The Lives of Others

It was 3 am and sleep was proving to be as elusive as subtlety in Govinda's movies or news in Times of India. Being a sound sleeper usually, I was at a loss of alternatives. I did consider ringing up people and asking them , even as they fumbled for my identity, the most impertinent question you can ask a person who is sleeping: "oh, i am sorry, were you sleeping?". But sleep (my sleep i.e.) being one of those few precious things in my life, i decided to forego such a great opportunity out of fear of repercussions. Tried to read a book, watch some TV, but somehow they just made me feel more awake. That is when it struck me; it being the art of online voyeurism : Orkut.

For some reason (vague, again) I decided to be a peeping tom in my school's community. School. Seemed like a different lifetime. I browsed through profiles of old friends, some of whom i hadn't spoken to in years, of acquaintances, of people who used to be popular back then and of course the random hot chick. And the amount of transformation , in people and their lives (whatever i could make out of their profiles) just astonished me. People who held great promise, still seemed to be struck in their old ways, some, who were mediocre back then had achieved remarkable success. Some had got married, had children while some had travelled far. Some had undergone unbelievable physical transformations while some had strayed off the beaten track and done different things. It was just a whole lot of change everywhere.

And that is when it hit me that anybody's life, viewed from the vantage point of view of time, is full of changes and twists and turns. People that we once thought we knew, change evolve and move on. In our day to day mundanity, we somehow never realise the changes that we all have gone through. Our everydays somehow hide the enormity and the story of our lives.

Life is strange afterall. Here i am, sitting at 3 am and taking a virtual stock of the lives of people i had known, seen but lost; and wondering what the story of everybody's lives would eventually turn out to be.

"It Goes On" - Robert Frost