to. We have to look in that mirror and see someone we can respect, don’t we?

No, we can’t. And even though we know for a fact (deep down there where there’s no escape from the truth) that our current outlook on life has rendered us mangled goods, we got to go through the motions of getting into a relationship, now don’t we? After all, all life’s a stage, we’re all actors on it and EVERYONE’S WATCHING TO SEE HOW WE PERFORM, right? Nobody has anything better to do, right?

Also, there’s this yammering little aspect down there below the belt that won’t shut up no matter HOW much we tell it that it’s no use, that it’s just gonna have to starve to death ‘cause Daddy/Mommy doesn’t have what it takes to provide. Yessir, it’s the good old human sex drive – and no, it won’t shut up. The sex drive is a brainless thing and doesn’t care about any conflicts between what you are, your self-perception and the way people actually react to you. It just says “GIMME” and sure enough, there you go… looking for a relationship you have already condemned to death even before it is born.

When a victim gets into a relationship, everything seems fine and dandy in the beginning. The unsuspecting partner often does sense something sinister squirming below the surface, but usually passes it off as a very understandable nervous reaction to his/her patented sex appeal (my dad used to tell me of the perfect business model – buy someone for what he’s worth and sell him for what he THINKS he’s worth, and you’ll ALWAYS make a profit.)

Two months down the line, both the victim and the victim’s victim have a situation. The victim has his/her true act onstage by then – the act of a self-perceived loser trying to justify yet another loss by putting the blame of the rapidly unraveling situation on the other. The victim’s victim is spending a large chunk off time fending of inexplicable arrows dispatched from inexplicable positions in true guerilla style. The victim’s victim has probably gone through a period of serious self-doubt by then – “Am I really such a bastard / bitch?”, “Were those really my intentions?”

More often than not, the victim’s victim has a better perception of himself/herself than the victim, and eventually tells the victim to take his/her pitiful martyr act and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. Bingo, alone again. “The prophecy has been fulfilled once more, Lawd – how could I ever doubt you? I will NEVER question your will for me again – and I know your will is that I spend my life miserable and alone.”

For such people, repeatedly generated abstinence from everything that makes life worth living, finally becomes not only a necessity, but a virtue of some kind. “Here I am on my cross, crucified for the sins of than sonofabitch / bitch who doesn’t know how to treat a woman / man right. This is my purpose in life. This is what I born for. Look upon me, all you sinners – see how you made the innocent, blameless suffer.”

I am reminded of a phenomenon that the media have observed here in India – that of professional refugees. India is a largish piece of real estate that is prone to all sorts of natural disasters. In fact, because political greed eats into a large chunk of funds allotted to technological safeguards, it is prone to man-made disasters as well. Fairly spectacular shit hits the fan every now and then – tsunamis, earthquakes, gas leaks, communal riots, you name it, we have it on our calendar this year. Of course, whatever Government happens to be top dog at these times announces that it is dispensing relief to the victims.

Well, certain reporters have noted the fact that the many familiar faces seem to turn up at each disaster site, just in time to lap up the Government goodies. These are professional refugees who keep track of such events and make sure they’re there to stand up and be counted.

What has that got to do with our relationship victims, you ask? Plenty. There’s a payoff for being a doomed love martyr – you get to wallow in loads of self-pity, can absolve yourself of many of the activities of daily living because you are ‘depressed’, and have a ready catchment of like-minded wet ends who will gladly sit down to wail with you that all men are bastards / all women are bitches.