Sisyphus’s Letter

Alright then, I walked away after taking a mouthful of scolding from my wife. Goats like me are hard to find. Wherever I go, all I get is abuse. This must be God’s will. He’s saying, “Hey fool, don’t open your mouth. Don’t open your mouth. Just shut up. You’ve got only a few days on this earth. Enjoy them, you madman.”

When does joy happen? When you can keep your mouth shut. The moment you open it, trouble begins. And when does supreme bliss arrive? When you know chidananda. That chidananda is hiding inside you. Come on, it’s actually you yourself. You understand it. You know it. And if you don’t know it, what’s the point?

So instead of speaking, you fool, write. Keep writing. Whether anyone reads it or not, you write. Misspellings don’t matter. You’re not letting anyone read it anyway. In truth, you’re talking only to yourself, in your own way. No one will stand there and hurl abuse at you. This is your satchidananda speaking to you. He is hidden inside your breath, eager to talk with you.

So first, you must make a few things clear. You came into this world alone, and you’ll leave it alone. You had no companion before, and you’ll have none after. In this life, your only friend is yourself, no one else. In truth, everyone is as alone as you are. Everyone is submerged in the deep abyss of their own sorrow.

The wife you keep blaming, she too is alone. She studied with many dreams, did well, topped her class, leapt into every competition. Marrying you, she left her home and came to another city, riding on the wings of countless dreams, trusting you. So many dreams, so many broken dreams, so much pain—do you even understand that? Her life ended in the kitchen and in raising a kid. Where did her own fulfillment ever happen? What did she get from life?

Maybe you achieved some of your dreams. All your life you wanted only to write, and today you do that, earning a little money alongside. You married, you had a kid, you built a household. But what did your wife get?

Still, don’t blame yourself without reason. If you stop working today, the carefully arranged garden will dry up before your eyes. It will crumble like a kid’s sandcastle on a beach, collapsing grain by grain. The rhythm of the world will not be disturbed in the slightest. No one will even hear the sound of it breaking.

You have to keep working, whether you want to or not. Yes, in a country like India, a man must go on working silently, swallowing abuse. Staying alive here, carrying the responsibility of two more lives, is no small matter. You will have to hear harsh words, and you must not break.

I know you want to throw everything away and leave. But no, the time hasn’t come. It may never come. Hearing harsh words at the office and at home, you’ll have to keep your mouth shut and keep working. This is your fate, and the fate of millions of men like you.

Your wife too will have to keep working against her will, after crushing her own dreams. If you were to exchange places, neither would your household survive on her salary, nor would anyone be able to swallow the meals you cook. The world—at least your world—would collapse.

So instead, speak to the person within you. Speak to the one who lives inside your mind. Even if no one else listens, he will. The peace you get from speaking to your mother, you will get the same peace from speaking to the person within. The only way to speak to that inner person is through writing. So you will keep writing. Even if people think you’re mad, you will keep sending yourself, regularly, a letter written by your own hand. 

Intellectuals

The unalloyed joy I get from reading Shibram’s writing is something I do not get from reading anything else. The gentleman never wanted to be a writer. “Pulling a pen is harder than pulling a rickshaw,” he wrote. He never called himself an intellectual; he called himself a laborer. These days, of course, everyone is an intellectual. Those who have no intellect are, rather, the biggest intellectuals.

This was about fifteen years ago. I was still unmarried then, more or less a free bird. I was traveling by train from Mumbai to Howrah, to our house in Konnagar. Mumbai had not yet become my home. My fellow passenger was a writer of school textbooks, physics, as far as I remember. In those days, there used to be an annual conference of the Publishers’ Guild in Kolkata, held at one of the city’s five-star hotels. I heard about the conference for the first time from this person. I have not kept track of whether these still happen. All kinds of writers were invited to that conference, from fiction writers to those who wrote physics. Without any pretension, my traveling companion said, “On my own merits, I will never be able to go to a five-star hotel. So I cannot ignore this invitation.”

At one such annual party, a well-known Tollywood celebrity was among the guests. As expected, the celebrity took the stage and, after speaking nonsense for a while, concluded with the words, “We intellectuals…” As the conference was being described, my companion looked at me, widened the eyes, and said, “Just imagine, brother, even that celebrity claims to be an intellectual! Where is the intellect? Do you see where we have landed?”

That day, I laughed a lot. It was because of the way the line was delivered. Whether a celebrity is an intellectual or not, I had no opinion then, and even today I do not have one in that sense. Or perhaps I do now, which is why I am writing this.

If you think about it, if Shibram can call himself a laborer, then who is an intellectual? And to what extent can celebrities, in a state of self-forgetfulness, call themselves intellectuals, or arrange that when a football star comes to Kolkata, they swarm around the star and deprive others in the stadium of even a glimpse. So much for intellect.

That is all I wanted to say.

The Mask

At some point in life, one simply has to calm down. The world will always be full of noise, chaos, shouting and squabbling. But you, my friend, need to learn to sit still for a while.

Nothing worthwhile ever comes out of being agitated. In fact, more often than not, it ruins whatever might have been. On the other hand, if you remain calm, the person in front of you might feel a little intimidated. People don’t quite know what to make of someone who stays silent, so they tread carefully around them. Try to remain calm in everything you do.

Don’t think you don't have to perform at home. A house can be a battlefield too. Every marriage has its daily squabbles. It is a relentless contest for territory and control. Don’t believe me? That’s fine. Perhaps you’re one of the fortunate few who’ve found a soulmate in every sense of the word.

But for people like us, the daily-wage labourers of life, the mask is nothing short of a survival tool. A mask at the office, a mask at home, even a mask when we go to bed.

But who can you take the mask off for? Listen, I’ll tell you.

If you wear the mask all the time, you’ll suffocate. You must take it off, but do so with awareness. First and foremost, know this. Your mother is dearer than heaven. Never wear a mask in front of your mother. While she is alive, you truly have nothing to fear. There’s no one else left in the world who will hear your tears the way she does.

Don’t go crying to your father. That poor man has nothing left to give you. No one ever gave him anything either. Yes, your mother, that remarkable woman, drained him completely. You just never realised it.

There are, of course, a few friends. The ones from childhood. Even if you push them away a hundred times, they won’t leave you. Or if they do, they’ll come back. Because you need them. And they too are suffering, just like you. The only reason they haven’t said anything is shame. But there’s no place for shame between friends.

And who else can you take the mask off for? The person dearest to your heart. The one you wouldn’t hesitate to die for. The one who makes life worth living. Never, ever wear a mask in front of your child.

Let your child never see your mask. Not now, not in old age, not even in your final moments. Wearing a mask before your own child is a sin. Because in the boundless ocean of domestic life, your child is the hidden pearl inside the hardened shell of your heart.

My Dear Ian

How are you? Please don’t be upset that it’s been so long since we last spoke. It’s not that I don’t think of you—I think of you often. But I’ve had nothing new to share, and that’s why I haven’t written. Please don’t be cross with me, dear friend.

I hope your health has improved since the last time we spoke. Truth be told, I don’t often write to check on you because I catch glimpses of you on Facebook. You share your old blog posts there, and I see how you continue to nurture your love for writing. Your mind remains vibrant and alive, even as your body has grown frail. Perhaps one day we’ll all come to such realizations, but for me to do so, I’d need to live a very long life. And honestly, I’m not sure I have such longevity in me.

I used to wonder, what’s the point of living too long? What meaning is there in clinging to life with a weakened body? That was, I now realize, the arrogance of youth speaking. Now that my body begins to slow, my mind grows calmer, my thoughts are fewer, my memory fades, and my senses—sight and hearing—diminish, I find myself loving life more deeply. I want to hold on to it, to cherish it. It feels as though I want to live another hundred years, even if all that remains of me is my breath and nothing else functions. Even then, I’d want to live.

And why, you ask? Can you tell, why? 

Your friend,

ghetufool

Nothing here

 Hey, I'm just trying to figure out if Office.com is more convenient than Apple Pages for keeping notes and accessing them later. Technically, I can access both from anywhere, but it feels better integrated to use Office on Windows and Pages on Apple devices. I'm not sold on LibreOffice yet—it would definitely take me a while to adjust to its somewhat rough interface. The way LibreOffice formats text, especially how it looks in emails (and even within LibreOffice Writer itself), puts me off. So, maybe I should stick with Office.com for most of my needs.  

This is a basic word processor, but it’s good enough for what I need. I’m very comfortable using Word; I’ve used it forever, both pirated and licensed. Now that I’m more financially stable, I believe in buying original software and avoiding piracy. I don’t use pirated stuff anymore, but with Word, a "lifetime" license really just means support for the product’s lifespan, not mine. It’ll reach end-of-life in about five years, which they don’t exactly spell out clearly. It’s a bit of a dishonest marketing tactic. 

I was thinking of jotting down my thoughts here. It doesn’t matter if anyone reads them—not even if I read them later. But I want to be fearless and keep writing as much as possible on topics as varied as astrophysics to fishing in a swamp full of little green floating plants. I don’t know the English name for them and won’t look it up; in Bengali, they’re called *kachuri pana*, or just *pana*. 

The truth is, I need someone to talk to. As I age, I find there are fewer people I can talk to, and I'm struggling to meet their expectations—or they, mine. This sometimes leads to breakdowns in communication, some of which can’t be repaired. The good thing about getting older, though, is that people feel less inclined toward drama. Teenagers, with all their energy (and time), can get dramatic about everything. But mature people don’t indulge in that; they just let things go when they get too heavy. Whatever lightens you, you keep shedding as you walk down the road. I’ve let go of a lot, and I’m constantly discarding old stuff from my closet. Things that once meant a lot barely get a second glance before I toss them out. Sometimes I donate them, but not out of any sense of charity—it’s just about freeing up space. Secretly, I even thank those who accept the items. I certainly don’t believe in “earning a spot in heaven” by giving things away. It’s more like I’m discarding what I don’t need. It’s the bird eating and then dropping its excess, something I’m relieved to have out of my life. 

And by the way, since I'm writing whatever comes to mind, with no particular audience in mind, you can be sure I’m going to get it grammar-checked and even edited by ChatGPT. It’s just me, ChatGPT (as editor), and you, my reader (if you’re out there). The only assurance I can give you is that I’m a real, breathing person who has no desire to become a cyborg. And if someone tries to push me into that, I’m not sure I’d resist. I have no control over where humanity is headed, nor am I particularly concerned with it. I’m practicing being here and now, breathing and typing. And ChatGPT is my perfect writing companion. 

Of Cricket and Other Sports

I have started playing cricket after some thirty years. I can't claim to be the best bloke around in cricket, far from it, but I am one of the best batters this team has got. I have even hit sixes and fours, and people recognize my prowess on the offside, and fielding arrangements are done accordingly.

This has surprised me to no end. Since nobody will read this, I can confess without the fear of being outed that I was never a good cricketer or athlete, or anything. In every sphere of life, I have been average or even subpar. But the show must continue, and it has continued so far.

When I started playing here, I was fairly certain that I would be exposed. My bluster will have to be eaten humbly as my bat won’t even come within an inch of the approaching ball. Tail-enders have a special place in batting, and someone like me, who can't bowl, bat, or even field, has a special significance during team selection. When I was a kid, I was given to the team that was theoretically stronger than the other. I would have created the balance. Never mind, this is the story I love to narrate to people for some amusement. Can't say if such self-deprecating humor is actually tumors, but I was very convincing while narrating this favorite lie.

But not when I could hit a six and curse my destiny for getting out the next ball. As you can understand, dear reader (that’s me), the first one was an accident, and the second the normal course. I’d flip the sequence, of course, and leave the field shaking my head in disbelief. Someone give me the Oscar, please!

Anyway, seeing me playing like this has surprised myself to no end, and I have been thinking if all these are actually how we train our mind? When a batsman cannot connect his bat with the ball, is it because he is athletically slow, or is it because his mind is racing fast to have swung the bat without observing the ball? Now that I have matured and my mind is relatively calmer, I could follow the ball properly, and my hand follows my eyes. Of course, I cannot play all shots, but if I am getting out these days, it is an accident, and not because I can’t play.

Therefore, an easy conclusion for me is that our mind holds the key to everything. How we play cricket, to how we score results as students. I have a kid growing up very fast. She is connecting with the world around her, she’s spreading her roots. As a father, my biggest lesson to her should be how to get mastery over the mind. Talent and all are not really something one should bother about. Every talented person is actually a master of a certain aspect of his or her mind.

That’s what I realized in my forties.

তোমায় ভালোবেসে

 

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কিছুই করা গেলো না আর, বাংলা, তোমায় ভালোবেসে।

ঘেটুফুল 

১৩ ফেব্রুয়ারি ২০২৩