A Lively Game, A Gamely Life

Every evening, when the classes get over, a bunch of zealous guys gather in the backyard of a hostel to enliven themselves; to regain the energy that is lost throughout the day. Two of the guys are chosen as captains and two teams are created. Toss is called and the teams get ready for a game of cricket. For these guys, it no longer remains a game. It becomes a combat of existence. The small playground turns into a battlefield. Players mould themselves into paladins. The rules of the game are made stricter. Discipline is the name of their revived format of the game. Playing over-aggressively is considered as grave a crime as playing too defensively. Every run scored is cheered and every wicket taken is celebrated. Even a minor error in the field is followed by bitter vociferous shouts from every corner. Opponent players sledge each other. Each player is supposed to be on his toes. This game is not for light-hearted people. Frequent burning eye contacts and nerve racking comments get the adrenaline in the veins flowing at impossible speed. One can easily feel the heat of the moment. Complacency is lethal in this territory. A lax player is shown the gate. The sharks of the game swallow the small fish. There is no hiding place in this warfare. Each one of players is ready to draw the first blood. Every wound gifted to the opposition is applauded by the teammates. Anything like spirit-of-the-game is not recognized in such fierce battles. If one can’t fight, he is supposed to expire. Controlling the happenings becomes the call of the hour. Even the players of one team compete healthily against each other. It brings the best out from everyone. Warriors in that battlefield struggle hard to win; win at any cost. The better equipped, more unified team wins the competition. And every loss is taken on the heart and it creates an opportunity for the opposition to take pride and make mockery of the losing team. Sarcastic comments are passed to the losers. They get nasty and show no mercy, for they receive none. But the best part of this whole situation is that everything is done within the pre-determined laws. Even the slightest deflection from these rules is not entertained and badly criticized.

Similar is the case with our lives. In fact, life constitutes several such battles. Just the form and the format of the battles change. One always competes with organisms around itself for survival. More the number of battles one wins, the longer he survives. One who can’t adapt to the extreme conditions doesn’t suit this place. Nature doesn’t celebrate fragile creatures. It’s all about deceiving precarious situations and coming out with flying colors. Victory is synonymous to survival. History announces the fact that a species that couldn’t shape itself according to the environment ceased to exist. Endurance is a mixture of aggress and defense. Any threat to our motive of survival should be curbed. And if this approach doesn’t prove handy, then only defense mechanism comes into play.

Sometimes, even the healthiest species terminates. Thanks to some bug in the programming of the forces of nature which are beyond our control. We know it better as luck. At times, this mysterious force assists the weaker species and hence, allows it some space to exist. And when it gets cruel, it ruins the strongest giants. But it is something we will never get hold of. It’s cheesy but we are forced to respect this irrepressible power as we have no other choice. What we can do is to be prepared to defy ourselves from every form of menace and develop an unsurpassable defense mechanism and hope that nature doesn’t play its unenviable, unloved game.

But the irony is that we ourselves are the biggest threat to our race. As said above, over-aggressiveness proves as fatal as anything else. We have done well, till now, to defend ourselves against other races capable of destroying our existence but the lust of conquering everything that this universe presents and the unhealthy competition among human beings has developed such a situation that we have lost our vision to distinguish between peril and vitality and thus, we are facing the danger of self-destruction. We human beings are our richest resource and we need to preserve it. We dream of discovering life on other heavenly bodies but if we can’t respect lives of our own fellow beings, the quest on other stations of universe will lead us nowhere….