As usual in one of my interviews where I was asked about my hobbies, promptly came my reply saying Guitar, Books and Travelling. I didn’t crack the interview but it somehow made me think. Guitar was still okay which I play occasionally and hence citing it as my hobby was not wrong. When it comes to books, I have wrongly convinced my credulous heart that I am a great reader whereas in reality, I could count the number of serious books I have ever read. One being “Crime and Punishment” which was indeed a masterpiece but the many pages I went through made me feel that I was indeed a voracious reader. I probably left a gap of more than a year before I had picked my next book “CatCh-22”. When people ask me what books you read, I tend to surely name Crime and Punishment as one of my favourites amongst other names whose existence even wikipedia might not know. This ensured that if someone had to grill me on a book, it had to be C&P and towards which I was reasonably armed to put on a debate. All such debates without exception used to impress the listener if not convince them. But I knew that I had come out of a dangerous quagmire successfully.
Next Hobby frequently cited by me was traveling. Frankly when I was in school, the only place I ever went was school. When I was in College, the only place I ever went was college. And now when I have a job, the only place I go is to office. I never liked traveling in the first place though I had always cherished the idea. There were indeed a few exceptions which I will relate later .I was more comfortable watching TV and playing games and playing guitar than pack my bags and explore an unknown place. I am comfortable with only known places and definite plans like going to this pub, dance, drink and come home. I have been places by chance and not by plans. In college I been to hill stations for trips which were always well planned and more importantly compulsory. I go on office trips to places not because i like office colleagues but because appraisals somehow get closer. In interviews , they just listen to the place I have been and not what I liked about it or the journey, why I planned that trip and x,y z. So not knowing that the X,Y,Z questions would have busted me, they stick to knowing about the place. Happily I narrate knowing I survived yet one more quagmire.
Deep inside me I know that the game of lies need to end. But I need not hurry when I see people getting ahead lying. see people portray their philosophical , spiritual and scientific and what not strengths just to subterfuge their hideous self. I had once realized after a constructive post drinking discussion that corrupt people tend to donate more for charity than a righteous man, the reason being to compensate for his wrong doings by an act seen as a great service to humanity. Once when I had received an incentive for a business which was done by an ex-colleague who at that time was working with some other company, I ensured that I spend it giving a lavish treat to my friends. I never confessed the real reason but nevertheless I portrayed myself as a very generous man for whom happiness is all that counts.
I aint a bad man but I find it difficult to be Mr Righteous. I try to be left alone from a crowd where doing wrong is simply survival though survival need not necessarily mean that the act was justified. It’s a perspective where mathematically a wrong act remains wrong and a right act remains right or simply otherwise. For me a person trying to kill my friend and in turn being killed by me would be justified had I been the judge. You can stretch the hypothetical circumstances here and make the right to wrong and vice versa. That’s the beauty of human mind and that’s exactly where confusion seeps in but only to the third person. The persons who are involved very well know what was right and what was wrong. Atleast I always knew it…WITHOUT FAIL.
