Schizophrenic Sid

On a typical rainy morning, Schizophrenic Siddharth and his imaginary sidekick Sandesh were having a typical discussion, on one of the typical topics that they cooked up between the two of them.

“Here we are, standing in the bloody rain, early in the morning, all according to the whims of someone else. What’s the damn meaning of all this?”

“Sandesh, we’re going to work!”

“I hate it! You’re the one who wants this job, and I have to tag along with you every day. You don’t even let me talk when you’re in office.”

“Of course I don’t, you idiot! That’s where I work; it’s not a place where I want to have conversations with you.”

“But, you know there are so many things that I want to talk to you about, Sid.”

After many failed attempts at hailing a rickshaw, Sid was finally able to wave one down. The rain was falling steadily, and in his desperate bid to be in office on time, Sid had asked another desperate man like him if they could share a rickshaw together. Now, with the rickshaw waiting obediently in front of them, trailing a bluish white cloud of engine smoke behind it, the three of them got inside. The man told Sid where he wanted to get off, and that was the end of the conversation between them. The rickshaw started off, and Sid’s attention went back to Sandesh and his extreme desire to talk to Sid.

“I miss Li’l Al,” said Sandesh suddenly; Sid hadn’t seen it coming at all, and so that sudden mention of his long gone friend made him lose focus of the beautiful Audi that was stuck right in front of them in the early morning traffic jam.

“Why, suddenly, Sandesh?” asked Sid. “How come you suddenly miss him this much?”

“I’ve been thinking about stuff, recently, and been thinking about the whole death thing.”

“What death thing?”

“You know, how people are born, and then they do stuff all their lives, and then they just die?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve been thinking, what’s the meaning of it all?”

“The point? We’re alive, we’re here! We’re doing everything we’re doing just so we can live, and that itself is a miracle.”

“But the purpose of it all? I mean, what’s the purpose of life, ultimately?”

“To live it.”

“Is it really that simple?”

“Well, it can be that simple, but you really have to want it to be that simple. You get it?”

“Not entirely. I mean, here we are sitting in the auto early in the morning, doing something that you

think you want to do. Still, how’s it impacting things?”

“I’m going to work. It’s what I do. I earn money this way, and that’s how I live.”

“Yes, but that’s for the time being, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s forever.”

“Not forever. For as long as you live, right?”

“I think I know what you mean there, but even so. This is what I do.”

“Ok, but do you leave an impact in the world?”

“Well, kind of. I mean, I’ve got my whole family who’s proud of me at this very moment, and they all feel that I’m doing a wonderful job here.”

“And then, one by one, they all die. Then you too die, someday.”

“Yes; just so you know, you’re scaring me a little bit here, but that is true. I know I will die someday.”

“Exactly. One day, you’ll die, and when that day comes, what would be the meaning of all of this?”

“I don’t think I understand what you mean exactly, Sandesh.”

“Well, you remember Li’l Al, right?”

“Of course I do.”

“You remember all the things that he used to do? The things he used to say to us when we were growing up?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“Well, what I’m trying to say has two sides to it, so it might take a little bit of time. Firstly, when Al lived amongst us, and when he told us all those things, it was all so real, right?”

“Yeah, it was.”

“So, in that moment, we knew he existed. There was so much he told us, about how we should live, and that’s the way we remember him, right?”

“Yes, Sandesh. What’s your point?”

“Well, my point here is somewhat linked to the second point that I’m trying to raise here. In a way, Al existed because we remember what all he did, how he lived his life, and everything that he told us during his life. We used to do that while Al was alive as well, didn’t we?”

“You mean, think about everything that he said? Yes, of course we used to.”

“Even poetically, many people have said that even after death, people can live on as memories. What if that’s actually true? Not in the physical sense perhaps, but what if right now, I’m alive because of the fact that people still remember me? What if, there’s a part of me that’s going to stay alive even after my death, because people still remember who I was, and what I said, and how I lived my life, and they can predict almost perfectly what my life would have been like, had I been alive?”

“That makes sense, in a very screwed up way. I don’t have the answer to it, but it does make sense; a whole lot of it.”

“I know what you mean. Even I don’t have the answer to that, it’s still all a mystery to me. And the weirdest bit about the whole thing is the second point that I was trying to raise here. Imagine that Li’l Al lives somewhere far away, and there’s no way that we can contact him. Now, how do we know that he existed? How do we know that he’s not with us anymore? How do we know that he’s dead?”

“That’s because we saw Al die, Sandesh. We were there at his funeral, remember?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I’m talking about a hypothetical question. Imagine that he didn’t die, he just moved away; really far away. In that kind of a situation, how would you know if he’s alive or dead? More importantly, how would you know that he existed in the first place, if you can’t contact him ever again?”

Sid stopped talking, and sat up in the auto thinking. Sid was a big guy, and the auto was a little small for him; his shoulder kept banging against the stranger who sat beside him, and Sandesh didn’t really like this part of the morning ever. Thankfully, on that day however, Sandesh seemed to have other things on his mind than Sid’s shoulder banging against those of strangers in the auto as they met up with every pothole of the city.

“You know what I’m talking about now?” asked Sandesh, as Sid tried to adjust a little better in the cramped environment. “How do we know whether someone existed, beyond what we remember of them?”

“Ok, now I’m starting to get confused, even though everything you’ve said here makes almost perfect sense.”

“With an example, then. We know that Li’l Al existed because we remember him – but what if Al existed only in our minds? What if the reason he seems so real to us is because of the fact that our memories are so vivid, and so clear? Maybe he wasn’t there, maybe we just imagined him all up, and then somehow forgot the fact that we had conjured him up in the mind. Maybe, that’s why, even though he was fiction, he seemed so real.”

“What have you got against Li’l Al, Sandesh? Why are you so hell bent on making him imaginary, when you very well know that he was just as real as you are!”

“I know that, Sid. I was just talking about a hypothetical situation.”

“Well, if you must insist on making people imaginary, then you might as well do that with people I don’t know, or people I’m not that close to.”

“Like that guy who was sitting beside you, until a little while ago?”

Sid looked beside him, and saw that the auto was empty. Somewhere along the way, the man had reached his destination, put his part of the fare silently into Sid’s hands, and disappeared in the world outside the little auto. Now, with Sandesh laughing silently in his head, the silent stranger existed only in his memories; like Li’l Al, like the many nameless faces Sid saw every morning, and even though he’d never admit it, like Sandesh himself.