Empty In Abundance

Just a few days back we got Alexa for home. It marks the entry of yet another appliance in an already appliance flooding house of ours. Alexa is quite convenient. You command the audio clip you would like to listen to, and the machine plays it for you. We all are surrounded by so many of such Gini. Entertainment is now at our fingertips. Yet there are times when even these feel insufficient.

There is nothingness in abundance. Though there is almost the whole world’s entertainment at our perusal, there are times when we are clueless about what we want to watch or listen to. As I type this I remember an ironic event. It was my mother’s school cum college diary that she showed us once. The diary was a reflection of her hobbies. Over its white now turned yellow pages were written stories, addresses of her friends, word meanings, as well as some scribbled Bollywood songs. One of these songs was “कारवाँ गुज़र गया, गुबार देखते रहे”. There were 2 lines written of it on one page. Then randomly few more lines of the song could be found scribbled on some other page. I remember asking her why couldn’t she write it on one page itself. To which her response was that every time this song would come on the radio, she would pen down as much as she could grasp. Since the song would play randomly anytime on the radio, there was no room for maintaining continuity in one single page.

I would laugh off at her stories then. But today many times I appreciate the lack of abundance in a few of these things. The element of surprise remains only intact as long as there is randomness in things. Calculated moves bring order, but randomness brings excitement. And though major things in life must be based on well-defined plans, fun and frolic must happen randomly. I say this also because more than listening to full songs on Alexa, I have mostly listened myself saying “Alexa Play, followed by Alexa Stop” before a song even completes its chorus. I think I am better off with Vividh Bharati only.

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