My Atoms And I

So lately I’ve been thinking about atoms. My atoms, to be precise.

This is not really an exercise in science; more like an exercise of fantasies.

I can’t begin to comprehend just how many atoms have got together to form me. So I don’t even try. I leave it at a few billions. Which means I am a billion things while I am me.

That is something worth thinking about.

The funny thing about this is to accept that even while they form me, my atoms don’t really know I exist. This is fascinating. It makes me feel like I am some sort of a greater entity the way we study societies but in a more noticeable, study-able scale. As when people come together and form a society or a community and the society is an abstract thing but the people think of it as real. Like Durkheim might say, it is real because it is general, external and coercive. I become that. I make my atoms do a lot of things – both consciously and subconsciously. I think about where I want to go, what I want to eat, what I want to read... and they comply. I am a society.

King David of Israel in Bible days wrote: I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I doubt if he knew about atoms but he was not wrong.

Which is crazy because even right now as I am musing on them and writing about them, they are all doing it with me. And yet they don’t know they are doing My Will. In fact, they don’t care all that much about me. They are the people that make up the Society Me. On a very tiny scale. They’re not even particularly loyal creatures. One day they’ll just disintegrate and go on to form someone else! Very sobering thought.

I suppose there’s no point being too full of myself.

If I am asked what I like best about them, I’d probably say the fact that they can teleport. Well, leap. Quantum leap. I guess. That is lovely. Us people will never teleport but the atom people (the non-alive people that form us) can. And do. Well, not atoms as a whole. Electrons, I suppose. Still, that is something else. And I am a grand society that is formed by tiny things that teleport! Inside me. That really is something else.

And to think, considering how much of me is water, I could have been a cloud.

Drivers Code

Sakawpzarvar is not the Mizo name of an animal, despite it starting with Sa. Nor has a Fun Bell got anything to do with either fun or bells.

These are just things you know if you’re a Mizo who drives. It’s a weird thing but grounds of commonality are invariably accompanied by a shared language. Language is a very deliberate act. You learn it. Sometimes you unwittingly develop a dialect or specific jargon but it is definitely learned.

I didn’t learn driving in a driving school so I don’t know how much they teach you as far as rougher driving is concerned – your off-roads and slippery, mud-caked roads, for example. But I can offer you this 3-part advice from senior drivers. One: don’t panic. It is very solid advice. The second bit is whatever you do, do not apply your brakes or you will skid. Three: don’t fight the mud, try to regain control of your wheels but respect it because the steel and rubber will win. Be gentle but firm. Like they tell you when you learn D-Key in guitar!

If you drive in Mizoram, sometimes you blink your headlights to tell someone you’re continuing to drive on so please wait. If someone doesn’t understand this or ignores it, you have the right to be PO’d and people will also blame the other guy.

If you’re a woman who drives and someone exclaims: wow the driver dude is a girl, you cannot be offended. Indeed, being a woman driver is a double-edged sword; sometimes people let you off the hook because they assume as a girl, you can’t be that good a driver. So on the one hand you avoid a lot of fights, accusations and sometimes challans, but at a cost. Is it worth it? My wallet says yes; my pride sometimes doesn’t agree.

When you take turns or about to merge into traffic, you are supposed to indicate your intended direction using your blinkers. It is very simple. If you want to turn right, you blink right. But it is common practise for a lot of drivers to blink to indicate the side for YOU to pass them. This is potentially confusing but it is just something you accept! Very weird. I’m thinking it might have been learned from truckers with bigger vehicles who can’t always depend on lights on the sides of the vehicles. Of course, some trucks have a million plus one tiny lights on them so depending on a tiny blinking light may not be second nature to them. And we all just go along with it even though we may drive a Maruti 800 or a scooter. Drivers code!

Speaking of, if you’re driving downhill and you meet someone driving uphill, it is common courtesy for the one driving downhill to have waited a bit for the one uphill to pass. Meanwhile, when the road is tiny and it is imperative that someone needs to reverse, it is also decency for the one driving uphill to move back downhill.

Again, these are things you just know if you drive in Mizoram. Like how you know to pump the accelerator if someone tells you to “rez” it. I still don’t know what the OG word for this is. At least I know shock absorbers and fan belts. It might be something to do with the Exkleitor, I don’t know for sure.

The accelerator, to the uninitiated. But of course.

Reincarnation

At the risk of stirring up a controversy, I believe in reincarnation. I find it a comforting thought. Although at other times, I find the idea exhausting. I don’t know exactly how compatible it is with Christianity but I’m guessing for the most part, no.

And why do I believe in reincarnation? It just seems plausible. It’s all a matter of faith, of believing in an Unknown, isn’t it? I reason that if I can believe in God and the supernatural, I should be able to believe in all levels of the Unknown. Who knows what will happen after we die? Who is to say with absolute certainty that when we die, we return to the ether, or if we just climb back up through another tunnel, or if we reach paradise or hell? We don’t know. Because we can’t know.

If you tell me there are beings that can shape-shift between humans and tigers, I shall believe you. If you tell me there are beings whose heads can fly off at night and suck the blood of unsuspecting preys, I shall believe you. If you tell me there are migrating spirit villages whose presence we can tell only by their torches at night, I shall believe you. I believe in the supernatural. I’ve always done so.

My contention with reincarnation, however, is Elijah in the Bible.

Elijah is a curious character. He just appears out of nowhere and slips back out in a flaming chariot to nowhere. At the very fag-end of the Old Testament, we are told this cryptic message that the prophet Elijah will be sent to stir up shit before the Day of the Lord. And when John the Baptist was described in the first book of the New Testament, anyone who knows Elijah would have said: Hey, this is a repeat! Because Elijah before him had been described in pretty much the same details, fashion-wise. See 2 Kings 1:8 and Matthew 3:4. John did say point-blank he was not Elijah but one could argue that perhaps reincarnates aren’t fully aware of their past lives. When Jesus was asked about Elijah he simply replied, Elijah had already come and gone, clearly referencing John.

I don’t want to be proven wrong. I like this theory. I don’t think it does me much harm. It had, for one monsoon, amused me and my mum immensely, discussing reincarnation as she taught me how to knit a sweater. Over hot, sweet milk tea and boiled yams with DPT chutney, or half-boiled country eggs. I have a nice, sweet memory of it. I know there are theologians or smarter people who can prove me wrong. But kindly let it be.

WBU?