“She’s a pawwry animal” I told my friend in the course of our conversation as she unabashedly shamelessly kept prodding me about matters that are defined as “my personal business” or still better “none of hers”.
My dear buddy - the one who has no sense of boundaries just ‘cause she’s been my friend for over 16 years - the erstwhile queen-bee of party animals quipped, “O, it’s just a phase!”
She once partied so hard, she hadn’t realised she’d fractured her foot. It was I, who noticed her swollen foot a week later, got her a Roentgenogram (Google this), reduced the fracture and plastered her leg. I had told her it pains a lot, so I was extremely proud of my bone-setting skills and for a moment starting fancying a career in Orthopaedics, when she didn’t even utter an “Uff”. My dream was shattered just a few moments later when I boasted to her that other patients have screamed their lungs out earlier, but now I’m very skilled that she hadn’t felt any pain and she replied, “O it was painful like hell. I just didn’t shout because I thought you’ll laugh.”
Now that’s the friendship that lasts 16 years!!
#SharedExperiences.
Jo dost kamina nahi, wo dost sachha dost nahi.
P.S.: In retrospect, no I wouldn’t have ‘not laughed’.
“Well then, we have a phase difference” I retorted in my nonchalant-high IQ – I’m a Doctor, but I haven’t forgotten my physics - pun laden - scientifically accurate sarcasm and cut my friend’s soul into two with the accuracy of a gamma knife incision.
#FrontalLobectomy
(Click here to Google(verb) Phase Difference and Frontal Lobectomy, but since you’re reading it on a smart phone, why don’t you ask Siri or Alexa to do it anyway).
“We all have our phases” she said contemplatively.
(Not sure if she isn’t high. She usually isn’t this philosophical; au contrare she’s quite a superficial type of person to be frank. It’s Saturday night and in my defence one can’t quite figure it out if you are texting people 25000 kilometers away.)
Blogging in the early 20’s was easier (i.e. my 20s, not the 20s of the Y2K millennium. Duh! Lest you be thinking isn’t this only 2023- aren’t these the early 20s – what’s this guy talking about?) Ignorance was bliss. Life was majorly a binary affair. Everything seemed wrong, and I knew what was right. The eyes did not see what the mind did not know. Then, over the years Delhi happened, then Coimbatore and Krishnankovil and back to Mumbai, and in the process the mind uncovered a great deal of mysteries, a myriad of events, a few personal experiences, a few from those of closer ones and many more just by being a mute spectator to all the chaos that unfolded with all the seemingly unrelated people around you. “O poor thing” that you felt for someone else, and the very next day it is you who were “the poor thing.”
The mind now knows much more, so the eyes now see that much more.
There’s no binary now, there’s only layers – deeper and deeper, infinite layers. And that makes it difficult to write. How many thoughts can one pen down about a single moment or an idea without sounding lost or confused or worse still, contradictory? While I could churn out an essay in a couple of hours earlier, it takes me months and years to finish an article now.
“Cut the umbilical cord” one of my professors used to insist. No, not in the delivery room, he meant it in the abstract sense of the word. Over time, I did it, rather it happened. It was the most liberating event to ever happen. That is, however, just one half of the story.
Once one graduates into an independent existence, starts the real journey of re-establishing that cord. Every paradise that’s lost has to be regained. And then there are new cords which need to be forged along the way. Some just happen so effortlessly, that you don’t know when found your clan...... You lean on some, some lean on you and the relay continues.
“Ye Mumbai hai, idhar Time ka matlab hai paisa” (movie buffs identify this movie starring John Abraham and Nana Patekar). This was the attitude with which I had moved out of the city I called my home for 25 years.
“I want to be 20 again” I was cribbing to another fellow human recently. At first, I thought I was getting overwhelmed by the complexities that I was seeing myself becoming aware of and wanted to revert to the easier binary phase of life.
But my friend has pointed out “O, it’s just a phase.”
True, and that phase has passed. I want to be 20 again because it probably was very easy to make “cords” then. Why? Probably because I had the time. We bartered time, not money. The friendships, the connections, all that have lasted over geographical distances, have flourished because they were nurtured with an investment of time. We are all starved for time now. And so it becomes all the more important to ration time and invest it wisely, on oneself most importantly. At a stage where work takes priority, one has to spare time for life!
The role of a career is to facilitate the progression of our lives, while one faces a situation where the career turns one to autophage on one’s life! We’re offsetting milestones, because you guessed it right, we can’t ration out the time for them!
Ever since I’ve returned to Mumbai the fallacy of “Time is money” philosophy has been laying itself bare. “Time is time” is what my learning has been. Let's not place two swords in the same scabbard.
I know you haven’t Googled or asked Siri or Alexa to spell out for you any of the things I had asked you to at the beginning. So, I’ll just explain what phase difference is –
“A PHASE DIFFERENCE IS THE DIFFERENCE IN THE PHASE ANGLE OF TWO WAVES” 😛😛
Well then, what’s a harmonic?
So kids, what have we discussed today?
Phase Difference, Harmonics and Umbilical cord.
Sounds like a good science class.
And here’s a better thought experiment to end with –
I think I misspelt something? Is it cord or chord?
Etymologically, the word chord is derived from cord.
The irony that life presents is that
until you don’t strike a chord,
you won’t establish a cord.
(the floor is now open to discussion)
