I gets angry, envious, jealous, excited, mad, dirty, frustrated, disappointed, depressed, anxious and hell of other things!

I likes, dislikes, loves, hates and does hell of other things!

I thinks, meditates, transcends, descends, reasons, calculates, figures out, concludes and does hell of other things!

I feels down, up, high, low, and hell of other things!

I is big, small, good, bad, euphoric, dysphoric, and hell of other things!

Now it is this I that sets the stage or is a stage by itself for what we call human emotions ranging from happiness to woes to play out. Everything that is thinkable and conceivable is received and issued from this I and that means it is so much powerful so much so that it has total control over the thing and on it rests the identity, the recognition, the position, the comfort zone, the security shield, the safe cocoon to live in, the entry point, and the whole point of notional existence. Not having I to represent the thing that it is will mean, God forbids, getting stripped off layers of security covers leaving the thing exposed and vulnerable. Above all, how will one possibly answer the question staring at the face, does this or that thing exist? If so, how can it be determined exactly what the thing is? We need proof. We need basis. We need order. We need logic.

This man talks crap! He writes rubbish, loads of shit! He is insane! A thing represented by I can instantly react.  And the response to that reaction is, Sanity demanded too big a price, I decided to go insane than to pay it.

Wait a minute! Before jumping the gun, why not take a look at what this I is all about and how it conspires against and give hell to the thing that is!

The funniest part about this I is that this thing or that thing didn’t come with the label of I on it, rather I as a tag or label was sort of branded on the thing to separate it from you, him, her and the herd to uniquely and honestly represent the thing that it is, or else, so scaring to think, the f**ing thing just can’t possibly make its presence felt, it may exist though. Without bringing this I into play there is no way to make out what this thing is and how to tame and slot it in the whole scheme of things we need to function conveniently?

In the order we have created out of non-orderly (nothingness) nature of phenomenon the one we were given, we’ve arranged things in a way to enable us function comfortably and conveniently, and hence, not to live with the idea of I is simply bizarre, horrifying, unthinkable and unconceivable!

After all said and done, the question that refuses to go away is, can I truly (if the word really means to you what it means to me) represent the thing that it is or does it so only psychologically, notionally or conceptually? If we take it to be the latter, then it doesn’t call for too much of mind-bending to conclude that I is only a psychological, notional or conceptual thing. It is hardly anything more than a tag or label.

No, it is lot more than a tag or a label! When and if a tag or a label gets so painful and messy, or can no longer bear with it, all you do is to snap it off a thing and chuck it away or replace it with the other one. But you can’t do the same with this tag or label called I! Why?

The answer is simple. I is not a piece of paper on a string or a dog-tag, it is more of a psychological entity (if I may call it) etched on the thing called mind and memory over the years and is so intricately woven to the whole of the thing that it is, using a loom or a framework of what is commonly known as mind.

To me, this question whether or not I is fundamental to my living, in other words, can the thing still function perfectly normal just like anyone else without carrying this tag or label of I on it, entered my head and stayed infinitely long bending and twisting my whole being that I was when I was 17, way back in 1978 when I had my first job at a five star hotel as a bellboy. I found my way through the maze and it took dreadfully long to disentangle myself from the web and walk into freedom. I’ll touch upon it later.

For now, I talk about the incident.

In those days, in the little town I had found myself in, getting a job amounted to getting a lottery or hitting a jackpot. I landed the job and got into it. I was a great one for the job. It was fun. It was joy. It was adventure. It was thrill. It was learning. Come Christmas there is flood of wine and deluge of cake.  All you have to do is to utter the word Merry Christmas, and a bottle of wine land in your hand. You get tips, sometimes big! You come across all kinds of people – kind, nice, decent, men and women with heart of gold, good Samaritans, gracious, cruel, sadist, pedophile, drug-addicts, mules, mean, psychopath, narcissist, pervert, bisexual, homosexual, maniac, dipsomaniac, and a whole bunch of it.

And this heterogeneous mix of population added the spice and made the job exciting and thrilling. I never had any problem with the fellow creature walking on two feet known as human checking-in at the hotel no matter how was he built, I mean, his personality, perception or frame of mind. I would go to the extremity and hog it, for I never carried any tag on me, things like position, principle, belief, faith, and religion, God, demon or anything to hold me back. I was interested in the extremity of darkness, and the far end of brightness. I wanted to see the true face of everything behind the mask – good and bad.

To a boy of 17 from a village, who haven’t seen the world, the job was like a Hollywood flick packed with thrill and suspense. You never know what this person checked in at the hotel whose bags you are lugging to the room is! And the job was a physically taxing, anyway. You had to lug the bags and baggage by sweat of your brow and take the strain.

To cut the story short and to come straight to the point, I briefly go into two incidents. Of numerous episodes in course of my stint with the hospitality business that lasted for 3 years, I evoke memory of two such incidents which cost me my job but fueled my pursuit in getting to the bottom of this tag or label of I and knowing what this thing is all about.

In those days, they had this motto “Guest is always right” regardless of how criminally wrong they may be. This was an unwritten, cruel law applied to all the hotelier and those in hospitality business, maybe with some exceptions but that was the preserve of the privileged few. The bell boy at the bottom of the heap had no choice but to acquiesce to it.

The first episode involved a woman, a filthy rich woman, I suppose from the vulgar display of ornaments on her body. She had checked-in sometime around 7 or 8 in the evening. I lugged her baggage in the room as part of my duty but there was a thing about her that I had no taste for. I could never fathom out the reason why had this guest been a repulsive sight to me. I know I have been an easy-going boy with men and women of all age checking-in the hotel, I’m straight, not a bi-sexual though. I had been the witness to the fact that humans are no different from any other animals in so many ways fundamental to all living beings. I’ve also been the witness to the fact that humans are rather unnatural in so many other ways as opposed to other animals. I also learnt that no other animals could stretch the boundary of sensory pleasure that far as humans to increase and sustain pleasures to its extremity at the cost of one’s own peril.

Let me be straight out about the fact that it was in this job I had lost what they call virginity. I had a woman thrice my age for maiden sex and then on no looking back. I shed all inhibitions or perhaps I never had any for people going down on me or me riding over them.  No sense of guilt, no regret, no penance, no sin, just nothing going down the road.

But this woman the one I am goanna talk about had nothing unnatural about her, she seemed perfectly natural to me. She had everything that would make a man run his tongue over lips, be it her voluptuous body or her husky whisper or her leers. I just happened to be an exception or an idiot!

One of her cases, don’t know what it was stuffed with, required strenuous effort and I unwittingly jerked it only to snap its handle off the case. I apologized and offered to mend it. She said it was okay and that I need not strain my head about it while her thieving hand fondled around my loin touching my genital, while giving me suggestive leers that only filled me with repulsion. I flung out of her room slamming the door shut behind me. It was rude of me not to reciprocate her advances!

Next day, I reported on duty and was served a memo demanding of me to explain within 24 hours why I had mishandled the woman’s case and gave her angry rebuff and used inappropriate language. Why action shouldn’t be taken against me. My explanation no matter how genuine would not hold water. The manager reprimanded me but fell short of firing me.

The other episode too, involved a woman. But this time it was not about sex, though. It was about a fiction by Mario Puzo “Cuckoo’s Nest”. She asked me to quickly fetch her cases down, for she was running out of time to get to the airport. I did as told, put the cases into the trunk of the cab on waiting outside the gate. She got into the cab, asked me if she had forgotten anything in the room slipping me small tips. Not to my knowledge, I had responded. I sensed that she was under strain. Her partner had bust up and left a day before. The cab fled, she was out of sight. The housemaid came running to me holding this book “Cuckoo’s Nest” which she had discovered on the side of washbasin in the washroom. Off duty, I slung it into my locker, locked it and left.

Next day, I was fired for dishonesty. I was charged with stealing the book by lying about it to the guest. I later learnt that she had burst into the hotel from the airport just for the book. Upon not finding it she had flown into a rage, ranted and raved, made a scene, had lodged a complaint with the hotel management about it.

I was accused of gross misconduct, served another memo to explain. They found my explanation unsatisfactory. I got my marching orders.

Now, this I that represented the thing or this whole being played hell to the head on shoulder, losing sleep over several nights, bringing the episodes again and again back into memory, playing it over and over, bending and twisting the thing called mind, looking for consolation or possible justification, never letting it go. The order of what we call mind was severely upset, refused to be restored.

This I found holes in things like honesty, integrity, hard work, tolerance, dedication and so on. It found them all empty words. It questioned the value and utility of things like notions, concepts, beliefs, principles, religion, spirituality and path and so on. It refused to believe in things like honesty pays, hard work rewarded, tolerance and patience yields fruits and so on.

The thing was there, moving on in spite of the non-cooperation or constant tussle and conflict between the thing and I. The thing lived thereafter albeit in constant conflict with this I for many years. Over the years they had packed me off from the hotel I suffered at the hand of half-a-dozen women more. I never ever harmed a hair of anyone.

And then, suddenly amid the wrestle, it dawned upon this thing that it should ditch this I and go alone, for it is none other than this I that is doing all the thinking, bringing back horrors into memory, playing hell with the thing called body, giving pains, inflicting misery, and causing afflictions.

Since this I is a lot more than a tag or a label, and has a robust foundation on which it is positioned, it can’t go until the whole foundation crumbles away. In order for this to happen, this I got to be gagged, mind got to be quietened down, and the thing that it is just be there where it is, not ahead of it nor behind it. It called for rigorous, unflinching, and ruthless practice, guided and controlled by tremendous amount of inner discipline. The thing walked down the path without a guide, like a rudderless ship. It is there where it is. It doesn’t question. It has no need to know a thing. It doesn’t reason. It is not interested or disinterested at a thing. It just takes things as they come and push on.

And there you are living in an order amongst people carrying the tag or label of I and you free from it. You look at one and the same thing differently from others. You have no perspective while others have. You have no frame of mind while others have. You see nothing where others see so many things. You take things in a way that clashes head-on with the other. A thing that others value the most is silly little nothing to you. And yet, you have no choice but to live in the order or abandon everything and take to the mountains or cave.

The thing that hitherto represented by I and now bereft of it chose to live in the order by neither accepting it nor running into conflict with it. There is this need to strike the balance. The tool to be used is “Play Acting”. Avoid the fool as far as possible and if not enjoy their foolishness.

A flying kite cut off string line doesn’t care which of the kites attached to string line it soars across. It has to fly over and past them. There is huge difference between kites off string and kites on string, though either of them are kites one and the same.