Me:’Miyalaraam, aaj saare Wholesalers ke target poore karwane hain…ok’
Miyalaraam (my top salesman at Kishangarh):’Ji sir’
Me:’Chalo, main Wholesalers ke naam leta hun…tum bolo target hoga ke nai…’
Miyalaraam:’Ji sir’
Me:’Oswal’
Miyalaraam:’hoga sir’
Me:’Shiv Shankar’
Miyalaraam:’hoga sir’
Me:’Apsara’
Miyalaraam:’hoga sir’
Me:’Nirmala’
Miyalaraam:’nai hoga sir’
Me:’Kyun’
Miyalaraam:’sir usse kisi ne goli maar di’
Me: (oh cmon…you really expected something here)
Ohk…so there are moments in life which leave you speechless…and then there are moments when you don’t know till 5 mins later that a moment 5 minutes back had rendered you speechless…because your mind had gone blank and it couldn’t take notice of your speechlessness! This was neither one of them…but this whole moment thingy sounded really cool so I put it there…
Anyways…coming back to the point…HOW THE HELL WILL I MEET MY TARGETS NOW…oops…missed the point again…
No really…coming back to the point…WHAT IN BLOODY HELL DID HE JUST SAY! Seriously, every now and then you settle into ‘Normal’ mode…where life starts following a pattern…a routine…and then just like the kid who will start crying the moment he see’s that Mom’s not paying any attention to it…arbit random shit starts happening. Here is the scene…this wholesaler…the biggest one in Kishangarh…is heading back home after work and carrying the day’s cash with him when 2 guys pull up on a bike…shoot him…he Is shot in the ribs but he makes sure he turns into the nearest sweet shop and deposits the cash there…and the guys run off…brilliant.
All day that day, this incident was the talk of the town. Any shop I went to..no one wanted to talk of Lux or Breeze…it was all Lachchu bhai (the wholesaler) and how bad a shape kishangarh was in. But getting airtime equal to the famous Lachchu bhai’s famous story…was another incident…of an unknown girl. Apparently, 2 days before the shooting incident, 2 guys on a bike had stopped a girl on the busiest road in Kishangarh…at 2 in the afternoon…held her hand…kissed her .. and driven away!
Now, what I found really interesting, was the way everyone in town described these 2 incidents. Each and every one of the n conversations I had that day ended with this line – ‘Batao sahib…kya halat hai kishangarh ki…sarre aam ladkiyon ko pappi de jaate hain…logon ko goli maar jaate hain’
When people said it this way…it just didn’t seem right to me…normally people say two things of comparable intensity/severity together…you know…it’s fine if someone says that 10 ppl died here and 14 died there…but no one says 10 people died here and even my foot is hurting…similarly…these two incident were not of comparable intensity by a long shot…but still everyone reported them together…in one breath…as if they happened simultaneously. Also, the kissing incident had happened 2 days back…why didn’t anyone feel the need to talk about it then!
The normal course of thought would be that these people are obviously worried about the state of crime in their town and it wasn’t until 2 incidents happened simultaneously that they realised how grave the situation was…and so they are reporting them now…together. Well, that is logical…but I don’t think it was the fear of crime…the fear of being hurt…or the fear of dying that I saw in many people who spoke the most passionately about this incident. No…I think it was the fear of not knowing when and how the crime..the hurt…the death will hit them. It was the ugly reminder that randomness had sent them to shake them out of their cosy homes made with patterned walls . I don’t think they knew it consciously…but they had just witnessed the thread called arbitrariness that binds life and death…through 2 explicit examples…one of life and one of death…
But does that mean we’d be better off if we knew when death will hit us??
I don’t know…there are people who know they will die in a month and some of them live their life in those 30 days while the others sulk it away. But what’s common to both reactions is the undercurrent of helplessness. Both know that they are helpless against what we call ‘fate’. Now the notion of fate has a n inherent self-annihilating paradox…the paradox is that the notion of ‘fate’ lives on an inherent belief in a pre-decided end to a particular chain of events..thus implying that there is a pattern…a method to the madness…but if there is a method…then I believe someone would’ve found it in the gazzilion years that human beings have existed…thereby eliminating the need for the mysterious notion of fate itself!!
But then again we, the human race, are extremely skilled at taking the easy route…so we go ahead and introduce another notion…that of a GOD…and using him/her (has that been settled yet?) give credence to the notion of fate…we say…ofcourse there is a pattern…and ofcourse we teeny tiny humans haven’t been able to/ never will be able to figure it out…because STRANGE ARE THE WAYS OF GOD…’wah re upar wale…teri maya koi nai samajh paya’….
What’s the result…we basically support a notion (of fate) that itself contradicts the premise that forms its very foundation, by inventing another notion (of God) that has no reason to exist except to keep a hundred other notions from being shattered…amazing!!
So are we doomed to a life of despair…when anything can hit us anytime…and we can’t even believe that there is someone up there who will serve justice…who is controlling all the variables…even if we can’t understand his modus operandi!!
The reactions that the people of Kishangarh had to this event were equally educative for me. There were people saying that now all shops will close down by 8pm…that they will ask for more police presence…that they will not send their women out alone….
Basically…all I could hear was…’we have seen 2 more forms of randomness and now we shall be prepared if randomness decides to repeat itself’…well hello…that is randomness’s core competence…it doesn’t fuckin repeat itself!!! ( The reaction reminded me of the Indian governments reaction to terrorist attacks…ohh they came from the sea…secure the ports now…they came by air…secure the airports now…seems like the government is saving the cost of hiring consultants who will tell them all the flaws at one go…whats the hurry…the terrorists are doing it anyway…and since they take some time…the costs get spread out!!)
Well…it didn’t fill me with despair…infact…I remember being quite happy that day…not that I wasn’t worried about the guy who got shot…but for me the 2 incidents reminded me that some unexpected good thing might be on its way…after all…randomness is extremely fair…the problem is that when it brings hurt people curse it…but when it bring happiness they feel that it had to happen and randomness gets no credit! Well I was happy…because in the fair world of randomness…the probability of a good thing and a bad thing happening is exactly the same!!
Ohh btw…the guy went into coma…came back out of it in 2 days…is absolutely fine now…and the 2 gunmen walked into the police station 4 days later and surrendered…No one know why they did so…(evil grin)
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