Why Am I

I was talking to Mr. Vasu, CEO of Last Rites India Services Private Limited, Hyderabad. Over a cup of tea, he casually asked – Do you know what is the world’s population? I said Nah! Probably I don’t know and probably I could guess it to be around 8 billion people. He said you are right sir. But do you know what is the population that has gone in to the earth i.e., buried since the creation of the universe? I said I have no idea.  He said the human population that went in to the shit whole – the earth – buried is over 75 times more than the present population of earth! Mind boggling!!

I wondered whether that many people lived on earth. I am sure everybody must have thought that they were going to live forever. I am sure everybody wanted to impress their wives, their girlfriends. I am sure everybody wanted to come first in the competition be it school or college or job or to be a king or queen – they wanted to have it all. They wanted to have it permanently. Everyday a new preaching, a new religion was created, they certainly would have thought their religion was forever.

I am reminded of P B Shelly’s Ozymandias! A traveler in a desert saw a broken pedestal inscribed on it – Hey you, mighty people, look at me I am the mighty Ozymandias, king of kings, emperor of emperors. Only the pedestal was there, neither the statue nor the legs nor the head. Having walking some more the traveler found the broken head, probably of Ozymandias. There was a frown on his face. Cruel looking eyes. Neither there is an emperor nor an empire. Everything is gone. What he thought was permanent, has sunk in to the shitwhole. The world is the biggest shitwhole. It sucks everything and everybody. It sucks into it – all.

Having talked about Ozymandias, about ambitions, frustrations and the glories of all who existed before, I looked at the world today – in Delhi, people take cars, cabs, bikes, trains and rush towards Gurugram, Noida – to their offices. At Hyderabad, I see people rushing away towards Hitech city. Oblivious to everything and anything.

Unmindful they are – they think they have to earn money, to come top in the world, their work will be the best. I wish they had known that all their work will sink in to the shitwhole and disappear soon. You might think – why am I talking like a sanyasi? Like Buddha? Or wondering why am I talking like a mad man? Let me tell one more thing – whatever I am writing – this will also be in shitwhole. When world itself is a shitwhole, knowledge has no meaning. It is ignorance that reigns supreme. Ignorance is bliss. The more we know, the more we will know how less we know and in our anxiety to know more, we will end up knowing even less. Finally, at the fag-end of our lives we realize that there is nothing to be learned. Ignorance is, indeed, bliss.

There is nothing to know; nothing is there – all we have is a giant sinkhole…the shitwhole! That’s why I chose a very controversial name – ShitWhole – for this site.

Shitwhole, I chose as – the ‘shit’ word itself is popular and shit need not necessarily mean bad. Cow shit, human shit, elephant shit – I don’t mean this way. Probably that is one of the meaning but the word shit has many connotations. When you look at a beautiful girl – you say ‘Shit man’! When you look at the examination result – we say ‘oh shit’! When you eat pizza (not Domino’s pizza) Italian pizza – the one you get to eat in Milan – automatically it comes – ‘Shit’ it is so tasty! In its various connotations the word ‘Shit’ describes beauty, hunger, achievements, frustrations & at times actual shit. In this ShitWhole everything unites. It is ShitWhole when all sorts of shits of the world combine. Couple of years ago, the celebrated popular film director – in India he is known as Mr. India and for the world known as Elizabeth –  Shekhar Kapur wrote, in the ‘Illustrated weekly of India’ yesteryear celebrated magazine a poem – whether the shit comes from villa or from a middle class home or from a poor family or whether it is constipated shit – all of it meets in the gutter. Shit becomes one Whole; the world is one shitWhole. In this life, our aim is to discover the shitWhole to live life to the fullest.

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