Sunday, September 16, 2007

Being Tantalus

There was king named Tantalus. He had everything. But he wanted to be god himself! So he stole ambrosia from the gods & gave it to his people. So he was punished. He was tied down in a pool of water with fruits hanging over him. But he couldn’t drink and neither could he eat! Whenever he tried to eat or drink the water or fruit receded! Just like the poor thirsty ancient mariner he could only watch & wail!

But what sacrilege had I done to meet a similar fate? I never hurt a fly & I only kill mosquitoes for self protection. I have followed that tried & tested path of studying & studying & studying through all these years of my life never really venturing out though I always wanted to do so. In fact my graduation years have seen a full blown conflict between my conventional liabilities & profane desires. But still here I have become a student again joining the bandwagon. But the irony is that the more we bend towards the stereotype, the more we suffer. There was a time when I craved for certain movies & couldn’t get enough of them. Now I have most of them in my hard disk itself. But it doesn’t make my happy! Like Tantalus I can only ogle at my impressive folder & do nothing. I don’t have time for anything! I used to think that accounting is a very pedestrian job. Simply keeping track of what people are selling or buying. But now I have realized I can’t even find out what is being sold & what is being bought. Accounting is an enigma of da Vinciesque proportions. Apart from that there are several factors making sure that I improve through “constructive dissatisfaction with the Status Quo” as Shigeo Shingo would have liked to put it.

This is just not a discrete case of a psycho movie buff getting frustrated. It is a microcosm of this entire modern human civilization where we always try to achieve more & can’t cherish what we have!

Anyway, I have got this irreducible break after the exams which will come to an end in no time. So I put the limited time to best use & watched a couple of them. Now I am once more gearing up to go back to the clichéd ways & perhaps I won’t be posting anything for the next couple of months again! Till then, have a good time & try not to be a Tantalus.