Freedom Regained

I’m not a product of my environment; My environment is a product of me. This or something very close to this is the opening line of The Departed. But in real life I have not heard many people say that. However, I very strongly feel that most of us have such a thought, consciously or underneath. After all, who wants to be controlled? I too am one of them. I do not believe in God of any form; not yet. I do not openly believe in destiny. I have always maintained that destiny is a creation of losers to rationalise their past. I rate my freedom as one topmost thing in my life. Probably that is why my father hesitated when I told him of my decision to take the UPSC Exams. He felt, apart from being very low paying, the Government jobs also did not offer one space; freedom. I did not heed his advice. But today, after spending quite a considerable time (by my standards) with the Government and more than three weeks at the National Academy of Direct Taxes, Nagpur, I have concluded there is a supernatural force; a power that is omnipotent; an overwhelming strength. There is no escape from it. That force torments me throughout a major part of the days here. I’m no more a free bird. I did try and still trying hard to overcome it, but I’m still on the losing side. One of my friends asked me to be sincere during our early morning yoga sessions. “That will help you”, he said. I took that advice very seriously and moved from my usual last row to the very first row of the yoga sessions; forgoing much of my freedom. But even after that I have not seen any progress in my fight against that Force Supernaturale!

One another friend, an intellectual, said, “Try moving from the last bench to the first rows in the lecture hall”. I thought about it for 48 hours; but did not try it. That was beyond my risk appetite. I was finding out other ways to overpower my enemy and take charge of my life. One of them was to take two ball pens – one blue and the other one black – and keep myself busy by underlining the key terms and take down the learning points in my brand new register. By the end of the day the plan produced something very strange. My register had a few pages of bi-coloured scribbling. It looked like that of an infant’s first-ever attempt with a pen. I felt more ashamed. In the attempt to ward off sleep and keep awake in the lecture hall I had lost control of my handwriting too!



Yes, that force that has thrown my life out of gear is – sleep.

Over the weekend I’m hoping to find the best possible game-plan against sleep during the lecture hours. Usually interest and attention go hand in hand. The more we like to do something the more attention we show to the job. (Forgetting other extraneous variables like incentives, salary, food etc.) But I genuinely feel my sleep is not due to the scarcity of attention arising out of a total lack of interest for the subjects taught. I like the IT Act, just like I love other things in life like playing saxophone, scuba diving, double trap, rock climbing, blind-fold chess etc. And I owe full allegiance to my job here.

Okay, let me take stock of the terms that have gone into my mind over the past four weeks here. Well...IT Authority, firm, search and seizure, heads of salary, exemption, Shaw Wallace, immovable property, junior artists, previous year, basis of charge, HUF, vigilance case, four corners of law....Oh! Good! The list goes on and on. I never even imagined so many things could have entered that soft, light thing in between my ears. Hmm...I think have acquired something special; probably the exceptional ability to exist in the two extreme states of consciousness, Stage IV NREM sleep and being fully alert – at the same time!

I’m excited! I really don’t know when I got this ultimate gift of life; anyway it does not matter now. Am happy I got it!

I did a bit of google to find out whether such a case had been reported earlier or not, if someone else too possessed this special and unusual control over his/her conscious or not. As usual the result had thousands of totally irrelevant web pages. But I was lucky enough to spot one source that gave me the precise info. (But I’m not sure if that is authentic) And I’m quite elated now, as the only person who had a power something near-similar to what I have is – Arjun. No no... not the one in politics or cinema. But that one Blessed by none other than Lord Krisha himself. It is said that Arjun can sleep or be awake even for years together as per his own wish.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Income-tax Act will give u many more exceptional abilities and after 16 months u will turn from Sundar to Arjuna to...

:)

Muthuvel said...

Commonly these days, lectures are good sleep inducers and in a way help us to relax... Every wise man will advise others to stay relaxed. So, we need to attend more lectures and may be a do a little bit of research on the art of sleep and relaxation!! :)

Pilani Pictures said...

dei...i have got very serious and alert these days....
;P

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