What kills a human being?

Perhaps I am asking a wrong question. I should rather ask ‘what kills a person?’ But recent situations have made me change my mind . Its been a while since this question first struck me, and I have not been able to get a clear answer yet. I had always found myself drowning in an ocean of diverse answers. Knife? Yes, a knife can kill a person. Sword? Obviously a better option than knife. A bullet? Well, if it is a bullet then why not a bomb, a missile or a nuclear weapon? To be honest, I could never reach close enough to something that I would call a satisfying answer.

Let me first introduce myself. I am Pricky! A little cactus who likes to spend most of his time observing things. I am a very curious plant. I like to ponder over matters which are nowhere related to me in any sense. Sad part is that I can’t observe much. My master leaves me near a window so that I can get proper sunlight and then forgets me for like a week or so. Seriously? Who can ignore a cute person like me? After a week he would come running and chanting ‘Where is my Pricky?’, pick me up, give me some water and put me at the same place. Idiot! I want to explore the world and I can’t do that sitting here at this window. But in spite of all this, I love him. I love my master. He can’t take me everywhere he goes. After all I am just a cactus, a cute one though. I am an attention whore. It ‘kills’ me if I do not get proper attention from someone. I wonder if same thing applies to all the humans too. What if they are not always killed by something physical but emotional stuff can do the same task? Let’s discuss this because I have drunk a lot water today and have nothing to do now for a week I guess.

But before doing that can someone tell me about this ‘Corona Virus’? I have heard that it ‘kills’ people. A virus? How? Technically, the virus enters a host body, attacks the native cells and soon captures respiratory organs of its host, especially , the throat and lungs. The group of  people who are in danger of mortality from this virus are children and aged people. I have heard all this when my master plays news on Youtube. I am not that expert in medical sciences but I have seen people are fearing by the name sake of it. Fear! Yes, fear can kill a person. But now my dilemma is whether it is fear or lack of proper supply of breath and oxygen which causes death of the person. I think in this case we all can agree to the latter.

I have a friend. A saint. A religious leader popularly known by the name of Dalai Lama. We are like childhood buddies who used take bath in the same bathtub. He once told me that there are two kinds of death. A ‘real’ death which is rewarded to person only once during his lifetime and ’emotional’ death which he meets daily. Dalai bro also told me that the person dies only from outside by his real death but emotional death kills a man from inside. One should not fear his real death but his emotional death. But if fear is the cause of ’emotional’ death then people will fear from ‘fear’ itself and it is fearful. Its like one of the infinite loops discussed in A Subtle of Not Giving a F*ck. But fear is not the only thing causes ’emotional’ death of a person. There are many, many other factors too and we have to discuss them too. Oh my god! we have so much to talk. So lets just change our original question to ‘What kills a human being emotionally?’ You may find it difficult to believe that I was befriended by Dalai Lama. Still shocked by that fact? Haha! Got you! I was just joking, trying to get your attention (told you I am an attention whore). I am very old though. Its just a part of me that is grown in this little pot. I have my roots at many places and each one is just like me. Cute.

Belief. Lets talk about ‘belief’. I have seen it killing many people. People are fighting over religion, language, differences in opinion and even gods. And they all have one thing in common. They have ‘different beliefs.’ So its not belief which kills people, its their difference of beliefs which does. A part of me believes that ‘belief’ is necessary to thrive. It helps us fight through tough situations. I sometimes eavesdrop on my master. One night I heard him chanting something like this, ‘Bhoot pishaach nikat nahi aave, mahaveer jab naam sunaave!’ My stupid master! He believes in ghosts. I can’t believe that he believes in ghosts. But what is more important is that he also believes in a faith. He has faith in someone who will protect him from his imaginary fears. So can ‘belief’ or ‘difference in belief’ kill a person emotionally? Of course they can kill physically but neither of them has guts enough to kill someone emotionally. ‘Lack of belief’ kills emotionally. You may be thinking that if belief and difference of belief are dangerous then its okay not to have them at all. And there my friend you decide your fate to move towards a slow painful emotional death. ‘Lack of belief’ takes away all the hope, all the light from your dark soul and makes it even darker. So having belief is not all that bad as it provides support at times we have no one with us. In loneliness your belief is your best friend. So believe in something. Not in god. Not in religion. Believe in something. Something that will increase your faith in yourself. Something that will help you fight your fears. And if you don’t believe me then I persuade you to give it a shot to ‘not believing’ in anything. I am pretty sure you will hear a jingling sound at midnight and wake up chanting, ‘bhoot pishaach nikat nahi aave, mahaveer jab naam sunaave!’.

I used to believe in love. I had a girlfriend. She was a small bush. We were in the nursery together. She had the sexiest and sharpest thorns of all the plants nearby. It was all perfect but then she cheated on me. I was so heartbroken. She cheated and left me for a sunflower! I felt so dejected then. My life became purposeless. It was then I was brought from nursery to this new house. Everything was different and I was still depressed over love. One day my master played a scene from Predestination. What do you want? What does everyone want?- Love?-Fuck love. Its purpose. It occurred to me then that love can’t be a purpose of life. I needed to find some purpose and my fate was decided. I became a preacher who would distribute free gyaan to everyone. I said earlier that i ‘used to’ believe in love, but that doesn’t mean i ‘now’ don’t. You humans take every word and sentence so seriously and literally. I admit that my belief was shaken when i was cheated. I was almost on the verge of my emotional death but there was something which kept me alive. Something more powerful than belief. HOPE. I never gave up on my hopes in love. I hoped that i would find love again, and i did. I fell in love with my neighbor’s lily. She has got the prettiest flowers, a calm and soothing aura around her, and hand to god, what a sexy flexible body. I just keep staring at her tender green stems and leaves. When she wakes up in the morning I sing for her, ‘Mere saamane wali khidki me, ek chaand ka tukda rehta hai’. You are thinking what a pervert i am and calling me ‘pervert cactus’. But let me correct you. ‘Cute pervert cactus.’ Pervert is not important, being cute is important.

Allow me to quote myself, ‘What’s life without hope?’ Also it is time for us to look at our question with a little different angle. Instead of seeking for answers about what kills us, we should search for what keeps us alive. So now here we come almost to the end of our discussion today. What keeps a human being alive? Now, we have this one simple question. We are provided with four choices. 1. Lack of fear. 2. Belief. 3. Love. 4. Hope. Now use your brains and solve this puzzle which has been killing us all for over a long time. ‘Lack of fear’ and ‘Belief’ are like the two options which we can definitely say not correct. What about love? I have just shared my personal experience that love can’t be a reason to stay alive. It should never be. For you can’t love someone more than yourself, and in case you don’t love yourself then there is someone who loves you more than you do and that is a reason enough to live. So that makes it a very weak option. We are left with only one option- hope.

Think of a situation when everything suddenly comes to a halt. You are stuck at some place and you can’t go elsewhere. You are all alone and have no one with you. Oh wait! You are already going through that! Corona Lockdown. Nevermind. But things could have been worse. You might have been stuck on a boat in middle of Pacific Ocean with a tiger. What would have you done? Obviously, you would be terrified, your beliefs would have given up and love, haha, one can’t trust love when it comes to survival. There is only one thing which would keep you alive. Hope. A hope that you might catch a fish to eat. A hope that Thor doesn’t see you. A hope that one day you might see a shore. Hope is nothing, yet everything. We thrive on hope from our first cry, and continue to do so until the day we die. We dream. And we ‘hope’ that they will come true. We hope that today would end and tomorrow would bring a new ray of light. We hope that what we are hoping may not just remain a hope.

Its 6 am now. We have been talking whole night. Go to sleep now and hope for sweet dreams. What now? You want to meet my girlfriend? Actually, her pot fell off from third floor and she died. Her master threw her to the cows. But I have not lost my hope, nor my belief in love. For I will keep loving till the universe survives and hoping I survive that long. So what, a virus strikes our planet and we start fearing again? Start losing our faith? Stop loving each other? Start losing our hopes? NO! We fight. We fight and we hope that one day it would all be over and we smile. Not for us, but for everyone else who care for us.

You may have been thinking why I settled with just four options. There could have been a numerous options to choose. Yes. There are a billion other options which can be a perfect answer for our question. Life isn’t so easy that it could be solved with just four options. There would be long length answers with proper methods and practicals. We have to answer them all. But my life isn’t as complicated as yours? After all I am just a cute little cactus. You are free to choose your options though. And in case you do, don’t forget to ask yourself, What kills a human being?

Love Virgin

She made me fall

on my knees before her.

The witch had her charm

all over me.

It was all magic,

all of it.

The slow motion, the moonlight,

the mistletoe and the first kiss.

Everything was part of her sorcery.

In that spellbound world

I walked around trapped as a love virgin.

Dancing on melodies of Pain

I have never been a good dancer. I have never been a bad dancer either. I don’t dance at all. Never. So whenever I am with friends and they drag to those fancy clubs to booze up and have a little ‘fun’, I just end up finding myself sitting on the sofa instead, watching them loosing themselves up with the beat. Even when I am drunk and DJ is playing best Punjabi hits, my feet won’t have enough courage to bless the dancing floor.

It was Saturday night. I was at some random club in this big city. My friends have dragged me along as one of us was going through a bad breakup and you can’t say no in a situation like this. So as usual, after three shots of Whiskey and two Vodka shots, they all were swaying their butts on the dancing floor, and I was watching them from a distance with a glass of Piña Colada in my hand.

It was then my eyes fell on you. You were there on the dancing floor, lost in a trance of your own. I have never seen someone dancing with so much pain. Your moves were reflecting the agony you were going through at that time. You weren’t listening to the song or the music. You were lost in your own beat. But that didn’t put you offbeat for the music. In fact it seemed your steps were fitter on that song rather than rest of the crowd’s. And then you smiled as the music dropped. By god, I have never seen so much trauma in a smile before.

You excused yourself from the crowd and went to the bartender for a drink. ‘Margarita’, you ordered. You took a sip and smacked those lips of yours. I was so lost in my thoughts kissing your lips that I didn’t see you move to a table. Five other girls were sitting there, probably your friends. I had thought you were alone. I followed you there to a table nearby. I kept my distance as I didn’t want to creep you out. But I also wanted to know the story behind that pain badly. So I started eavesdropping to your conversations.

You had a breakup recently. Not a big deal. Breakup can’t be reason behind that gloom – the gloom that made you dance. Things started to get clear as drinks on your table increased. From recent conversations, you started moving to your past. You were still in love with your ex and that moron cheated on you. Yes, that might be the reason – a heartbreak. Yes, there’s difference between a heartbreak and a breakup. If you are having a heartbreak and still choose not to breakup, then trust me no one can even empathize the pain you are going through. I knew your recent breakup uncovered that hidden pain you had through your heartbreak.

I didn’t know why I was doing this. I was literally stalking you, but you know what, I wasn’t feeling any guilt about it at all. Your group went to the washroom. I knew it was the time you would leave the club and the story unfinished. I still wasn’t able to comprehend how you were able to gather that trauma altogether and dance through it. But it was fine. Most of the stories are left unfinished that way in this universe. I scribbled something and left a note on your table below your unfinished drink. I had an intuition that you would come back to finish at least that drink, if not your story. You came out after five minutes and picked the note up to read it properly with your dizzy eyes.

‘I liked your dance. It was so painful. You ruined my night. Now, its your time to make up for it. A genuine smile from your heart would be enough to give me a good night sleep tonight- xoxo.’

I won’t tell you what happened next but I had a very good sleep that night- and in my dreams, she was dancing again, alone this time, with all the trauma and lost in trance of her own.