This happened more than 17 years back, when I was still a teenager - way too cynical about everything around me. I prided myself in finding everything that is wrong with anything - movies, books, people, places etc. My cousin visited us after many years. Now, when I say cousin, please do not imagine another teenager. My cousin was a couple of years older than my father. In a family as big as my mother, this was not uncommon, nor was it uncommon to find nephews and nieces who were older than me!
Anyway, this cousin was one of the most creative people in my family. My mother had often told me how he would create small wonders and show-pieces out of waste articles like toys from coconut shells, paintings on the ceiling fan to give a lovely effect when the fan is switched on and so on. He was also popular in the family for having changed the maximum number of jobs within a certain number of years.
He described with great passion his current job in a prawn farm - how the prawns were bred, ‘harvested’ and then processed through machines which smeared them in bread crumbs, roasted them, packed them in tins them and so on. The love with which he described the process would have made one think that he loved eating prawns, had one not known that he had never tasted any.
We were talking about my school and the subjects. I was talking with the same indifference that one often finds in teenagers about how the whole system was wrong and how the subjects were of no use. Without seeming to advise he started talking fondly about the subjects and suggested I keep writing as I read, for it was easier to remember what one writes down than what one reads.
It is strange what memories one tends to carry from one’s past. I do not remember a lot of things from that year. I don’t even remember the exact year. I don’t really remember everything we talked about. However I do remember that we watched a mediocre tamil movie (and I still remember the title of the movie) and as always, I was pointing out the various faults with the movie - how absurd the dialogues sounded, how stupid the costumes looked etc. My cousin on the other had, suddenly said how interestingly an actor reacted or some such thing. I don’t remember exactly what he said, only that he managed to find something good in a trashy film!!
I would not say that I was jolted out of my negativity. I thought for a few days. I discussed it with my mother and realized that this person had probably more reasons to feel negative about one thing or the other. All the time he stayed at home, he did not speak anything negative about his previous jobs, but spoke with interest on his current one. It is a different story that he left this one a while later too, but the crux of the matter is how much he lived and loved the present.
I have often thought about that evening. I have not changed completely as a person. I did not become a motivational speaker overnight. I still get frustrated at uncertainty and with a lot of people inside and outside of work. But this memory has often helped in some small degree at least in putting aside the negativity for a while at least, if not come completely out of it.
Of late it has become increasingly difficult to stay positive. Changes at the workplace and constantly hearing how we are all ‘resources’ for the company and not people, news everyday bringing out one scandal after another in the country and in my state, large hoardings of corrupt politicians smiling shamelessly decorating the roads that I cannot avoid on the way to work - there are countless things that fuel the frustration and depression. I really wish I get another wake-up call to help me come out of it. One that will jolt me out of my coma and make me feel alive again!!
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