A decade of wandering

Life comes full circle, only to lead on to another circle until peace is made with the inner-self. Even a lifetime of search often falls short. The search may result in a unseemly small error that have been incorporated during the journey which completely changes the outcome.  I now realize that a decade of wandering has not taken me anywhere. It is not that nothing happened in this period. Many good things occurred about which I am not sure if anything I have done to deserve them. It is God's mercy and virtues of family and friends that have caused them. But if I were to list what went wrong, the first thing that comes to mind is the loss of innocence. Actually it appears the most important thing that might be related to all others that did not go well. My mind often try to recapitulate the entire experience and find where it all started. I can say with some confidence that I have found it out. It is my email id username !

My username is speedmanoj -  in email as well as many other internet accounts including this blog. Many a times I have realized the vices of speed and in fact had written a post also on the virtues of slowness in this blog. But never did I realize that an oxymoron tag with my name was all where the beginning of mismatch with my actually slow nature lie. A label forced on one's name never allows oneself to behave otherwise - a psychological fact that, I believe, might have been proved. And with god's grace, the username that I really wanted is still available. The journey from speedmanoj to slowmanoj took a decade to correct itself. Lets see how many more circles or any other conical shape for that matter lie in store for my next journeys.  

Recovery and Hope

When we go through bad phases, then we come out of them becoming better. If our destiny gives us struggles, it is our good fortune. Only the lucky ones get to struggle. 

Jaipur Literature Festival – Our city’s pride

The recent Bharat Ratna awardee Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya had said that we should fully understand our literature, culture and arts in order to know ourselves. The literature from not only our region or country but the world literature also shapes our thinking and worldview. We should always keep a good quality literary book with us of any kind, be it fiction, non-fiction, biographies, poetry etc, on any subject of our interest e.g. philosophy, history, science, arts, environment or any other subject. We can start with the popular novels of Chetan Bhagat, Ravinder Singh but we also should read other Indian and foreign authors whose works are popular and/or awarded by the prestigious literary awards like the Nobel Prize in literature, Man Booker Prize, Sahitya Akademi Award etc. We are lucky that our own city hosts the world’s largest free literary festival, Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF).  

This year’s JLF would take place from 21-25 January, 2015 at Diggi Palace, Jaipur. Many famous personalities like Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul, Man Booker nominee Neel Mukherjee, best-selling novelist Amish Tripathi, prominent Hindi poet Kedarnath Singh, the philosophical essayist Nassim Nicholas Taleb  and many others from the fields of journalism, cinema and theatre. 

Namita Gokhale, writer and co-Director of the Jaipur Literature Festival, said about JLF, “Come January, a cloud of creative energies gathers around Jaipur. Writers and thinkers from South Asia and around the world will once again debate and attempt to make sense of our changing worlds through the prism of literature. The 2015 edition will continue to nurture books, ideas and dialogue, and showcase the range and diversity of South Asian literature as well as the best in international writing.”

Literature should and must find its place in our daily life. Young minds of this country should develop the habit of debate, dialogue and discussion which make them independent and original thinkers. It is the privilege of Jaipur, an already historic city, to hold this historic event.  

Accident

The accident happens in one’s life, for better or worse. After meeting with the one, I can only tell that it, the accident, happens only for better. It is a God’s way of correcting our path and leading us into a direction which is good for us and our family. It is a chance to realize the value of life through the near experience of death. It is a test of capacity of the body to bear the pains of damaged remains. It is a process of hope, recovery, future, a new start.

We can try to find reasons why it happened only to us. We can hasten to justify the suffering inflicted upon us through various instruments such as law of karma, god’s injustice etc. But to accept it as it is, to live through it as just a phase of life is the best thing we can do with it. God has His own plans we cannot even fathom. We have a response in our hand though. There is no limit to the strength and the courage that can be derived from the incident. There is no limit to the new lessons that can be learnt from the event.  There is no limit to the gains that can be made even after the accident.

The search of the reason of the fatal event may lead us to the confused state of mind. The answer to the question can vary ranging from a very mundane, very futile, very routinely affair to the calculated, risky and already known reasons. Whatever may be the reason, just thinking about that would not take us to anywhere. The origin or the seed of the accident are lying in the Creator’s scheme of things. What He has in store for us is beyond our imagination.

This phase also enables us to understand that there is only so much that is in our hands.  We can go on to plan our whole life but the plans that He has can never be bypassed. This should increase our faith on that unworldly power, should decrease the overt faith that we have on our own faculties. This is a chance for submitting ourselves at the altar of His Holy Grace, to dedicate ourselves in the service of others.

The principle of doing our actions without any particular desire of getting something in return can truly be actualized after one goes through this phase of life. The ego, the hubris, the navel-gazing - all are badly damaged after the accident and what is left is just the vacuum where anything can be filled in. There can be anger, disdain, guilt, melancholy or there can be thankfulness, forgiveness, compassion, humanity. The choice is ours and with better choice, we can actually do something we possibly could never have done if not met with an accident. A life lived for others is a life worthwhile, Einstein said. To find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others, Gandhi quoted.

If we want to console ourselves with a reason for punishment inflicted on us, it can be the insane ego, the sole attention to self, the word I in every line of ourselves. And if we want to derive some satisfaction out of this tragic event, it is again the smashed hubris which can now be put to good use, that is, in the service of others.  

Culture as a way of life

The past and the distant always have an appeal, albeit an antique one at times. We cherish and preserve old memories, old forms and substances not necessarily because they are extremely valuable, though that would be probably most of the times, but also because of nostalgic, emotional feelings or -what is called in a manner of speech- simply for the old time’s sake. But this adherence to the past and the historic may very well turn out to be an effort aimed at preserving and protecting ways of life so anachronistic in the present. If we are contented to have made these cultures or art forms representing different ways of life of our distant past some antique pieces just as one likes to keep antique furniture in one’s house, then the dichotomy between one’s present lifestyle and these myriad past ways would never cease to make our engagement with these cultures and art forms a banal exercise.

There seems two most important dangers in the cultural self-affirmation efforts of our civilization. One concerns with the radical ultra-religious groups trying to reclaim, in the wake of western dominance, the supremacy of our old civilization through fundamentalist propagandas in the name of religious preaching of morality and values. The exhortations to masses, to abandon everything western, be it food, language, music, clothes and instead adopt anything having name Indian, hide under the garb of cultural nationalism a desperate attempt to cover the cultural defeat, handed by the west, through re-affirmation of our cultural dominance catalyzed by isolated blind pursuit of shallow ideals of our historic past. They want to counter western dominance either through native form of eastern dominance or through re-aligning east to the characteristics of the west so as to preempt it and, as it were, defeat it at its own game. They like neither the traditional, semi-literate villager who acting out of his ignorance does not participate in the conflicts of the modern times nor the burgeoning bourgeoisie who is too busy in gormandizing and naval-gazing to care for such issues. They want polarized people with polarized agendas. Their distorted interpretation of religious texts, myths and pasts, in order to create newer myths and pasts, help them create such polarization in the masses for short political gains. What it does to people of the civilization is to make them live a life of confusion and animosity, and demolish their faiths and myths which helped them to get on with their ordinary everyday lives.

The second concern is with the tussle between the classic and the folk. This tussle has great cultural consequences. As elaborated by Robert M. Pirsig in his transformative book Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, the dualistic split between form and substance, the classic and the folk, object and subject, reason and feeling, sanity and insane has created irreconcilable divide in the human persona. Hard-minded, objective, rational, scientific reasoned and logical approach, after a point of time, is bound to create emptiness and alienation. On the other hand, if one is governed by only emotions, feelings or irrationality, then it leads to romanticism or obscurantism which is mostly irrelevant. When our soul is totally in sync with the object of work, when our way of life is not threatened by but in harmony with the instrument of operation, then only we feel real satisfaction and then only all tussles disappear.

Unfortunately, hierarchy of cultures exists when there should not have been any. The classic is considered, among culture-savvy, a higher form of culture, as it were, as it involves tough mindedness, defined set of rules, a lot of hard work and a coterie of people. The undiluted, pure, scripture based art forms quickly find currency among state-sponsored and elites backed patronage. The true appreciation of these arts requires sophisticated intellect, only possessed by high class experts and professionals. Folk, on the other hand, is considered the delirium of light minded, ignorant, low class people just wanting some entertainment out of art and culture so that they can carry on with their already unimportant futile daily lives. Well, the hierarchy might be less brazen and more subtle than described here, but there is no denying of it. This class based stratification of culture undermines the definition of culture as a way of life. The redemption of traditional folk theories of life representing tolerant, simple and truthful worldview is as much necessary as the revival of these dying classical art forms. It would be appropriate here to quote, which is rather a long one, from a lecture delivered at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in 1983 by the renowned political and social psychologist and one of the foremost intellectual thinker of our country, Ashis Nandy.

“The culture-oriented approach assumes that culture is a dialectic between the classic and the folk, the past and the present, the dead and the living. Modern states, on the other hand, emphasize the classical and frozen-in-time, so as to museumise culture and to make it harmless. Here, too, the modernists endorse the revivalists who believe in time-travel to the past, the orientalists to whom culture is a distant object of study, and the deculturised to whom the culture is what one sees on the stage. Such attitudes to culture go with a devaluation of the folk which is reduced to the artistic and musical self-expression of tribes or language groups. Ethnic arts and ethnic music then becomes, like ethnic food, new indicators of the cultivation of the rich and the powerful.

Culture, however, is a way of life and it covers, apart from ‘high culture’, indigenous knowledge, including indigenous theories of science, education and social change. The defense of culture, according to those who stress cultural survival, is also the defense of these native theories. The defense must challenge the basic hierarchy of cultures, the evolutionist theory of progress, and the historical sense with which the modern mind works.”

Farther the culture, better it looks to keep it in a museum. But culture is much more than the art forms, music and dance. It is the whole way of looking at things and living a life. Though we can try to find inspiration from the different artistic forms, these would be never be substitutes for the broader theory of life and culture that produced them in the first place. While we are busy collecting the debris of our rich cultural heritage, we can afford to ponder why is it that our present find it so difficult to produce those men or women of our pasts we can’t stop being proud of. We can go on to trade and barter whatever remnants we have of them, they are essentially going to lie in our memory as geniuses we do not have a capacity to even define. We do not have to worry because the culture that produced them would take care of them as they took care of their culture.

Slow-ism

Slowism is the frontrunner formula of the day. Slowism can take us to places. Slowism is all we need today.

Slowism means doing things slowly. The joy of work comes from Slowism. The fruit of hard work can be realized only through Slowism. The satisfaction, the happiness, the intense pleasure is nothing but Slowism. The success as it is called is only possible when we start slowly adopting Slowism.

Gone are the days when fast can do wonders.  People having religion as fastism will be jumping like monkeys without tails. Forecast says that Slow people will hunt down every fast one on the earth slowly and slowly.

So when you read this post, you should read every line slowly and slowly. See, again you jumped to the next line, You fasto-maniac! What this fast-fetishism is doing to young people is seriously worrying. Have you seen old people? Why do you think do they work slowly? You thought they are not fast enough, You ignorant fast-fool! They have got a life time of experiences which tells them which is the way for living a good life.

People talk about rat race. But come on, race is meant for rats. Race turns man into a rat. Sluggishness fits for the man. Just think about freedom to experience and enjoy your tardiness, feeling movement of your body parts, breathing and all the funny things going on inside you. Just think about when you catch hold of your dreams and imaginations while sitting idle. Just think about when you become so slow that signal from your brain is taking minutes to reach to your limbs and before it does, you can play with it. Just think about when you peddle your cycle so slow that it is about to fall but still manage to ride on. Think about joy in all that. Can you get it otherwise?

In today’s action movies, they show you scenes by playing them so slowly that you can see the reaction on skin of villain’s face when hero punches him, you can also see when pieces of glasses are going just above the hero’s bent body very slowly. In old hit movies, how beautifully heroine used to come to hero slowly and slowly and put her head onto his shoulder and sing the song slowly and peacefully. By doing it slowly, it was love. Otherwise, it is all sex and dhokha. If you are fast, you can not love. The word LOVE itself means slow love. There is no such thing called fast love.

Machine can work fast. But man is not a machine. That’s why man has slowly made the machine so that he can work slowly and machine can work fast. People blame those people who work slow. I do not understand. Are bhai, they are working in the most humanely possible way.

Please allow me to say that lazily brilliant people will take away the trophy. Slow and lazy will win the race.

Identity crisis for youth: collecting the debris

When we say that we have an identity, what does it mean? Is it the type of clothes we are wearing or food we are eating? Or is it a set of beliefs and thoughts in our mind? In a cosmopolitan culture, are there any identities? Or is it a global mass culture known for appeal of consumption and senses?

For all the babies born in the hospitals today, what is the idealistic future conceived for them in the eyes of their parents, when they first see their child? They all want their children to be speaking English, wearing modern fashionable branded foreign clothes, doing work or study in foreign institutions and become so busy that they get only as much time as to eat fast food so that over the phone, parents can show their concern and love by advising sons and daughters to have nutritious good food and to take care of their health but to simultaneously keep in mind sending the money home so that they can have bigger apartment and bigger car.

We, today’s youth, find it difficult to know what to do with the cultural baggage we are burdened with from time to time. More than 2000 years of civilization and its evolved culture persisted even in the times of industrial revolution and colonial rule. Now it runs a risk of perishing to the level that small efforts to save its glimpses like those of tigers will be rewarded by those few claiming to be saviors of our culture. When we are told that our tradition teaches us that we should always try to speak the truth, then we start to guess about what little can be achieved by speaking truth in modern world. When sometimes someone informs us that in Gita, it is written that we should not first think about result but instead should act first, we are in dilemma as to how can one even think of doing something without giving a single thought to what one would get in return. When our parents say that we should respect our elders, we do not understand what they mean by that.

We are tempted to watch English movies, serials but when we are tired of those, we allow ourselves a dose of TV episodes of Ramayan or Mahabharata and start to pretend that we also know the flavor of Indian traditions. We are inclined towards learning Guitar or Drums and behaving like westerners mistakenly dropped on the eastern side. But we do not like when people do not know how to react on the music that comes out of those Guitar or Drums. We are attracted towards latest electronic gadgets, bikes, cars etc. Here Honda tells us that it is the beat of nation’s heart and we should go by riding on it. But when we learn that it does not tell where to go (or Does it? probably to reply to girl friend’s SMS), we do not know what to do with it. When someone says that according to our culture, extra-marital relations are sinful, that one should be loyal to one’s spouse, we do not understand what to do with the advertisement of a deodorant which tells us to zatak her or seduce a married woman by applying it.

We are introduced to modern ways of tele-communication and networking, internet, social connectivity but when it falls short of telling us whom should we connect to and with what purpose, we feel very restless. Modern trends of fast and energetic life, speed living causes us to believe in extremes of life, but when we do know where to channel our excessive energy, it appears self-destructive. Speaking of today’s women clothing sense, they are being told by their parents, grandparents to wear loose full clothes and wear duppata or sari so as to restrict people’s eyes to watch our body or breasts. But today they wear skin tight tops and short jeans splashing their breasts in public with proud. They argue against teachings of their old culture and want to adopt the modern western style of free and liberated women. But then they also tend to realize the importance of family system and fidelity and then remain confused as to how can they remain free and liberated when at the same time attached to old value system of family and fidelity.

The even bigger crisis lies in inability to decide what to do with nationalism and religion. First talking of nationalism, after hearing patriotic songs of Rehman, Lata and others on 15 august, 26 January, and after supporting India against Pakistan in terrorism, war and cricket, we feel elated as to have done justice to our obligation to nationalism. At the same time, we find attractive the idea of globalization and mixing of all nations and their cultures. Then we are left guessing as to how much of loyalty to show to nationalism and how much to globalization.

The biggest crisis, I think, is regarding religion and God. The idea of God does not seem to fit into our lifestyle. Someone said that God is man’s biggest creation. So when God is just a figment of someone’s imagination, then why bother? Man, from centuries, has toyed with the idea whether God exists or not but still no one can say for sure. Then why care for something of which existence itself is not sure? Who needs faith? But when some people say that religion is essential for living life, faith is more important than intellect, rituals and traditions are not superstitions but man’s belief in something above all controlling everything, then we feel indecisive. So what do we do now? We adopt middle path. We occasionally go to temples, mosques, church or other places of worship as the case may be to show solidarity to our grandparents, parents and children, celebrate holidays caused by religious festivals and condemn people who in the name of religion spread violence. We think that we should not take religion more seriously than that. But we do not want to know that religion based violence has gained its foothold not due to extreme religion-alism but due to de-religion-alism of masses. Why did Hindutva succeeded over Hinduism? It is because Hinduism has vanished from the minds of masses. How can only a small chunk of extremist people shake billion plus masses? This hate and violence between Hinduism and Islamism has been started only from a century back. But Hinduism and its culture has endured and accommodated many religions, their goodness, their extremism for thousands of years. Something must have changed now, for better or worse.

But what identity can one give to our youth who finds safe shelter in alcohol, marijuana and meat, who is burger gobbling, news freaks and flamboyant, whose virtue is wine, women and wealth. Identities change, modify, evolve with time and other external influences. But they also remain constant for some time or their spirit does not change for a while. But why there is no one identity? Why then is this dualism? Why do we find it difficult to mix our culture with western culture? Is it because we have lost the ability of distinguishing and preserving what is of value in our old culture and taking what is good in other cultures? Was it not the objective of a culture to give that ability, to distinguish between right and wrong, between good and bad?

M. K. Gandhi said that I would allow different winds in the name of different cultures to blow around my house but I would not allow my house i.e. my culture to be blown away by those winds. Is our house secure today? Or do we not even know where the debris is?