Ramblings of an Idle Mind:

While in Chopta, we saw a bus from FRI – Dehradun (Forest Research Institute) stop there in the evening. Boisterous students got out for a cuppa. Long time ago, when I was trying to figure out a meaningful career for myself, I had thought wistfully of joining this very institute (of course I couldn’t since I had given up science in Plus 2). Watching the students talk and shout, I thought about all the wrong decisions I had taken in life.

Of leaving Science because I was forced to take math; of not trying enough to get into geography; of not being persistent about a career in archeology; of quitting my job without anything in hand, of not being friends with a person…..the list is endless. After all this, when I look back at the path that has finally brought me here, one thing stands out so clearly. It’s not destiny that can be blamed but my very own choices!

Now, my idle mind is working overtime. But I just can’t help thinking what would life be like had I taken any one of those decisions correctly. Would I have had a satisfying career, would I have been as restless, would I have found ‘the’ man, would I have been happier or would I have been worse off, would I have met all my fantastic friends, would I have traveled the world by now? What?

So it’s not Destiny that brought me here but my many faulty choices and hopefully a few right ones. Life is a jigsaw puzzle of choices then with many permutation and combinations which we are messing up everytime instead of simplifying and making sense of it. In the end, unlike what I have believed so far, the pieces of life’s puzzle might never fall into place.

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Now taking this whole thought forward…..like me others’ lives are also dependent on their choices (like a massive game of chess). Looking at most people’s lives around, I can say that 50% of their choices have been wrong. So if we look at a larger picture, the current status of earth and life here is basically a cumulative result of the wrong or right choices of so many people – dead or alive. If some people long ago had chosen not to use the wheel, probably the earth would not be dying right now.

But then the Mayan calendar ends at 2012 – a prediction of the end of the world or the beginning of the end of the world. And now The Report on global warming warns that we have only 8 years (year 2015) to current our mistakes (wrong choices). 2012 or 2015 – give or take 3 years. The Mayans as usual have been right!

If you we go by the Mayan prediction, then 2012 is Destined. So does it means it’s not our choices which led to this but destiny OR are we destined to make wrong choices at the right time?

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The report on global warming is just an attestation of what we all knew (but chose to ignore)….the signs of destruction are everywhere….right at our doorstep.

- the extreme climate of Delhi (blast furnace like summer and freezing winter) has now changed to a rather temperate climate
- Bombay’s once temperate climate is now soaring
- Rain in the cold desert of Ladakh
- Snowfall in Dubai
- Grass in Antarctica
- Near freezing temperature in California
- Forest fire in Germany in the ‘spring’ month of April
- Massive floods in Europe
- Where 7 years ago I was enthralled by the beauty of the Gangotri glaciers, now pictures of the same place shows barren hills with people wearing sleeveless shirts
- Germany is trying to save its ‘last’ glacier from melting
- And many more

I envy my father’s and grandfather’s generation – they lived a simple life and experienced nature at its best. I am happy about my generation – at least we have still managed to lead a simple life and we have still managed to see the pristine, untouched beauty of nature. We however will suffer the maximum pain because only we know what we are losing. I pity the teens of now – they will never know what real beauty and life is. I am terrified for those who are being born now – they will face the full brunt of the destruction.

Despite the bold writings on the wall, we continue to choose the wrong things in life. We still choose to run after money, to buy that ‘home theatre’ than seeing the real life all across the world, we still choose to tell lies and not change, to ignore the old people on the street, not to love, to take our parents and friends for granted, to keep our eyes shut, mind closed and hearts dead…..

…….even when we know that we do not have too much time and all these in the end will be absolutely fruitless?