The running cities & restless lives!

Yes. So life is not about only good meals, your emotional & physical needs be dealt with intent; and the people you heed & like, always around.

It’s only the segment of those woven, worked out jiffies, that abides by your basic wants, food, cotton, shelter. Yes this is Mumbai. Totally budged off owing to the catch-22 quandaries people face to make both ends meet, some how!

At times Mumbaikars are blamed of being agile to trade everything. Almost everything. Right from the products & services that we are inured to; to some we hardly could have thought of, had we never heard of before! Health, love, faith, fear, humor, entertainment, sympathy… all of them are drawn in the business they do it really well. And this intensity of their being involved really comes from the struggle they submit themselves to. Just like corporate world, peer pressure & rat race coerce them to come up with such commerce, though the stakes are overseen by bread & shelter rather than profit & share holder value.

Life counts its own while & proceeds. Pressure creeps in. Finally the bell peals. Frustration tiptoes and finds its way out, often through the violence & destruction. It pulls people’s socks up to untie the fiery thought-jamboree & we see people blighting innocent lives with murders, thefts, riots, protests, underworld fights & scandals. And the list goeth on, endlessly…

The issues that top any sensible list of grounds of this mayhem will, by and large, reckon competition, colossal trend following in education & career fronts, high stakes/risks & stress that draws closer later, over gluttonous politics & corruption.

Today, take any talent; people want it to lend a hand for some recognition, they may dig up airing it. Say singing. No one likes to be Pundit Bhimsen Joshi to get completely immersed in music & raise it to the greater heights as well as to savor the untouched levels of happiness & satisfaction. Or Kishore Kumar who sang for his ardor & it became his life, which later, eventually became a glorious emblem of Indian musical history. Instead, they want to be Abhijeet Sawant, craving for one crore like he had, fame & luxuries he enjoys today. And to get hold of it all, they are ready to submit themselves to the cut throat competition they have to put up with. Stakes are high with the massive participation. Rest & comforts start steering clear of our lives. We become parched of creativity & peace as well.

Whilst professions like management, Engineering, Medical field have the defined ways of exploitation of talent. They come up with good money, recognition & guarantee warranted by security. So masses are predisposed to get into them, diverting all the intellectual traffic to very few spaces, where again the competencies raise their bar making it difficult for a contender to even get into the competition! Those who fail to make it, get sought after by frustration. Those who make into it, start their restless ride, often full of emotions at peak levels. Minds start getting irked, once again.

And that sullied politics, with its never ending greed, is always all set to pilfer national wealth; to make rich richer, poor poorer. The gap adds to between two parties. Similarly it finds its presence at lower levels of administration of government bodies. Fights start waving in the social life of common man. A local form of this greed shapes up into corruption, complicating the proceedings. Again, no place for simple happy life!

And many such things can be alluded to. Indeed it’s a chaos. Solution needs to be eyed out to make our lives better, fruitful & happy. Some asceticism in attitudes, balanced ways of addressing the desires & practices like meditation & exercise can truly change the way we perceive ourselves. We will become more peaceful, contented & pleased at all levels of consciousness & all phases of our lifetime. Whilst, defining more ways of exploitation of talents can help spread the population accordingly, to avoid crowding and in result, the severe competition can be curbed to some extent. After all, most of the things we always keep running after are volatile. Habitually they vanish even as we start savoring them!

So next time, whenever you see a piece of cake in front of you in the form of opportunities, breathe easy & think again! There are better ways & places to find pleasure in. That too, nearby!!

After all there are things we know & things we don’t. In between there are doors!