Are we there yet? – I

[parakhi]

http://www.parakhi.com/blogs/2012/02/11/are-we-there-yet-i
February 11, 2012 By: chiya-pasaley

We were talking about if it has become late for us to do something. We are both beyond our twenties and at an age when twenties is the new thirties, we were both, I think in our own ways, worried. We drew examples and sketched consolation for ourselves, while also discussing examples that would make us nervous. “Look at Somebody, how old is he?”, I would ask. “Maybe 32”, S. replied. “Hmm…”. And after a few moments, I would say “So there is time”. “Lau”, S. appeared suddenly confident now, “Of course we have time. It is why, or else we would have been doing something wouldn’t we?”

I do not know the answer to that, but it makes me a little relieved. Everyday in the newspapers I read of a twenty one year old guy making a robot that can can fly and make interesting sounds or take pictures it can directly transfer to i-whatever. Or a twenty three year old going to Brown and discovering water in Mars. Or there is this success story who has not celebrated her twenty third but is celebrating a CEO position. And there is always Justin Bieber. Slowly, I suppose I am not a kid anymore. The celebrities of my generation are more and more dangerously hovering to the birth date of the mid Eighties. Which means I am with them, getting there. And what have I done? Sometimes, I feel, a lot for my age, and sometimes, really very little.

“When you are walking up a hill, there is bound to be late/quick. You rest here and you see another group passing by and at times you pass those groups yourself, resting at some other point”, S. gets wise.

“Yes, yes”, I am a little upbeat about this metaphor. “I guess the important thing is to not rest a lot at the same spot, there is the danger of missing your lot”, I add.

We both agree that, in life, as in trekking, it is nicer to not miss one’s lot. As if inspired by our conversation, a few birds chip above us, hovering around an old tree. Would it matter if the birds get their food in the noon or the evening, I wonder. I suppose depending on their appetite they have a deadline, but how they go about it probably depends on them. The ones above us, for example, seemed to be in leisure. They demonstrated no real accomplishment coming to that tree and hovering around it. Chirping for about a minute they left for another tree. If they were searching for food, to me, they looked at ease with it.

We all have our deadlines on our heads, temporary and permanent, and as a generation on ourselves, we are always looking to be with each other. Technology has played a big hand in having made our lives faster, but has it increased the value of our living? I guess I do not look modest pronouncing such a thought, but I am confident, it is an important question for us.

Chiya-Pasaley loves tea and writes about conversations that originate along the hours spent on drinking many cups of it. Besides that he is curious about many things and especially the rural-urban divide, and the coming of modernization to Nepal. He writes on the mundane and the very fantastic, and everything in between.

http://www.parakhi.com/blogs/2012/02/11/are-we-there-yet-i

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