The Quest of Questioning

You have a gruelling day at work. The matters of the heart are screwed enough to give you a giant ulcer so you prefer not to even think about it. The rains are slashing against the roof, constantly reminding you of its attack once you step out in the open. Things at the family end is also not so hunky dory. Your best friends and supportive bests are miles away. Not such a happy scenario, is it?... then at the end of each day, how important it is to come back to a flat where you regain some peace of mind?
For my first almost month and a half, I chose to live alone in the city of Mumbai. Then some memories came back to haunt me and going back to a psychotic landlady amidst all that wasn’t exactly my idea of “going home”… so I began to work like a maniac, the office became my second home, the streets of Mumbai I walked with ease and the cinema halls became my solace in the solitariness that I entangled myself in. But the good that came out of it was that I began to enjoy my work…a line that I wasn’t so sure about began to beckon to me with open arms and inch by inch, I walked in to get embraced in all willingness by the world of television, cameras, digibetas, and edits. This is what I want to do – I realised, as days went by and I watched a world around me, that has no time to spare, yet time enough to make the best of professional as well as personal relationships. It is a statement I use a lot, “There is no alternate tomorrow”… so if I had to be here, I am here and I am happy. It doesn’t matter then, if my personal self wasn’t at its happiest best, as long as office was a place I enjoyed going to. Yet sometimes, late nights are inevitable and some tiredness of the mind and body, unavoidable. So then coming back to a nutty, money-gnawing, squirrel of a landlady wasn’t the most welcoming of thoughts…
So I escaped – that hell hole and a part of where I had knitted more memories that had turned bitter – and shifted to a place where I was sharing a house with 4 more girls… now in my life, though my best friends are girls, my general opinion of the general girls are generally not of the very positive kind – for after the few girls I made friends with and who entered my tiny bracket of the indispensables – I haven’t bonded with too many women, or rather come across any that I have wanted to bond with – or for that matter, even where men are concerned, there is a level to which I can be friends with them and after that, I pretty much emotionally back out – so in a nutshell, making new friends is an effort that I don’t feel like taking, and a risk that I don’t want to take, for after being so let down by one such best friend, I have taken a sanyaas of sorts from this world of friendship and closeness.
So shifting into this new place brought out the sceptic in me – but then once I moved in I realised, that this is a world, totally disconnected from any front of my life. These are the people, that I will share a space with for a few weeks and then disappear… so here is a place, there is no pressure to be someone else – no pressure to guard myself or censure what I speak – no associations, no connections, - what an amazing expansive breathing space – where I didn’t choke or suffocate… where I came back everyday and made tea for the whole lot and then sat down and talked about absurd things in life…
For example just yesterday, I was having this random conversation with one of them about religion, it all started with my statement about how I think that religion is the last thing that people should fight about, yet it is the first issue on which riots break out and how completely ridiculous this is – and then we went about talking of Godhra and other Hindu Muslim issues and then I mentioned that I find peace in the church and that it is one of my favourite place to go think and reflect on myself – it is like that coup where I can untangle and comb all my mixed up and complex thoughts and give some direction to them and hence form my beliefs and opinions. She is a catholic, so she started telling me about how her faith and her prayers bring her peace of mind and helps her in times of distress and despair… and then she asked me what religion I follow – and I am an agnostic – so I told her so – that I don’t ridicule, condemn, or comment on people who are religious – but I don’t believe in idol worship or chanting to the elements – I however acknowledge that there is a universal force that shapes our destiny and that’s my belief. I think that religion is too personal an issue to bother about any further than your individual self. And then she made an offhand statement that made me think further … she said that I am still searching, that I haven’t yet found a path that gives me peace and that one day I will find it. It sounds like such big words coming from a 20 something year old girl, yet I found myself questioning myself….
So is that why I am not at peace with myself? Is that why I look to get some answers from the other person because I couldn’t answer it myself? Am I really looking for a path that gives me salvation? …
And while playing around with such jumbled up thoughts, another thought pops into my head… “religion…religious…religiously”… Is religion really a pillar of strength or is it just a routine and a hope to have a better after-death experience?... why do we then replace it for the word “regularly”? like we say…”I religiously do this and I religiously follow some soap opera”…so is that all there is to religion?...is its just a routine that you are so conditioned to follow that you now follow it without a second thought - like eating, walking, even crapping – is it just a routinely thing?...
So that one discussion with a person who I just know as my tea-companion and whose surname also I don’t know – with a person I may never meet after these few weeks – makes me think, makes me feel like myself again … wondering, questioning, critiquing and thoroughly and healthily confusing myself!
I think in life, the salt and pepper doesn’t come through answers…the essence of everyday comes through questions…these little thoughts, these strange doubts, these issues of personal concern… the more the questions, the more the speculations…more doubts and more thoughts still… so why are we always looking for answers, when just diving and floating in questions is an experience in itself… why the human quest for answers to these universal questions… but then again, the very fact its been centuries, and we are still looking for these answers says just one thing – that we may spend all our lives looking for these answers – yet ironically and unknowingly simply exist within questions and queries…and that’s what makes life so indefinably beautiful.