Prashant's Solace

One night in my dream I came face to face with evil. It told me to think for myself, take decisions based on my understanding of the world. It told me to think critically, analyse objectively and trust my instincts even if they go against the ways of the world.  It talked to me about existential crisis, new recourses, breaking of fundamentals of living in order to create new realities. It talked about voyeuristic pursuit of self-actualization and the horrendousness of not knowing everything.  But thankfully, I woke up and I reaffirmed to myself…  One is born into. One cannot choose. I was born in a village, a community, a caste, a religion, a country. All around me were perfunctory motions of life. From before birth till after death, my life was to be enacted in a certain way. Everything was figured out by all the above combinations, unlike what evil suggested.  From morning till night, night after night, day after day, I come across happy and sad occasions. ...

The picture below is one of many disappearing stories. What is a story? The one which is told or the one which is written, the one which is sung or the one which is enacted. What about those which are neither told nor written, simply play out there and cease to exist? But one hot day... The water cans in this picture were provided to these labourers by my house. These are not people employed by us but construction workers on a road site. Meaning a government contractor brought them in my lane for work and left them there for good. It is the end of the day; you can see life and work partners are getting into the auto rickshaw, after a hard day's labour. Their kids are already lodged behind the seat in semi-dazed condition. The woman folk are getting in, well-aware their day's work is not yet over. They have to go back to their ramshackle existence, cook and feed all, service the elders and later maybe their husbands. But the cans. They had come running on being told by my passin...