I remember this funny dialogue from Sai Paranjpye’s classic movie, Katha, where the simpleton character of Naseeruddin Shah tells the smooth talker character of Farooq Shaikh, “मैं तो ताला संस्कृति के ख़िलाफ़ हूँ। ताले आदमी का आदमी के प्रति अविश्वास का प्रतीक है।”
It was one of the most hilarious dialogues of the movie depicting the innocence of the character, and we all laughed as we saw it on screen!
As we went back to our well-secure homes with the double latches, the various cupboards securely locked, each drawer, each briefcase, the hidden steel locker, the bank locker, our two wheelers, our four wheelers, our luggage suitcases… all locked tight! Giving us the feeling that our stuff is so safe and nobody can touch it or take it away from us!
Even if it took its toll in terms of the number of keys we carried around, and then feared that we don’t forget the keys somewhere or misplace them. Because hey, then how will we access our super secure assets!!
The stress moved from worrying about the security of our assets to the security of the keys of the locks that guarded our assets!
All these thoughts crossed my mind as I was clearing up some drawers of an old office of ours, where I found this massive number of keys – with nothing to open!!
Some had meticulous labelling like “back godown key” or “Sampat drawer key” or “Dadar office mailbox key” etc etc. Most were without any clues of any kind!!
The godown has long gone, there is no mailbox at the Dadar office any more, have no clue what drawer of which Sampat this referred to! And when I see the humungous bunch of the rest of the keys, and I look around that office, I realise that there is no such stuff, no locks left that these keys could belong to!!
Which is when I saw the futility of our life long pursuit to secure everything, lock away stuff, continue to accumulate keys and more keys. When what we tried to lock and secure will be gone away long, and we will keep clutching on to our keys, not knowing which precious lock of ours these belonged to, and wondering as to whatever happened to it!!
I started with a Bollywood reference and will conclude with another. I remember this song from the movie Victoria No. 203, featuring Pran and Ashok Kumar, and which went like,
“Do Bichaare Bina Sahaare,
Do Bichaare Bina Sahaare
Dekho Puchh Puchhkar Haare
Bin Taale Ki
Chaavi Le Kar
Phirte Maare Maare”
Random Musings 