Cat-Fish

How was the life of people living in America? Full of advanced technology, great sky-scrapers, neat-clean place like heaven on earth. This is thought of any Indian who has seen US only on TV and photos. And people from other world get curious that how 100,000 people can live per sq km of Mumbai.

We never thought that what other people thought about us. Most of the people think that their life is boring, monotonous, same routine every day. But our this monotonous life may be great interest for someone. This is not true only for people from opposite world, but also true for me, you and most of the people around us also. We just get glimpse of someone’s life and we get curious to know what will happened with that person. Let me tell you a story. Some day you found mails piling in mailbox of home next to yours. No one is living there for years. And just for curiosity you pick up one letter and its love letter to a girl. You just get curious and you read 5-6 more letters. Then you come across that the guy who is writing her is suffering from cancer. And one more tragedy is that you don’t know where that girl has shifted. The letters don’t have address of sender also. On the other side that guy has left that girl for his career and now when he know that he has cancer, he realized what was important for him. Just some glimpse of someone’s life become part of your life. I am not continuing this story anymore because YOU are part of this story. Now it’s up to you what to do. Either find that guy and girl anyhow, help them to meet or just read letters like watching some show on TV, or something else. This is just example how simple normal behavior of some other person becomes your prime interest.

I watched “Dhobi-Ghat” Movie and it shows just exactly that how peeping in someone’s life which is supposed to be boring life, fuels your curiosity. First you get glance of that life, then it stimulate to know more about it and at the end you found that some stranger’s life is now strongly connected with you own life. That’s beauty of human curiosity. In our daily routine boring life we try to find some interesting things and that things spice up our life and make our life interesting. Let me share my own experience. I met a girl on social networking site, who was with me during school 10 yrs before. We talked a lot, but it was only through mails. I come across that she had gone through some tough time during those years. But now she is fine, living perfectly normal life. Still remembering those tough time makes her uneasy so, she avoided to tell me exactly what had happened. I get curious and we mailed lot after that also. And after few days she became most interesting person I ever met. May be for her that normal routine life is out of interest of anyone, but it’s not for me.

One more incident of my life. My mom got promotion and obviously transfers to farther place a year back. She and other lady was traveling to that place by bus. That lady likes to write and she gave my mom her articles to read. Mom was impressed and brought few of those articles to me. She made me read at least one as I was skeptic that what will be in article written by bank employee. And in my amazement it was fabulous. Afterward I read all of them. And I asked my mom what she is doing, she should be writer for newspaper or should write book. My mom told me she has two small children and had to manage everything, still she had ambition to be professional writer. After a month or something my mom went to her home. She was expecting that as she is great thinker, her home would be beautifully decorated. And in her surprise it was so simple small home. My mom explained me that they are not earning much; they spend most of their money for daily expenses. I felt too sorry for her, how will she manage to fulfill her ambition. I also felt sorry for myself that I wasn’t able to help her anyhow. And that way story of that lady whom I have never met affected my perspective towards life to certain extent.

Now title of this article, Cat-fish. Cat-fish? What is that? A Merchant was selling his fishes from Alaska to China. But when it reaches to its destination, fishes become mush and taste-less. So, that guy come up with idea that if you put catfish in those carts, then catfish keeps moving and keep dead fishes fresh. Some people are like cat-fish in our life. Glimpse of their life make us curios and keep us thinking all the time. Watch this “Cat-fish” movie also. It’s about relationship developed between 2 people through facebook. It will become part of your thoughts for days.

Life is full of stories, but not like stories in the book. You never know where is first page and where is last one, and who is author and who is reader.

~Jaimin Patel