To see your child in glee and chuckles
To love your woman like Truth
To swing with the rhythm of the road
To brood over a drink and good music
To see a young tree you planted grow
To earn good sleep in your own bed
To rest in peace over justice served
To see fairness and beauty all around
To feel safe from abuse and cruelty
To feel loved by even one person
To think like the God himself
To dream like this in solitude….
Monday, October 06, 2008
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Of Men and Morals
We were in Singapore last month, our team of 15 people, forming the core of the Mahindra business in the 4 southern states. All of us are educated in premier institutes. All engineers from Anna University, MIT, premier MBA institutes.
We had all gone out on sight seeing on the 1st day and were back in the hotel. Went out to for some shopping and were back for a drink at the hotel.
The second day was again full of sight seeing, with the Jurong Bird Park and Sentosa Island Resort forming the highlights of the trip.
We got back to the hotel at 9 pm, and all sat together for a drink, including our boss, who had come with his family. Had a rollicking time. Till then everything went on fine.
It all started at 10 pm, when some people wanted to explore the night life of Singapore. Me and my partner in customer care, Mr. Nagaraj, stayed back. I was having one drink after another and we were conversing different topics.
At 11 pm, there was a knock, and 3 people came running inside the room. They were looking extremely scared and one of them, a drinker, wanted a drink to calm his nerves. He had a drink and then started narrating what happened to them in their quest to explore the night life of Singapore.
They had all left in taxis, and asked the drivers to take them to some night clubs and one of the drivers was Tamil. He took them to a place where night life, in its literal sense, was being lived.
Mr. Uday was sitting in a table in a bar with a beer. He was looking at the women in the club. Suddenly, a girl came and sat on his lap. She was looking extremely pretty. Uday kept gazing at her, unable to realize that a girl other than his wife was sitting on his lap.
He realized the gravity of the situation and managed to will himself to get off the seat. 3 more guys of a similar disposition and Uday managed to get out of the setup and scramble home to the safety of the taxi. They were back and Uday was shaking from head to toe.
He as scared. He was tempted to buy the woman a few drinks and pay her money to get laid. The temptation lasted a minute and it was a moment of realization for him of his weakness and his strength of morality as well. He was shaken and badly mauled by the experience.
Let us now see what happened to the other 10 people who were exploring the night life of Singapore.
They bought the drinks for the girls, paid them the money, and got laid.
I would recall the instance of one guy, one of my team in TN. He has a son, whom he apparently loves. The drinks and the sex had cost him S$150. He did not buy his son anything from Singapore.
The other guy from TN, 28, got married in 2007 December. His wife is having an issue, 7th month. It cost him S$150 to get laid. He did not buy anything even for his wife or for home. He was the same guy who specialized in taking snaps of asses of women in short skirts and shorts, and boasted about it.
Some people go to prostitutes to get laid alone. Paying for sex, I think, is the basest thing anyone can do with their life and character. Making love and having sex are 2 different things and are confused to be the same thing.
One difference between animals and humans is that the longevity of a relationship lasts beyond the mating process. The relationship is based on love and sex is just an outcome of the love, of acceptance and of an emotion of conduciveness.
When a man pays money for sex, he is not only maligning his own morals, but also jeopardizing the love of his family. Who was a loving father has every possibility to turn into a monster. When money leads to sex, a vital link in the evolution of man’s mind is violated. It leads to guilt and diseases, to the mind and to the body.
What I realized was that no matter what your education is, how much you earn, what your wife does, men require sex for the thrill of the primacy or novelty of the situation or life. A guilty person can’t be a good father or a mother, as a lathe can't turn a square hole.
We had all gone out on sight seeing on the 1st day and were back in the hotel. Went out to for some shopping and were back for a drink at the hotel.
The second day was again full of sight seeing, with the Jurong Bird Park and Sentosa Island Resort forming the highlights of the trip.
We got back to the hotel at 9 pm, and all sat together for a drink, including our boss, who had come with his family. Had a rollicking time. Till then everything went on fine.
It all started at 10 pm, when some people wanted to explore the night life of Singapore. Me and my partner in customer care, Mr. Nagaraj, stayed back. I was having one drink after another and we were conversing different topics.
At 11 pm, there was a knock, and 3 people came running inside the room. They were looking extremely scared and one of them, a drinker, wanted a drink to calm his nerves. He had a drink and then started narrating what happened to them in their quest to explore the night life of Singapore.
They had all left in taxis, and asked the drivers to take them to some night clubs and one of the drivers was Tamil. He took them to a place where night life, in its literal sense, was being lived.
Mr. Uday was sitting in a table in a bar with a beer. He was looking at the women in the club. Suddenly, a girl came and sat on his lap. She was looking extremely pretty. Uday kept gazing at her, unable to realize that a girl other than his wife was sitting on his lap.
He realized the gravity of the situation and managed to will himself to get off the seat. 3 more guys of a similar disposition and Uday managed to get out of the setup and scramble home to the safety of the taxi. They were back and Uday was shaking from head to toe.
He as scared. He was tempted to buy the woman a few drinks and pay her money to get laid. The temptation lasted a minute and it was a moment of realization for him of his weakness and his strength of morality as well. He was shaken and badly mauled by the experience.
Let us now see what happened to the other 10 people who were exploring the night life of Singapore.
They bought the drinks for the girls, paid them the money, and got laid.
I would recall the instance of one guy, one of my team in TN. He has a son, whom he apparently loves. The drinks and the sex had cost him S$150. He did not buy his son anything from Singapore.
The other guy from TN, 28, got married in 2007 December. His wife is having an issue, 7th month. It cost him S$150 to get laid. He did not buy anything even for his wife or for home. He was the same guy who specialized in taking snaps of asses of women in short skirts and shorts, and boasted about it.
Some people go to prostitutes to get laid alone. Paying for sex, I think, is the basest thing anyone can do with their life and character. Making love and having sex are 2 different things and are confused to be the same thing.
One difference between animals and humans is that the longevity of a relationship lasts beyond the mating process. The relationship is based on love and sex is just an outcome of the love, of acceptance and of an emotion of conduciveness.
When a man pays money for sex, he is not only maligning his own morals, but also jeopardizing the love of his family. Who was a loving father has every possibility to turn into a monster. When money leads to sex, a vital link in the evolution of man’s mind is violated. It leads to guilt and diseases, to the mind and to the body.
What I realized was that no matter what your education is, how much you earn, what your wife does, men require sex for the thrill of the primacy or novelty of the situation or life. A guilty person can’t be a good father or a mother, as a lathe can't turn a square hole.
Friday, August 08, 2008
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Selfish
Selfishness:
It, I would define is, the will to further one’s interests over others’, within one’s own moral precincts. It is the instinct of survival that has been tempered by generations of collective thinking and social taming.
I would like to clarify here that I am making a fundamental differentiation between a wrongdoing and an act of selfishness. A wrongdoing is an act of moral weakness. An act of selfishness is of the will, usually with full effect, because you are doing something over the fresh grave of a conflict.
The conflict is with the notion of “sacrifice”. It is moral degradation that asks or waits for a sacrifice. It is lack of strength that makes a sacrifice. A duty is never a sacrifice, to be remembered. Who claims a duty to be a sacrifice is being selfish.
Being selfish is just one of the means to be independent. This is the way that makes independence inevitable. You would have exhibited your preferences, your priorities and your intentions. You would have played your cards. You are exposed, like a diva under the focus lamp, whose shoulder straps have become undone. You can either cover your vitals and be ashamed. Or you can be light as a newborn foal, and celebrate the innocence of being naked. Your pretences have been shooed away by a momentary expansion of your real self. It is now decided! You have been branded!
Let me be honest, very. Simply put, no man can be not selfish at all. Selflessness is in an ideal man. Designed to make a role model for us, at a time when being selfish could have ruined a pack of hunters, who still held stones for weapons. The results of one individual wanting to exercise his interests and choices would be disastrous for the pack. Such hunters became the solitary jungle men, thrown out of the pack, and fighting for survival in a world where individual choices are violated and disrespected.
I need not be proud of being selfish, just like how I am not proud that I can be cold and unsympathetic. I need not feel self-regret and remorse for being selfish, just like how I am in equanimity with my arts and vices.
Selfishness is demonstrated through acts. Words, movements, gestures and decisions. They are the ends churned out by something as unpredictable as a human mind. The dynamics are complex to break down. The concoction is variegated by the essence of so many experiences and priorities.
People lie. People make mistakes. People do stupid things. People do bad things. People hurt. People hurt. Can an individual’s worth be measured accordingly? The answer would be a loud no among our intellectuals. The answer would be a simple yes from an ordinary man. What matters is “what do you think?”
The Personality – Taking the Mind’s Part!
In psychology, personality is a collection of emotional, thought and behavioral patterns unique to a person that is consistent over time. The word itself originates from the Latin word “mask”. Not meaning an apparatus to plot, but as one to typify or portray.
Various schools of psychology employ various approaches to frame a model to explaining personality. Freud used the ego, superego and id as components of personality. There are behaviorist theories, cognitive theories, trait theories and many more.
All modern theories look at explaining personality, where it is an object of mystery that has to be solved. Emotions, behaviors and thoughts are seen as outcomes of a certain type of personality. There seems to be an underlying principle that is ignored when something is explained in context than in essence. But this is science and it stops with the explaining. Psychologists were trying to understand, not to design a way of life. They did not have nirvana or deliverance or afterlife to contend with. Understanding was the deliverable than devising an approach to understand and use it to one’s advantage.
It is more prudent, in my opinion, to look at the cause to frame a theory, than to look at the action/reaction.
The Buddha explains personality thus:
The personality is of five components:
1. The body – as the substrata of being alive
2. The sensory organs – on which the body depends to feel alive
3. Perceptions – as the process of interpretation of the senses thus felt
4. The activities of the mind – as the process of thinking
5. Cognition – as the process of knowing
One leads to the other. Without the body, there would be no living. This is the physical bulk of the personality. The sensory organs feel, vibrate and function their part. The mind performs the arithmetic, gives allegories, recalls examples and finds the best way to act.
Till now, everything is involuntary. The ears will always hear the music, leading to a sense of joy. The joy is the outcome of the mind. It recalls nice things, beautiful valleys, colorful gardens and cute babies. Cognition is the awareness part, where the self reflects, meditates and ponders over itself and its actions. There is a smile that will bloom on the face at the sight of a kitten, which will sometimes be crossed by “why am I smiling?” This is the self, looking at the personality, trying to understand it.
Traditionally religions have been the channels of framing ways to live, act and behave. In turn, such principles were supported by philosophies that explained the self, its mysteries and the life after death. The Aryan race believed in payback brought about by the actions in this birth. Donate, sacrifice, be virtuous, be religious and abnegate.
Escape from passions and desires are seen as a way of freeing oneself from the mires of the personality. This is because the personality and the self are seen as different. The personality is the mortal, while the self or the atman is immortal. The personality is the direction of the urge of the self in this birth.
Cognition is causal. We are aware of something only when the previous four components have done their functions. The processes that take place because of the senses cause it. Cognition cannot be used as an approach to explaining the personality, since it is a part of the personality.
Personality can be explained and understood only by the self, which is an outsider to personality. One cannot know the quality of an apple by being a leaf in the tree. One has to be a farmer. The self has to look at the personality, isolated.
The self is the idea of a unified being which is the source of an idiosyncratic consciousness in a living being. This is called idiosyncratic because it symbolizes the peculiarity of the self with respect to the other senses that reside in the body and the processes of the mind. The latter are there for a specific purpose. But the self? Why must we have a self? It is because we are unable to explain this something. A substance or a mechanism that seems to reside within us, yet apart from us, and which will come closer only by reflection and not by intuition. The self is deduced by logic. The same cold logic of the mind will deduce the essence of man, the self or the atman.
The self is the life that throbs in the heart. The force that moves the universe. The electric field that causes electrons to go around the nucleus. The God that creates life. The destructive force that can churn an ocean. For us who are tangled with the details cannot see the force that is guiding us on our path. The macro can look at the micro with a mere effort, but the opposite to take place needs a different approach to life.
I have gone into such details to enable the thought process of understanding the cause of selfishness. If one thinks he is selfish, his self is looking at his personality. It is the essence of you that is being critical. The personality as such is causal and has acted in the best material interests of you. The self looks at the interests in a different manner, since it is outside the realm of the personality, though it uses the very same cognition to effect this judgment on the individual.
The self is apart from selfishness or any other vices or devise yet contrived by any mind. Such are acts of the cognition. Borne out of the processes triggered by the senses, and processed by the mind. The self is always divine in every being. The overpowering sensations of the mind, passions and desires overshadow the self, the essence of man.
All turpitude and guilt is only mind deep. Deep down we are all-pure. Till we realize and fructify this spirit within us, all movements and productions are sufferings and are illusory.
Are we then to abnegate and become monks ourselves? I venture forth with the answer “ All beings were selected by a self, the eternal one. It formed our personality in response to the touch and vibrations of our senses and our mentation. We have to respond in this world if we are to sail smooth within this samsara. Not everyone can quit family, desires and passions to attain Buddhahood. Nor does everyone believe in the eternal self and rebirth. The awareness of the self will suffice in this age when individual value is corroded more than ever. People run away, break down and actively and passively abandon their responsibility to themselves and the society. It is better to look at the world as a place where the self has chosen to weave its story, around this personality, in this direction”.
The self has to be acknowledged as being present within us. Not everything of us is flesh, blood and matter. There is enough room within our existence that permits the accedence of the metaphysical; of the abstract, the incorporeal and the obtuse. Once this space is accorded to the self, then it is the ego that is being selfish. Any act is a response to a condition that exists, and is the result of cognition, which is causal in nature. If the act evokes guilt, it is the mind again with its response to the situation created by the act. This situation might also be dealt with by a response.
It is by giving up all that the self can be attained. That eternal bliss is not to be attained by us all. We are creatures that respond. We are creatures that are surviving. We want to live. Death for us is pain, not deliverance. Such is the mentation’s reason. Strong enough, in my opinion, to make us go through life, as we deem right.
So let us set aside the spiritual context of selfishness, or any other quality within man that he deems is unfit for public exposition. The spiritual realm is for those who want deliverance from the cycle of birth, death, sins and suffering. We are talking about the justifiability of an act within one’s mind. We are limited to the cognitive. We are trying to make peace with the mind and the self, by taking the mind’s part. The mind is aware of the self and vice versa, and we are trying to synchronize the both by showing the self the very little choice that the mind has to consider. Let the self be sympathetic, let the mind be flamboyant. Let the path be correct. Let us live to be happy, however futile this life may be.
Submitting:
We all submit, rather surrender our choices for something better. We have the choice of redepositing our choices into the “choice” bank. We can draw out new ones. We can change.
I can surrender resolve to pliability. I can surrender truth to falsehood. I can submit to a life of celibacy. I can do anything!
We always go through a period when choices don’t seem to exist, after the surrender. There seems to be an indomitable scarcity of thought, ideas and action; of choices as such. We despair at these times. When the soul feels broken, when the heart revels in a trough, refusing to look up. There again is always the awakening. For nothing can be left untouched by evolution and growth, can it? We look about, and then amazingly, we walk again. We look for fresh choices to make. We surrender old coins that are not worth any longer, in exchange for newly issued ones.
There is a new attitude to this makeover! People do change, I believe for the good. They submit used choices to new ones. They create new vistas to themselves, where they can see a better view of their future. They rejoice the potency of their decision, proud and defiant.
Selfishness is just such a choice, made unconsciously and sometimes consciously. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that it is bred among us as separate entities; as money, as freedom, as desires, as power, etc. The only crime that selfishness commits on the human is that it conquers him unnoticed, when he does notice, he is in a plot inextricably complex and is daringly in the open.
He who exercises his choices with a will scares people of his potency. He plays to his strength, his smartness. He gets what he exactly wants. He makes bold decisions that decide his own fate. He is taking destiny head on. He chooses to have more control over his life than others.
He who is sure is always suspected. He who thinks for his own welfare always draws flak for his seemingly careless attitude. He who is powerful over himself is always belittled in a thousand small ways. He who is smart is always hated. We are not paragons of virtue. Vices rule our unconscious, moderated by again, taming and social instincts.
A selfish individual not only robs people of their interests, but also enjoys them right in front of the disadvantaged, all the more hurt.
Man has been so well conditioned that he will not advance his own interests till he is insecure, cornered. Insecurity may be imaginary, nothing really. He reacts like an innocent toddler clutching at fire. Will he be burnt? Or will he learn to play & revel in its warmth?
Love and Selfishness:
Love. I would not be doing justice to selfishness if I don’t think of this.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses
Your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So he shall descend to your roots and shake them
In their clinging to the earth.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then as he assigns you to his sacred fire, that
You may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you
May know the secrets of your heart, and in that
Knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love’s
Peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your
Nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh,
But not all of your laughter, and weep,but not all
Of your tears.
(On love, The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran)
Love is a flight toward perfection. We become better with love. We love so that we become better. Self-love is the basic manifestation of love. If it is not within us, it will not come out. One who is deficient in resources cannot give. Love is a conscious effort we make toward someone or something.
Love moves us toward extremities. There is immense happiness, emotions, and passions and there is heart wrenching sorrow and failure too. One who has not loved will never know these extremes. Yet nobody is not touched by love. If love is not perceived in its embracing presence, it is definitely felt in its ghostly absence.
One, who does not perceive love, will be contented. He will have capabilities that will define his boundaries. There will be no wings. There will be no utopia in the mind. There will be no butterflies in the garden. The spring that embellishes the spirit with a sense of bounty will forever deprive the individual of the warmth that is the extra bit of spice that man tastes over the animals.
We usually encounter situations where we must give up something for somebody we love. If I give up something for something for my beloved, I am doing love’s labor. It is duty. It is duty that is performed without the slightest whimpering. We cannot be selfish to those who love because we will be doing our duty by doing what is required to be done. There is a joy to doing this; else we would not do it. Ignoring the self in making such decisions towards depriving oneself can look romantic at that moment, but will always come back and haunt us. Regrets in decisions lead to discontent. Discontent leads to complaining. Complaining will always come back to “sacrifice”.
Must Selfishness be Vanquished?
Now, we will see if this needs to be branded as bad and hounded out of our realm, else if it needs to be tolerated as another eccentricity of the human mind among many others.
Everybody is selfish. It is hypocrisy if this is refuted. It cannot be challenged. We are human beings. We need to advance, grow, and survive, most of all. The advancements and the growth become the proxies for survival when survival is taken for granted. An average man is assured of physical survival. He will normally not be beaten to death or killed by an expulsion from a group. He will live. So now, the struggle is toward a comfortable existence. I need an air conditioner badly. It has become need. It has become a hygiene factor, without which I am not happy. I want to be powerful. I want to control. I will live unless an accident happens to occur.
So we will be rarely in a position where we will be endangering the physical lives of people by being selfish. Not many people get to that position of power and potency. Being selfish will enable you to be in control, if only your conscience permitted you to be happy with the control so achieved. Being selfish will let you have better things in life. Be it a better income, a better job, a better lifestyle.
It is imperative to understand that being unselfish will not give lives to people who are in trouble. It is sometimes bad to be unselfish, just like how it is good to be selfish sometimes. After all, we may not be making much of a difference.
What would we be losing? We would be losing the goodwill of those who were affected, if it mattered to think about their lot. We would be losing our peace of mind if we believe we have been harsh. We would be losing our self worth if we think we were wrong. If this were the case, it would be best to go back on the decision, since this is a weak mind, with weaker principles and controls.
Selfishness is good. Anything that is considered bad is bad and will be regretted and fretted over. I would not call them selfish acts or motives. They are just bad things done at a time when a bad thought asserted itself.
Selfishness is an act of consciousness if planned, within the ambit of our values. If it is unplanned, it is the essence of ourselves that are exposed through an act. In both cases, it is the good part of us that is acting to do us good. It is not sick to be selfish. It is not a base character that calls itself selfish and acts so.
Then are we here to outdo and outsmart one another, one may wonder. Gathering fruits is different from marauding an orchard. So is selfishness different from mindless acquisition. Being selfish means you pick the best fruits for yourself and not wish your neighbor ate rotten eggs. Then, what he eats need not be your worry, if that can be seen as a crime! If you have an apple to spare, you may even be charitable. Up to your appetite.
When selfishness creeps up from behind you, wake up. You may have your priorities wrong or neglecting your interests and well being. If you think you are unselfish, wake up. It is better to be selfish than a hypocrite. Accept it, live with it.
Conclusion:
I am selfish. I am not regretting it. I am at peace when I can say this to my face and to the world. I am not lying.
It takes a change to acknowledge this. It takes an effort. It takes will to assert oneself. Change.
When we look at the cost of a sacrifice, it will always be worth not making it. Who has not regretted a sacrifice sincerely?
For so long, socio religious conscience has had the better of the mind. A thousand chains have bound rationality. Man has become a slave to his own creation – society. Man is today lost in a multitude of fantabulous theories and myths regarding his existence. Man is an intelligent animal, a bit more sophisticated and with more ambulatory options, and definitely a better mental capacity.
In the absence of a physical territory to guard, when food, shelter and sex are guaranteed, when existence is not threatened, such things that were preternatural to our forefathers have become knowledge to us. Times have changed.
Selfishness is the conduit for our instinctual energies to be spent. It is the intent to live, expressed through a thousand proxies. It is human life, with its own eccentricity. The center point will remain the same, but the circle will never be perfect.
It, I would define is, the will to further one’s interests over others’, within one’s own moral precincts. It is the instinct of survival that has been tempered by generations of collective thinking and social taming.
I would like to clarify here that I am making a fundamental differentiation between a wrongdoing and an act of selfishness. A wrongdoing is an act of moral weakness. An act of selfishness is of the will, usually with full effect, because you are doing something over the fresh grave of a conflict.
The conflict is with the notion of “sacrifice”. It is moral degradation that asks or waits for a sacrifice. It is lack of strength that makes a sacrifice. A duty is never a sacrifice, to be remembered. Who claims a duty to be a sacrifice is being selfish.
Being selfish is just one of the means to be independent. This is the way that makes independence inevitable. You would have exhibited your preferences, your priorities and your intentions. You would have played your cards. You are exposed, like a diva under the focus lamp, whose shoulder straps have become undone. You can either cover your vitals and be ashamed. Or you can be light as a newborn foal, and celebrate the innocence of being naked. Your pretences have been shooed away by a momentary expansion of your real self. It is now decided! You have been branded!
Let me be honest, very. Simply put, no man can be not selfish at all. Selflessness is in an ideal man. Designed to make a role model for us, at a time when being selfish could have ruined a pack of hunters, who still held stones for weapons. The results of one individual wanting to exercise his interests and choices would be disastrous for the pack. Such hunters became the solitary jungle men, thrown out of the pack, and fighting for survival in a world where individual choices are violated and disrespected.
I need not be proud of being selfish, just like how I am not proud that I can be cold and unsympathetic. I need not feel self-regret and remorse for being selfish, just like how I am in equanimity with my arts and vices.
Selfishness is demonstrated through acts. Words, movements, gestures and decisions. They are the ends churned out by something as unpredictable as a human mind. The dynamics are complex to break down. The concoction is variegated by the essence of so many experiences and priorities.
People lie. People make mistakes. People do stupid things. People do bad things. People hurt. People hurt. Can an individual’s worth be measured accordingly? The answer would be a loud no among our intellectuals. The answer would be a simple yes from an ordinary man. What matters is “what do you think?”
The Personality – Taking the Mind’s Part!
In psychology, personality is a collection of emotional, thought and behavioral patterns unique to a person that is consistent over time. The word itself originates from the Latin word “mask”. Not meaning an apparatus to plot, but as one to typify or portray.
Various schools of psychology employ various approaches to frame a model to explaining personality. Freud used the ego, superego and id as components of personality. There are behaviorist theories, cognitive theories, trait theories and many more.
All modern theories look at explaining personality, where it is an object of mystery that has to be solved. Emotions, behaviors and thoughts are seen as outcomes of a certain type of personality. There seems to be an underlying principle that is ignored when something is explained in context than in essence. But this is science and it stops with the explaining. Psychologists were trying to understand, not to design a way of life. They did not have nirvana or deliverance or afterlife to contend with. Understanding was the deliverable than devising an approach to understand and use it to one’s advantage.
It is more prudent, in my opinion, to look at the cause to frame a theory, than to look at the action/reaction.
The Buddha explains personality thus:
The personality is of five components:
1. The body – as the substrata of being alive
2. The sensory organs – on which the body depends to feel alive
3. Perceptions – as the process of interpretation of the senses thus felt
4. The activities of the mind – as the process of thinking
5. Cognition – as the process of knowing
One leads to the other. Without the body, there would be no living. This is the physical bulk of the personality. The sensory organs feel, vibrate and function their part. The mind performs the arithmetic, gives allegories, recalls examples and finds the best way to act.
Till now, everything is involuntary. The ears will always hear the music, leading to a sense of joy. The joy is the outcome of the mind. It recalls nice things, beautiful valleys, colorful gardens and cute babies. Cognition is the awareness part, where the self reflects, meditates and ponders over itself and its actions. There is a smile that will bloom on the face at the sight of a kitten, which will sometimes be crossed by “why am I smiling?” This is the self, looking at the personality, trying to understand it.
Traditionally religions have been the channels of framing ways to live, act and behave. In turn, such principles were supported by philosophies that explained the self, its mysteries and the life after death. The Aryan race believed in payback brought about by the actions in this birth. Donate, sacrifice, be virtuous, be religious and abnegate.
Escape from passions and desires are seen as a way of freeing oneself from the mires of the personality. This is because the personality and the self are seen as different. The personality is the mortal, while the self or the atman is immortal. The personality is the direction of the urge of the self in this birth.
Cognition is causal. We are aware of something only when the previous four components have done their functions. The processes that take place because of the senses cause it. Cognition cannot be used as an approach to explaining the personality, since it is a part of the personality.
Personality can be explained and understood only by the self, which is an outsider to personality. One cannot know the quality of an apple by being a leaf in the tree. One has to be a farmer. The self has to look at the personality, isolated.
The self is the idea of a unified being which is the source of an idiosyncratic consciousness in a living being. This is called idiosyncratic because it symbolizes the peculiarity of the self with respect to the other senses that reside in the body and the processes of the mind. The latter are there for a specific purpose. But the self? Why must we have a self? It is because we are unable to explain this something. A substance or a mechanism that seems to reside within us, yet apart from us, and which will come closer only by reflection and not by intuition. The self is deduced by logic. The same cold logic of the mind will deduce the essence of man, the self or the atman.
The self is the life that throbs in the heart. The force that moves the universe. The electric field that causes electrons to go around the nucleus. The God that creates life. The destructive force that can churn an ocean. For us who are tangled with the details cannot see the force that is guiding us on our path. The macro can look at the micro with a mere effort, but the opposite to take place needs a different approach to life.
I have gone into such details to enable the thought process of understanding the cause of selfishness. If one thinks he is selfish, his self is looking at his personality. It is the essence of you that is being critical. The personality as such is causal and has acted in the best material interests of you. The self looks at the interests in a different manner, since it is outside the realm of the personality, though it uses the very same cognition to effect this judgment on the individual.
The self is apart from selfishness or any other vices or devise yet contrived by any mind. Such are acts of the cognition. Borne out of the processes triggered by the senses, and processed by the mind. The self is always divine in every being. The overpowering sensations of the mind, passions and desires overshadow the self, the essence of man.
All turpitude and guilt is only mind deep. Deep down we are all-pure. Till we realize and fructify this spirit within us, all movements and productions are sufferings and are illusory.
Are we then to abnegate and become monks ourselves? I venture forth with the answer “ All beings were selected by a self, the eternal one. It formed our personality in response to the touch and vibrations of our senses and our mentation. We have to respond in this world if we are to sail smooth within this samsara. Not everyone can quit family, desires and passions to attain Buddhahood. Nor does everyone believe in the eternal self and rebirth. The awareness of the self will suffice in this age when individual value is corroded more than ever. People run away, break down and actively and passively abandon their responsibility to themselves and the society. It is better to look at the world as a place where the self has chosen to weave its story, around this personality, in this direction”.
The self has to be acknowledged as being present within us. Not everything of us is flesh, blood and matter. There is enough room within our existence that permits the accedence of the metaphysical; of the abstract, the incorporeal and the obtuse. Once this space is accorded to the self, then it is the ego that is being selfish. Any act is a response to a condition that exists, and is the result of cognition, which is causal in nature. If the act evokes guilt, it is the mind again with its response to the situation created by the act. This situation might also be dealt with by a response.
It is by giving up all that the self can be attained. That eternal bliss is not to be attained by us all. We are creatures that respond. We are creatures that are surviving. We want to live. Death for us is pain, not deliverance. Such is the mentation’s reason. Strong enough, in my opinion, to make us go through life, as we deem right.
So let us set aside the spiritual context of selfishness, or any other quality within man that he deems is unfit for public exposition. The spiritual realm is for those who want deliverance from the cycle of birth, death, sins and suffering. We are talking about the justifiability of an act within one’s mind. We are limited to the cognitive. We are trying to make peace with the mind and the self, by taking the mind’s part. The mind is aware of the self and vice versa, and we are trying to synchronize the both by showing the self the very little choice that the mind has to consider. Let the self be sympathetic, let the mind be flamboyant. Let the path be correct. Let us live to be happy, however futile this life may be.
Submitting:
We all submit, rather surrender our choices for something better. We have the choice of redepositing our choices into the “choice” bank. We can draw out new ones. We can change.
I can surrender resolve to pliability. I can surrender truth to falsehood. I can submit to a life of celibacy. I can do anything!
We always go through a period when choices don’t seem to exist, after the surrender. There seems to be an indomitable scarcity of thought, ideas and action; of choices as such. We despair at these times. When the soul feels broken, when the heart revels in a trough, refusing to look up. There again is always the awakening. For nothing can be left untouched by evolution and growth, can it? We look about, and then amazingly, we walk again. We look for fresh choices to make. We surrender old coins that are not worth any longer, in exchange for newly issued ones.
There is a new attitude to this makeover! People do change, I believe for the good. They submit used choices to new ones. They create new vistas to themselves, where they can see a better view of their future. They rejoice the potency of their decision, proud and defiant.
Selfishness is just such a choice, made unconsciously and sometimes consciously. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that it is bred among us as separate entities; as money, as freedom, as desires, as power, etc. The only crime that selfishness commits on the human is that it conquers him unnoticed, when he does notice, he is in a plot inextricably complex and is daringly in the open.
He who exercises his choices with a will scares people of his potency. He plays to his strength, his smartness. He gets what he exactly wants. He makes bold decisions that decide his own fate. He is taking destiny head on. He chooses to have more control over his life than others.
He who is sure is always suspected. He who thinks for his own welfare always draws flak for his seemingly careless attitude. He who is powerful over himself is always belittled in a thousand small ways. He who is smart is always hated. We are not paragons of virtue. Vices rule our unconscious, moderated by again, taming and social instincts.
A selfish individual not only robs people of their interests, but also enjoys them right in front of the disadvantaged, all the more hurt.
Man has been so well conditioned that he will not advance his own interests till he is insecure, cornered. Insecurity may be imaginary, nothing really. He reacts like an innocent toddler clutching at fire. Will he be burnt? Or will he learn to play & revel in its warmth?
Love and Selfishness:
Love. I would not be doing justice to selfishness if I don’t think of this.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses
Your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So he shall descend to your roots and shake them
In their clinging to the earth.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then as he assigns you to his sacred fire, that
You may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you
May know the secrets of your heart, and in that
Knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love’s
Peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your
Nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh,
But not all of your laughter, and weep,but not all
Of your tears.
(On love, The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran)
Love is a flight toward perfection. We become better with love. We love so that we become better. Self-love is the basic manifestation of love. If it is not within us, it will not come out. One who is deficient in resources cannot give. Love is a conscious effort we make toward someone or something.
Love moves us toward extremities. There is immense happiness, emotions, and passions and there is heart wrenching sorrow and failure too. One who has not loved will never know these extremes. Yet nobody is not touched by love. If love is not perceived in its embracing presence, it is definitely felt in its ghostly absence.
One, who does not perceive love, will be contented. He will have capabilities that will define his boundaries. There will be no wings. There will be no utopia in the mind. There will be no butterflies in the garden. The spring that embellishes the spirit with a sense of bounty will forever deprive the individual of the warmth that is the extra bit of spice that man tastes over the animals.
We usually encounter situations where we must give up something for somebody we love. If I give up something for something for my beloved, I am doing love’s labor. It is duty. It is duty that is performed without the slightest whimpering. We cannot be selfish to those who love because we will be doing our duty by doing what is required to be done. There is a joy to doing this; else we would not do it. Ignoring the self in making such decisions towards depriving oneself can look romantic at that moment, but will always come back and haunt us. Regrets in decisions lead to discontent. Discontent leads to complaining. Complaining will always come back to “sacrifice”.
Must Selfishness be Vanquished?
Now, we will see if this needs to be branded as bad and hounded out of our realm, else if it needs to be tolerated as another eccentricity of the human mind among many others.
Everybody is selfish. It is hypocrisy if this is refuted. It cannot be challenged. We are human beings. We need to advance, grow, and survive, most of all. The advancements and the growth become the proxies for survival when survival is taken for granted. An average man is assured of physical survival. He will normally not be beaten to death or killed by an expulsion from a group. He will live. So now, the struggle is toward a comfortable existence. I need an air conditioner badly. It has become need. It has become a hygiene factor, without which I am not happy. I want to be powerful. I want to control. I will live unless an accident happens to occur.
So we will be rarely in a position where we will be endangering the physical lives of people by being selfish. Not many people get to that position of power and potency. Being selfish will enable you to be in control, if only your conscience permitted you to be happy with the control so achieved. Being selfish will let you have better things in life. Be it a better income, a better job, a better lifestyle.
It is imperative to understand that being unselfish will not give lives to people who are in trouble. It is sometimes bad to be unselfish, just like how it is good to be selfish sometimes. After all, we may not be making much of a difference.
What would we be losing? We would be losing the goodwill of those who were affected, if it mattered to think about their lot. We would be losing our peace of mind if we believe we have been harsh. We would be losing our self worth if we think we were wrong. If this were the case, it would be best to go back on the decision, since this is a weak mind, with weaker principles and controls.
Selfishness is good. Anything that is considered bad is bad and will be regretted and fretted over. I would not call them selfish acts or motives. They are just bad things done at a time when a bad thought asserted itself.
Selfishness is an act of consciousness if planned, within the ambit of our values. If it is unplanned, it is the essence of ourselves that are exposed through an act. In both cases, it is the good part of us that is acting to do us good. It is not sick to be selfish. It is not a base character that calls itself selfish and acts so.
Then are we here to outdo and outsmart one another, one may wonder. Gathering fruits is different from marauding an orchard. So is selfishness different from mindless acquisition. Being selfish means you pick the best fruits for yourself and not wish your neighbor ate rotten eggs. Then, what he eats need not be your worry, if that can be seen as a crime! If you have an apple to spare, you may even be charitable. Up to your appetite.
When selfishness creeps up from behind you, wake up. You may have your priorities wrong or neglecting your interests and well being. If you think you are unselfish, wake up. It is better to be selfish than a hypocrite. Accept it, live with it.
Conclusion:
I am selfish. I am not regretting it. I am at peace when I can say this to my face and to the world. I am not lying.
It takes a change to acknowledge this. It takes an effort. It takes will to assert oneself. Change.
When we look at the cost of a sacrifice, it will always be worth not making it. Who has not regretted a sacrifice sincerely?
For so long, socio religious conscience has had the better of the mind. A thousand chains have bound rationality. Man has become a slave to his own creation – society. Man is today lost in a multitude of fantabulous theories and myths regarding his existence. Man is an intelligent animal, a bit more sophisticated and with more ambulatory options, and definitely a better mental capacity.
In the absence of a physical territory to guard, when food, shelter and sex are guaranteed, when existence is not threatened, such things that were preternatural to our forefathers have become knowledge to us. Times have changed.
Selfishness is the conduit for our instinctual energies to be spent. It is the intent to live, expressed through a thousand proxies. It is human life, with its own eccentricity. The center point will remain the same, but the circle will never be perfect.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
GangaikondaCholapuram
I was supposed to be in Tanjore tomorrow. So I decided to make a trip out of the weekend and visit GangaikondaCholapuram - the name may sound long, but it literally means “The Town of the Cholas who conquered the Ganges”. It was the capital of the Cholas when they flourished and their empire stretched from the Bengal to Ceylon.
It is an off beat place in today’s tourist circuit in Tamil Nadu. In fact, it has never been popular, considering its heritage. The village has a marvelous shrine dedicated to Lord Brihadeeshwara – Shiva. Everything about this place can be had at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangaikondacholapuram.
I wanted to start off at 4 am and beat the midday heat. Yes, you guessed right, I slept happily till 6.30 am and then started off at a very leisurely pace. I was driving my Bolero today, and stuck to 80 kmph, with no work calling for urgency.
Got to Acharapakkam and had my breakfast at 8.30 am and drove on through Vikravandi, Koliyanur, Vadalur, Neyveli, Minsurutti, Settiatope and then reached GangaikondaCholapuram at 12 pm.
I had expected a small to medium sized town with the temple as the highlight, but all I found were dilapidated tea shops and dusty restaurants and a very small village. There is decent infra in place at the village. The village itself is very clean and neatly maintained. The temple complex is controlled b y the Archeological Society of India (ASI) and they have done a great job. Everything that is fragile has been fenced off and the place is very very clean. There are no sacrifices in the temple now, and technically there are no poojas as well.
The Nandi is very very imposing at the entrance and the temple complex is fortified and there are smaller viharas around the main complex. The outer walls are studded with sculptures, but the sharpness of their features is lost, not so on the inside. But what amazes you when you go to Chola Temples is the sheer size of the Main Tower. One has to see The Big Temple of Tanjore and this temple to assess the monstrosity of the folly of erecting such a tower.
The place is exactly 250 km from Chennai – 5 hours at a leisurely pace. It is possible to visit the place and get back to the city in a day. It is possible to couple this with Tanjore and make it a casual 2 day weekend trip.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Tamil Historical Novels
I have always wanted to read Tamil historical novels. It was one thing I have never got around to doing.
Historical novels are interesting to me in the sense that they evoke a sense of curiosity as to where a particular monument may be now or what would be happening if this were to happen today.
I was at a book store last month, and I bought Sivakamiyin Sabatham, Kalki.
I started off slowly. I have never learnt Tamil in school, except in kindergarten. I have managed to get along by reading sign boards, hoardings and glancing through masala news in mainstream Tamil newspapers. I could not do more than 10 pages in an hour.
But I gained in speed everyday. And as I moved through to the core of the plot, I really started enjoying the story.
The thing with English classics and historical novels is that English novels elicit an awe and involvement into the plot of the story. But I have never seen rural England, London or the downs and its fogs and winters and summers.
When I was reading this book, there was awe at real things I have seen with my own eye. To think that Mamallapuram was created by the chiseling by thousands of artisans for about 20 years is inspiring. The country, Thondaimandalam, went through a long drawn out war against the Chalukyas, several famines and adversities, during which this work was stopped and restarted again and again.
There were so many Jain and Buddhist temples and monasteries in those days. I tried the Archeological Survey website and there are many protected Jain and Buddhist structures in our state. I was amazed to see that I have never heard about them or seen them.
I made it a point to visit the temple which has the idol of the Ganesh which was brought home by the General, Paranjothi, to his village near Tanjore the first time I was driving through the town.
I have started reading the sequel to Sivakamiyin Sabatham, Parthiban Kanavu. It is turning up many more revelations and many new places to explore in our very own Tamil Nadu.
Historical novels are interesting to me in the sense that they evoke a sense of curiosity as to where a particular monument may be now or what would be happening if this were to happen today.
I was at a book store last month, and I bought Sivakamiyin Sabatham, Kalki.
I started off slowly. I have never learnt Tamil in school, except in kindergarten. I have managed to get along by reading sign boards, hoardings and glancing through masala news in mainstream Tamil newspapers. I could not do more than 10 pages in an hour.
But I gained in speed everyday. And as I moved through to the core of the plot, I really started enjoying the story.
The thing with English classics and historical novels is that English novels elicit an awe and involvement into the plot of the story. But I have never seen rural England, London or the downs and its fogs and winters and summers.
When I was reading this book, there was awe at real things I have seen with my own eye. To think that Mamallapuram was created by the chiseling by thousands of artisans for about 20 years is inspiring. The country, Thondaimandalam, went through a long drawn out war against the Chalukyas, several famines and adversities, during which this work was stopped and restarted again and again.
There were so many Jain and Buddhist temples and monasteries in those days. I tried the Archeological Survey website and there are many protected Jain and Buddhist structures in our state. I was amazed to see that I have never heard about them or seen them.
I made it a point to visit the temple which has the idol of the Ganesh which was brought home by the General, Paranjothi, to his village near Tanjore the first time I was driving through the town.
I have started reading the sequel to Sivakamiyin Sabatham, Parthiban Kanavu. It is turning up many more revelations and many new places to explore in our very own Tamil Nadu.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Gas Cylinder
Was visiting my in laws today. I had just gone out for a smoke to the next street.
I heard a dog screaming down the road. I ran towards it.
The shopkeeper nearby had thrown a full gas cylinder on the sleeping dog. A gas cylinder weighs about 20 kg. He had let it fall on its head, for fun.
The dog’s skull was broken and the whole place was full of blood. It was running in circles, crashing, rising and then running around in frenzy. Its mouth had foamed. I think it had lost its sight. It was running around and hit a wall head on. It walked with a strange tilt. It was unable to balance itself. It kept falling every few paces and letting out a gut wrenching yelp.
The shopkeeper and a teenager were gawking and laughing at the creature. The teenager was shouting, “It’s a murder, murder”, with a smirk of smartness written all over his face.
The commotion had drawn a few people from around. They started asking the guys how it would feel if they had the same cylinder dropped on their heads.
They hung their head down, they were ashamed. One guy said, “It was only a dog”
One onlooker said, “If it was only a normal street dog, you could have chased it away by pelting a stone at it”
A lady on the top floor of an apartment kept cursing the shopkeeper, “You will be born a dirty dog in your next life. I will drop a TV from the third floor on your head”. This lady was making most of the noise.
A cop was riding by on his bicycle. He stopped to look into the row. He gave both the guys a good beating on the spot. Every time the baton fell on their backs, there was some encouragement from the people gathered around.
Everybody had forgotten the dog that had struggled and got away from the crowd. It was lying in a pool of blood panting its last breath in a gutter. It was choking and a few little boys were looking on. Only one of them had tears in his eyes. The others were, of course, learning their first lessons in inflicting pain. They were coldly poking at the dying thing with sticks. I had to shove them away.
The dog died approximately 10 minutes into its struggle. It will be carted onto a garbage tipper tomorrow and disposed of in an unknown dump.
I have felt the death of a man and the death of a dog very near me this week. But the dog’s death seems to have shaken me more than the man’s. In my travels, I have seen many gory deaths on the roads. But twice I have seen a dog beaten to death, and I can recall both to this day to the minutest of details.
A man has many variables to manipulate for his good. But an animal lives with more constraints than a man. It lives on faith and intuition.
To dump a gas cylinder on someone’s head is rank disrespect for life. A rage had built up within me at that time. I felt like puking a long time after I had seen the whole thing happen.
I think our children start throwing stones at dogs for fun, and to tune their aim. Some do family planning operations for lizards and frogs. Some experiment how many wings a dragon-fly can fly with. Some try throwing cats out of windows – cats don’t seem to die so easily from a fall.
How can there be fun in the suffering of another living thing?
Children get trained early on that someone else’s pain is not a thing to fret about, that if the situation permits and if there is the right company, inflicting pain can be fun.
I heard a dog screaming down the road. I ran towards it.
The shopkeeper nearby had thrown a full gas cylinder on the sleeping dog. A gas cylinder weighs about 20 kg. He had let it fall on its head, for fun.
The dog’s skull was broken and the whole place was full of blood. It was running in circles, crashing, rising and then running around in frenzy. Its mouth had foamed. I think it had lost its sight. It was running around and hit a wall head on. It walked with a strange tilt. It was unable to balance itself. It kept falling every few paces and letting out a gut wrenching yelp.
The shopkeeper and a teenager were gawking and laughing at the creature. The teenager was shouting, “It’s a murder, murder”, with a smirk of smartness written all over his face.
The commotion had drawn a few people from around. They started asking the guys how it would feel if they had the same cylinder dropped on their heads.
They hung their head down, they were ashamed. One guy said, “It was only a dog”
One onlooker said, “If it was only a normal street dog, you could have chased it away by pelting a stone at it”
A lady on the top floor of an apartment kept cursing the shopkeeper, “You will be born a dirty dog in your next life. I will drop a TV from the third floor on your head”. This lady was making most of the noise.
A cop was riding by on his bicycle. He stopped to look into the row. He gave both the guys a good beating on the spot. Every time the baton fell on their backs, there was some encouragement from the people gathered around.
Everybody had forgotten the dog that had struggled and got away from the crowd. It was lying in a pool of blood panting its last breath in a gutter. It was choking and a few little boys were looking on. Only one of them had tears in his eyes. The others were, of course, learning their first lessons in inflicting pain. They were coldly poking at the dying thing with sticks. I had to shove them away.
The dog died approximately 10 minutes into its struggle. It will be carted onto a garbage tipper tomorrow and disposed of in an unknown dump.
I have felt the death of a man and the death of a dog very near me this week. But the dog’s death seems to have shaken me more than the man’s. In my travels, I have seen many gory deaths on the roads. But twice I have seen a dog beaten to death, and I can recall both to this day to the minutest of details.
A man has many variables to manipulate for his good. But an animal lives with more constraints than a man. It lives on faith and intuition.
To dump a gas cylinder on someone’s head is rank disrespect for life. A rage had built up within me at that time. I felt like puking a long time after I had seen the whole thing happen.
I think our children start throwing stones at dogs for fun, and to tune their aim. Some do family planning operations for lizards and frogs. Some experiment how many wings a dragon-fly can fly with. Some try throwing cats out of windows – cats don’t seem to die so easily from a fall.
How can there be fun in the suffering of another living thing?
Children get trained early on that someone else’s pain is not a thing to fret about, that if the situation permits and if there is the right company, inflicting pain can be fun.
Uthangarai
14th March, 2008
I was in a place called Uthangarai – a remote hamlet in a corner of the Krishnagiri District. It is on the crossroads between what used to be 2 very busy trucking routes in Tamil Nadu.
Over the years, the significance of the place on the state map has gone down. The roads have deteriorated and the locale remains one of the least developed in Tamil Nadu in terms of infrastructure and industry.
Public transport is very bad or is not well connected. So people have to go in for their own means of transportation. This area remains one of the top rural markets for taxis and vans for ferrying people to Vellore, Salem and Chennai – 3 places where the many business interests of the people here lie.
I had stopped in Uthangarai to meet a customer of ours. I was leaving to Chennai and I had run out of cigarettes. I stopped by at a small shop and asked for a pack of Gold Flake Kings cigarettes.
I handed out a Rs. 100 bill and the shop keeper didn’t have stock, so he walked over to another shop and got it for me. The pack costs Rs. 38 normally. In villages you get it for Rs. 40. But this guy gave me change of Rs. 55 – meaning the pack had cost me Rs. 45.
He gave me a statement before he handed me the change – “Sir, the amount of money you spend on this pack of cigarettes can buy 20 kg of rice from a government fair price shop”.
My casual reply was, “Nothing can be done about that”
Then I asked him, “Why does this pack of cigarettes cost Rs. 5 more?”
He says, “That is the rate the other fellow gave it to me for”
I reply, “If you don’t have the stuff in your shop, how can you buy it for me at a cost higher than the normal cost?”
He says, “OK sir, since you are so concerned about the money, I will return the material and give you back your money”
He returned the money and I asked him, “Why do you think this Rs. 5 is not so important to me? Do you think people make money without working or do I look like a fool?”
He mumbles something and just goes away.
As I was driving back I was wondering – it was a new thought to me that one pack of my cigarettes is worth more than 20 kg of food grain in our country. Is it that the food is cheap or is it that the tobacco is costly?
A man who buys rice from a ration shop buys it at Rs. 2 per kg. I am not eligible for this scheme because I make than Rs. 10000 per annum. I have to buy rice at Rs. 22 per kg from a normal grocer. I bet the guy who tried to make Rs. 5 from me did not know this.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
The Killng Groungds
I was driving down from Chennai to Salem yesterday. The route was Chennai – Dindivanavam – Villupuram – Ulundurpet – Kallakurichi – Attur – Salem.
It is a 4 laner from Chennai to Dindivanam. After that it is the old 2 laner – this stretch of road from Dindivanam to Ulundurpet (90 kms) may be rightfully called the killing grounds of TN. At least 2 major accidents everyday – god alone knows how many get killed from dusk to dawn.
This stretch was just overcrowded at one point of time. Now, a 4 laner is getting ready – work is in progress since early 2007. The old road has not been topped during this whole period. The road has just disintegrated and everybody has to take this one route to reach – Coimbatore, Salem, Erode, Tirupur in one side and Trichy, Madurai, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin and Nagercoil on the other side. It is also the access to Tanjore, Nagapattinam, Cuddalore and the entire east of TN.
Yesterday it was raining heavily right from Chennai to Salem. After I hit the old road, I could see an accident every 10 kms. A whole bus on its belly like a dead cockroach. Huge trailers broken like thin twigs. Small cars reduced to pulp. Trucks parked on the shoulder just sinking into the mud.
Traffic jams everywhere. Till a new road is built and is operational, the old road must be maintained. This is plain simple logic. 10 people killed everyday is a big thing. Nobody reports this and nobody cares. There are no proper “Take Diversion” sign boards anywhere. There are such huge ruts and potholes that a car driver has to think which one to avoid and which one the car can afford to plough into. For all this, the pace of the road is not slow by any means. It is a nerve wracking experience driving through this stretch. Whenever I come this way, my knee aches from the clutch, shoulders from the continuous zig zagging and rough drive. There is no watering place. Everything is dug up on both sides – no entering the by lane for a chaai and dhum.
There was a news article in NDTV this morning. “Fiat takes auto journalists on an Arctic tour in Sweden to prove the ruggedness of the Linea and the Grande’ Punto”.
Professional journalists are chasing sensations and the common man is left to become a citizen journalist to capture the woes of the common man. The whole concept of journalism today has moved from the classical, meaning the traditional news, to the sensational, meaning the production of news out of non news making things. The Tamil media is more concerned about the harangues and bad mouthings between the CM and the Ex CM, Vijayakanth and their whole families ranging from their sons to annis. There are hundreds of banners – good flex banners – of various political dramas – our Lion, our Tamil saviour, our Tamil saint, our Tamil revolutionary. But they don’t add up to much when it comes to saving people’ lives. The NDTV’s and the CNN’s run more programs than news coverage.
When I was in the traffic jam yesterday, my knee was aching, my back was aching, my head was aching. We had been at one spot for more than an hour – no policeman turned up to clear the mess. Every john was cutting in and out of the mess trying to find a way to wriggle through. There was a minor accident where a bus driver violated the queue and brushed a car. One of the doors of the car was gone. There was a big fight. Nobody went home or wherever they wanted to go for lunch. So many man hours lost, so many kilo liters of fuel lost.
An ambulance couldn’t get through. Its siren went off 15 minutes into the jam. Things just cooled off after the person or people in the ambulance died. I think it was the struggle in the ambulance that made us all animals. People were embarrassed and they just relaxed and sat back. No horns after that. It was dead quiet for 2 minutes or so after the siren was turned off. In the end I had dinner in Salem – 330 kms – 13 hours later. The siren is still searing through my head when I am writing this in the refuge of a quiet room.
It is a 4 laner from Chennai to Dindivanam. After that it is the old 2 laner – this stretch of road from Dindivanam to Ulundurpet (90 kms) may be rightfully called the killing grounds of TN. At least 2 major accidents everyday – god alone knows how many get killed from dusk to dawn.
This stretch was just overcrowded at one point of time. Now, a 4 laner is getting ready – work is in progress since early 2007. The old road has not been topped during this whole period. The road has just disintegrated and everybody has to take this one route to reach – Coimbatore, Salem, Erode, Tirupur in one side and Trichy, Madurai, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin and Nagercoil on the other side. It is also the access to Tanjore, Nagapattinam, Cuddalore and the entire east of TN.
Yesterday it was raining heavily right from Chennai to Salem. After I hit the old road, I could see an accident every 10 kms. A whole bus on its belly like a dead cockroach. Huge trailers broken like thin twigs. Small cars reduced to pulp. Trucks parked on the shoulder just sinking into the mud.
Traffic jams everywhere. Till a new road is built and is operational, the old road must be maintained. This is plain simple logic. 10 people killed everyday is a big thing. Nobody reports this and nobody cares. There are no proper “Take Diversion” sign boards anywhere. There are such huge ruts and potholes that a car driver has to think which one to avoid and which one the car can afford to plough into. For all this, the pace of the road is not slow by any means. It is a nerve wracking experience driving through this stretch. Whenever I come this way, my knee aches from the clutch, shoulders from the continuous zig zagging and rough drive. There is no watering place. Everything is dug up on both sides – no entering the by lane for a chaai and dhum.
There was a news article in NDTV this morning. “Fiat takes auto journalists on an Arctic tour in Sweden to prove the ruggedness of the Linea and the Grande’ Punto”.
Professional journalists are chasing sensations and the common man is left to become a citizen journalist to capture the woes of the common man. The whole concept of journalism today has moved from the classical, meaning the traditional news, to the sensational, meaning the production of news out of non news making things. The Tamil media is more concerned about the harangues and bad mouthings between the CM and the Ex CM, Vijayakanth and their whole families ranging from their sons to annis. There are hundreds of banners – good flex banners – of various political dramas – our Lion, our Tamil saviour, our Tamil saint, our Tamil revolutionary. But they don’t add up to much when it comes to saving people’ lives. The NDTV’s and the CNN’s run more programs than news coverage.
When I was in the traffic jam yesterday, my knee was aching, my back was aching, my head was aching. We had been at one spot for more than an hour – no policeman turned up to clear the mess. Every john was cutting in and out of the mess trying to find a way to wriggle through. There was a minor accident where a bus driver violated the queue and brushed a car. One of the doors of the car was gone. There was a big fight. Nobody went home or wherever they wanted to go for lunch. So many man hours lost, so many kilo liters of fuel lost.
An ambulance couldn’t get through. Its siren went off 15 minutes into the jam. Things just cooled off after the person or people in the ambulance died. I think it was the struggle in the ambulance that made us all animals. People were embarrassed and they just relaxed and sat back. No horns after that. It was dead quiet for 2 minutes or so after the siren was turned off. In the end I had dinner in Salem – 330 kms – 13 hours later. The siren is still searing through my head when I am writing this in the refuge of a quiet room.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Maya, after all
13th February, 2008
It’s a girl! I ran shouting to my mom and dad through the hospital corridor. It was just what I had wanted.
The nurse, an old woman, walked out of the labor room and declared to us that the grandson was born at 9.54 pm. Then the doctor comes out and declares that the girl child and mother are fine. We got a bit mixed up then. There was tension that someone else’s baby may have gotten mixed up and what if we got the wrong baby? What if it was not Maya?
Then we got to know that there was only one delivery happening that night in the hospital. So there was no chance of anything like that happening.
The day we realized that we were going to have a baby, this was sometime in May, I willed the baby to be a girl and my wife to be a boy. I just wanted a girl child named Maya, as if it would be born clutchng a placard reading - annoouncing "Maya".
This wish for a girl child named Maya was born during my first love, reiterated by my second love and just solidified by the third. The solidification was just a longing for a girl child named Maya after I got married. I had secretly looked for a personification of all the good and the not so good I have loved in the 4 women.
I had always expected a dark child, with skin as dark, or rather, as brown as me. To see a pink baby was in itself a shock for me. It was a big baby when born, at 3.6 kg. I didn’t take it in my arms when they gave it to me. Maya was literally pink. One slight mewl or simper threw her face into the brightest red. I was afraid I would hurt her.
23rd February, 2008
I was with my wife and kid till they were discharged. Then I went back to work and didn’t get to meet them for 10 days. And today, Maya is already grown. She is a lot thinner, has darkened out a little bit. Is sharp towards sound and light. This time I couldn’t get enough of her. I wouldn’t let her go out of my arms. I was jealous when my brother in law gave her fond kisses.
I am really angry when people tell me I cant name her Maya. A name according to many has to be derived from the baby’s star sign. Maya was born under the star Bharani – I can name her with the starting syllables Le, Lu, Lo, Li, A, E or U. Now where do I fit the Maya in? Maya doesn’t start with the letter “L”. When I told my mother in law what I had in my mind – naming her Maya and balls to astrology – I got a very scary warning. Her son was named Vinoth – they never thought about astrology or numerology in those days. So he is still not too good at mathematics, has never been very bright or has he been successful in his career, has been divorced, etc. All his life has been ill luck and sorrow. I know that his ill luck has been attributed to the vastu of the house, the position of the borewell at various points in time. But the fact that there is a such a hypothesis is scary to any young father. So much for education, so much for aptitude and such bull. I decided to give the whole thing a figuring over a drink.
I have thought about Angamaya, Aghamaya, Unnatamaya, a hundred other names which fit in Maya as I had conceived my child and have the blessings of the astrological science. Now my people don’t like anything like that. What seems to be fad now is names like Anisha, Alisha, Lekha, Lalitha. Names sported by a hundred people, named by a hundred parents named Rahul, Reshma and Rasagolla.
Laya is a Christian name according to my mother in law. Subhiksha super market is a wonderful name for a girl – father in law. Lathika is a wonderful name – wify. Oh why doesn’t anyone want to name her Maya, the essence of spirituality and Hindu philosophy?
I will bulldoze my wife and her family into naming her Maya. Of course, there can’t be a beautiful girl named anything other than Maya.
2nd May, 2008
We named her Maya, after all! Cheers!!!
How does Maya Vinod Sriramulu sound?
It’s a girl! I ran shouting to my mom and dad through the hospital corridor. It was just what I had wanted.
The nurse, an old woman, walked out of the labor room and declared to us that the grandson was born at 9.54 pm. Then the doctor comes out and declares that the girl child and mother are fine. We got a bit mixed up then. There was tension that someone else’s baby may have gotten mixed up and what if we got the wrong baby? What if it was not Maya?
Then we got to know that there was only one delivery happening that night in the hospital. So there was no chance of anything like that happening.
The day we realized that we were going to have a baby, this was sometime in May, I willed the baby to be a girl and my wife to be a boy. I just wanted a girl child named Maya, as if it would be born clutchng a placard reading - annoouncing "Maya".
This wish for a girl child named Maya was born during my first love, reiterated by my second love and just solidified by the third. The solidification was just a longing for a girl child named Maya after I got married. I had secretly looked for a personification of all the good and the not so good I have loved in the 4 women.
I had always expected a dark child, with skin as dark, or rather, as brown as me. To see a pink baby was in itself a shock for me. It was a big baby when born, at 3.6 kg. I didn’t take it in my arms when they gave it to me. Maya was literally pink. One slight mewl or simper threw her face into the brightest red. I was afraid I would hurt her.
23rd February, 2008
I was with my wife and kid till they were discharged. Then I went back to work and didn’t get to meet them for 10 days. And today, Maya is already grown. She is a lot thinner, has darkened out a little bit. Is sharp towards sound and light. This time I couldn’t get enough of her. I wouldn’t let her go out of my arms. I was jealous when my brother in law gave her fond kisses.
I am really angry when people tell me I cant name her Maya. A name according to many has to be derived from the baby’s star sign. Maya was born under the star Bharani – I can name her with the starting syllables Le, Lu, Lo, Li, A, E or U. Now where do I fit the Maya in? Maya doesn’t start with the letter “L”. When I told my mother in law what I had in my mind – naming her Maya and balls to astrology – I got a very scary warning. Her son was named Vinoth – they never thought about astrology or numerology in those days. So he is still not too good at mathematics, has never been very bright or has he been successful in his career, has been divorced, etc. All his life has been ill luck and sorrow. I know that his ill luck has been attributed to the vastu of the house, the position of the borewell at various points in time. But the fact that there is a such a hypothesis is scary to any young father. So much for education, so much for aptitude and such bull. I decided to give the whole thing a figuring over a drink.
I have thought about Angamaya, Aghamaya, Unnatamaya, a hundred other names which fit in Maya as I had conceived my child and have the blessings of the astrological science. Now my people don’t like anything like that. What seems to be fad now is names like Anisha, Alisha, Lekha, Lalitha. Names sported by a hundred people, named by a hundred parents named Rahul, Reshma and Rasagolla.
Laya is a Christian name according to my mother in law. Subhiksha super market is a wonderful name for a girl – father in law. Lathika is a wonderful name – wify. Oh why doesn’t anyone want to name her Maya, the essence of spirituality and Hindu philosophy?
I will bulldoze my wife and her family into naming her Maya. Of course, there can’t be a beautiful girl named anything other than Maya.
2nd May, 2008
We named her Maya, after all! Cheers!!!
How does Maya Vinod Sriramulu sound?
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