THE UNTIMELY FLIGHT

THE UNTIMELY FLIGHT

By Joshua Cherian Varughese

The flight I was to take on the 25^th July 2012 was scheduled to depart at 00:15 but it took me by surprise when it came more than ten hours earlier.  Being from a low context culture flights, trains or buses getting late was never a novelty for me but flights coming early was certainly surprising. More surprisingly, I did not miss the flight!! 

The flight reached at 1:10pm on the 24^th July 2012.

But there were discrepancies .The flight was supposed to take me from Trivandrum to Singapore took me only ten feet away from where I was at 1:09 pm 59 seconds. The flight was to take about 4 and half hours but it took just 2-3 seconds. The flight I booked with my hard earned money was supposed to take me to the education that I had dreamed of for years; but this flight that I never booked nor ever wanted to take gave me instant and exciting education regarding some things I could never dream of learning otherwise -  you know what I learned? I learned to thank God and secondly, I learned to respect my A-S-S and realized it could be a life saver occasionally.

Getting less mystical and figurative about the flight that came like a juggernaut - It was while I was just about to pass a traffic light on my Honda Activa that it turned red and I braked like a good citizen. Two to three seconds later I heard a bang from behind and before I could think of anything at all I was “FLYING”. It lasted for only two to three seconds but I saw and thought a lot of things – I saw that my legs were stretched forward like those long jumpers in Olympics, I saw people running towards me, I saw a horde of cars and bikes in the opposite lane glaring at me with eager eyes and a “slurping” tongues to run me over in the next few fractions of a seconds. Well, that must be a lot to see in those three seconds but that was not all. I thought while flying, “The vehicle (which by no way could be a light vehicle) must have hit my scooter at about 60-70kmph. If it had not braked completely before I landed I would make squash under its tyres in the next second. Should I wait for another hit that would take me to eternity?” As soon as I landed(thankfully I landed on my ass and helmet was intact), I gathered all strength that had ever been stored in my worn-away-athlete body and turned back as if to face the “bull” that attacked me from behind. Standing there was a bolero pick up, it wasn’t raging towards me.

People thronged around to ask me if I was okay. Someone asked me if I wanted to go to a hospital but I said that I felt okay except for the numerous minor bloody wounds on various parts of my body. I stretched my legs, hands and neck to see if I had pain but I was okay except for a shooting pain in my ass coz it had hit tarred road at around 40kmph(kinetic energy transferred leaving behind some to account for the crumpled scooter and the amount scooter moved and also considering my weight being smaller than that of the bolero..zyada techy ho gaya!!) and I knew the docs could not possibly help. Someone even said, “ The way you were falling, I thought you would die”. From the midst of the people came a “cinema style”-ish traffic police and asked to a Me who was bruised all over, “Abe traffic light pe kyun ruka. Chale jate”(Why did you stop at the traffic light? You should have kept on going”). And then he took his walkie talky and reported to the head quarters “ Two vehicles collided near Keltron both had violated traffic lights”. I smiled at him as I said to myself “Wow!! I’ve got only my God given ASS to thank for me surviving the untimely flight”.

Post script: Well, I did take my second flight later the next day - Ten hours later, though I had to pack in two hours instead of ten (thanks to my shove pack training at National Institute of Technology JAMSHEDPUR).

“And to GOD the Lord belong escapes from death”(Ps 68:20)

Towing Tales

TOWING TALES

By Joshua Cherian Varughese

One day and two nights..it proved to me yet again that there are more challenges in life left to face, there are more mountains to cover and more problems to overthrow but still our hands are never too tired, our legs never too sore and our eyes never too heavy when it comes to defeating a challenge that towers up so high and boorishly ordering us to quit..

Smell of petrol, the sound of the engine sputtering and dying out filled the air that our world hardly seemed to consist of anything else. It was a journey that started as a trip to a friend’s marriage 80kms away and had eight people,  our car’s engine fouled early during the journey when it stopped in the middle of nowhere with almost no help for us to lean on to. This never bothered me then because I knew I had eight strong pair of hands not those of fragile chicken-headed body builders, but that of workers who out of their need had made beating metal their way of life (They were hardened men who saw realities of life everyday and above all one of them(representing all) had once said to me “sir, hum aapke saath hain..aap jo bhi chiz keliye tayar ho jate ho, aap ko koi nahi rokh sakta”. I knew these exaggerated words will not stand with me in all times but I certainly knew they were with me on this). Our manipulations and “jugad” on the fouling engine got us to our destination with great difficulty but then the engine ceased, it just would not start. The night went by as thousands of mosquitoes from all corners of Hodal (a place in Haryana which seemed to be the supply house of mosquitoes to the ends of the world) feasted on our foreign blood while we were left to “sleep” in a road side shop and in the car.

The mechanic hunt started early in the morning and when we found one, he agreed to complete the work till evening the same day. The day passed fast while three of us slept on the dirty workshop couch and the others left by bus back to gurgaon. One day passed and so did half of its night; it was 1 o clock in the night when the mechanic said he could do nothing to make the engine right even after he consulted all experts in the town. Left on the road to the mercy of passing vehicles to tow us to some place near to home, we finally found a drunk but kind hearted old man who bothered enough to tow us to Faridabad. Although good enough at heart, he was a pest at towing (atleast when he was drunk) when he towed our vehicle at 80kmph cutting in between speeding trucks on Delhi Agra national highway. Our car followed faithfully like a string caught on the leg of a mad bull controlled only by me steering it off raging truckers in the pelting rain (no wipers too, remember!!). Two o clock and three o clock melted away in fright as well as exhilaration..two hours of leaning on to the car steering straining my eyes on to the only one working taillight of an Indica(our car battery completely dead..no lights..hardly any brakes: thanks to the modern power brakes which works only when the engine runs). Trying hard not to crash in a towed vehicle at the mercy of a drunk driver will surely add no value to my curriculum vitae..but it surely lets me realize that there are still challenges coming on and if I just don’t give up and go home, I can still overthrow them. I still can do it not because I have skills, but because there are kind hearted people who are ready to help, there still is a fire that burns inside me that wants to overcome, there still are friends who no matter what will back me up. So, no matter what, where or when.. our hands are never too tired, our legs never too sore and our eyes never too heavy when it comes to defeating a challenge that towers up so high and boorishly ordering us to quit.

EASILY ENTANGLED..

- Joshua Cherian Varughese

H

e walked days at a stretch; His irregular steps tended to trip him over, his hair was ruffled and unkempt like a tramp, his lips hung down uncovering his dry mouth, his drooping eyes gazed hopefully somewhere into the future looking for something that he seemed to have seen. He had seen something so gripping in the past that his well to do life filled with fun, frolic and talents moved into the background and got blurred; His thought world was a swamp with no solid ground worth a firm foothold. .his identity bobbed up and down like pieces of ice melting in water.

It was not a sight of horror that he had seen for his face was calm nor was it a sight of goodness for he lacked any in him..It was hope that he saw.. It was a sight of such great hope that lifts one to the heights no human has felt but that hope which lasts but for a moment. What is hope if it does not last? Hope by definition is something that lasts but the hope which came to him lasted only for a moment.  And yet it was so real that when it vanished he dropped from those heights to these lows. 

It is not once that he had thought it will not appear to him again, it is not once that it occurred to him that he should live in the present like everybody else, it is not once that he tried and it not once that he fell back into this depressing chasm of a “hope” of seeing that hope again. One fine day he would decide, “No more of this!!” and he would start living a normal life like anyone else. But how can man not hope when he has seen the heights of it? He would feel the “hope to hoping like he hoped” crawling irresistibly up his legs slowly winding itself on him like a python which cannot be stopped. The days that followed would be least described by the word “pain”. Repeated “normalcy” and “abnormalcy” left what is left of that fine young man to wonder:

“O hope, why didst thou choose me?

Did I ask of thee, Did I ask even a morsel?

Did my soul seek its self  or did I rob the poor?

What great sin did my self commit, O my soul?

Or what great charity did I do for your benevolence?

I just sought to live a life, with nothing but a smile

But thou hast made me hope to the pinnacle

That when thou art not, I search..I search endlessly”

CHERISHED & NOURISHING FAILURES

By Joshua Cherian Varughese

S

and mixed with sweat stuck to most of his visible body as if a woman in her lust, His veins came out like stretched bows ready to shoot the arrow as he looked at the pole with a grimace on his face. There was no confidence in his teary eyes but there was that undefeatable attitude in his eyes which shouted  “I’m gonna do this damn thing!!”. He bent down as if to break into a sprint. Then he let the backward leg slip a little bit before his forward leg took his weight. The next step was sure and so was the next and the one after that. He was in full speed by then, his head slightly bowed but his teary eyes were still on the pole that he had to cross. He knew he had never even tried it before but he just had to do it for whatever reason he did not know. His friends had advised him to take a diagonal run up and try a scissor cut which everyone else was doing. But he somehow could not digest that again for whatsoever reason he did not know. He ran head on to the pole like a ram meeting its rival in a fight. The pole was near, he knew this jump was his last chance. He had cleared many heights earlier but had missed the last two which were attributed to the awkward style in high jumping against the tried and tested methods. He knew he needed to clear this height to get at least the third place..the pole came nearer. It was a split second away now. He took a jump at least a foot away from the usual jumpers and went head first to the pole, his head crossed, belly crossed but the legs tripped on the pole and it went down with a clamor and echoed in the ground.

His face was in the sand, sweat dripped down his sand filled brows. He lifted his head in utter disappointment of not doing well in his first attempt at athletics. The pole was lying dead as it is in the sand but to his amazement people were clapping.  He could hear people occasionally saying “He goes like superman”. He went down to the place where the run up starts and saw his name being cut from the list of jumpers who’d proceed to fight for positions.  The school vice principal was standing there and he had a proud look on his face. He patted MY back and said “Well done”. I did not understand why he would appreciate a loser nor did I know why anyone was clapping even when the pole fell. I did not know that when people would see me on the way they would whisper to each other saying, “this is the guy who high jumps like superman”. Little did I know what lesson I would learn that day, that day made an impact so deep that it etched a nourishing wound in my heart for good. That day taught me to lose and to lose in style; to put the thousand and first effort and then lose with flying colours. That day taught me to lose and lose and lose but never be defeated. That day taught me to say “never” to giving up.

That day was my first day on training which taught me to push hard and harder until my perception of my limit extends further and further. The hot afternoons that I roamed in the sun, the kilometers that I walked without ever complaining, the days I went without quality food, amenities  are attributed to that training which started on that day, that which continued into several school & college, state & national athletic meets covering a span of almost ten years in my life. That overshoot which budded on my life that day led to those valuable days surrounded by smell of volini, sound of spikes piercing grounds of different colours and the taste of sand and sweat in our mouths. Those days when blood heats up to such temperatures that you feel that you are gonna explode in that excitement, those were days of action and little words. I’m afraid the days of words has started and I don’t like it!!

DIRT KINGS

DIRT KINGS 

“we stand on the dirt and not in it!!”

By Joshua Cherian Varughese

Prelude:“All we did was grind a little bit more dirt at various dirt tracks. But we did it in such a way that the world stared agape”

The black moisture laden soil sifted through my fingers back into the ground as I crushed it in my fists. My nails were long muddy; my black hair had turned brown with tonnes of dust in it. Grease was all over me. I was ‘dirty’ in the words of the outside world. People who knew me would probably not have recognised me. It had been two years – for me ‘two years’ was a long time - but I knew I never felt it all the time. I had walked it as if it was a week or two. I knew I could do it for a long time before I’d be tired of it. (I usually get tired of stuff very fast)

It’s not a story that I have to tell; it’s not an anecdote with well built exaggerations and interesting metaphors. It’s an account from the heart of a boy becoming man. I was a boy when I started doing what I do , back then I did it just because I loved the idea. But slowly it shaped me – my hands became hard in texture but smooth in handling spanners, cutters, knives and various other machines; my heart became hard as it learned to fail and not be defeated but it became soft to my brothers around me. It taught me to be who I am inside and not to be what I was not. I thirsted for victory – to stand and shout on the stands with my veins swelling in my neck, the name at the sound of which my hair stands up straight – DAKSH. It taught me to lead when there was no leader, to be led when there was one. It taught me to laugh when there was no reason to and to smile at raging storms. It taught me brotherhood of those whose shoulders which would stand against mine no matter what stood before us.

(My brothers who are made of the same substance that I am made of.  Those brothers who’d pull their ‘lubb dubbing’ hearts out of their chest at the sound of an engine roaring. Those brothers who’d gladly stand in my shoes if they had to - when I went through trouble. I remember a man who disrespected one of my brothers a couple of days back – my heart skipped a beat, my blood boiled, I stepped in front of that man and my brother looking the man in the eye as if to say “Now you talk to me, bugger”)

Somewhere an engine chocked and died out. Some other engines were still running of those who were still trying to prove their mettle. As I stood in that dirt track where I had been for several days in the past two years, I knew that I had proved myself. It took time, hard efforts, guts to dream dreams that my fellows never dared to dream. But now at the end of two hard years, the shapeless dirt racing ‘car’ that my brothers and I built had proved a better machine against the dirt. As I sat in the afternoon sun with its rays beating down my shoulders, with crowns of the dirt track all over me (dirt and grease), I knew I was more a man than I was the day before.

We bleed, we sweat, we burn, we get tanned, our clothes smell, our hair endlessly unkempt but when it comes to dirt racing we just keep on rolling – NOTHING STOPS US!!

‘ILL’ IN ILLUSIONS

Dust which belongs to the ground, that is no good but to the trampled by passersby and to be spat upon by strangers, sometimes rises in the storm; up and upto the apex of the wind, whirling upwards with the wind and leaping as if in joy for its aggrandizement. Once ‘he’ soared above the heavens and while he floated up there puffed with conceit, he looked down and saw the glory, riches and beauty of the world down below. He saw the scorn of the world for everything which is below it while dancing with the wind- movements so graceful with poise of a damsel. The one glimpse of the whole world, all at a time overwhelmed the dust particle –a cornucopia of sweets for his eyes, her beauty tingled him- a feast for his eyes which dazzled him. Every one of his breaths made him feel closer and closer with that world of whose beauty it saw.

While dancing about in grandeur with the wind, something so unworthy and unlikely of the dust particle happened to it- an impossibility for the particle became possible, it did something that it never should have. It DREAMED!!! It dreamed of being one with the glory of the world it saw. A dream in which it attained all the glories that it saw in a glimpse, a fraction of time that showed it the deceitfully enticing world around and all the colours of it.
He felt as if she was calling to him to come and be one with her. All he could think of was to go to her and be a part of what she was. He denied any obstacle that lay in between- he seemed to push them all into that dark hole called oblivion caused by love so that he would never see those obstacles again(or was it the lust for her beauty).

Late was he when he realized that he was wrong. The storm abated, the wind ceased. The dust started to lose height. It dropped fast back to where it lay. Dropping fast despite of his cry for his love. None heard those cries for it did not have a voice. And in the silence of its own inability to cry, it cried; grappling with reality to hold fast to its dream with false hopes of being with her one day, refusing and violently rejecting the thought that she’ll never come to him. The particle finally fell back to the ground waiting to be trampled upon and then he finally realized- I’m dust and here I belong!!

A PEBBLE’S GEM HUNT

(Prelude: “Sometimes I sit with the gem in my hand doing nothing but stare at their beauty, I feel that I glimpse eternity as I float around in their blinding dazzle”)

I bend over; I search through the rotten and stinking refuse, through silt and sand with seconds ticking away into hours, days and years. My hands harden with labour and I feel as if I it has been ages since I’ve stood straight. But when I will finally find it, that gleaming and glittering stone flaunting their colour through its facets, shining as if to redefine the definition of ‘dazzling’, then I will feel as though I’ve been paid for the years of nothingness. I know it because I’ve found them in the past. And when I hold them tight in my hand as if to feel what they are inside( something that I cannot be, a beauty too profound for me to fathom), I feel that I’m one of them but then as I start loving them and share all that I have with their brilliance, I feel liquid on my palms. That is when I open my tightly clutched arms to see that the gem is gone and my hands have started bleeding at the place I held ‘my precious’.

Each time I bleed, my brain tells me to bail out of this race (because I don’t see a goal ahead, it is just a dream that drives me) but my heart tells me to go on. Each time a gem makes me bleed(and disappears) the sad realization dawns on me that she is not for me and I have to keep on searching. So I go on and on and on…

I dream about them all the time, there isn’t a moment that passes by without me dreaming about a gem that would change my life; a gem that would transform me, one that would love me even as I’m a pebble (sometime my looks made me a pebble, sometimes my family, sometimes the place I’m from, sometimes the God I worship, sometimes something else). But the more I seem to find and love the gems, the more I lose hope of that day when ‘my precious’ would come to take me to the wonderland to transform me. Will she come?

But something keeps telling me not to lose hope. So, I work through the dirt forgetting the fact that I’m just a pebble who would not settle for another pebble because in a pebble’s dream it is a gem that it becomes. I come across phony gems among all the other pebbles and dirt that slips through my hand as I work my way through the never ending mound of earth (which was not gracious enough to make me a gem when I was born) and they waste my time making me think that they are real but as time passes and trials descent, I learn that they are nothing but phony gems. When I get a real gem I immediately know that it is real because I feel my heart throb and blood gush merrily through my veins.

I don’t know if I have a destination, a goal or a prize. All I know is that If I don’t get a gem, I will die without a gem and wont regret of not having dreamed of it.

INTERLUDE:

‘All that I am is just another pebble, yet of a gem I dream

I search foolishly through rain, shine and hail

The scars of my pebble body are the gifts o gems that I found in the past

Yet for their bruises, I’ll toil

For though they make me bleed, their bruises are so sweet

So will I work, spend all I have to find a gem, the one that I dream of’

ODE to the pebble:

“SO HE TOILED AND TOILED, ONE DAY HE DISAPPEARED WHEN FINALLY ALL THE SUBSTANCE THAT HIS PEBBLE BODY WAS MADE OF WORE AWAY BY THE WOUNDS AND DEEP SCARS GIFTED BY GEMS. NOW HE LIES IN THE SAND WITH ALL OTHER GRAINS NOT EVEN RECOGNISED AS THE PEBBLE WHICH NEVER GAVE UP. HE LIES THERE AS THE DIRT FOR THE NEXT DREAMY PEBBLE’S GEM SEARCH AFTER WHICH IT’D ALSO JOIN THE DIRT FOR THE NEXT DREAMY PEBBLE AND THE NEXT..”