My dad's first car was a Nissan Datsun bought in 1987, it was a great car, with a powerful engine, sturdy body, great pick-up and automatic windows that I loved to play with. He loved that car too and called it his son. Over the years, the car met with a few accident but it was built to take the blow & was built to be fixed quickly without much trouble. It was with us for 13 years before its started falling apart. The engine though was still in top notch condition.
After giving away his first son - Nissan, reluctantly though, my dad bought a Toyota Corolla and unfortunately he met with an accident few months after buying the car. The car crumbled like a biscuit. "They don't make things the way they used to anymore", he said shaking his head slowly with sadness, looking at the carnage.
Today, I see what he had seen then.... For gone are the days where things were made to last, the days when time was taken to fix things rather than throw them away. We now live in the upgrade era where you can upgrade anything from your mobile to your wife.
The age of just getting by than working hard. Because hard work is for the retards of the world. Working smart (What does that even mean?) is the new catch phrase till an even more emptier phrase takes its place. Working hard is no longer a virtue I am being told with conviction, it is a relic of a bygone era, a passée notion we should not concern ourselves with. Hard work and its cousin excellence is dead... Long live the dead!
Even at work we are pressurised to deliver faster and all deadlines are EoD (I wanna kill the guy who coined this!). Quality of work has taken it's beating in the never ending onslaught of intense pressure from deadlines that have inadvertently eaten into the quality of work like a virus that progress slowly and steadily. Your turn around time is more important than the quality of ideas you bring to the table.
It is now acceptable & rewarding even, to create sub-standard work, just as long as you wear your flashy suit & confuse your boss & client with snazzy presentations and convoluted expressions like "Our core competence is unparalleled in disambiguating the disintermediate agenda". Even products are excused for their lousy life time, cause "Hey, we were gonna upgrade it in 2 years anyway!".
Products or our work are sold by how they look & how well they can be talked up rather than hard performance facts. Cause saleable is the new standard to achieve not quality and never excellence. Products are created & sold just as long as it is saleable & passable.
We now live in a world where talent is scantily praised and inability is showered with hype, brilliance is ridiculed and the idiots praised. The wardrobe malfunction of a celebrity makes more waves than a cabinet reshuffle. Welcome to the 21st century where hard work and excellence are passée and the barely passable drives the world.
I was startled by a faint sound in the distance, my eyes opened to a world, familiar & new, fuzzy & sharp, colourful & grey like something left behind from a dream, like a place I was meant to be but was always hidden in the mysterious shrouds of my conscience. *shhh*
I knew I was dreaming, I had to be. It didn't make any sense but I knew that I was there for a purpose. Then I heard it again, far away. Something calling out to me from afar, *tisssshhh* its incessant almost stubborn, rhythmic continuity, made me move closer to it. The sound was harsh *tisssshhh* and I knew I should not go anywhere near it but I found myself slowly creeping towards it, like a moth to the light.
*kwaa-tisssshhh* As I drew near, I could still hear the *kwaa-tisssshhh*, *kwaa-tisssshhh*, something about that sound was giving me an ominous feel, a sense of helplessness, mixed with panic.... There was a stench in the air, like no earthly odour, a stench of burning tears, silent screams, dying hopes and dreams on fire. Yet I had to see it, I had to know, I could not turn back...
A part of me knew that I didn't have to see this, that I would be scarred if I did & that I'd be better off without knowing but I knew it was a band aid I had to rip open.
*kwaa-tisssshhh* I could hear it more sharply now, it felt as though the sound was coming from within me and from outside. There was a crowd gathered there, some uninterested, some silent, some pointing, some mournful, some grinning, some laughing, all of them standing rooted to the spot and staring in to the centre...
I couldn't get a look at what was going, as I pressed on through the crowd I felt it *kwaa-tisssshhh* and winced, a stream of pain coursed through my body and then again *kwaa-tisssshhh* it was a burning searing pain. *kwaa-tisssshhh* I could have stopped, I could have turned away but I had to know. *kwaa-tisssshhh* There was some part of me there and I just had to claim it.
Then I saw him, a man I had never seen before but always knew. A silent unflinching figure who I wanted to embrace as well as run away from. *kwaa-tisssshhh* He had cold grey eyes that were fixed on me like he knew I'd come to stand in that exact same spot. Like he had been calling out to me for so long...
He was standing there naked and I could see his magnificent physique & yet for all his glory I couldn't understand where the noise and my pain was coming from. Then I saw a quick flash accompanied by *kwaa-tisssshhh*, another pang of burning pain and I saw it....
A thin brown flash that crackled the air *kwaa-tisssshhh*, a serpent with no end & no beginning sticking out its forked tongue. The serpent was coiled around his hand, I stared at it and realized that it was not alive, it was not a dreadful serpent but an inanimate WHIP. I couldn't decide which I liked more. *kwaa-tisssshhh*
He wielded it with grace, taking it over his head, an elegant captivating manoeuvre.... Then a moment of vaccuum with no sound, no stench, like the calm before a storm, a moment that drew me in.
And then he brought it down on himself with a resounding *kwaa-tisssshhh*. I winced from the pain yet he stood there calm & his grey eyes boring into mine. I wanted to surrender myself to him.
He then spun it around him again and brought it down *kwaa-tisssshhh* and that awful noise was reverberating within me. *kwaa-tisssshhh* He did not even flinch a muscle. As I stood there, I realized that with every lash he brought down, he was growing and becoming burlier and more menacing. Yet his grey eyes were like a calm cold pool tucked in the heart of a mountain.
*kwaa-tisssshhh* I wanted to be one with him, for the pain was mine to bear.I wanted the people around me to look at him & see me, *kwaa-tisssshhh* point their leering fingers at me & slowly shake their head *kwaa-tisssshhh* or grin with malice or even laugh for as long as I was him I was the centre and nothing else mattered. *kwaa-tisssshhh* The pain was hard to bear but it was the price to pay. *kwaa-tisssshhh* With every new lash came a wave of pain and a heady rush of numbness.
*kwaa-tisssshhh* I smiled, winced, cried, screamed and reveled in that enrapturing moment. Suddenly, I realized that the sounds were becoming louder & came faster.
As he kept whipping himself and looking at me, It dawned on me that I was making this happen and not him, it was me and not him.*kwaa-tisssshhh* And with every lash I was fading, I was becoming less of me and more of him. It shocked me to realize that I was making him bring down the whip and I was inflicting this on myself for that elusive moment of rapture. He was forced to obey my biding and I was pushing him to be bigger and better for it was my window to the world.
I knew I had to stop but through that window I could see the bright light flowing in. I felt light and looked down at myself, I could only see grey swirling mists. I could see all the colours leaving me, colours that were a part of me leaving me, running away from me like a rain drop scattering into a million pieces on a green leaf.
I couldn't understand why I was being abandoned when I was about to reach my moment of glory. It was frustrating, I had to make a choice the fleeing colours of my soul or the window of light. And then I froze and fell down with a thud. The colours swarmed around me and blocked my vision. When it cleared I could see his grey eyes fade into a grey swirl and was swept off in the wind.
I found the whip at my feet, I grabbed it and staggered on to my feet. I knew I could summon him back but only if I wanted to.
