Immortal

 The title might seem just a tad bit overzealous considering that I'm not legally considered an adult yet but I mean something different as always.

Applications Of Woe

As of late, I've been running around trying to apply to colleges with my father. It's entrance exam after entrance exam and it's exhausting, to say the least.

For one, you don't really realise how convoluted and borderline pointless the bureaucracy behind college admissions is. There's the whole matter of applying to a college and needing a dozen certificates to prove that you were born, that you were born somewhere, that you were born into a certain religion and into a certain community. 

So you think well I'll just get these certificates, submit them and then I'll be done. Oh, my sweet summer child, you have no idea.

If it's a certificate issued by a private authority or organisation usually it depends on you and if you play your cards right, things will be done quickly. If it's a government-issued certificate, prepare to question your existence. 

The government has practically perfected the art of making people want to tear their hair out in utter frustration at the number of hoops you have to jump through to get a single certificate. 

You need to get a seal by the village officer so you go to your local government office, he's out for lunch his lackey explains and he won't be back in for the rest of the day. You wonder what kind of lunch break lasts for an entire day but you decide to return the next day. The next day you arrive at your earliest and yet there is somehow a gigantic crowd waiting at the village officer's desk, pleading to be put out of their misery.

You finally reach the mysterious and fearsome being that is the village officer. He's a plump middle-aged man, wearing a shirt that is almost always a striped or checked shirt and trousers that seem like they could stretch to his chin.

 You stutter and stumble and keep your head down throughout the whole conversation, your gusto, your bravado- all gone. He has established his utter dominance in this world of signs and seals and you're at his mercy. 

He smiles and you breathe a sigh of relief, it's over- finally over...but wait! It's not a benign smile! It's a smile of utter malice, one of the supreme evil. He opens his mouth, but you already know what he's going to say, it has been denied, all has been lost- you're thrust back into the endless abyss of bureaucracy.

 It has gotten better to a large extent but there's a way to go yet.

Forgive my diatribe on the very cliché subject of "Applications suck" but I promise that it ties into this seemingly unrelated subject.

Where does it tie in?

One of the places that I applied to over these past weeks is the Christian Medical College in Ludhiana for sponsorship. If you're a Christian, you can request your church to basically vouch for you in times of application to universities and jobs, but for medical colleges, it is usually an effort done in vain because nothing will happen unless you have the requisite NEET marks, which I know for a fact I don't have. "What if?" is the only argument to be said in favour of going after this laborious application.

As part of this application, you need to get multiple documents signed and attested by church leaders. In addition, you need some certificates that you'll probably never use in your life ever again, all of which necessitate multiple trips to different locations. 

Last week one fine afternoon, at about 3:45 to be precise we decided to set out to our church to get this affair over with.

I must say, I admittedly am not a fan of going out much nowadays, if all the reasons that I'd usually describe such as getting ready to go out and talking with people aren't enough we're still in the middle of a pandemic but life must go on so I decided to just suck it up and do what needed to be done.

This is kind of meta but I often think of ideas to write about when I'm out and about. There's only so much you can get from the vitriol that is the internet that isn't soaked in a cocktail of drama, spite and excess. I look at everything and try to find something that piques my interest or spurs a need to write within me. 

The Church

I had such a goal that day as we reached the church and my father went into the office to get a baptism certificate issued. The church premises were for the large part empty- the church doors themselves locked. I stepped to the side of the church, not particularly interested in watching the office-bearer struggle to get this archaic document issued.

It was wide and open, to the right stood my church, which, while not gigantic is fairly sized and to the left lay the graveyard. In the middle of this large space there lay a huge tree with its branches spread out as if they were reaching out to the sky, creating a canopy that provided some cool, dark shade. The place was tiled with tiles of black and white in a pattern that seemed to go forever with no end in sight.

I first looked at the church, it felt grand and somehow looking at it made me feel at peace, especially now more so than ever when it lay silent almost like a large beast breathing in and sighing softly. It's known for being one of the oldest churches in Kerala and multiple renovations over the year make it seem quite young yet. It has some beautiful stained glass pictures inside and it just felt very emblematic of peace. 

I've never been someone very religious and I'm not particularly fond of people who try to force their religion on others. I consider religion to be a very personal thing, something between you and some divine power that you hope is looking after you. I do still believe and while I don't need to justify my beliefs to anyone else I'll just say that far too much has happened to me that isn't mere coincidence.

Next, I looked at the graveyard to my left, graves lay in rows, grey and some mossy after the rains. My uncle and grandfather's graves lay there among many others that had passed away at some point in time. I wondered, what kind of people were they, did they live lives that they were proud of? Did they have regrets? It all seemed to not matter now as everyone lay in the same soil together in silence. And yet this silence was different, it felt like silence with greater depth like it had more to convey, than the silence that just meant no sound. It felt more alive which was ironic considering that it was coming from a graveyard.

I looked at the tree finally and some of the other trees out in the front, the tree next to the graveyard still had leaves hanging on to its branches and seemed quite firmly assured of itself and yet seemed like it was drooping a bit in the now waning sunlight. The other trees were dry and parched without leaves to speak of and their bare exposed branches stood out like sharp spikes. 

In a way, the church reminded me of how death was inevitable. Just as the silence had now settled at the church after everyone had left, death would eventually have to come but just as it would come alive on Sundays with noise, life would come back. . Without the usual utterances of the members, it felt oddly silent and yet it was a hopeful silence that awaited the next day when people would come.

I was reminded of another place as I stood there at the church that has a particularly special place in my heart too- Brindavan Gardens in Mysore.

Brindavan Gardens

We went to Mysore on our class tour in 10th grade and Brindavan gardens was one of the many places we visited. It's known for its musical water show and is particularly famous for the variety of flowers and plants present there. There are large rows of grass where you can sit and watch everything around you or just lie down and take a nap.

I remember lying there, on the cool, crisp grass gazing at the sky on that breezy Mysore evening, thinking that it couldn't get better than this. I heard the far-off cries of children playing and people talking and yet I felt the deepest silence possible within me, it felt like my mind was clearer than it ever was and for a few moments as I lay there, I understood the poets and writers of old, who wrote about the grass, trees and skies and how wonderful they are. It was a silence of utter bliss and I doubt I'll ever recapture that moment of bliss even if I were to go there now.

It reminded me of more carefree days when college applications nor responsibility were present in my life, one where I could do dumb things with my friends and laugh at the silliest things. I won't say that I don't laugh nowadays, I do, raucously sometimes but something is different. I've read in many books and seen movies where there is a conflicting desire between children and adults, one wishes to be older and the other wishes to be younger. I think that I'm at that stage of life where I can tap into the arguments of both sides a bit and it is strange to think about.

I was jolted out of my reverie as we collected the certificates and the Vicar(Head Priest) at our church signed the papers, he wished me luck and sent us off to the office-home of one of the heads of our church to get the final signature.

Home without Homeliness

When we arrived at the Head's home, I was taken aback by two things.

First, is the sheer grandeur of the whole place, it was a large building with an immensely big front yard replete with trees of different sorts and a single pine tree stood tall right in front of the house as the centre of attention. A huge car was parked on the car porch and as we pulled up next to it I gazed at the house's sitting area. Many chairs were spread out anticipating visitors in large volumes which no doubt was probably a regular issue. Everything seemed to be of the highest order of quality and I reasoned that the Head was probably quite affluent. 

We knocked at the door and waited for a response. I could sounds of metals clanging and the buzz of a saw emanating from within, no doubt the already splendid house was undergoing renovations to make it even better. No response yet, so we rang the bell and this time a man seemingly appeared out of thin air and asked us the purpose of our visit. We informed him of the same and he said he'd take the papers and get them signed by the Head.

We waited outside and I looked at the front of the house once more and now I found myself comparing it to the places that I had thought of before.

Here too lay a silence, but it felt weary and stifling. The garden though prim and proper felt dull and listless and the house for all its grandeur seemed hollow to the core to me. I wondered why this place with all of its intricacies didn't appeal to my mind as much. 

Familiarity? That could be argued for my church but what of Brindavan Gardens? 

Dislike? I had no qualms against my church and certainly nothing against a brick-and-mortar house.

It felt like the place tried to command respect and importance, and that seemed to make it a little bit less desirable to me at the very least. 

A voice broke this stifling silence, the man was back and he said that the head wanted to meet us both. I'd not expected this and I was nervous as I stepped into the house. The halls were dark except for a few faint flickers of light ahead as the workers renovated the house, there were many rooms around us and one to the left was a prayer room decorated much like our church.

The man led us up a flight of stairs all still dark, especially in the now fading sunlight. It felt incredibly lonely and for a few moments, I wondered if there even was a Head or if this man was just going to pull an ambush on us.

Fortunately, the Head was seated in a well-lit room at a table. He was bent over some papers and examining them as we came in. He looked up at us and peered at us through his round glasses. He asked me how my NEET went and I in standard embarrassingly Aby-esque fashion mumbled something about how I think it went alright. His smile was warm and I felt sorry for him for a bit.

Despite all the opulence present in this house and the area surrounding it, it felt like a place devoid of joy and perhaps that is how a house of prayer must be, I'm no theologian after all.

As we gave our thanks to the Head and left the house I took one final look at the house and its yard as we sped away on the scooter. I thought a fair bit on the ride back and I came to an important conclusion. The bricks and foundations of my church would wear thin in time, maybe centuries later, maybe sooner but one thing was for certain it would eventually crumble into dust as all things would. The grass at Brindavan would wilt and die in heat or rain and the skies would turn grey and the primness of the Head's home would eventually be lost to the ages perhaps later than the church or Brindavan but it would still happen inevitably.

Conclusion

Age is inevitable, youth is fleeting.

I have a penchant for wondering about the choices I'd make in impossible or incredibly rare situations such as the trolley problem. I have always held that I would refuse immortality if given the choice to take it, what is life worth living for without the people you love and know. I'd hate an existence of constant pain and misery and to me, that is all immortality is. 

Yet as of recent I'd like to think that there is something Immortal present in this world of ours. Peace. Peace is eternal, it can be shrouded in darkness, hidden from hopeless eyes but peace is enduring. Even in war-torn countries, in unhappy families- peace is present if only in glimpses.

 And long after we're all turned to dust and the ravaging of our earth is done. peace will return. The blissful peace of Brindavan and the graceful peace at my Church would last long in my mind even after they ceased their existence but the home of the Head would lie forgotten. 

Only peace is worth striving for and only in it's presence can we hope to be truly happy.