Empowering priorities

They say, “Exception proves the rule.”

Heisenberg stated that certainty in position and momentum of a particle cannot prevail simultaneously. My dad is one of those few exceptions who defy this law of uncertainty.

I have always known my dad to be an ‘ideal dad’, doing every special thing for his darling li’l daughter. And it is difficult for a person who sees dad in this role to visualize him as a dedicated workman. My dad works in a power plant. He is no doubt, a workaholic; and on my visit to his office premises, I have derived that he his quite important and sought after, not just in office, but in entire township. Or perhaps a greater are than that. And in spite of all the airs, dad stands firm on his grounds.

Coal is extracted from the mines and burnt in furnaces to produce thermal energy, which is used to produce electricity. This is what happens in every power plant. The general processes of operation, commissioning, managing and directing are all the same. Dad has to do the same thing in every power plant; so changing from one company to other in the power sector is no big deal! Or so I thought, till I read between the lines of my dad’s mind. Had I been a senior official in a company where I’ve worked for 25 years, owning a huge office and humongous respect of thousands of people, it would have been equally difficult for me to let my hedonism give way to evanescence. That is human instinct- to be scared of an uncertainty, even if it might be one step closer to the zenith.

“The heart does things for reasons that reason doesn’t understand.”

Dad lover his job and his colleagues; and changing job may initially not give dad a better life. I mean, if you have cranberries, all you can do is make them less sour, you can’t altogether transform them into sugar. Incidentally, I am the paradox to which this situation happens to be the only solution. Dad might be joining a new company, but I am the power plant he is worried about. No down, I’ve always been provided with the anthracite, but now I need an efficient resource manager for sustainable development. My dad is the most efficient person. That’s the reason why every power plant needs dad.

Everything in life changes, but change is a constant. We get used to the changes. Dad makes his own rules. He has the momentum; he will soon determine his position.

What's in a . ?

The figure "." creates a paranoid as to how it is to be named. Some say it is dimensionless; some call it a dot, while others are flooded with weird names such as point, centre, full stop etc. for something that is next to invisible.

My little brother calls the little thing a ‘taalshaans’. Before I explain further, let me tell you, that my brother Nik is an unusually good looking kid. He has, what is called a beauty spot on his chin. And this beauty spot is the same figure(as mentioned above); wearing a black color. When asked,’ What is that black mark on your chin?’ , he says, ‘It is a taalshaans.’ ‘Taalshaans’ or ‘Jolbhora’ is one of the most popular Bengali sweets, and undoubtedly, Nik’s favorite. And he is privileged to have right on his chin. And lick it whenever he wants to.

For convenience, let’s call the figure ‘Anonymous’. In the beginning, I ignored the taalshaans situation and went on pondering over nomenclature of Anonymous. Days later, Nik saw a pimple on my face, which resembled Anonymous. This time, he call it ‘Anuswar’. I stared at him awe-struck. Before I realized what happened, he exclaimed,’ I like the bindis on our shirt!!’ He was referring to the bunch of Anonymouses printed on my birthday dress. The goose bumps popping up on my skin pricked my brain. Not pricked , it provided an acupressure therapy for my brain to heal its pain of failure to identify anonymous. I started discovering its mysteries.

A black Anonymous to the chin of a beautiful child is what ‘taalshaans’ is to our tongues-a sweet and pleasant essence. ‘Anuswar’ in Hindi and Bengali languages provides a nasal distortion in the pronunciation of a word. So does the Anonymous to one’s face when it wears the garments of a pimple. A woman wears bindi between her eyebrows to look beautiful. Being another incarnation of Anonymous, it plays the same role on a shirt.

This is the truth of both life and the lifeless. Everyone is born anonymous and is identified by what he does. Like Anonymous, a person is called a child when he plays around, a student when he studies, a doctor, teacher, or engineer when in society, a parent by his own children and so on. But like the appearance of Anonymous, man’s soul is eternal.

Now ‘ . ‘ reminds me of Shakespeare’s famous saying,

“What’s in a name? That, if you call a rose by any other name smells as sweet!”

In spite of being dimensionless, it is the beginning of all dimensions. Everything that exists is a collection of .’s misplaced haphazardly. And we articulately join several such lifeless .’s to shape our lives…………