We were watching Charulatha, the iconic Sathyajit Ray movie at Metro theater Kolkatta. Once scene was particularly annoying. The leading lady kept combing her hair for a complete ten minutes, while all the while looking out of the window.

Did I have to waste all this evening just to see a lady comb her hair? The blood of my Bong friends boiled. Any attack on Ray, Tagore or even Didi amounts to sacrilege. 

Isn’t this what life is all about? Don’t the ladies in your household do the same?

Imagine spending a major part of life just combing one’s hair. Don’t many of us fall into this kind of a rut? Doesn’t a majority of the existence go through this rigmarole day in and day out?

How many of us have eked out a Chaplinesque existence? Don’t you remember, how in the movie ‘Modern Times’, Charlie would come back after a hard day in the factory and keep turning screws as he did in the assembly line even while asleep?

Doesn’t most of the society lead a life of meaningless existence? Wouldn’t my Alma mater of bloggers who cite instances of suicide, depression and vaping agree?

How do we get the society out of the rut en masse’? Is there a magic potion to transmute the entire mass who have fallen into debauchery, ineptitude and turpitude? Certainly one shrink cannot do the trick. Wouldn’t you agree?

Vehicle tracks harden in the severe winter frost in Canada. If by miss happens, a vehicle gets into this rut (frozen track). It would have no alternative but to keep moving on this track for miles together.

I have been a prominent member of this rut community for a long, long time. Monday spelt as Tuesday and so did Wednesday. The days would seamlessly shift gears into months which assiduously accumulated into years. I would hit breakfast and then hit lunch and then hit dinner and then hit the sack. I was an automaton stuck in the matrix.

I needed somebody to pull me out of this rut. Little did I realize then that I was going through the ‘Niagara syndrome‘.

Boating is a common excursion among adventurists upstream at the Niagara. At times, the oarsmen venture too far downstream unawares. By now the momentum of the waters overpowers them and pummels them into a free-fall. The desperate oarsmen furiously row in the rivers, trying to avoid the jaws of the ignoble water, which goes all out to engulf them.

I had the same plight as the unfortunate oarsmen. It was 2004, my finances, business and relationship with my father were in dire straits. I needed some force to push me upstream. Some force to push me upstream. I needed a new thought process, a new identity, to get out of the rut.

Don’t even corporates don a new image to escape the clutches of Niagara? Did not Red-bull take a quantum leap from cliff diving to pushing Baumgartner from the edge of space to reeve up its image?

Did not the stunt prove to be a shot in the arm for this drink? Was not the epochal event the most viewed on YouTube that year after the Olympics?

So friends, what needs to be done to take the maddening crowd out of the rut? What steps could catapult the society out of the snarling waters of the Niagara?

Could the positive thinkers who have taken up the onerous task of building this nation, come out with suggestions?

This is Shiv signing off from S & S Family First with the sole purpose of building families and thus building the nation.