Choice, choosy and choicest!

The toughest of the jobs perhaps, is about 'choices' ....

Once I swallow something down the throat, 'no more choices'... was what I felt...

Then there came a teacher who said, 'You should be able to tell your stomach... “Dear Stomach, I forgot to sit for meditation today... will you kindly press the 'pause' button for a while, and then press the 'resume' button when I have finished with it?'...

In that very same group of students, there was one amazing person, who also happened to be my colleague and a very good friend, who very casually demonstrates, how he can bring the water he drank just now, out of his throat and mouth the way it went inside! He added, ' I used to swallow small bits of food items, and just bring it out as it is, when a kid... a nice place to hide isn't it?... but now, I don't indulge in such things... doesn't make sense'...

Once we elect a politician, we have to digest the misdeeds even, of that politician (the 'right to recall' is right now far beyond our 'practical reach'... almost like we try to push our hand through the sleeve of a coat which was inadvertently stitched/sewn across the opening at the other end !)

A lady has a choice(when 'really' free), can have a choice (with a good spouse), and 'must-have-a-choice' (that 'must-have' is a 'wish'....when forced against her will, to marry an incompatible kind of spouse), about bearing a child..! A cocoanut tree does not have a choice about bearing nuts... Oh! ...for that matter, perhaps, couples of same gender too cannot boast of any 'such' choice ...

“Answer any 5 out of the following” said the top most line of the question paper at our school ...

Nothing unusual... except that...

a few of us started off with number 1 (it was the easiest... so why waste time, looking at all the questions?... only when something tough comes, look further down...).. But there were only 5 questions! Half an hour later, that teacher walked through the 4 class rooms, and asked 6th standard boys to raise their hands... (His choice was, to dictate two more questions to be added 'only' if there were a few raised hands!... ). The kids of 6th and 7th classes , section A and B were shuffled in those 4 rooms, to prevent copying from the very next kid... there was a choice to try and look over the next kid, ..... to the next-of-next kid....!!! Kids used to look at 'random-roll-numbers' when announced to find out the likely alternate kid at the exam hall.. the anxiety is very same, when we look at the berth in the railway compartment, the look in the eyes say it loud and clear! And if it is about a 'vacant' berth, that routine, impersonal dialogue-delivery by the TTE, uttered not-even-lifting his gaze, up from that crumpled sheets of charts, ....'Try the next compartments' he says,..... and we know.... he is only trying to remind us that the choice is more about 'deciding whether we are stupid enough'.... to really 'try' wading through that crowd, with all the lug-age/aged-cases-lugged, precariously at its loose handles, all the way to enjoy the jostling enriched by sneers moving within a moving train (almost like ... a person chanting ' I am meditating' throughout the meditative session, eyes closed, and claiming that his silent mind did allow a meditation, not aware of the crowd of non-verbal thoughts perpetuating his choiclessness!).

Dosa or Idli?.... asks the spouse... I say 'both'.. Earlier she used to ask 'why?'... not now... She knows!... She knows my choices... I have outsourced the 'choice' back to the batter... The same batter performs well as an idli between 16th hour and 30th hour of manufacture... but for a dosa, the batter has no choices... it has to perform! The miniaturised grains are anyways going to remain 'compressed', sealed by heated oil, until it is a very healthy stomach that can reconstitute the micro grains into a digestible form!

When 'trust' becomes a matter of a very a 'conscious' choice, at will, irrevocably, at the hands of the person who offers that choice-called-trust, the person who gives up that choice, evolves into a dynamic state of choicelessness!

(By the way... I was ... sort of ... joyed, when I heard a dialogue, by Shri Vikram seth, chosen by a choosy kind of judges, as the choicest of 25 'legends'... “His parting shot: "My advice for the next generation is choose your parents well." http://www.ndtv.com/article/ndtv-25-latest/intolerance-is-violence-says-vikram-seth-458805 )

Choicelessly yours,

psn(5th January, 2014)