Confucius Say: Roll of Dice is Three

It is almost three years to the date that I find myself moving to Bangalore again with the intent of helping my father in his business plans. And it is with a sense of some more apprehension, a lot more responsibility and now, also some anticipation. While this career shift is welcome, considering it gives me something of a career as opposed to not having one at all right now, it also has its own set of troubles that don't merit detail. Suffice to say that I foresee now a very different life for me than I had ever previously imagined it to be. And how was that, you ask? Instead of an answer, here is another question for you.

What is common between the atmosphere, the bottom of the ocean and the urethra under a bursting bladder? Yep, pressure. And there are many other kinds too, of course. There was a time when I thought I withstood it well, and it was a quality I admired in my pool of few positive traits. But in what I guess is a rather telling sign, I seem to have lost, along with patience, that attribute of mine.

I am being torn asunder, it seems. And try as I may, I don't quite see myself as the vacuumed ball that horse drawn carriages are trying to pull apart. It is far less dramatic in real life, as opposed to the illustration from that physics book, but I still find myself empathising with that useless ball of metal. Only, in my case, I feel much worse than the ball that stood its ground.

I thought I was doing pretty well, telling myself that I just need to come to terms with my responsibilities, whether I like them or not and even if I did not necessarily choose to take them on in the first place. And then, out of the blue come accusations. Not very precise ones, mere allusions for the most part, but accusations all the same. And their vague nature does not help. I cannot be dismissive of them either, since callousness would only add to my list of crimes, and as it is, callous is something I do not wish to always be.

I never thought that I (or anyone outside of a tragic comedy, for that matter) could simultaneously be in so many places that I don't want to be in. Of course, I am not referring merely to physical spaces here. But it seems that a change of physical space, in this case, is the only course of action I can take if I am to preserve what little I think is left of my sanity, which was always on shaky ground to start with. And now that it sounds much like escapism, I cannot help but feel a sort of disdain at my own anticipation.

I guess there are no un-drastic measures to start life from scratch, disowning everything from your past. For better or for worse, the past makes us who we are, and we can't really disown ourselves. But why, oh why, does the past have to keep coming back to haunt? And if it must, it really knows how to pick the time when the chips are down. Find a homeless unemployed man who has little other than the generosity of friends and family to live on, passing his time indolently, making of himself a caricature of the person he once was, and fling upon him his past. Even Chinese torture techniques seem laughable in contrast. Or maybe I am only saying that since I have never been tortured by the Chinese. But right now, I really wouldn't mind the trade.