Life is a long wait
Shaadaab S. Bakht
@ShaadaabSBakhtShaadaab S. Bakht, who worked for famous Indian dailies The Telegraph, The Pioneer, The Sentinel and wrote political commentaries for Tehelka.com, is Gulf Today’s Executive Editor.
This photo is used for illustrative purpose.
Life doesn’t give us happiness. It merely makes us wait for it. One wait leads to another. One small wait leads to a big wait. In other words, life is one long wait, nothing more.
Credit goes to life’s impregnable dexterity that it puts us through the endless circuit of the wait and we can’t make that out. Life is indeed smart because we can’t figure out that we are being manipulated when we are being manipulated.
Incidentally, the wait is known by two names: dream and hope. The former is solely responsible for creating a whole new and highly saleable and sought-after world called poetry, a respectable palliative for failures. You don’t have to agree with me.
It flies us to the no-no land where undemanding pleasure plays the king. agony is persona non grata. And anguish is an outlaw
I went to the same school for as many as twelve years and was and am still in love with it. Again, school life was a series of waits.
In primary school, I used to feel that great things would happen in high school. In high school, I used to feel that life would see happiness once I completed high school. So, I waited for my school years to end.
But then arrived college and with that came the succulent adolescent years. And with that began the greatest of all waits for joy: career. I was reminded almost daily by my elders and friends that a joyful life had everything to do with a lucrative career. Once again began my long wait for bliss.
The desire to enjoy life is the deepest in the adolescent years and it is really sad that the years are invariably used in search of a rewarding career.
It is a period in our lives when unadulterated passion begins to take charge and assumes utopian dimensions. It flies us to the no-no land where undemanding pleasure plays the king. Agony is persona non grata. And anguish is an outlaw.
In the restive vigour of some eyes we can feel and breathe the calm of a lifetime and the gush of eternal gladness. We want to touch them as if they were a patchwork of reveries. As if feeling them would rescript our experiences of togetherness.
After I landed a career the toughest wait for fulfilment entered my life: the consolidation of my career. Because a good family life depended fully on the amount of money I made, I was told repeatedly.
Well, the bulk of my vibrant years is over waiting. When will happiness come?
