Wishing for Pangaea: An Ode to Long Distance (Friend)ships

According to Wikipedia, ‘Pangaea’ is the supercontinent that existed before the earth split into its current continent configuration some 250 million years ago. It also goes onto say that the earth is in the habit of doing this random drifting apart and shifting around every 300-400 million years.

And at each point we have managed to come up with names to describe it, Gondwanaland, Pannotia, Rodinia… the list goes on. How anyone comes up with these numbers and postulates is anyone’s guess and I’m pretty sure I sound daft and nerdy as I go on about something very irrelevant to anything today. Do bear with me, I have a point. You see, when there was a combined landmass everyone lived together, continents which are now separate, then overlapped to form common ground. Everyone lived on the same piece of land. There was no divergent evolution or natural selection, no survival of the fittest or random elimination. Therefore, my best friend and I have come to the conclusion that the origins of our friendship were somewhat like that, until that fateful day when the continental drift decided to come along, aka graduation. Yes, the continental drift did also cause an intermingling of populations and a division of pre-existing populations due to tectonic plate shifts resulting in many of the hypothesis that Charles Darwin and Mr Lamarck liked to throw around. However, for friends such as mine, it rendered our life a bit chaotic and more than a little lonely. On opposite corners of the world in completely different external environments, we now had to adapt to circumstances previous unforeseen and to a good extent, unwanted. Our routines diverged and so did our communication. Add to that a long list of limiting factors such as time difference, internet inconsistencies, the issue of paying to talk on the phone, living you current life as well as holding onto the good old Pangaean times, new people, new food, the obligatory growing up etc, and you get the perfect recipe for being friend-sick. That’s right. Here’s a sickness that’s not given as much care and attention as compared to “love-sickness”. We speak on end about long distance relationships, of the separation of love which is meant to be together. But what of two friends sitting miles, oceans and continents away from each other, staring at a computer screen waiting for a word, a phrase or chat conversation with their significant other. What of the heart break you feel when the video freezes, or the voice get cut, when the bars on the internet signal plunge down, when the computer decides to be dodgy, when the phone line goes dead because you’ve run out of money, when you’re greeted with missed calls instead of a familiar face, when sending the package costs more than what’s in it, when in a country like India it just ends up getting lost anyway…. What of those chuddy-buddies, those brother’s-in-arms, those homie-G’s, those machas, those roommates and dorm mates and classmates, those people that made up your day, and marked your calenders. What happens when they end up like those continents separated by seas of… everything!? It takes time and effort to keep it up, to keep it going, to keep in touch. It’s harder to be there for someone, and it’s also harder not to think about how it ‘used to be’ and what ‘could’ve been’ instead of focusing on what is and has to be done. As my friend and I do absurd things to overcome the time difference, from downing tons of coffee and green tea to having showers to stay awake, one this is for sure, we will come together. Maybe physically, like the earth does every so often (note: 300-400 million years) or maybe and most probably, mentally, in that way we look to the future, for better things are definitely to come. It something like the commonality between the Tasmanian Wolf (a marsupial found off the coast of Australia) and the Placental wolf (found on the mainland)… although they were victims in separation of the continental drift, and were subjected to various different environments that they were required to adapt to in order to survive, the end product, i.e., the current species of the same, are not very different. Yes, they appear different and function differently but their purpose is still the same; to hunt and survive. Forgive the crude simile, for we all seek to do more than hunt and survive in life, but in essence the mechanism is parallel. Because when my friend and I saw each other a couple of days ago after almost 8 months not having been around each other, we picked up as though we were in the middle of a conversation we hadn’t finished. Although we’re separated by different cultures and lifestyles and oceans and what not else, we still are and always will be, Pangaeans.

The 21st Century Assembly Line

I always wonder at the way a place that seemed big when you first got there just gets smaller as you got to know your way around it. It’s quite like the plastic Christmas tree that you decorated since kindergarten just got smaller as you got bigger. Less intimating, easier to decorate, easier to reach the stars on the top… maybe also, less awe inspiring, giving us the power to jump up and hang the decorations, without using the stool, without holding your mother’s hand and then suddenly, a gentle Thud! You fall. You cry. Someone picks you up. Asks you, concerned, “Are you alright?” plain, simple concern. No condescension, no accusation but still. Ever answered with an angry retort? I have. So sometimes I wonder, is this what I have grown up to become? I feel like I have lost the sense of wonder and awe, which would fill me as I looked up at a big building, or gazed to the top of the Christmas tree, at the twinkling lights and the crowning angel right on the top… things which seemed so far away. Yet there had always been the anticipation, maybe if I live long enough, I could be tall enough to get to the top. But there would also be the seeping disappointment, if I grow a little every year, wouldn’t the tree grow as well? So maybe I’ll never get to it! But wonder of wonders, the fairy dust worked! The tooth fairy did exist because hey! One Christmas I could touch the top of the tree on my tippy toes.

Happiness, simple and unadulterated. What happened to it? It. Just. Died. With the "maturation" into adulthood and the coming of the 21^st century marvel, which is globalization. And I’m sure you’ve read lots of articles on this one so let’s just be “cool” (more like clichéd) and call this, just another brick in the wall.

Have you noticed how when little children laugh their eyes smile?

It puzzles me but, all I see in the eyes of the people around me as I jostle through the 8 am Morning Rush is a vary alertness, an unequivocal aim of getting to work on time, and in many cases a slight hint of desperation. This world is surging forward like high tide crashing at the rocks, except it never ebbs away. It keeps coming, and it batters the common man, the "mature" adult against the solid silica over and over and over again. I am dashed out of my reverie when I bumped into a poised and calm 45 year old woman, in her crisp starched cotton sari on her way to work. When I turn to apologize, I am pinned with a REALLY angry look. So much for smiling with your eyes. And so much, for poise. If this where development and growth brings us, I’d rather not have a bunch of cars, some property or a nice phone. I’d rather just sit on top of a mountain and look at the view. Oh! For the fulfillment of such fanciful ideals.

When I was little I would look at a skyscraper and count the number of floors in it, although I would go cross eyed somewhere along the way and have to start all the way from the beginning again, finally giving in to the utter impossibility of task. Down the years I’ve still tried to do it, and my dream came true when I counted ALL FIFTEEN FLOORS of the LIC building on Mount Road in Chennai. Anywho, essentially my point is that a sense of awe and humility at the sheer size and scale of the world around us is now considered as being the curse of the complacent inexperienced minds which are just ‘easily amused’. An expression of pleasant contentment at a cup of coffee well-served at a Bistro was reciprocated by my friend, with a careless shrug and a overtly humble, “Oh that’s what they’re paid for, Big deal!” A person has to think a million times just before asking a question that’s on their minds just in case what comes out sounds ‘uncool’ or ‘ill informed’. The fear of not seeming up to date with going on-s of the world around us in terms of the latest music, or the newest brands, or the most recent unnecessary overpriced piece of technology is the paramount concern in the minds of many. Attribute it to low self esteem of the individual or the psychological dictatorship of the society we live in, an innocently spoken phrase or a defuse of silly excitement at something trivial can be so ‘pregnant’ with connotations (yes, pun intended) that a sufficiently self conscious person would best leave it unsaid. So much, for the freedom of speech and expression. We protest against physical coercion for human rights, but what about the compartmentalization of our minds, this complete and absolute take over by no one in particular, of everyone in general. It reaches us all, this shutter on our soul, this filter installed at the frontal lobe of our cerebrum: stop, listen, repeat. Reuse, Recycle. The same junk that everyone throws out linguistically is picked up by our radar and regurgitated for fear of risking a place, a seat, a number in this assembly line we call the Beat Generation.

An Educated Guess

When do words go from being conversational, to contemplative to philosophical? When do diary entries become capricious, frivolous, exaggerated or carefully organized ramblings instead of thoughts, feelings, events, activities, just life? When does pretending become being, when does trying to be, become pretending? When the genuinity dissolves, can you really tell? Or does it not matter. I say this because I know; my words are not genuine, that they are imagined masterpieces thought out over and over not because I am thinking, but because I am awaiting an exposure, a display of this ‘secret’ life, these ‘hidden’ writings to the world someday. So what do we really do, because it makes us happy, because it makes us content, when are our words, or our thoughts, yes even those, completely our own? When is it that we present our souls, our very core, in simple plain words, unadulterated and honest, even to ourselves? Because even in the most private moments, one shares with his own thoughts, we are governed by the wish, the will, to be seen. To be heard. To be admired. To be loved and appreciated. To accepted and to be coveted. Yes, coveted.

To be honest, is really much harder than I thought. The words above are mine. And still, I have lied. For I have shown them to you. And this is my excuse. I’m human.

Hi. Clichés and human shortcomings apart here are the beginnings of a linguistic algorithm with no particular rhyme or rhythm, just a few educated guesses I’ve picked up along the way.