ONE SHOT- I’VE TAKEN IT

Look, if you had one shot, one opportunity,

To seize everything you ever wanted-One moment

Would you capture it or just let it slip?

These are the words that come from the celebrated singer/rapper Eminem. How true? Isn’t this so true in the world we live in today? So few opportunities and so much competition. Do we have the time to catch our breath and stop for a moment to look and appreciate things around us? Or is it rush hour 24/7?

Perception is reality. You are caught in the matrix and you don’t know which the real world is. The one you live in or the one you want to live in? Time flies. Moments pass by. People come and go. Marriages and funerals are aplenty. Is time new or are we living the same moment over and over again and just not realising it? Well its time to take a moment and look at our lives.

Another week goes by…. spills over into the weekend and before you know its time to head back to the same routine. Well so how did the weekend go? Well I rushed home hit the couch and picked up the remote and the idiot box was turned on. Flipped through channels aplenty, hardly absorbing anything that I saw or heard. Where has my sensitivity gone? Well I have seen and heard so many crimes day in and day out that it has become a way of life for me. The violence and sleaze I’m used to does not allow me to get surprised at the events taking place around me. I spoke to a friend and she told me the incident about a school in Russia where children were kept hostage for almost a week with the kids having to drink their own urine as they were kept thirsty for days. Her reaction was, “a shiver ran down my spine…. what ghastly people as that do live on the face of the earth and I felt disgusted and scared to be sharing this land with such heinous souls?” The hype that was created by the media was unbelievable. It helped TRP’s and business is at its highest. So which was the idiot box – the one I’m watching or the one lying there like a vegetable not reacting to anything being controlled by the remote and the images that are flashing on the screen at 24 frames per second.

So how much do you care? Do you care at all? The last time I heard they were packing drainage waters in cola bottles and animal kingdom inside chocolates…what do we have next? Cockroaches in cakes and moss breads…naah, not too exciting for my taste buds yet! But has that stopped you from buying any of this stuff. When are we going to stop violating our bodies and the bodies of others for a little bit of pleasure? For some it’s the pleasure of the taste buds, for some profit motive and others power. So in which category do you fit in? And stop lying to yourself that you are different because you are not. You are not!

So again I spoke to my friend and she said, “I am telling you, there sure is some great powers involved in breathing life out of humans…why, we still have child sacrifices riding the upward curve…. upsurge of ridiculous rituals… bewildered I am to believe this to be a digital age.” So we just sit there in our chairs and talk about it and do nothing. Get up and go to work again tomorrow and forget about everything else. Well well missy welcome to the real world.

So do you want to be different? Ha! Fat chance you have. So you have the latest gelled hair style with spikes, the soul beard, the designer party clothes, the attitude, the noodle straps, the vroom vroom, those revealing skirts (hey if I have a great body why not show it?), boots, your mobile phone, the hip low waist jeans, the English accent and some generations ago some ancestor of yours knew Hindi and some regional language (your mother tongue) you cant even spell now (in English). Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against all this. I am part of it. We are from the production line. All of us are homogenous products of this system. All in all just another brick in the wall.

So here I am on the dais with a chance to present my Oscar speech. But what can I say? This is my one shot. Let me start by thanking the right people. My creator for breathing life into me, my parents who have given me a cherished life and the few values that I have intact, my family for all the support and the healthy environment they created around me, friends for all the special moments and the growing up and finally my teachers. They have instilled a sense of discipline in me and filled me with knowledge of knowing right and wrong. They have been an integral part of my life and a special mention to all my teachers. Those 5 years have been the golden years of my life. I blossomed into the person I am under their care and its been a memorable journey- the treks, the presentations, the lectures, the punishments, the associations, the trophies, the pranks, the teaching and so much more. So I conclude saying that there is hope and we can make a difference because someone in my life made a difference. And it was a teacher from college and a colleague at work who taught me never to give up and they never gave up on us. With words from the same song I confirm….

…The clock's run out, time's up over, bloah!

Snap back to reality,

Oh there goes gravity, Oh, there goes Rabbit,

He choked He's so mad,

But he won't give up that Easy,

-

Melwyn Abraham in conversation with close pal Madhavi Mukherjee