Intense Reflexes

Seventy minutes of intense play defines the game of legacy that carries the pride of India forward. Being the brutal force once, Hockey has turned out to be a huge set back in the present days. The stunning emergence of cricket turning out to be the money maker with loads of adulterates like IPL has managed to push the national game to a corner thus poisoning the minds of sports lovers. The fact that our national game is not even screened in our channels is a shame to the game of reflexes. There is a very narrow line of demarcation between the emotion of winning and losing, and a perfect sportsman stays unmoved when tormented by the opposition. The opposition to our hockey team is not the countries who play against them, but our media who has failed to support the game.Sweat till you succeed, if not stand up and praise the opponent has always been our intact ideology. We play to learn and when accoutered with a thunderous chance we grab and fight. We have had our share of players in all extremities.
Sardara Singh,a player who could integrate mindsets when attacking and deliberately grab the ball single handedly is an asset to our hockey team and his stamina is unmatched and applauded by many. V.R Raghunath,being our fittest penalty corner specialists has enthralled the spectators with his flabbergasting strikes leaving the opponents in disguise and has been one of the clever operators of the game. Gubraj Singh and Gurwindar Singh Chandi’s tackling ability excels and questions many professionals in the sport that desires intense reflexes and creative gameplays. Defending is an intelligent fortress in Hockey and Vickram Kanth, is a defender whose stick spins through the game plan of the opponent and wrecks the technique and uniqueness of the opposition striker.Hockey is a spectator’s sport and our supremacy in the game of crowd years before remained a disappointment to the strongest of oppositions. Our team has managed to instill fear in the opponent’s heart and have been an obvious limelight in the history of our game for the unity they cynosure. The missing factor as of now is the support and the amount of money that is being spent in the game. If we provide the hockey team with proper sponsors and good amount of support through media, once again our national game would earn the pride that it possessed before. The reflexes that the government takes in order to intensify the changes is a vital factor in bringing forward the lost interest towards the game, Hockey.

Vyashti

It was twelve approximately. Hesitation was grudging within me but without much further thought I split my lips to pitch my first word to him. He was about twelve, much diminutive than he looked but way too canny than I imagined. His legs cut the air fast and the sun managed to vividly glaze on his flickering eyes. I was sustaining my speed and believably I was beginning to admire him. It had been just a five minute jaunt but still felt so much of connect between us. I wished we had a conversation.

In a whack to kindle his mouth, I towered my voice “Am I casting myself like a bastard?” my tone vibrating with a heavy resonance. Withholding his movement, he bumped against air to stop and he turned.

“Do you have a doubt?” he opened up in a way that I wished he hadn't. He was dissecting my composure but I held my nerves as I was on the faulty side. Things seemed really bumbling. He crossed me just five minutes back. Now I was anticipating that he would forgive me. If someone could be so screwed then I was at the zenith of being so. Accoutering all the courage to get back to him, I started to mumble.

Before I could even start convincing he forced his tough voice, “I wish there was someone here. I was also obliged to what had happened”. He twirled his face back and looked at things in the background. He settled down.

“Where do you reside?” I inquired with the sole reason of knowing him further.

“Anywhere”

It seemed less surprising as I could spot that from the way he carried himself. His shorts had a big hovel at the back. His shirt was over-sized to make anyone guess that it was not his. I pitied his being. He looked like he hadn't ingested for months.

“We have a lot in common” I added.

“Do you beg?” he was puzzled at my allegation.

Confused if I could reveal my way of living, I retaliated to his question “No. I don’t precisely” 

“Nothing could bring us an inch closer. I beg for my routine food. I wear dresses that I find in the bin and doze in a place that I find when my eyes dwell into the state of unconsciousness. I am a vague being who god forgot to reconsider. I neither know who my parents are nor do I know what starvation is. I have always been in it”

I laughed meekly with a slight sarcasm. I understood the line of demarcation between us was narrow.

“Am I not making sense? Life has only two straightforward rules. One to live filthy rich and enjoy; the other to live moral myself and struggle”, he said; his words reflecting some foresight.

“Maybe” I said.

Much of philosophy overshadowed the part of our conversation. I was a person who believed that blood is the ultimate, and I procured money swirling knives on people’s neck. I was a hooligan whose ideologies were completely relied on payments. I knew no other work than to be a gangster. I kill, I rape, and I sin. How could I tell him that?

“Do you mind telling your name?” I asked.

“I would not have minded if I had known”

I adored his innocence. His ability to contemplate at things in a humorous yet veracious manner redefined a lot of things inside me. I was feeling fresh. I was beginning to cherish things. Before enlightenment crawled its way inside me, he jerked suddenly.

“Why did you pause?” 

“I find it very awkward to be walking with you. But I conceive you as my very own”

“I should have the pleasure” I said this as both of us tuned our heads to turn back and look at the road that we have been walking all through. It was straight. It looked like a long walk but the point where we initiated the walk was still in sight.

“Do you stab people for money?” his mouth reflexed quickly. I didn't reckon this now. He is being a genius. Some can impress in a minutes time I thought. Contradictory but fizzling to the words of my heart this time, I said yes.

He wasn’t offended. He tittered mildly and said “Now I trust the tremor in your eyes that I have been seeing right from the site where we met.”

The sun was extracting all my synergy surging the heat of the talk to a peak. Our interpretation depends on what we believe. His belief was right. Fear of being killed has always engaged my life. Death is not something I failed to believe, but the enforcement of death to me did always bring in a shake within.

“Tediously bending to all the questions you flip is now becoming a task uphill.” I said letting go of my ego. He effortlessly managed to bring the stony part of myself out. Till the moment he questioned my fear, I was verging towards hiding my identity but his coherent ability to face read, wrecked all the thoughts of my stupid neurons in brain that was in a state of puzzlement.

Befitting to the conversation that was through, things around began to clinch down. No vehicles were moving and it was dead silent. I began speaking my heart and things that occurred prior to the meeting.

His eyes looked into mine. He froze and listened to what my mouth said. Though our heights made a difference, the situation was extremely pleasing. I started.

“People generally refer to me as hooligan for the avocation I do. If not, I would have been a beggar literally sleeping on roads and eating garbage. All things that happen in our lives are not necessarily explainable but experience-able and that’s how I was called to work under a very famous law maker. Though I have slashed a lot of heads, eyed tones of blood for him I have literally not seen him once. I work under my boss who assigns my work. I was a payable prostitute”. 

“Do you prefer driving your bike fast?” he asked something that wasn't relevant to what I had been saying.

“Why do you ask that?” I questioned.

“You must know” he said.

“Yes I do. I betrayed my boss”

“Now is that a reason”

“I killed him”

“I guessed. Your eyes said that way before. Your lips did that just now”

“I believe now you must have the entire picture. Greediness when contemplated closely is not explainable.”

“So you say it’s experience-able?”

“Unless you fear death, it is”

“Death? There is no death. It’s an interpretation”

I failed to understand his point. Walking slowly I was missing eye contact. I was looking around. An ambulance crossed me very fast. The sound irritated my senses.

“Death does not happen. It has never happened.” He said further.

“So you say that god doesn’t exist. Isn’t it?”

There was a wait. He told me to change the direction of our walk. We started to walk back to the place where we began. My senses obeyed his words without further quest.

“Our consciousness is different from our body. Our body is not ours. Our consciousness is. Death happens when we dwell into the identification of our body and not our senses. When we feel separated from our body, we feel death. When we identify our consciousness to body, death is a fools game-play.” He finished.

“Complicate” I said.

Divine intervention is not experienced by all. Those who do become saints and those who don’t become atheists, I thought. The seven positive and the seven negative planes of existence have some meaning and that is the reason we have been living in the world where love and compassion among individuals is a rarity. Melodramatic, yet I was amazed to see the change in myself.

“Do you mind telling your name?” he asked.

I could see that the ambulance that crossed us before few minutes stopped ahead of us. The few meters in between was evident. Being a voracious observer of women, I noticed a woman near the ambulance. She was in her thirties. She was beautiful and ethnic. She must have called the ambulance, I guessed.

Noticing her acts I forgot to answer him. “Everything in this world has a reason. Once a person starts to think beyond his individual level, there would be no poverty, no ego, no hunger and no religious wars.” he said.

“Everything has a reason.” I repeated.

I saw the girl once again. She bent and touched.

“Eh? What?” he asked as if he dint listen to what I said.

“I was named as Vyashti I remember.” I answered his question.

All of a sudden he stamped my legs while walking. The laces were misplaced. It felt strenuous to walk. Wind was blowing laboriously. Things eventuate when we least expect it. It’s a universal fact common to all the endeavours in this domain.

“You were right. If you had held on to the brakes of your bike at the right time and if you hadn't hit me hard, things would have been extremely difficult for me ahead” he said.

 I saw the girl touching the boy lying there. The phrase “Everything has a reason” was ringing again and again, inside me.

“You don’t belong here” I said to him. I bent down to tie my laces. “Why were you rushing and running hurriedly before I bumped on you. I too saw the fear. I knew that you were terrified to lose your life. Your eyes sketched what your heart wished. Isn’t it?”

 There was absolute silence.

I got up. He was not there. He has whooshed into the air. I heard a voice ahead. It was the girl’s.

“The boy is breathing. He has life” she shouted to the men in the ambulance.

The situation there became strained. “What must be his name?” I thought.

“Samashti” maybe I interpreted.

All things that we experience are not necessarily explainable. When we don’t know ourselves and we are identified with our body death matters. Consciousness is what we should identify and the soul remains eternal. I understood that there is no death.

And so I moved.

                                                                                                            

All Red light areas do not have a Red light

Simple it may seem writing about an issue in question is not a cakewalk. Procuring the reputation of being a good analytic writer has been immensely demanding and I wish not to deviate from the job of uprooting the essence of habitual issues that we don’t pause and breathe to bother about. Time plays tough and makes you inoperative when you devote all your vigour seeking work. Incidentally it happened to be lethal, plunging me out of the globe into mind wrecking work, hampering me from experiencing a subject worth of putting my butt for straight two hours on the chair to pen about. Ironically the video which I saw also contributed to the urge of spinning this issue to focus of attention. The title may seem sarcastic at the start of the read but the requisite to intentionally use such a caption would be justified towards the end, for which I apologize.

Thirty five kilometres was all that it took to reach the adjoining state. Chithoor, a place notorious for trafficking of women and children was our ultimate destination. When we accelerated our bikes, the wind punched adamant and air was chilling tediously on our faces. Drops of tears emerged to be the reaction of over speed and I had no other go than to swirl my tongue around my lips to taste a drop and absurdly turned back to my friend to convey that it tasted salty, just to bug him and make my existence felt in that road of solitude very rarely hit by vehicles. He was swooping into ever blooming Illaiyaraja songs and was shaking mildly; his mannerisms were ample enough to induce any women to give a sound slap on his face. Now, I would like to make my second apology here. These facts mentioned above do not contribute anything to the article and the title.

A sudden jerk, I did not notice a speed breaker ahead. Luckily, juggling out into perfection I avoided a slide and conversely speaking a drive to puthoor, recognized for its fracture dressings. Everything was going fine, until my friend put his hand right in front of my face hiding the road ahead, to point out a blockade very far. I saw boards that warned us to halt. It was jam-packed. I did not stop my vehicle as I retained every single stuff that would avert any Indian from keeping on the road. Most importantly I owned a licence, for which I was very thrilled of. I parked my bike well in between two police men very arrogantly shifting gears to neutral, in a manner that would annoy even the kindest of kinds. Aware of the fact that verification was very casual as it was the border, I hoped that they would finalize their commitments in a short time and would allow us to make our way into the pathetic road. Was I interpreting impossible?

Reflexing his muscles as if I was rushing to punch his balls, he pulled out the keys in a pace twenty four times electrifying than any bowler in the Indian cricket team. Ten minutes later once my sweat initiated its way to the toes through my tummy unwittingly touching most of my parts, I assembled the courage and the force to question the traffic police to give us the reason for withholding our locomotion.

Twelve bikes, two auto rickshaws, five cars and twenty two buffoons (it does not include police men, for they made us so) were standing without any muster of muscles to open our mouth. The tenor of that place was extremely dynamic and restless. Later, one of the men in his forties elevated his tone to command for my license. I showed because I had no other go than to surrender to him blindly. Then many evidences were asked, one being our liquor content which he managed to check through the odour of our mouths literally proving to be void, were asked which I took out in the order of approval of his diligence. What seemed very weird yet very hilarious was he asked me to pay two hundred rupees for providing him with all the confirmations he asked for and when questioned he acquitted that our number plate had a shaded colour and was not formal, which would put a wild laugh even on the fierce and tough professors of my college. Without understanding the wrongdoing for being accused we gave the amount with a discount of twenty rupees to the Government of India, which was sincere in its intention to provide us the bill for the money that tumbled into their pockets. Fake or true, a big salute for that.

Drifting from my familiar routine of questioning the sincerity of the government or investigating the job ethics of the police men which has become ultimately tiresome, let me thrust a question that every common man should look upon; does licence manifest consideration from the police?  Our pride to keep on the roads of India is ruining its sense as it only remains the first question of approval and no traffic police stops with that alone, letting our drive resume after they examine our license. It has become a key to nag, to be harsh enough.

Precisely some fund can unchain you from any form of violation of rules on the road even if you don’t own a license. To all those people who pointlessly pride having one, learn the fact that it’s purposeless. An intense job of putting things right on road when the sun propels the face hard and chill flows through the ears is difficult, we understand. But you get paid for your job. You have the dominance; you have the power to interrogate us; you have the power to halt us. But does it deserve the hard earned money from public. Some even plead for money instead of throwing a fine, which is an ultimate shame to the profession of justice.

Not this time, the mistake should obviously be bestowed upon us. We in an impulse to abscond from the fine have been very pleased to lend our pockets to their grasp, who as a choice to earn hurried money has lingered its labour of rendering futile questions to snatch money withholding dignity. All red light areas do not have a red light to emphasize the portrayal of its profession, but some years from now if this holds on, the craft that warrants selfless sacrifice and flawless authority in public would be a red light warning to people on road to keep away from cops who effortlessly collects money to drive ahead. The choice is ours. 

Reflection of hearts: Women recreated and reconciled.

As seconds flew in air, she was inching very close to me, close I could ever fantasize. My nerves trembled when the air between us was rushing its way out, as it penetrated through my senses. She was deliberately compressing the space between us, as the people in the bus stand saw with disgust and dirt. I do not know who she was? Why she was embarrassing me and what was she up to? Thousand questions lined up one by one haunting, but being a fun loving person and social minded devil, I continued to escape eye contact, still noticing her acts of sexual innocence. I slowly crawled away from her, wishing I could hypnotize myself when she repeats her act of disguise. My mind, which for most of the time was a vacuum prone base, wanted to travel to the deepest, underlying thoughts of a woman, considered out of question by the majority, tried and flopped by the minority. She was casting herself as a person who she never was, she had something that her eyes never reflected and her lips perfectly faked her heart. Catechizing out her thoughts was impossible at that very instinct because of the situation I was put into. My ears unmuted when the genius and humane part of me accurately synchronized with my thoughts and woke me up from dilemma and yes, she was a Sex-Worker. If not for her profession, people would also take pride in calling her a PROSTITUTE. Minutes later, I started to walk towards light, not because she was in darkness but because I met someone who has taught me to contradict between light and dark. She is a part of womanhood seldom respected, often misused and molested. She thrives for her living and yes, she too is a WOMAN born blessed, facing hazards, speculations and insults all through.

Two extreme contradictory faces of womanhood that happened to come across my livelihood, gagged my unstable mind and insensitive heart, humping a big question within me.

One tried to seduce, enchant and take me to some cop- free lodge so that I would reward her to sleep with me and would pay suitable wages for the pleasure of having her body. She didn’t even torment about the fact that I was way too younger for her. She was trading her sexuality for the money that could get her a meal, her ailing husband the required medical treatment, habitation for her children and her parents a chance to thrive in this ruthless society. Now, are the words slut, whore and a bitch suitable enough to describe a woman of such stature fighting all odds in their life? Thus we equipped her with a more furnished and modest name "SEX-WORKER". Somewhere deep within she wanted to live a transparent and authentic life, but society?

One, tolerating all the bullets, still remaining firm and breaking all the barricade has bestowed women with the maturity that age is not a part when we fight against anti-social elements. A sixteen year old, probably one of the strongest girls by heart has ensured that all Pakistani women would be literate in the years to come. Malala Yousafzai is not only a girl, but a complete woman. Weakness, hopelessness and fear died. Strength, courage and power were born. Her words are a source of wisdom anytime.

Both are women combating with diversified attitudes, fighting out for their own rights and living. What makes the difference is all what matters. We are people who always talk and revolutionize good and that is the sole reason one is standing in United Nations and the other in some stupid roads waving hands for consumers of SEX. Ethos of men has never changed over the years, desiring to just sleep with women anytime and anywhere. If ever we tried to bring parallelism in thoughts and made men perceive the fact that virginity is not a symbol of womanhood, Prostitution would have never been the big game of filth, in survival today. Prostitution is not only a conviction, but the act of penetrating a woman both sexually and mentally by one man, another man and it goes on. That’s what it is.

What does feminism have to do with the work of sex? Are sex workers feminists? Aren’t they concerned about their own sex, striving and falling to the wickedness of men? Many questions evolve when we go deep inside. Only 30 percent of the total women living are feminists. The remaining still fall prey to some inadequate and idiosyncratic mindset of man. If feminism is all about equilibrium of sexes, why are all women not feminists? The problem is when women don’t care about their liberties; men stab them with their power of dominance, prostitution is no different. Feminists are turning out to be egotistical and self-seeking, difficult to interpret. Most women don’t like to presume themselves as helpless victims and even after years of battle against men, the unethical prostitution can never be displaced from the society. Instead of reasoning and winning over arguments with men, if feminists could have accommodated women with proper sex education, termination of prostitution would have been very much possible. Still they put up a struggle to prove that the profession of sex is degrading and only serves to enhance male supremacy. They present facts, but refuse to bring a change ahead. Feminists are not willing to accept SEX WORKERS as their own selves. But somewhere deep within there is a feminist within each of the sex-worker, only buried amidst the evils of the society. They are feminists in disguise.

Women, a symbol of love and power, have learnt to face odds but are they equipped well enough to fight it out themselves, is a big question. Society is creating an ambiance that places sex workers at risk, not their profession. If it was the other way round, feminism would have had its share of success, but literally demanding equal rights and speaking that sex work is degrading our customs and some saying that it is also like any other profession, we have forgot the women caught in between the extremities. They have had their own dying situations and speculations for being pushed into the sex industry, and we instead of providing them with an option of educating and spreading awareness, have insulted them all the way, calling and addressing to them as a prostitute, whore, slut etc. They are prone to rampage and insult everywhere. Sex workers are not given a platform to voice their opinion about themselves. Being women, they are not even allowed to speak about women. They are a part of womanhood, turning out to be OBJECTS to be spoken for and about, sometimes by feminists themselves.

Women would be truly unchained only when the male hold on clutches of influential power are relieved. They need the power to echo their ideas, tell their own stories in their own way and perspective, rather than through male dominant mirrors. A recent study shows that men’s self-esteem is hurt if their opposite sex succeeds at something that they themselves fail at. Feminism for sure, would see an increase in number if so, but whatever the profession of sex is never going to be impacted unless the male dominant mentality of men and equality demanding feminists go hand in hand and work together for the well-being of the marginalized community of sex workers, pliable to all the anti-social elements.

Like every girl, she too would have wanted to become a doctor, activist, engineer or a painter, only to find herself in a place that she was propelled into. Sex workers are not criminals; they are just women who lack resources and dignity in the society. Instead of showcasing and discussing about her purity, it’s high time we cleanse and retune ourselves before we pay to sleep with them. Until and unless the temperament of men keeps trading them, they would be the same workers, sweating for payable SEX.