Autobiography Of A Duffer by Santosh Jha (good books to read for teens TXT) 📕

He told me that mind disposition could be in five different states –

First, it can accept what one sees, visualizes and listens as right and true.

Second, it can understand and accept just opposite and reverse to what is right and true.

Third, it can accept an imagination and visualization as true and right, which shall be different from reality and actuality.

Fourth, it can accept and understand that there is nothing to be understood and realized.

Fifth and last, it can accept as true and right, what it has acquired as life experience.

All five situations can lead one to the twin doors of pain and joy respectively. My grandpa told me that I should never react to any of life situations or positioning of mind disposition even when at times it may seem a prudent and right thing to do. This reaction business is only for animals and it works for them because they have a single mind disposition, unlike humans who have five. He told me to wait and watch patiently and keep away from the instinctive habit of judging and rushing to conclusions of mind. He asked me to let a situation settle down. Take the idea home and sit over it. With a calm mind, assess all five different possibilities of my mind disposition. Make sure that a life situation is assessed and valued from all five dimensions of mind disposition so that no single disposition could weigh more on the scale of decision-making. And then, choose an option and decision, which leads to long-term peace and joys of not only self but of larger section of people around me.

I am telling you all this because I have benefitted immensely from his advice. I was also a reaction-person. A life situation would present itself and I would jump to a conclusion and take a decision. This led me to loads of trouble. I did unimaginable stupidities in my life. When my grandpa made me learn this simple magic of life, I could see that this stupidity, which I did, was something most people did in their lives. If my dad would say that it was cold out there, my mother would immediately contradict and say, it is actually not something, which one could term as cold. For my mom and dad, there never was a reality, which they could see independent of their hatred for each other. Their minds were conditioned, as my grandpa told me about mind dispositions, people are in. I see it happening all around me. People are in different shades of their mind disposition. If you scan their behaviors, you can see how they are predominantly in any one of the above-mentioned five shades of mind disposition. This always leads them to a judgment, which is away from truth and reality. I am 23 now and I have begun to understand bit of politics, culture and markets. Everywhere, people clash and conflict with each other as they are in different mind dispositions and it is only natural that they see the reality differently. This is typical in humans; animals do not have this problem. Their trouble is that they are also very much reactive like humans. This is the only difference I admit I have to keep away from.

This dog of mine, which is otherwise so intelligent, will start barking stupidly when the doorbell rings. He does not feel the need to check his mouth and wait to see if there is someone known or unknown on the door. This stupid is always on a reactive mode and instinctively barks. This is not something I can do. My grandpa warned me against this. If I were a dog, I would believe in my strength, wait a while, walk up to the door and see, whether it is my wife or someone else. Why should I bark at my wife? I would preserve my energies and bark only at strangers. This stupid dog is not like me; he is a reactive fool. He knows only one thing. If there is a sound, he shall bark. Humans also do the same. They think later, act first instinctively. My mom would instinctively start abusing dad if anything goes wrong in the household. Like my stupid dog, she instinctively reacts and barks, not bothering to differentiate between a known face and a stranger.

You know, actually, it is such a huge advantage to be a duffer. People do not expect a duffer to react. Now that I am 23, I have seen so much of life and now that my grandpa is no more, I have taken on, where he left. He was cool, calm and never reactive. I have picked up from him. I almost feel like grandpa. I have brought grandpa’s large reclining chair to my living room and I spend hours on that swinging up and down. I have decided to give myself a time lag of 24 hours. When I sit on this chair, I pick up thoughts and situations of previous day and mull over them. I make sure that my dog is snoozing around me. He is my reminder that I have to be more like him and my grandpa’s chair ensures that I never go beyond his ideas. I have started where he left and now I am on my slow and relaxed journey of life.

Now I leave you with my wife. She has agreed to write the last chapter of my biography with a condition that she would write it and not show me back. So, I am happy and relaxed now. It is up to her to decide, whether I did a good work or not. My grandpa had told me to count only those as joys, which I can create and control. Like writers, I am not bothered about my book’s success as it depends on others. My joy is in writing it and I feel happy that I made my wife happy. She wished me to write it. Thank you.

IV

I am busy as hell; still I have to write this. I am not a writer. I am just a literary agent and I have a rather easy task to do. The writers take all the trouble and I just have to find out why they cannot make it to the markets. Finding fault with anything and anyone is so easy. We all always know how to figure out issues to take them as causes for failure. I even do not have to do this. I simply say, I pass. It is always better not to risk a success. And I can tell you, in today’s precarious markets and public mood, everything is a risk, if it is not backed by a brand power. Nobody buys costly tickets to a multiplex for a movie, which does not have a super star in it. Nobody buys a book if it is not already in bestseller list with loads of reviews. Moneys are precious and they are better positioned when placed on a winning horse in the race. Success is expensive and worshipped only because they come rarely and when loads of factors get pulled in at one singularity, by luck or by masterly orchestration.

I asked my dear husband to write his biography to make him feel connected to things around him. I am writing this to make him happy. He is my hero but I do not see him of any worth to people. I am not a writer and that is why, when I am required to tell you about my husband, I shall give you plain and simple words. It is a fact that I know most things about him because we have been together for over 20 years. Our fathers were business partners for 15 years and he visited us since he was three and I was six.

We lived as neighbors and he would be left in my care, whenever our parents came together for dinner or weekend outings. He was a calm kid and I was a tornado. He would always be with me and smile whenever I would do a silly thing. He would never share it with my parents or his. Very early, I could know that he was a keen observer. He became my good friend when my first boyfriend dumped me. I was 13 and my boyfriend was a 19-year-old stupid, whom I later discovered was on a spree to make a record of sorts by kissing more girls than his friends in his group. I was so upset and my future husband observed it. By then, his parents had already declared him a duffer and he had started seeing the psychologist.

My sweet duffer has his own way of doing things. He saw me in bad mood and went away. An hour later, he came to me with chips, bottle of soft drinks and a piece of paper. He silently placed them near me and went away. Later, when I read the paper, there was a sorry written on it and signed by my boyfriend. I called him and asked him about the sorry thing and he calmly told me that he knew the guy and his home. So he went to his house and told him that a good boy should never hurt a girl. He asked the boy to write a sorry and he did it for me. He also stupidly told me that he gave him his new mobile phone to get a sorry from him.

He is not normal and I truly love him for that. I have seen enough of normal people in my life and I am so happy and proud that he is my dear husband. I am not saying that all husbands should be like that; but surely, I find him best for me. It is tough life for all of us. The world you live puts you in a perpetual drift. The normal life, household issues, jobs, the markets, society and culture; everything is so replete with fakeness and fudged realisms. There is little option for you. You have to be deep into it to survive and excel. Success in contemporary world is very high priced, as it takes away a lot from your life. It lands you in an uprooted consciousness. This is especially true for women today. They have to make a mark in this tough world and that is why, they are in infinite battle with society, markets and culture. In such a world, you can be lucky if you have a husband like mine. He is very rooted and completely out of sync with contemporary culture and society. He lives in his own made world and smiles all the time. He is my pillar, my beautifully profitable wellness support system.

After I married him, I got sure that every woman should have a husband at least ten years older to her. A husband has to be your wellness milieu after you come home to sanity and serenity. My husband is actually three years younger to me but mentally, he is 60. He says, he has taken over from his dear grandpa and at 23, he needs to be at 70. He is ideally suited to my needs and my personality. I am a drifter and he is like old and rusted anchor on the sea. The whole world can crash on his feet but he is unaffected and still hugely settled. Death is his dear friend. He has been so close to death so many times that no fatality or fear can now touch him. I really love his anchored worldview and outlook towards life.

What a wife wants from a husband? I do not know and surely cannot say for others but I can tell you what I want. When I am back home, after a