The Gangster Philosophy

                                                     Co-Written with Ameya Dusane

If anyone decided to script a movie on my life I am sure it would be one of 

 those typical Bollywood movies. Love, broken dreams, betrayal, murder, gun chases with a lot of melodrama. My life story is no Bollywood movie. I was being interviewed by a journalist. Some questions start haunting me for example when he asked me as to what would I do after I am set free from the jail? It’s almost been a decade I have spent in jail away from guns, away from fights, away from the world of hide and seek, and more importantly away from the world of death. I just reply “Haven’t decided yet”. The journalist moves on to the next question and a question many of my friends and people close to me have asked, “How does it feel to be constantly followed by the shadow of death?”

I answer the question in a very monotonous tone, “I am not afraid of death and never will be.”

The interview lasts for 25 minutes and then the journalist takes off. I go back to my cell where people are curious to know about my interview.

It’s past 3am with my eyes still wide open for some reason. Am I not afraid of death? The question keeps haunting me and also brings back old memories when I had seven mouths to feed without a job. Education was just an unfulfilled dream. No one was ready to employ me until a man asked me to appear for the interview for the post of a peon in a local bank. That was a good day. I cleared the interview and the pay was descent. However that is when I learnt life’s biggest lesson that either you screw things for others or you get screwed up. He was my first victim. His name was Roy. Why did I kill him? Roy had bribed the branch manager to get the job that belonged to me. I was told by a very reliable source. My hands were as stable as it could have been. I was a mere 2 feet away from Roy. That is when I pressed the trigger and shot two bullets blowing into his head. From then on I was on the run. I was hiding from the police who were keeping a close watch on me. I have no regrets for killing that bastard and never will have. That brings me back to the same old question. Am I not scared of death?

I’m not scared of death. When I look around I see death everywhere. I see death in each and every individual who is alive. Others are all dying and they don’t even realize that they are dying and even if they do they don’t think about living. If you see from my eye, death is a daily ritual of our lives. I died many years ago when my job was taken away.

Confused? When here I am speaking of death am not implying to our physical death. However when I refer to death I am talking about when young souls kill their dreams, when they stop believing in words like miracles, when we stop fighting with the world for what we thought belonged to us .When we think our dreams are too childish and don’t hold any significance in one’s life. When exactly the opposite is true. When we keep looking for happiness and take trips to exotic destinations, eat delicious food, shop every weekend, read books on philosophy but yet we are not able to seek true happiness. We ask many questions we doubt many things, when the answer we look for is rooted deep in our hearts, yet we ignore it.  Then slowly our dead dreams start killing us from within. With the burden of our killed dreams it becomes laborious to live with peace in our heart.

Have a dream. Go achieve it. We are normal human beings, when dreams are snatched away from us we do not take anyone at gun point. Death is around you. You shouldn’t be around death.

Dream, live and keep living until you stop dreaming. To stop dreaming is impossible so keep living till God books a spot for you in heaven.