An Anthology of Pain

What is pain ?

The online dictionary defines it as "An unpleasant sensation occurring in varying degrees of severity as a consequence of injury, disease, or emotional disorder". However, I am sure this definition is not exhaustive, for several times you feel the pain despite not being afflicted by injury, disease or emotional disorder.

Probably, its easier to define it relative to pleasure. We do need to be careful here, though, because absence of pleasure does not automatically mean presence of pain. There is an intermediate stage of tranquility too, squeaky white in color, when you feel neither too elated nor dejected.


However, the question we set out to answer was pain, its identity, its genesis and if possible, a cure.

We may start with a working definition of pain as the uncomfortable emotional response to external and/or internal stimuli. The key is emotion level response because we have seen people not feeling pain when their physical condition would require them to, simply because their emotion level response dictated something else. How else would we explain people dying for the other person, sacrificng their pleasures, comfort and even lives for others. By extension, we may say that you feel pain when you want to and in that sense, pain becomes kind of self inflicted.

That's what Victor Frankl states in his, "Man's Search for Meaning". That's what a lot of writers and wise men state that in any given condition, a man is free to choose his response to his circumstances. This is important because this is our only hope too. Whoever thought he could always control his circumstances was probably hallucinating, or God Himself.

However, this doesn't cover all that is to pain. Another significant characteristic of pain is that it is transient. You may feel extreme despair at having been away from your loved one for too long but the very next moment, you may feel the warmth of her touch when you will ever meet her. The key probably is the hope for resolution in future, but even hope is relative. One person's hope may be another's despair. The focal point however, is hope because survival instinct of humans is such that as long as there is some hope, we pretty much endure all that the circumstances throw at us.

Yet another intriguing characteristic of pain is that expression, in some ways, soothes it. The circumstances may not have changed but just the fact that you have been somehow able to express it, whittles away at least some of the intensity. The mode of expression may vary widely, at times you may confide in a confidante, at times you may converse with your God or at times, it may come out as a couplet. That probably is why the best poetry comes out of a sad heart. It actually is expressed very beautifully in the following verse:

"Viyogi hoga pahla kavi, aah se upjaa hoga gaan,
nikal kar aankhon se chupchaap, bahi hogi kavita anjaan"

(The first poet would have been one, separated from his lover and his silent tears would have formed the first verse)

Pain is, as long as life is. You can't decide your situation but you can decide your response which means you are free to decide how much pain you have to feel. Also, expression is the primary means of taking the pain out of pain.

As a final word, therefore, make sure you either have some very good friends or you are a poet.

Thanksgiving and Papaji Kanpur Wale.!!!

Circa 1987: One cold morning in Lakhimpur, the sleepy little town in UP, India.

Yours truly was a bleary eyed, grade 6 kid who had to get up, out of the coziness of a warm bed to sit on chair and solve some algebra problems. If your mom was a teacher, you'd know that life as a kid is not always easy.

The doorbell rang, it was the newspaper guy. I ran to pick it up but what caught my attention was a funny little pink colored pamphlet, with broad headlines, "Papaji Kanpur Wale ki Loot Maar Saree Sale" (loosely translated as, "The big brother from Kanpur organizes a grand sale for sarees").

Circa 2005: Night of Nov 24, Thanksgiving eve. Santa Clara. Time: 10.55 pm

Three friends bent over a laptop screen finding out where the best deals were and where do you get a laptop at throwaway prices. Two of them sifting through a 7 inches thick pile of newspaper pamphlets advertizing the deals. Some offer 40%-70% off and some offer digital cameras for $10.

Just then, another chum joins in. He immediately pounces on the laptop and opens his mail account. No body objects for he has just received an excel spreadhseet which lists all the deals(and they were some 2000 of them, gathered from newspaper cuttings). All of us watch intently. It indeed is a spreadsheet with deals organized by stores. We perform all sorts of MS Excel jugglery to find the best deals and zero in on a couple of stores we might want to attack, even as I wonder how much effort would it have taken to build the list.

The morning after is a mad scramble. After 10 minutes of incessant shouting, buddies manage to wake me up and all of us jump in a car to raid the store we decided a night before. We come to the store and we are heartbroken, the store is not yet opened and the queue outside is no less than a good 500 meters and I am not exaggerating.

In the end, we do manage to get some good deals, though, I am sure several others got better than us. But what existed was a festive spirit, a kind of mild competition to grab the deal before the other guy and a sense of triumph when you do manage to buy something cheaper.

Two days later, the spirit is gone but the feeling lingers on. When sanity returns, you understand that there is no difference between Papaji Kanpur Wale and Thanksgiving. While Papaji narrates his story of how he suffered severe export losses and how he has to dump everything at dirt cheap prices and how the city is lucky to host him and how this sale will only last 2 days (which invariably gets extended to 10 days but never in instalments of more than 2 days), with thanksgiving, its much more organized. Imagine all cities and towns of India hosting Papaji Kanpur Wale on a single day and the government declaring a holiday that day to enable people to raid him. That would be Indian Thanksgiving.

And then the people. I always thought that only middle class women would be interested in Papaji Kanpur Wale, but that can be explained by the fact that Papaji only sells sarees. If Papaji diversifies into selling DVD players, TVs, Camcorders, SD Memory cards, Laptops etc., I am sure enthusiasm level in India too would transcend sex and age boundaries.

In the end, there is no difference. People are the same be it in Sitapur or in San Jose. Vendors are the same, be it Papaji Kanpur Wale or Walmart (and I know it sounds weird).

Sky is blue, wherever you look at it from and blood is indeed red, wheresoever it flows. Feelings, spirit, everyday concerns, daily struggles, dreams and aspirations have a universal color and vibration. You find cadence and resonance everywhere.

Thanksgiving shopping for your lady love ain't easy..!!!

I have no intention to counter Freud when he says that the toughest thing in this world is to understand women. However, I want to contend that shopping for dresses for your girlfriend is no less. All the women in various stores in Gilroy, the huge shopping complex in California, who I pakaoed endlessly to help me get the right fit are witnesses.

First of all, you have to contend with the fact that she is not there with you when you are shopping and every time you walk into a ladies section, at least some people do get swayed by how closely you resemble Daku Malkhan Singh and wonder what are you upto in a ladies section. I know, most of them would be saying, "This bugger, he looks like no sane girl would even want to be caught dead with him, what is he doing with girls' dresses all around. I am sure he is a transvestite, didn't you see the weird grin on his face".

Then comes the fit hurdle. I know I need to get a trousers with waist size 28. Now, how on earth am I supposed to know which American size means waist 28, esp if I have never bought women's clothing in the land of milk and honey. The resourceful bugger that I am, I walk upto the nearest lady and ask her to help me out with locating what size means waist 28. She was a well meaning lady, middle aged sweet auntie. She tried hard to understand what my problem was and I tried hard to understand what was so complicated about it. Ultimately, she summoned her teenaged daughter and asked her if she would know whether waist 28 meant size 0, 1, 3, 5, 6, 7 or 8. The daughter was a sweet kid and as usual, sweet kids are nice to talk, they may even solve your profound, existential problems but this one was a bit too concrete. She too, could only laugh at my predicament.

I then approcahed a pretty, young, smart woman who I thought would be too much into buying trousers and would know. She was a flat, "No clue" and I was like, "What the hell do you do in such stores then?"

Undaunted, I went to the shopfloor assistant. She was like, "Probably 6 or 8 or....ummmmmm...". I scratched my head, thanked her and went out to have a smoke.

But then, men in love die hard. I came back again. This time, I caught another salesgirl. She referred me to the woman near the trial rooms who supposedly had a conversion chart. I went and saw the chart, ok, its size 8. Cool. Triumphant.

Size 8 didn't have anything quite upto my high standards in the Lee showroom. So I tried another.

Again those, "I know he is a cross-dresser" and "Ahh, here comes the newest rapist cum serial killer" looks which I ostensibly ignored and walked unfazed through the ladies section. Somehow, I wasn't convinced by the size 8 theory and there was a sales guy around. I told him I needed a lady's pants which would fit this waist size. He came up with a gem of a respone.

"Hmmmm.....is it for a boy or a girl?".

I gave up, "Can you get me a measuring tape"

"Yeah but 28 is different for boys and girls"

"I know, but the measuring tape is the same, right. I'll take a size 5, 6, and 7 and see which one would fit waist 28."

Somehow, he understood. In two minutes, he came back with a big grin, "We don't have a tape, but I enquired with the store manager and she says it should be size 1"

My jaw dropped. Size 8 and size 1, how can both of them correspond to waist 28?

But then, in the true Americans-are-great-sales-men tradition, he got a jeans whose waist was 28, matched seam to seam with the pants I was holding and convinced me that the correct size was 1. I quickly unlearnt all that I had learnt in the Lee store.

Then came a pretty sales girl asking if she could help me. I caught her and narrated my tale of how I was hopelessly in love with a girl back home in India and how I hopelessly wanted to buy her a pair of trousers and how I just knew the waist size. She smiled, one of the sweetest smiles you'd ever see.

"Mine is 25 and I wear size 0, so 28 should be 3".

My jaw dropped again. "Munde munde matirbhinna", "Many heads, many opinions", as they say in Sanskrit.

But she was a charming girl. So I again told her how she was making my life difficult by once again confusing me. From 8 to 1 to now 3. I had been convinced of 8, had seen it in the chart; re-oriented and got convinced of 1, had seen it match the waist of jeans for 28 waist size and now 3!!!

I even told her that she ought to know as some of her friends would definitely be waist 28 but she thought I was flirting with her and again gave me her sweetest smile. However, there was some ferver in her insistence that 3 was the right size. In the meantime, her male colleague even went to a lady customer who, he thought had a waist size of 28 and asked her about her size. He came back saying that probably 3 was the right one.

In part due to a looming sense of a give-up, in part due to the salesgirl's sweet smile and in part due to effort of the sales guy, I decided that 3 was the right size and went ahead and got some of them.

Now I pray to the Lord Almighty that 3 was indeed, the correct size. As it is, with my aesthtically impaired tastes in dresses, I am not too well poised to be a great gifter and now, if I don't even get the fit right, I wonder for how long will the mother of my prospective children continue playing the gracious recepient of gifts which would only serve to increase junk in her room.

God, save me and Jaan, please bear with me.

I love you.

Mr. Amarjeet Singh

Today morning I saw Mr. Amarjeet Singh standing by a truck half loaded (or unloaded, depending on which side of the clichéd table are you) with household stuff. No, he is not a new entrant to this society, I still remember the heated exchange of words some ten months back that followed his protests to the noise coming from my house – we were just having an all singles drink and curse party at home.

He sounded reasonable then, a typical family man, who has the courage to confront a group of four drunk guys at midnight but doesn't want to create too much of a consternation. He could easily have replaced the courageous but pragmatic heroine’s father in a Bollywood potboiler – he knows what’s wrong and he protests too – but makes sure he doesn’t ruffle too many feathers.

Actually Mr. Amarjeet Singh is a fictitious name; I don’t know his real name. I used this one just because was too embarrassed at the beginning to admit that I didn’t know the name of my immediate neighbor even after one year of living next door. Alice, any one?

Let’s persist with the fictional name. It doesn’t matter anyway. More so for I am sure even he doesn’t know my name. We are square.

I saw him supervising the loading truck in the morning while I was dressed in my last nights vest, lazily going through the ritual of brushing my teeth in the balcony. Good habits, they pain at times.

Two hours later, I got down the staircase, with my laptop hanging from my shoulder. At times I feel hanging is the best option. You exercise no choice, you make no decisions, and you go through no pain. Or is just hanging a big pain in itself. Laptop doesn’t speak, so he can never confide.

Just as the flight of stairs ended, I was face to face with a beaming Mr. Amarjeet Singh. His eyes caught mine – we shared that slightly uncomfortable moment of no-action. As if deciding whether to smile, whether to say hello. Ahh, now that’s a pain of exercising choices, at times saying hello becomes a big decision problem.

But I did the hanging job this time. Mr. Amarjeet Singh decided. He greeted me with a "Hi", much more enthusiastic than what I had expected. The decision was taken. I too shook hands.

“You are leaving”, I said.

“Yes, moving to Chandigarh”.

“Took up a new job there ??”, I continued; he nodded.

“Where did you work”.

“Cadbury’s”

“And where have you shifted ?”, to which he mentioned a company which I forgot as soon as I heard of.

I shook hands “Good luck”. His warmth was unfailing. The gleaming eyes and the beaming smile. I proceeded to my car.

All the way to the office, I was thinking of Mr. Amarjeet Singh. He was a warm man, would have been a nice man to know. And I missed out. He is leaving today, would have been a great friend. Its now that I remember his expectant eyes when our eyes had met more than a couple of times on the same staircase, or in the same locality and I had chosen to look through. That was his warmth and I too consider myself to be no less warm. But I was cold.

It’s easy to blame the work stress, the mad scramble, the unfavourable celestial oritentation, tsunami or earthquake or the hills and rivers – but something in me is dying.

Sure, I am decaying. Antiseptic, anyone?

Alcoholic's Menopause

Well, the term may not be the best - but it does convey the idea. Called it menopause - because it signifies a change - a sudden change of heart in which a person completely voluntarily loses all interest in bachhus' syrup. Its not exactly too gradual and it is unmistakable.

Lets not get into how it starts - simply because if you've had more than a couple of drinks in your life time more than a couple of times - you won't believe that its coming. The initial decrease in your propensity to lunge for alcohol will be dismissed outright. You'd have far too much faith in the inherent charm of ethanol and its resonating capacity with your body vibes.

And then you'll be in for a shock. After the initial phase of,"Oh...I'll drink tomorrow", you'll move to the phase of "I won't drink today" and then you'll be outright opposed to the idea of a date with the bottle.

Sill, you are not unduly alarmed. At times you do wonder if you really are the same guy who used to be nominated in the annual awards at your college for drink-and-throw-up exploits. Those were the days when you'd drink till 7 in the morning and be completely alert in the class at 8 and you'd even manage to ask seemingly intelligent questions regarding the case under discussion and even articulate your analysis (allow me the luxury to use high sounding words). This amazement, however, doesn't set off an alarm and you are quite chilled out.

Until, the unthinkable happens. You, amongst the biggest bootleggers wherever you've been, life of all the drunk parties ever since you jumped in the fray - be it the sophisticated corporate cocktail parties or extremely noisy-Friday evening-all bachelors-Old Monk-Haldiram Bhujia parties, manage to get sick on a couple of Margaritas !!! That's when you get alarmed but by then its too late.

After all, even viagra doesn't turn the clock back on menopause.

101 Ways to live through corporate presentations

1. Try to take notes – though no matter how hard you try, you’ll be lost in no more than 10 mins.
2. Finish as many caffeine cups as you can.
3. Move your toe inside your shoe as a form of some oriental exercise to improve blood circulation, concentration and blah blah.
4. Look at the executive you hate from across the room and imagine how you’d want his stomach to be fried.
5. Look at the pretty lady sitting a couple of seats from you and admire her anatomy while still pretending absolute involvement in the proceedings of the house.
6. Look at the ponytail of the sales guy from Antarctica and wonder how long will it take you to grow it and whether you’d resemble a simian or a human.
7. Mumble your favorite swear word in your native language.
8. Fantasize about the exquisite dinner of daal-chawal that you’ll have to cook once you reach home and the pots and pans you’ll have to wash before that.
9. Feel smug while looking at the obscenely overgrown pot belly of that sales guy from God-knows-where.
10. Anticipate when your boss is going to look at you and look like most absorbed at those precise moments.
11. Compose and post your newest entry on blogspot.
12. Plan for the weekend that’ll start as soon as the current god-forsaken exchange of ideas finishes.
13. Savour the really good speakers that take the stage intermittently.
14. Meet, look and sound excited and indulge in small talk with the guy sitting next to you – though you don’t know if he sells in Timbuktoo or Chinchpokli.
15. Curse yourself for starting this post with the promise of 101 ways while your ideas seem to get exhausted at 15 (if you do count this one).

Well, that's pretty much what I am able to gather right now. May God throw me into more and more presentations and may I keep finding more and more creative ways to live through them.

Amen,

Lallan.