Pujit Aggarwal Redivivus - Positivity Ltd

 

  When words are overused or flogged to death in conversation or script, they lose their meaning and degenerate into tokens that we exchange on social or ceremonial occasions.

  "Could norning" utters a warm voice on the telephone. "Good morning," you mutter drowsily. It is rather early in the day to pull a friend out of bed just because you shared with him a course in Creative Writing at Yale a quarter of a century before.

  He did not open the conversation with ‘good morning’ but that is what you heard on account of years of conditioning. If he further adds that he recently took his children to the zoo and they had a lot of fun marvelling at the liars and tigers, you automatically hear ‘lions and tigers’.

  Each of us is touted as original and unique. In most cases, this gift lapses over the years as you fit into the slot designed by society. Heredity and environment interact to varying degrees to process you into a finished product. Words like fortune, chance, providence, destiny, et al. come in handy to rationalise and whitewash the deficit or surplus in our achievements.

  We are born as tabula rasa, but this deemed innocence is precariously open to the vagaries of wind and weather sponsored by accidents and institutions. Originality and uniqueness fail to withstand the instillation of conduct, manners, values, and aspirations that are constantly encoded in you.

  The potent seed that could have grown into a majestic redwood or a tangled, impenetrable chaparral is unable to germinate. A desert of uniformity sweeps over the deviations to extend its dominion beyond the horizon.
Diamonds cannot shine in the tonnes of debris that slide from the craggy mountains, burying the greenery and tracts of wetland below.

  Family, sanskar, schooling, ethnicity, religion, tradition, and a set of stable and labile values build up the sense of what you are: your identity, your me-ness.

  There is little scope in this composite, compressed identity to evolve into an original, unique being. The unrealized, the unfulfilled, and the unattained always haunt you. In the same way, the might-have-been continues to tag along, however fast you run to catch up with your rosy future.
 
  A liberal ration of negative bias exposes us to the smog of toxic soot and carbon. Breathe in to the count of seven. Breathe out to the count of eleven.

  She may not be wantonly sexy, but she is beautiful. Your life.

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