Of Borrowed Thoughts, Feelings, Stories and a lifetime...

*** Warning: This post is a result of a psychotic attack - heavily philosophical and rather Utopian***

When I was a child, I was mesmerised by the stories of Nil Kamal and Lal Kamal. There was a LP record in the house that I used play on the gramophone and instantly transform myself into the world of demons and princes, magic and battles, wins and losses. It was a story of how princes won over demons and how the gold stick would wake up the princess from her long sleep. When I was in my early teens, I was intoxicated by the men in Bengalee literature. They were dreamy, argumentative, headstrong and difficult. They made conversations easy, they made love less romantic. I took parts of authors' imaginations and made those mine. I judged their writings and adopted thoughts that became mine. Their outlook inspired my ideals and believed those were mine. Are my ideals borrowed?

I have never witnessed a war. I have never witnessed a catastrophe. I have never seen deserted roads dotted with torn shoes, broken promises, shattered glasses and leftover lives. The closest I have come to life being affected is the curfew era in the 1980s when the state government declared curfew to combat the tribal uprise in my home town. Yes, roads were empty after 8 PM, people rushed home, we bolted our front doors, the members of the house kept some form of weapon handy (it could be a bettlenut cracker; don't laugh, we are Bengalees), and we huddled together on the back porch in front of cracking coal while our guard from Bangladesh narrated stories of riots and terror. Once in a while in the morning, we would hear about a dead body found floating in the nearby canal, but we were never allowed near that. Today, I watched a much discussed film - The Hurt Locker. It took me to the celluloid streets of Baghdad where people peeped out of their windows as 'elite' US Army squads attempted to defuse bombs on deserted roads. Roads bearing the mark of a generation torn apart, faces etched in surrender and structures propping themselves up - tired and distort by the continuous assault. I have never witnessed a war. I have just watched them, in films and in documentaries. I write about them, the words I believe are mine. Or are these borrowed? From the Hurt Locker? Or the Casualties of War?

Ever since I have started to think, which would be as late as 18 or 19, I have always wanted to visit my father's birthplace, Narayanganj, Dhaka, Bangladesh. I wanted to see the village (or whatever it might have transmogrified into) in search of my roots and to find a sense of belonging. For someone like me, who cannot call any place a home anymore, it is in such hopes I fool myself. I read 'Ekattorer Smriti' (a book on civil war in Bangladesh in 1971) and I believed nothing will be left of my father's ancestral home. I still dreamed of one story buildings, green pastures, the Ganges from family stories and painted a picture. A picture borrowed from hopes, stories and desires.

A very dear friend of mine faced the tribulations of life bravely to carve a place for her in this world. As she narrated her story to me in a late June afternoon, I experienced love, faith, loyalty, heartache, anger, struggle, and courage. She inspires me to believe in myself. I know I have borrowed a lot from her.

We all have our own little place in this world where we have our thoughts, beliefs, values and loved ones. A lifetime of memories and incidents. It makes me wonder how much of our stories are our own? How many such actions that we have taken are our own? How many times has it happened in our lives that after we have done something or thought of something that we have paused for a while and felt this has been done before. Or have wondered if, my friend, mother, father, sibling or spouse had inspired me to do that. Is that mine anymore? Or is it borrowed, copied and 'customised' by me to suit me?

As I embark on yet another year and a decade, it makes me think if all our stories for generations have been stories of borrowed thoughts, feelings, expressions and actions - in parts or in whole? And if that is so, is that what we call existence?