Grand

I have always been inspired by grandness. I am intensely interested in cosmology and I believe it is the grandness of space that enthralls me. It is the undeniable and overwhelming power manifest in its size, its complexities, its strangeness that draws me to space. It is both mysterious and mystical. For many, space is a challenge, the next quest. In its dark depths, we feel like we may find answers to our own questions. We feel we may even be able to understand the mind of God if we understand space. But for me, more than all this, it is the awe space inspires in me - by virtue of its grandeur and its grandness - that truly excites me. Space, in all its infinite glory, is ultimate, unconquerable, incomparable.

Recently, I have been doing a lot of reading on current affairs in preparation for some interviews. In the course of this preparation, I started reading about the Arab Spring. I read about the Burning Man - one Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi - who set himself to fire as a mark of protest against the civil discrimination he was being dealt by the local authorities. That singular incident set off a series of protests and civil demonstrations against the unjust autocratic rule Tunisia had been subject to for so many years. Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Syria, Yemen, and several other countries followed in the wake of Tunisia. Some of the protests turned violent. The total death toll is expected to be around 38,000 - 39,000, roughly. That many people have died, gone, poof! For what? For justice, to demand what is rightly theirs - and they won't even be around to enjoy those rights now. But their fellow countrymen will. Such unselfish acts are unheard of. But I err. We have heard of such acts. Bhagat Singh, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, Chandra Shekhar Azad - all died for our independence. Perhaps I am dulled to those acts of martyrdom because I have grown up reading about them. But what is happening around us today is current, to be written in history books some day. History is being made right now. And so I am more greatly affected by the current uprisings - what some are calling the "fourth wave of democracy". These events involve so many lives, they are such great events, so grand, that for the first time, I am feeling inspired and awed by another kind of grandness.

I know what makes space grand. But what makes these current uprisings grand? Is it the landmark changes they will make to word history? Is it that they are global events, potentially shaping all our futures? The one definite answer I could think of was the sheer humanitarian spirit of these movements. It is like a virus - started by one act of self-immolation - and now spread, like a plague, to several millions across borders. So many human lives revolve around the outcome of these events that the total worth associated with those outcomes becomes dangerously close to infinite. If there is a God, here is something He's going to have to take very, very seriously. And so, there is a comparison to space after all. And that is a human life.

When man first looked up at the skies and tried to make sense of what he saw in the movement of the stars, he concluded that the Earth, with man on it, was at the center of our solar system. The Sun, the Moon, and all the other planets moved around the Earth. It's called ego-centrism and it's our natural condition. But as our understanding of the Universe progressed, we realized not only are we not at the center of the solar system, we're not at the center of anything. The Sun is at the center of the solar system. The Earth is the third planet that revolves around the Sun. The solar system, itself, lies on an outer spiral arm called the Orion arm of our Milky Way galaxy. Where our galaxy lies with respect to the center of the Universe is anyone's guess, (for we're yet to find that center). In other words, science is telling us we're not as special as we once believed. Our sun accounts for 99.9 percent of the mass of the solar system. That means the Earth, one of the smaller planets, accounts for a fraction of 0.1 percent of the mass. And so you can imagine how very minuscule a human being is with respect to the solar system. Now think of a human being with respect to the Universe. Exactly.

We are like a fraction of a whiff as far as the Universe is concerned. If one day we all went missing, the Universe would not even notice. But as puny as we humans are, as little as we matter in the grander, material scope of things, collectively, human lives inspire the same awe in us as space itself. It must mean that on some level, we are equal to space, capable of matching up to it's grandness. Don't they say - great things come in small packages? We may not have lots of mass or be in a privileged geographical location, but we are capable of affecting change - in other people, and even in the Universe itself. The Arab Spring is testimony to that.
We, are grand.

Lal Bahadur

Ever notice how all rickshaw drivers look the same? Cab and bus drivers, courier delivery guys, pizza delivery boys, pani puri and vada pav bhaiyyas, cigarette walas - they all invariably look the same! They all have separate and unique lives, each as complex and rich in detail as our own. They each have their share of all life's joys: responsibilities, love, loss, celebration, death. And yet, how easily we club them into one common denominator. We never really notice how diverse and rich each life is. That's how we are made to function. How about stopping to spare a smile, a heartfelt thank you? How about asking them what's going on in their lives? There's such a wealth of knowledge behind each of these common faces - so much we could learn, so much we could know.

While I was living in Bombay in Khar, I had slipped into the expensive habit of cabbing it to work every morning. There were a bunch of cab drivers who were always around my house - the same ones everyday. And because I saw them everyday I slowly learnt to tell one face from another. There was one particular cab driver among these with whom I traveled most often. His name was Lal Bahadur. He was an old, fat little man with a small frame and a kind face. He always wore the same white kurta pyjama - looking freshly laundered and then increasingly soiled with every passing day until the cycle would repeat.

Now as a rule, I do not generally engage in conversation with my cab and rickshaw drivers (they can sometimes get too talkative and I like my quiet). But since Lal Bahadur had been dropping me to work quite often lately, I did not particularly mind when he once asked me if it was an office that I went to every morning. We got to talking after that. I told him quite a lot more about my life than I normally would to a stranger. He was mighty impressed that I was a girl living alone in the city, away from my parents, and working in an "office". I think at one point he asked me the name of the company that hired me and when that did not strike a bell with him, he asked what it was that we did. I was at quite a loss to try and explain Advertising to him and remember floundering around, saying "TV" quite a lot - the only word I was sure he'd understand. Lal Bahadur, in turn, shared his life story with me. He was from a small village somewhere in Uttar Pradesh, and had come to Bombay, like so many others, to make money. We live such sheltered lives that there is something about a truth such as this one that really hits home when you hear it from an individual who has actually experienced it - like being in a war or being witness to a bomb explosion, or being a refugee in the Partition. I knew, I'd heard, the newspapers talked about it all the time - the city was such a lure for so many folks from rural India - how, every year, so many of them come here with starry eyed expectation, only to end up being drivers or peons, or, if they're very lucky, little chai stall owners. Hearing Lal Bahadur talk about just this somehow made the fact a little more real to me.

He told me how he had a daughter who was working with SBI bank, and when he told me she was an "officer" with the bank, his voice shook with pride and emotion. I realised he had such a different perspective of things. To him, his daughter had "made it", and she'd hit the jackpot working for a public sector bank - such a very reputed one. To you and me, that seems like a minor accomplishment. Because we've been born into financially stable families, bred by English-medium schools, to us, this seems unworthy of ambition. We have grander meanings associated with that word. Ambition to us is spearheading a big multinational company, or making a speech on television or migrating to a richer country. Its funny, but although Lal Bahadur's definition of the word is so warped compared to our own, our ambitions are probably never going to be realised whereas his already are.

He drives his big Omni around the city with such pride in his eyes, such happiness in his heart. Am I saying one must lower one's expectations from oneself in order to ensure they are achieved? Of course not. For Lal Bahadur, this was the highest expectation he could have placed upon himself and upon his daughter. And yet, he achieved it all. So, by comparison, doesn't it seem like he's a bigger achiever than any of us? We may have fancy clothes to wear, and fancy offices to go to, while he wears the same kurta pyjama everyday and toils the streets of the city in his little black and yellow car, dropping important people to important places. Yet, he shines brighter than me. He shines brighter than all of us. He has achieved what he set out to do, while we haven't even come close.

I salute you, Lal Bahadur.