Dr. Govinda Kc- a prophet in a wrong land

Dr. KC shows what an ideal human being looks like and why you should not be one of them.

If you have been following the news lately, it does not really take a genius to say who is right and who is wrong. Having nothing more than integrity has his only banner, Dr. Kc leads from the front on what a human is capable of, what an ideal human being looks like and why one should not aim for that.

A man can stand suffering. I would claim that he has strength to stand tall than any suffering presented to him. But it is indignation that he cannot stand, not the suffering. How can one ask anyone to be virtuous when it is precisely what is being punished. You are not being taken down for your vices, you are not dying for your wrong doing, but your honesty being your weak point, your integrity being your liability.

As you read this, little kids in the country right now are being taught on why "Honesty is the best policy", "Why you should refuse to settle for lies", "Why integrity is the highest form of badge a human should aim at" and god forbid if that kid actually listens and grows up, he is probably going to die, be called an insane person, even worse mistagged, blamed for everything by those who have nothing to offer to anyone, by those whose soul does not even have a faint taint of truth to spot on. That is what we are preparing our kids to be.

One of the most frequent talks over the dining table, over the coffee shops is about we wondering why we don’t get heroes in our country. I can tell you why, because the heroes don’t win, even worse anyone who dares not even for heroism but just for justice- even the ones asking the rapist to be given punishment, someone asking a taxi driver to pay by the reading on the cab, anyone and I mean anyone who dares for justice, who dares to carry truth as his only god is the one pay the price for being right.

As of now, well this is the example we are being set. This is the movie we are being forced to watch, where a good guy is taken apart into pieces by the bad guys who are powerful and the others are just watching him being torn apart; except it is not a movie, it is real and the country is losing.

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The Mirage

The loneliness often stabs from the back, at the least expected moment. The tunes in the song when you are wired in, a quick glance at your own shadow- the trigger is sent and a meltdown is coming.

And as my brain recollects the aura of a meltdown, I make my guards ready- the wisdom, the long breaths to distract myself, few quotes here and there, desperately cling on to the vision of dreams hoping they can drag me through the day.

A battle is inevitable.

I fragment. Each of my cells in the body aligns with one team or the other- one in the protest, one in the support. Each of them holding their flags for or against my vision, for or against the horizon and for or against my own leadership for me.  

Each of the philosophy I hold is tested. The tug of war begins. I drown, I rise, I shrink, I resist. The battle goes on.

And no matter who wins, I end up winning and losing at the same time. A part of me wins, a part of me loses. And there I sit at the consensus table with the winner, the loser, and me- staring at the shadow, hoping it lengthens and the day ends.

Some days it's about winning, some days it is about going through. Some days you triumph your vulnerabilities, some days you are not so lucky. Some days you float and some days you drown. And as much of a cliché, it is - Some days, you are Van Gogh's starry night, some days you are his suicide letter.

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The impersonator

My voice cracks with the crushing weight of the question, "Are you okay?" as my younger self asks me the question from the mirror. I try hard to hear him- the screaming of the unfulfilled promises, the carcass of the broken dreams and the echoes of failure are louder than the soft words.

"Have you done the things you wanted to do?", he asks me. My heart beats the same but sounds louder in the silence. My vacant eyes, my dry throat, and my dying soul muster up the courage in every corner of my being to just barely stand.

I tell him that fate dealt a heavy blow, that I had lost at something infinite, something big, that somewhere I did not measure up, that the battle was fought and the battle was lost, that my wings have torn and I cannot fly like I used to, that the dreams have remained unfulfilled and long forgotten.

"Are you still the person you were", he asks again.

I wish I could wrap pretty words around and tell him that beneath the flesh beats the same heart, that it was battle that was lost and not the compass, that life is sometimes a battle against gods and gods can be a little stubborn. But I don't. I tell him that I have lost the colours, that my armors are down and the wounds are on display.

I look him and question myself if he is real or I am, if he is the impersonator or I am.

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Voices And The Wars

The voices and the wars continued. It is funny how emptiness feels so heavy. The heaviness crushes down my soul, every fiber of my being that warrants I should live disintegrates and all that remains is a big chunk of nothingness; wounds failing to gape with time, the words of wisdom are too weak to even make an attempt to soothe me.

In a desperate attempt to get an inflated sense of self-worth, I upload a selfie. A quick hit of dopamine will make me immune to the hurts of my scattered pieces of my bones for some hours. Facebook status for some more. Then hopefully sleep will kick in. But mornings are always the hardest- the reminder that we are nothing more than a function of who we are and we have no more freedom than the cells in our body, that we must act as we are supposed to act, we must look the way we are supposed to look, we must say the things we are supposed to say, we must behave the way we are supposed to behave and we must love the way we are supposed to love. Anything contrary will be annihilated- Honesty does not count, integrity does not count.

We fought for it, we tried to find it. But our sweaty palms, our pounding hearts, and proud brain decided to cut the strings of the kite and wave white flags on the wind instead. Then our old rusty hearts walked away accepting loneliness as forced retirement.

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Why should you walk alone?

"We are giving the power to one bad remark, one lousy comment to control us and bring us down….In any compromise between food and poison, it is always poison that wins. In any compromise between good and evil, it is always evil that wins..There may not be much light at the end of the tunnel, but it will beat darkness."

"If you give them the power to kill you, they will"- Charles Bukowski

We are living in the world where we are conditioned to be numbed by compliments. "You look so cute on that picture", "you are so special", "That dress suits you so perfectly". We become used to it, to the point where it actually becomes the source from which extract false sense of inflation of who we are.

The problem is that whenever we give them the power to make us feel good, we also give them the power to bring us down. We are giving the power to one bad remark, one lousy comment to control us and bring us down. This is the problem with trying to go for the quick fix. Since our entire confidence and image is built by others, it is too fragile to stand on its own, and down it crumbles.

The idea of walking alone has always inspired me. It means long and dark shadows but it also means not having to carry the burden of others. It means cold food and lonely nights but it also means an integral piece- not fragmented- one single theme, one single idea- not divided, not compromised. The problem with compromise is that once you know you are right and you are compromising, then that’s a betrayal to the self. "In any compromise between food and poison, it is always poison that wins. In any compromise between good and evil, it is always evil that wins." says Ayn Rand.

The idea is don’t sell yourself short. At times the world seems too big to fight against, but it can be fought, men of vision have done it. Quoting one of the best lines from Bukowski himself, "There may not be much light at the end of the tunnel, but it will beat darkness." Let others play the small game. Let them be bound by the petty constitution and laws the world dictates, don’t let them be your standard default. The world is too big, too cruel that can send chills down the spines on a sunny day, protect yourself, for everytime the world gets a chance to swing its blade, it will.

I am ending this piece with a line from watership down, "The entire world will be your enemy, prince with thousand enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first, they must catch you."

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Turning Back

We were nineteen years old and we were searching for love, like a pirate looking for his filthy share of gold. We searched it anywhere we could find, in the facebook chats, in the twitter world, in the corners of the classroom, across the halls.

We were nineteen and we wanted a picture perfect love, picture perfect happiness, picture perfect world. We were nineteen and things made little sense. Maybe we let the movies dictate our imagination, maybe we let those romantic books seep into our bones a little more than we should have or maybe it was supposed to be the way it was, we were nineteen and we got broken.

But, we were nineteen, and we were alive. Our hearts were not scared to beat faster and we could feel the weight of blood pooling in our veins. We were nineteen and we knew less of the world than we do today. We had ignored the maps and went into an exploration and things made less sense. We were nineteen and we lived the way we should have. We were nineteen and the tattoo on our shoulder shouts the honest slogan, “No Regrets”.

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The apology you deserved

Dear you,

More often than not, I have been sad in my life. That is the thing about being sad. You get used to it. You get accustomed to it. It wraps you around like a fog and you cannot see things clearly. At first, you want to see the end of the road, you struggle, but then you slowly sink in the bliss of the feeling of being numb because you cannot see the end of the road and there is no destination anymore. The fog becomes your comfort zone and you don’t want to trade it with a sunny day.

The coldness in your bones begins to creep inside your heart and finds a way to your head. You begin to replay the memories and try to find out what was real and what was not? At that moment, I swear I loved you more than myself. Now, I feel nothing about you. What is real and what is not? All those precious memories I treasured are now equivalent to the teenager’s drunk hangovers. What is real and what is not? And what if, what feels so real today feels nothing tomorrow? What is real and what is not?

As my mind races through these question marks, I begin to realize how sorry I am. I am sorry from the side of the both of us for it took us so long to finally let each other go; that we held each other so tightly, we were choking each other; that we were so desperate to feel right about our choices that we tried to modify who we were just to feed our ego to prove we are right.

You deserved this apology from the day we met, from the day we took our shining hearts and turned them into rust with our tears. You deserve this apology for it took us so long to realize that when things don’t fit in the empty spaces you shouldn’t force them in because that’s how things break and that is how we got broken. It took us so long to realize that we were unhappy and it was happiness we wanted, not the people. This is an apology for it took us so long to realize we were just bruising and making each other bleed all the time through our rusty hearts.

Sincerely,
Yours

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The Aching Heart

They made it sound tragic so that they could auction their movies based on this feeling, trade songs for this emotion, write books on this topic, make blockbusters of this manipulative pain which they injected like venom in us.

But on the contrary, heartbreak is not sad. It is not tragic. Tragedy happens when the loudest of the cry cannot wake up the person sleeping silently in the hospital bed.

People come in your life when you are ready for them and they leave after teaching everything they had to teach, after their purpose for both you and them is done.

This pain that makes your spine powder to dust, this trembling chest, this siren in your head, this is not pain, look into it a bit deeper; it is just as giving up your baby teeth, it is just as growing beard, it is just as developing a hoarse voice. It is a part of the process of growing up, it is the part of the process of living. 

Because life is not stagnant and movement comes at a different pace. You are moving at your own pace and someone out there who you think is for you is moving at his/her own pace. Sometimes you leave them behind, sometimes you are left behind. And it's okay. It's more than okay.

It’s nothing to be sad about, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You are the same person you have always been. Your barometer of measuring who you are does not depend on them. It’s okay. It’s not tragic. It’s normal. It’s normal. 

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Today

Today I feel small. Today I feel that if the breeze was to blow even just a little harder, each of my cells would be scattered and my blood spilled so much that the Pacific would forget it was once blue. Today, I am realizing that it does not always take water to drown. You can drown in so many things: poetry, memories, love, your own red blood. Today the scars are all opening up and my soul is a balloon penetrated with a thousand bullets that are no longer scared to bleed. Today my heart is a bleeding machine manufacturing red paint because it has ran out of blood so long ago.

Today my pulse ranges from sounding like gun shots to a flat silence. Today my mood swings. Today I am about to collapse and my world is crying for a time machine that takes either to past or even to future because today is too much to handle. Because there is a limit to the pain the nerves feel. Today the body is pouring everything out because the chest cavity has a limited space to hold on. Today the word "forever" in the post card on the drawer feels like a bad joke which one cannot resist to laugh.

They say to stop a wound you need to stop touching it. But today I want to scratch every rash, magnify every scratches and show them to god and question his justice. Today my body is a witness of a living cadaver.

But today does not even feel like an exception, feels like everyday has been today. Today has now begun to feel like a friend. Today feels like home.

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Bullets And Blood

Today the sky is filled with the vapors rising from the tear of the woman who lost her son who couldn’t get hold of the pills that could get his heart pumping. Today, the clouds are filled with black smokes because of the flames rising from the body of the police officer burnt alive. Today, you and I have lost all our colors like the woman who lost the red sindhur in her forehead on his husband being killed in his uniform. Today the red of rose does not remind anyone of the spring but of the blood of that innocent child who bled his life out in your clash. Does this sound like the music of triumph to you?

The owl now roams during days because it now takes a only a genius to differentiate between day and night. Today, the neighbor far away sits with a remote control watching our misery like a soap opera fitting into his dirty games. While the streets are painted red, we are still busy tearing the flesh apart of each other till one of our sternum has become dust. The marching line of empty gasoline cylinders resonances with the rib cage pulled inward because of air failing to make a push to abdominal wall. The news seem more of a horror movie than anyone ever watched which leaves the soul paralyzed like a tired tree waiting for winter to take it. Does this sound like the march of victory to you?

But my dear friend, the war does not bring peace. It brings blood. Physics says, when objects strike, only clash among them is possible. Whoever taught you, the strike brings peace, taught you wrong. For proof, look around you, the blood of our own brothers is everywhere.

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