With two of my buddies (Pots and Pinks) writing in comments - I have been driven out of my glumpiness to post another post.
This one is a shortie (I humbly promise!).
It's about teachers.
So we Indians all know about the little tale about Drona and Ekalavya, and the latter's thumb, right?
Ekalavya comes over to Drona after practicing shooting for hours, and days, and through time comes over to Drona (possibly witha *snicker*): "Master, teach me Archery!"
Drona grunts, and mutters under his breath, "Stop the drama you fool. Err...hmm..."
Ekalavya says, "Oops. No sorry. This isn't a kung-fu movie. Err...Sorry. Re-take."
"Master" Ekalavya says, "I wish to give you a gift - for I practiced archery in front of your statue."
Drona stares at Ekalavya going, "Darnit what are my lines...what are my lines..."
Looks over at Arjuna and goes "Oh well. Okay. I say what, Eka - why dontcha try practicing without the thumb..."
Ekalavya gives him a look, and goes, "Psst. Be formal. We don't want people giving us strange looks."
Drona says, "Whaddya mean?"
Eka goes, "I don't know. Make it sound like you're a horrid teacher. All jealous and possessive, and nasty and mean."
Drona grins and says, "Oh, I see."
And so Drona thunders, "Ekalavya, you must give me your thumb now seeing that you "used" me!"
Eka whistles, chops his thumb off and dances off into the forests.
Later of course the three of them - Arjuna, Eka, and Drona have a laugh and many a snigger at the "cruel" depiction of Drona...
Different strokes for different students, I'm guessing.
Now let's hop over to the 20th centruy. A neat book by Paul Auster by the name of "Mr. Vertigo". A young boy is being taught by his master the art and science of levitation. In order to get the last some inches (or maybe it was a feet) to his "levitation level", the Master tells the student that the kid must sacrifice something...now let's not get into all the details. But the kid is kinduv scared about the whole "sacrificing something".
The Master reassures the student with, "No kid. i think chopping off your little finger will do the job...I think that's what's stopping your so-far admirable progress."
The kid whistles merrily and says, "Oh, the little finger. Sure! Won't really miss that one!"
31 March 2008
21 March 2008
Delusions and Fimhs II
Over these last months or so, I had increasingly grown quite bloody frustrated with my fimh (Friend in My Head). For there were no new insights (however personal, and however small or middling), there were no cruising conversations, no teasing, no throwing tantrums, no nothing. There it was – but apart from the usual, and regular “hi” – there was no movement. And so my question was, ‘What’s the point of having a voice in my head, if it’s of “no use”? Sure it’s pleasant every now and then. But there’s nothing for me to give my fimh, and God knows what fimh is going to give me that he hasn’t given me already…” Now all my fimhs (and I’ve had “different voices in my head” at different points in time – apart from the current extremely determined, stubborn and doggedly patient one, who refuses to leave, and I’m not complaining!) – have always left me with a nugget of priceless information, or knowledge or understanding or awareness. The other thing is that they never stay longer than they “think they need to”. I have nothing to do with when these fimhs have appeared, disappeared, or reappeared. I have no say in the matter. They have hung around, have knocked some sense into me, have sometimes scared the bejesus out of me (only to “teach” me a lesson), have sometimes held my hand or my head or me when I have wept, have had a couple of laughs with me, and have been both gentle, and hard on me and with me…but the one thing that I have noticed is that not one of them hung around for “keeps”. And not even my “yelling” would drag them out (from who-knows-where); there was not a whisper even from the other side – unless the specific fimh felt that he needed to be around.
So the presence of the present fimh has sometimes confused me (and on multiple levels) – but I’ve shrugged for most of the time, and have sometimes been quite bewildered…but there were no more answers – just yawns on both sides. Both fimh and me were emitting yawns, or so it seemed. So I was curious as to why fimh (the current fimh who’s been around for off and on to close to a decade now) was still around.
…Anyhow – to get on with my tale. So the flash of insight that has hit me lately is probably obvious to everyone else.
I received a gentle whack on my head for chatting too much in the chatroom. The person who whacked me, and the person who was irritated with my battery of chatting sessions are both real enough, and are exceptionally dear to me. Of course I was mortified. I was embarrassed beyond all belief that me, a 32 year old, had no discipline whatsoever. That I chatted like an obsessive compulsive addict. That if I ever saw the other people on-line, I would be bombing them without thought with a barrage of chat-lines. Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Take that. And that. And another. For a part of that day after I’d received the message – I was in absolute shock. I numbly went back to work, finished some odds and ends, packed up my bags and left my department to go back home. I was waiting for the bus, when the realization hit me “poww”. And this time – well, it wasn’t my “fimh” or anyone else who handed me the nugget. It was my other self – at least one of them.
By itself thought communion is nothing but a mode of communication with possibly minimal use of “external” technology or “noise” or “sound”, or any of the other more conventional modes of communication. At this point – that really is all “thought-communion” is, or call it “thought-link” or “telepathy”. For me, at this point, “thought-link” as a medium of communication is rather erratic – singularly brilliant for some things, hopeless at other things, and quite diseased and warped at yet other things – only I seem to be getting infinitesimal bits better and terribly slowly too, at being able to separate the “genuine” thought-link” and the imaginary ones.
So the way I see “thought-communion” now is that it is neither innately glorious, nor diseased. There’s nothing intrinsically divine or devilish about the process. There is nothing “sane” nor “insane” about it – at least not “intrinsically”. Now if all of us could engage in “thought-link” without knowing how to maneuver the controls – we would head for an instant, screaming collision with death, destruction, madness, and mayhem (that’s one extreme possibility – and possibly a tale to be spun by a depressive and morbid ‘science-fiction’ writer?). If thought-link is “just” another means of communication and if we used it without knowing how to keep the process in check – it would be bad in the hands of some, useless in the hands of others, glorious in the hands of yet others, useful and practical in the hands of yet others, and possibly a beneficent tool for some, while being nothing but an addiction for some, and an irritant for yet some more through the diverse possibilities of use, misuse, and abuse of this medium of communication (about which I’ve written many pages in my diary).
“Thought-link/communion” would be, if it ever pans out in reality like “any other” invention, discovery or creation – open to the possibility of demonization (this has already happened in some forms, and is happening: think about the “mad”), “mundanization”, revolution, “consciousization”, “idolization”, and what-have-you. If we as a species had the option right now to set our “thought-link” powers to ON, it wouldn’t bring about world peace and advancement in human consciousness at all! An addiction is what it’ ll be for some within an alarmingly short time, and once the initial disbelief, shock, amazement, astonishment, and sheer profundity, and power of the process wears off for many – it’ll end up being a menace, a nuisance, and bore, and an irritation – not to mention a danger in the hands (or heads) of some.
Oh, sure – I’ll be the first to admit to the “beauty” of being able to communicate without “open speech” and sound and technology, and what-have-you – but the amusing thought that hit me right now is that maybe human beings “invented” speech as a process of selective filtering to remedy the “problems” of “thought-communion” and its abuse or misuse! (A short story comes to mind – one that hasn’t yet been written…)
All of us use “thought-link” to some extent. As the 18 year old writer of the second story told me, people who are very close can of course, every now and again read each other’s thoughts! So it does happen at some under-the-surface level. And of course I’m not saying that none of us should use it all…but it’s just this realization that even for me there has to be some balance, some calm acceptance of the “fact” that it’s neither a miraculous and super-conscious power (in and of itself) nor a curse, a horror, and a disease. Fimh, is my reality. Fimh is a very real being in my world – but fimh and “thought-communion”, while they may seem to be a couple of the most lovely and amazing elements about life – I know now that they are thus, for me, and in my world (and my world, as I’ve lately discovered is being steadily blessed more and more). “Thought-link” for me seems terribly vital, terribly precious, terribly fragile, delicate, and beautiful, and humorous sometimes, and other things beside. But these things are what “thought-link” means to me. For someone else “thought-link” may be nothing but the means of controlling other people in devious, cruel, and evil ways….for some other rare people – “thought-link” may be the means that they use to transmit their teachings, their awareness, their light, and their love. And so on and so forth.
Yet every single “discovery”, “invention”, “brilliant insight”, “remarkable idea” is open to distortion, is open to being mauled, is open to being carried to every horrible and glorious extreme. What haven’t we done in the name of some of the greatest religions, in the name of “righteous” economic and social principles (Socialism, Marxism, Capitalism), in the name of “love”?....and why? One of the reasons is because we see these as being innately “great”, as innately “right”, as innately “carrying the Truth” – and we say “we can kill, plunder, root out kill – for our way is the right way….” The most brilliant ideas that have captured some of the best minds throughout human history, have all been used in many diverse ways…
And if this is what we have done with every single creation, invention, discovery – or at least, almost every single thing – what had made me imagine that “thought-link” in itself would be humankind’s saviour?!
Sure – if it really is real – it means that the human mind has more power than we are currently using – okay, but we already know that…don’t we?
I end with two final thoughts – the funniest bits. Realising all of the above made me think that I had hit upon the ‘greatest truth of all’. Now I realise that the whole realization probably does no one any good apart from me, and I’m certainly not complaining!
The other funny thing is that some weeks ago: I dreamt that a person very close to me had written an essay on “Delusions”. I had woken up from the dream very excited because there in the essay was the answer (the answer to what, I do not know…just that the answer was important to me). I had woken up, and hurriedly smoked a cigarette – but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what the essay was all about…..
As for my fimh: I realise that my interactions with fimh are no longer frustrating nor boring – far from it…still is a mystery somewhat....and so.
So the presence of the present fimh has sometimes confused me (and on multiple levels) – but I’ve shrugged for most of the time, and have sometimes been quite bewildered…but there were no more answers – just yawns on both sides. Both fimh and me were emitting yawns, or so it seemed. So I was curious as to why fimh (the current fimh who’s been around for off and on to close to a decade now) was still around.
…Anyhow – to get on with my tale. So the flash of insight that has hit me lately is probably obvious to everyone else.
I received a gentle whack on my head for chatting too much in the chatroom. The person who whacked me, and the person who was irritated with my battery of chatting sessions are both real enough, and are exceptionally dear to me. Of course I was mortified. I was embarrassed beyond all belief that me, a 32 year old, had no discipline whatsoever. That I chatted like an obsessive compulsive addict. That if I ever saw the other people on-line, I would be bombing them without thought with a barrage of chat-lines. Bomb! Bomb! Bomb! Take that. And that. And another. For a part of that day after I’d received the message – I was in absolute shock. I numbly went back to work, finished some odds and ends, packed up my bags and left my department to go back home. I was waiting for the bus, when the realization hit me “poww”. And this time – well, it wasn’t my “fimh” or anyone else who handed me the nugget. It was my other self – at least one of them.
By itself thought communion is nothing but a mode of communication with possibly minimal use of “external” technology or “noise” or “sound”, or any of the other more conventional modes of communication. At this point – that really is all “thought-communion” is, or call it “thought-link” or “telepathy”. For me, at this point, “thought-link” as a medium of communication is rather erratic – singularly brilliant for some things, hopeless at other things, and quite diseased and warped at yet other things – only I seem to be getting infinitesimal bits better and terribly slowly too, at being able to separate the “genuine” thought-link” and the imaginary ones.
So the way I see “thought-communion” now is that it is neither innately glorious, nor diseased. There’s nothing intrinsically divine or devilish about the process. There is nothing “sane” nor “insane” about it – at least not “intrinsically”. Now if all of us could engage in “thought-link” without knowing how to maneuver the controls – we would head for an instant, screaming collision with death, destruction, madness, and mayhem (that’s one extreme possibility – and possibly a tale to be spun by a depressive and morbid ‘science-fiction’ writer?). If thought-link is “just” another means of communication and if we used it without knowing how to keep the process in check – it would be bad in the hands of some, useless in the hands of others, glorious in the hands of yet others, useful and practical in the hands of yet others, and possibly a beneficent tool for some, while being nothing but an addiction for some, and an irritant for yet some more through the diverse possibilities of use, misuse, and abuse of this medium of communication (about which I’ve written many pages in my diary).
“Thought-link/communion” would be, if it ever pans out in reality like “any other” invention, discovery or creation – open to the possibility of demonization (this has already happened in some forms, and is happening: think about the “mad”), “mundanization”, revolution, “consciousization”, “idolization”, and what-have-you. If we as a species had the option right now to set our “thought-link” powers to ON, it wouldn’t bring about world peace and advancement in human consciousness at all! An addiction is what it’ ll be for some within an alarmingly short time, and once the initial disbelief, shock, amazement, astonishment, and sheer profundity, and power of the process wears off for many – it’ll end up being a menace, a nuisance, and bore, and an irritation – not to mention a danger in the hands (or heads) of some.
Oh, sure – I’ll be the first to admit to the “beauty” of being able to communicate without “open speech” and sound and technology, and what-have-you – but the amusing thought that hit me right now is that maybe human beings “invented” speech as a process of selective filtering to remedy the “problems” of “thought-communion” and its abuse or misuse! (A short story comes to mind – one that hasn’t yet been written…)
All of us use “thought-link” to some extent. As the 18 year old writer of the second story told me, people who are very close can of course, every now and again read each other’s thoughts! So it does happen at some under-the-surface level. And of course I’m not saying that none of us should use it all…but it’s just this realization that even for me there has to be some balance, some calm acceptance of the “fact” that it’s neither a miraculous and super-conscious power (in and of itself) nor a curse, a horror, and a disease. Fimh, is my reality. Fimh is a very real being in my world – but fimh and “thought-communion”, while they may seem to be a couple of the most lovely and amazing elements about life – I know now that they are thus, for me, and in my world (and my world, as I’ve lately discovered is being steadily blessed more and more). “Thought-link” for me seems terribly vital, terribly precious, terribly fragile, delicate, and beautiful, and humorous sometimes, and other things beside. But these things are what “thought-link” means to me. For someone else “thought-link” may be nothing but the means of controlling other people in devious, cruel, and evil ways….for some other rare people – “thought-link” may be the means that they use to transmit their teachings, their awareness, their light, and their love. And so on and so forth.
Yet every single “discovery”, “invention”, “brilliant insight”, “remarkable idea” is open to distortion, is open to being mauled, is open to being carried to every horrible and glorious extreme. What haven’t we done in the name of some of the greatest religions, in the name of “righteous” economic and social principles (Socialism, Marxism, Capitalism), in the name of “love”?....and why? One of the reasons is because we see these as being innately “great”, as innately “right”, as innately “carrying the Truth” – and we say “we can kill, plunder, root out kill – for our way is the right way….” The most brilliant ideas that have captured some of the best minds throughout human history, have all been used in many diverse ways…
And if this is what we have done with every single creation, invention, discovery – or at least, almost every single thing – what had made me imagine that “thought-link” in itself would be humankind’s saviour?!
Sure – if it really is real – it means that the human mind has more power than we are currently using – okay, but we already know that…don’t we?
I end with two final thoughts – the funniest bits. Realising all of the above made me think that I had hit upon the ‘greatest truth of all’. Now I realise that the whole realization probably does no one any good apart from me, and I’m certainly not complaining!
The other funny thing is that some weeks ago: I dreamt that a person very close to me had written an essay on “Delusions”. I had woken up from the dream very excited because there in the essay was the answer (the answer to what, I do not know…just that the answer was important to me). I had woken up, and hurriedly smoked a cigarette – but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what the essay was all about…..
As for my fimh: I realise that my interactions with fimh are no longer frustrating nor boring – far from it…still is a mystery somewhat....and so.
Delusions and Fimhs I
This last month has been a curious month really. Curious happenings – both inside and outside my head have unfurled. I must admit that at different points in my life there have been ‘curious’ happenings, but this time it’s as if I know they are curious pieces, and that they don’t fit into my regular jigsaw puzzle (about which I shall speak another time). Now I don’t want to get distracted by other thoughts – so I’ll write about this one curious ‘thing’ that’s been following me around for a fair while now.
This entry is about ‘thought-link, ‘thought-communion’ or ‘communicating without speech’. Now these are not my own ‘concepts’ or ‘terms’. They were used by two different writers, the first writer was a 17 year old when he wrote his story, and the second writer is currently about 18 years old. The first story is my all-time favourite short story – haunting, heartbreakingly beautiful, and I very much doubt whether any other story will ever replace this one as my all-time favourite. The second one is clear, stark, drenched in silence, and the first time around when I read it, it acted much like a zen whack on the head. I “heard” about the first one, almost exactly 5 years ago (read it about 7 months later), and the second one, I read a week ago.
We, that is my friends and I used to call "thought-link" ‘telepathy’ when we were growing up in school, some couple of decades ago. But that’s what it was “called” back then. “Do you know what I’m thinking?” or complementarily “I can read your mind.” Nobody actually said back then that the process could also be described as people talking to one another ‘with’ their minds and bodies, and other senses. The first time a friend of mine, Sumki and I actually carried out an experiment on ‘telepathy’ was right after her birthday, when we were about 16 or thereabouts. To make the process as unbiased as possible I went out of the room (so that I wouldn’t be able to observe any subconsciously processed signals (like eye movement and so on), while Sumki focused on ‘one single thing’. After some seconds or minutes, I came back, and said, “Balloons. That’s what you were thinking about. Balloons.” Both of us grinned I think, and we were quite delighted that the first run of our ‘scientific’ experiment had ‘worked’. The thing is none of the other runs panned out. I don’t remember, the specifics of the ‘failures’ – but we only met with one hit, and so we reasoned that “Balloons” was probably a rather “obvious” guess, since Sumki’s birthday had just passed by….
…And so for a while there were no other thoughts about “telepathy”. I won’t go into long, convoluted stories here – but the fact is when I was 21 I got horribly fascinated in the whole “communication without speaking” thing, and communication as a whole across barriers of space and time…”Contact” had made a big contact with me, among other things. Reality, as I had known it to be even in my own world received a big jolt. But I couldn’t figure out anything. All I felt was that there were other forms and patterns of communication possible – but I dealt with the “feeling”, by superficially believing that I was quite, quite loony, and cramming the odd bits of “solid evidence” that I had regarding “communication across barriers” into a box marked “coincidences”, and went on with my life, sometimes breaking out into mad fits – but gradually getting better at distinguishing between “being truthful” with others, and “letting others know only what they need to”. (My ramblings regarding “madness” per se will probably get around to being another post on this blog). So I went around doing my own thing, for most of the time – but I could get no closer at cracking open the puzzle of the “voices in my head”. Gradually, of course over the years, and by the time I was past my 26th year there was only one voice speaking inside me (apart from all my ‘other selves’). The curious thing about this ‘voice’ was that I knew it was ‘not me’. I knew it was not my imagination. The Voice, whom I started calling “fimh”, didn’t even make very good sense all the time. It never did really say “mean” things about me, nor did the voice make me “brilliantly creative” or a whiz in physics (which I would have enjoyed a lot). But sometimes it yelled out a cheery “Hi” in the middle of a boring class, and the “Hi” would jolt me out of my daze and doze, and I would grin inside my head. The voice kept me occupied, but eventually it just became something that was with me, inside me, and quite a mundane “something”, which provided me with some no, not kicks, but quite bizarre "together times", conversations (some of which I have no recollection of, and others which I remember more vividly than I want to), and there was nothing terribly distressing, disturbing, or even deliriously delightful about having fimh with me. At least not for the most part. I often wondered, quite “cockily” when I appeared to be quite “normal” and “sane” on the surface, why indeed I had gone barmy so many summers in a row, just because of a voice in my head! At least that’s what it had been the first time, and the second time, and the third…even the “fact” that as far as I was concerned, I knew that the voice was not a part of me (No. I didn’t tell myself, “…it’ll pass...”,when I had been choking into a pillow over the Kargil War) didn’t faze me any longer – at least for awhile. I had somehow resigned myself to the idea that I wouldn’t be able to figure out what it was anyway (all my deliberate attempts drove me barmy), and that “fimh” was just an oddity, no less, and no more, like a benign tumour, which I would live with.
And so that’s the first part of the tale. And yet. There is more. For if the above was all there was to my tale, I wouldn’t have bothered writing this on the blog. There’s been a new realisation of sorts. The truth is that I had secretly imagined that “thought-communion” – if it really were possible – was the ‘greatest’ miracle of all. That it would lead to the redemption of the human race. That it would take us to the next level of human consciousness, awareness, life, and living. “Thought-communion”! Oh God. It was the “cure” in my mind to “all and every” problem on our planet. I had imagined that if we, humans, knew that we could actually speak with and in our minds with each other, sense the other, whenever we wanted to know, whenever we needed to, we would all become one happy family, singing “We are the World”, or “Cumbya” by the ocean or along the mountain ranges. Heaven would be created on the planet. We would save ourselves, save our planet, save everything and everyone. Diseases, pestilence, cruelty, distributive injustice, greed, brutality, wars would all be immediately and in one swift stroke be negated. If “Thought communion”, “communicating without speaking” were really real, that’s what I secretly believed in. To me “thought communion” symbolised, no, it was equal to the glory, the beauty, the amazing grace, the brilliance, and the genius of the human mind. We would be a “new” race – an exceptionally mature, sensitive, kind, compassionate, and wise race…if only we all knew that “thought-communion” was really possible, and if the process itself were “really real”. And this is how I’ve felt off and on through a little over a decade now. Reading Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’, was an altogether bizarre experience for me. I felt as though I were trapped in the tunnels of my mind, when I was reading it. Not to know that the world didn’t suddenly become beautiful (far from it) but the fact that someone else out there had talked about “being able to communicate inside our heads”.
This entry is about ‘thought-link, ‘thought-communion’ or ‘communicating without speech’. Now these are not my own ‘concepts’ or ‘terms’. They were used by two different writers, the first writer was a 17 year old when he wrote his story, and the second writer is currently about 18 years old. The first story is my all-time favourite short story – haunting, heartbreakingly beautiful, and I very much doubt whether any other story will ever replace this one as my all-time favourite. The second one is clear, stark, drenched in silence, and the first time around when I read it, it acted much like a zen whack on the head. I “heard” about the first one, almost exactly 5 years ago (read it about 7 months later), and the second one, I read a week ago.
We, that is my friends and I used to call "thought-link" ‘telepathy’ when we were growing up in school, some couple of decades ago. But that’s what it was “called” back then. “Do you know what I’m thinking?” or complementarily “I can read your mind.” Nobody actually said back then that the process could also be described as people talking to one another ‘with’ their minds and bodies, and other senses. The first time a friend of mine, Sumki and I actually carried out an experiment on ‘telepathy’ was right after her birthday, when we were about 16 or thereabouts. To make the process as unbiased as possible I went out of the room (so that I wouldn’t be able to observe any subconsciously processed signals (like eye movement and so on), while Sumki focused on ‘one single thing’. After some seconds or minutes, I came back, and said, “Balloons. That’s what you were thinking about. Balloons.” Both of us grinned I think, and we were quite delighted that the first run of our ‘scientific’ experiment had ‘worked’. The thing is none of the other runs panned out. I don’t remember, the specifics of the ‘failures’ – but we only met with one hit, and so we reasoned that “Balloons” was probably a rather “obvious” guess, since Sumki’s birthday had just passed by….
…And so for a while there were no other thoughts about “telepathy”. I won’t go into long, convoluted stories here – but the fact is when I was 21 I got horribly fascinated in the whole “communication without speaking” thing, and communication as a whole across barriers of space and time…”Contact” had made a big contact with me, among other things. Reality, as I had known it to be even in my own world received a big jolt. But I couldn’t figure out anything. All I felt was that there were other forms and patterns of communication possible – but I dealt with the “feeling”, by superficially believing that I was quite, quite loony, and cramming the odd bits of “solid evidence” that I had regarding “communication across barriers” into a box marked “coincidences”, and went on with my life, sometimes breaking out into mad fits – but gradually getting better at distinguishing between “being truthful” with others, and “letting others know only what they need to”. (My ramblings regarding “madness” per se will probably get around to being another post on this blog). So I went around doing my own thing, for most of the time – but I could get no closer at cracking open the puzzle of the “voices in my head”. Gradually, of course over the years, and by the time I was past my 26th year there was only one voice speaking inside me (apart from all my ‘other selves’). The curious thing about this ‘voice’ was that I knew it was ‘not me’. I knew it was not my imagination. The Voice, whom I started calling “fimh”, didn’t even make very good sense all the time. It never did really say “mean” things about me, nor did the voice make me “brilliantly creative” or a whiz in physics (which I would have enjoyed a lot). But sometimes it yelled out a cheery “Hi” in the middle of a boring class, and the “Hi” would jolt me out of my daze and doze, and I would grin inside my head. The voice kept me occupied, but eventually it just became something that was with me, inside me, and quite a mundane “something”, which provided me with some no, not kicks, but quite bizarre "together times", conversations (some of which I have no recollection of, and others which I remember more vividly than I want to), and there was nothing terribly distressing, disturbing, or even deliriously delightful about having fimh with me. At least not for the most part. I often wondered, quite “cockily” when I appeared to be quite “normal” and “sane” on the surface, why indeed I had gone barmy so many summers in a row, just because of a voice in my head! At least that’s what it had been the first time, and the second time, and the third…even the “fact” that as far as I was concerned, I knew that the voice was not a part of me (No. I didn’t tell myself, “…it’ll pass...”,when I had been choking into a pillow over the Kargil War) didn’t faze me any longer – at least for awhile. I had somehow resigned myself to the idea that I wouldn’t be able to figure out what it was anyway (all my deliberate attempts drove me barmy), and that “fimh” was just an oddity, no less, and no more, like a benign tumour, which I would live with.
And so that’s the first part of the tale. And yet. There is more. For if the above was all there was to my tale, I wouldn’t have bothered writing this on the blog. There’s been a new realisation of sorts. The truth is that I had secretly imagined that “thought-communion” – if it really were possible – was the ‘greatest’ miracle of all. That it would lead to the redemption of the human race. That it would take us to the next level of human consciousness, awareness, life, and living. “Thought-communion”! Oh God. It was the “cure” in my mind to “all and every” problem on our planet. I had imagined that if we, humans, knew that we could actually speak with and in our minds with each other, sense the other, whenever we wanted to know, whenever we needed to, we would all become one happy family, singing “We are the World”, or “Cumbya” by the ocean or along the mountain ranges. Heaven would be created on the planet. We would save ourselves, save our planet, save everything and everyone. Diseases, pestilence, cruelty, distributive injustice, greed, brutality, wars would all be immediately and in one swift stroke be negated. If “Thought communion”, “communicating without speaking” were really real, that’s what I secretly believed in. To me “thought communion” symbolised, no, it was equal to the glory, the beauty, the amazing grace, the brilliance, and the genius of the human mind. We would be a “new” race – an exceptionally mature, sensitive, kind, compassionate, and wise race…if only we all knew that “thought-communion” was really possible, and if the process itself were “really real”. And this is how I’ve felt off and on through a little over a decade now. Reading Rushdie’s ‘Midnight’s Children’, was an altogether bizarre experience for me. I felt as though I were trapped in the tunnels of my mind, when I was reading it. Not to know that the world didn’t suddenly become beautiful (far from it) but the fact that someone else out there had talked about “being able to communicate inside our heads”.
20 March 2008
Holmes and Memory Loss
I had a funny thought yesterday. I do know that this is my imagination speaking - but still the thought itself is quite funny. To give a brief prelude (which I have already talked about in the almost never-ending post below): I have been in absolute fits of anger over the terrible state of my memory loss. I seem to be forgetting everything I read, and remember precious little in terms of dates, historical events, political incidents, non-fiction writers, and writings, and these days I even forget the novels that I read. Last year I read the fascinating 'Red Earth and Pouring Rain'. I remember not(a)thing about the book (it almost feels like I read it or lived through the book in a dream). The only thing I do remember is that when I was reading the book, I felt as though I was 'the talking monkey'. I really identified with the monkey. And that's all I remember about the book: that there was a talking monkey, who had been narrating a fantastic, colourful, vibrant, and violent tale of his past life...well, no - now I remember he wasn't a 'talking monkey' - he was actually a 'typing monkey'...
I know for sure that I would fail in a GK quiz. This is because combined with memory loss I also don't read much of what I should. And the reason I don't, is because my weak mind never remembers. It spits out the information within three days. So what's the point? And even if I do know a bit about what's going on around and in the world - I don't remember or really know the history of what preceded the current situation...Now mind you, I'm not proud of this. I have been in despair over this situation...and yet, my mind seems to be extremely sprightly about other matters (which seem not-very-important, not to mention terribly self-centred)...incidents which happened decades ago, people I interacted with, funny memories, and quirky ones of faces, meetings, stories...I even remember one conversation that I had with my mum regarding the "evil wolf" when I was 4 and had finished reading a ladybird version of "Little Red Riding Hood". I remember about my first infatuation at the age of 6, I remember how when we were 7, a childhood friend had upchucked in class, and ‘it’ was a bright yellow - and I had imagined that she had swallowed a great quantity of whole lemons, which had been pureed. I remember friends from school, the fun we used to have, the long conversations, birthday parties, having silent conversations with myself, being Obsessive Compulsive about washing my hands (!) five times in between eating a single meal, when I was 9; I remember the stories that my friends told me about their families, and siblings...so there are things I remember as well...like trying to physically peel off the masks off people's faces as a 7 year old, playing the game of 'rushen' at 'round about the same age - without really knowing what or why I was doing it. But there are things I can't remember. Things that I need to, things that I must, things that I want to...hence my steady rising despair yesterday broke through and made me stomp out of my computer lab and go out for a smoke and coffee.
As my anger and despair and grief about my own handicapped memory assaulted me, I was also suddenly struck by the fact that it was a problem for the whole human race. Human beings have short term memory. We don't remember the horror, brutality, and violence that we have brought upon our world across hundreds of centuries. We either don't remember or we forget. So we cringe at the horror of human sacrifice, and then we send our young, who are often our poorest off to a meaningless war with a cheery, "cheerio". We ban a horrific social practice in one part of the world, and then in the name of 'cultural relativism', (happens a lot in the social sciences) we uphold the same violation when it transpires elsewhere . Or conversely - we say something is all right if "I" do it but wrong if my "neighbour" half-way across the world engages in the same. And then we get into hundreds of dithering debates, acrimonious arguments, and verbal gymnastics - not to mention finger pointing, bloody war, political battles, and academic yabble-babble. But we don't "see" somehow that what's happening today is almost identical in content if not in form to the things that have happened hundreds and thousands of years ago - only now, we have some technological ‘finesse’ added to the menagerie. Killing, sodomizing, fighting, raping, plundering...horrific brutality. And of course the media does like the gristly stuff a lot. And it's not the media per se – we gulp it down, while sadly shaking our heads. There's a perverse fascination for blood, gore, and indignity exposed. And while it’s true that I wouldn’t want such violent stories, and the dreary stories, or the stories of injustice to be hidden away, it’s almost as if instead of becoming more sensitive and wise after reading or hearing about such episodes, we are becoming more used to it. What can I call it but an alarming and quite tragic case of ‘memory loss’? And stories about brilliance, goodness, dots of heaven appear ever so rarely...and I don't know whether those tiny dots are really tiny - or whether indeed they are just as widespread and profound as the ugliness.
Anyhow - the point that hit me was that the human race as a whole seemed to have an extremely short memory - just like me. And both are in an unhappy state, rather. And then as if all this were not enough - I realised that through my endless lifetimes, there's probably nothing I remember - at least not consciously (and I happen to believe in the notion of rebirth. can't go into this tangent now - but it is a belief and a 'knowing' that simply 'is' what it is). So every lifetime I come back - I'm most likely learning the same old lessons all over again. Heck! I can't even remember this lifetime and the stuff learnt - leave alone lessons from other lifetimes. And this thought dropped me into an even deeper pit of utter gloom. It was as if I were a student, forever stuck in Class 5, and forever failing every year!As this thought hit home, I was yelling inside. 'What a waste! What a terrible waste!'And then as I inhaled on my cigarette, I wondered, how incredible it would be if I could just remember - just remember all the things I needed to..so that the next time I come around to our planet - I'll be just a tad more 'wise' and aware.
And that's when the funny thought hit. I could hear Holmes saying out aloud (of course I always see Jeremy Brett in my head) - almost 'gonging' in my head, "Don't you remember what I said about the mind being an attic?" I said, "Of course I do! That's probably one of the seven things I remember from all your stories combined!" And then my mind started grinning inspite of myself. Half-chuckling, I said, "Ha! And you didn't want to remember the planets, or the fact that all the planets are spinning around the sun. Hyuck!Hyuck! You even said it was 'useless' information!" The chuckle disappeared from my head, as I retorted grumpily, "But so what? My own mind is stuffed with things that I don't need to remember. Useless bits and strings, and yards of information, memories, which have no purpose, use or...Gah-bah, anything! And I forget." Holmes smiled in my head. You know that half-smile, eyes almost shut but not quite, and he half-reclined in his chair, and deeply inhaled from his pipe, emitting some purple smoke. I looked back at him glumly, and said, "What?! I don't remember anything! I forget everything I need to remember and know - and remember everything I need to forget. My mind is an overstuffed attic, which remembers nothing. I remember nothing of what I read about the distinction between fusion and fission energy, the nuclear power issue, the ---"
"Fool!" Holmes replied sharply. His seemingly sleepy Self had disappeared, and he was staring at me in the face now - with that inimitable sharp, bright, and brilliant, and still half-amused expression glinting through him and his eyes. "Fool twice over!" So saying he wagged his pipe in front of my glum and glaring face. My eyes this time glinted back at him though. A sharp glint, and a twinkle flashed through. He smiled again, and with a laconic, "Excellent!" -“poofh”, he disappeared.
And this was the funny incident. The nugget Holmes threw in my way was that "maybe, just maybe, after all is said and done I do remember." Albeit, unlike Holmes I don't consciously remember to forget the things that I don't care to or need to remember.
Of course, it's only now that I say 'maybe'. What flooded into me in those seconds is that through my lifetimes I've probably decided that there are certain things that I won't and can't forget. That I won't forget how brutal I've been somewhere, sometime; that I won't forget about the blood, gore, and violence that I've engaged in sometime somewhere; that I won't forget the essence of the human spirit...even if I'm yet to understand it; that I won't forget that no idea, no invention, no discovery is inherently good or evil or bad; that I won't forget that given a choice between remembering bits of 'real' information and the ability to understand connections - I will pray that I have the latter, no matter how rudimentary or how basic my skills are at the second enterprise (Both would have been great...but what can I do); that I won't forget that any 'glorious' ideal can lead to bloodshed when it's seen as 'set in stone'; that I won't forget that real freedom is sacred, and that all life is sacred.... and much more. But the 'more' I'll leave for another day.
And that's what it was....the incident - the funny thing. I know it's my imagination. I know there's a part of me, which says that I'm just 'using' the 'incident' to justify the sickly health of my memory.
Nonetheless...there's a part of me which says," Ah, but I do remember what I need to and forget the things that I can afford to forget, at least for the nonce."
I know for sure that I would fail in a GK quiz. This is because combined with memory loss I also don't read much of what I should. And the reason I don't, is because my weak mind never remembers. It spits out the information within three days. So what's the point? And even if I do know a bit about what's going on around and in the world - I don't remember or really know the history of what preceded the current situation...Now mind you, I'm not proud of this. I have been in despair over this situation...and yet, my mind seems to be extremely sprightly about other matters (which seem not-very-important, not to mention terribly self-centred)...incidents which happened decades ago, people I interacted with, funny memories, and quirky ones of faces, meetings, stories...I even remember one conversation that I had with my mum regarding the "evil wolf" when I was 4 and had finished reading a ladybird version of "Little Red Riding Hood". I remember about my first infatuation at the age of 6, I remember how when we were 7, a childhood friend had upchucked in class, and ‘it’ was a bright yellow - and I had imagined that she had swallowed a great quantity of whole lemons, which had been pureed. I remember friends from school, the fun we used to have, the long conversations, birthday parties, having silent conversations with myself, being Obsessive Compulsive about washing my hands (!) five times in between eating a single meal, when I was 9; I remember the stories that my friends told me about their families, and siblings...so there are things I remember as well...like trying to physically peel off the masks off people's faces as a 7 year old, playing the game of 'rushen' at 'round about the same age - without really knowing what or why I was doing it. But there are things I can't remember. Things that I need to, things that I must, things that I want to...hence my steady rising despair yesterday broke through and made me stomp out of my computer lab and go out for a smoke and coffee.
As my anger and despair and grief about my own handicapped memory assaulted me, I was also suddenly struck by the fact that it was a problem for the whole human race. Human beings have short term memory. We don't remember the horror, brutality, and violence that we have brought upon our world across hundreds of centuries. We either don't remember or we forget. So we cringe at the horror of human sacrifice, and then we send our young, who are often our poorest off to a meaningless war with a cheery, "cheerio". We ban a horrific social practice in one part of the world, and then in the name of 'cultural relativism', (happens a lot in the social sciences) we uphold the same violation when it transpires elsewhere . Or conversely - we say something is all right if "I" do it but wrong if my "neighbour" half-way across the world engages in the same. And then we get into hundreds of dithering debates, acrimonious arguments, and verbal gymnastics - not to mention finger pointing, bloody war, political battles, and academic yabble-babble. But we don't "see" somehow that what's happening today is almost identical in content if not in form to the things that have happened hundreds and thousands of years ago - only now, we have some technological ‘finesse’ added to the menagerie. Killing, sodomizing, fighting, raping, plundering...horrific brutality. And of course the media does like the gristly stuff a lot. And it's not the media per se – we gulp it down, while sadly shaking our heads. There's a perverse fascination for blood, gore, and indignity exposed. And while it’s true that I wouldn’t want such violent stories, and the dreary stories, or the stories of injustice to be hidden away, it’s almost as if instead of becoming more sensitive and wise after reading or hearing about such episodes, we are becoming more used to it. What can I call it but an alarming and quite tragic case of ‘memory loss’? And stories about brilliance, goodness, dots of heaven appear ever so rarely...and I don't know whether those tiny dots are really tiny - or whether indeed they are just as widespread and profound as the ugliness.
Anyhow - the point that hit me was that the human race as a whole seemed to have an extremely short memory - just like me. And both are in an unhappy state, rather. And then as if all this were not enough - I realised that through my endless lifetimes, there's probably nothing I remember - at least not consciously (and I happen to believe in the notion of rebirth. can't go into this tangent now - but it is a belief and a 'knowing' that simply 'is' what it is). So every lifetime I come back - I'm most likely learning the same old lessons all over again. Heck! I can't even remember this lifetime and the stuff learnt - leave alone lessons from other lifetimes. And this thought dropped me into an even deeper pit of utter gloom. It was as if I were a student, forever stuck in Class 5, and forever failing every year!As this thought hit home, I was yelling inside. 'What a waste! What a terrible waste!'And then as I inhaled on my cigarette, I wondered, how incredible it would be if I could just remember - just remember all the things I needed to..so that the next time I come around to our planet - I'll be just a tad more 'wise' and aware.
And that's when the funny thought hit. I could hear Holmes saying out aloud (of course I always see Jeremy Brett in my head) - almost 'gonging' in my head, "Don't you remember what I said about the mind being an attic?" I said, "Of course I do! That's probably one of the seven things I remember from all your stories combined!" And then my mind started grinning inspite of myself. Half-chuckling, I said, "Ha! And you didn't want to remember the planets, or the fact that all the planets are spinning around the sun. Hyuck!Hyuck! You even said it was 'useless' information!" The chuckle disappeared from my head, as I retorted grumpily, "But so what? My own mind is stuffed with things that I don't need to remember. Useless bits and strings, and yards of information, memories, which have no purpose, use or...Gah-bah, anything! And I forget." Holmes smiled in my head. You know that half-smile, eyes almost shut but not quite, and he half-reclined in his chair, and deeply inhaled from his pipe, emitting some purple smoke. I looked back at him glumly, and said, "What?! I don't remember anything! I forget everything I need to remember and know - and remember everything I need to forget. My mind is an overstuffed attic, which remembers nothing. I remember nothing of what I read about the distinction between fusion and fission energy, the nuclear power issue, the ---"
"Fool!" Holmes replied sharply. His seemingly sleepy Self had disappeared, and he was staring at me in the face now - with that inimitable sharp, bright, and brilliant, and still half-amused expression glinting through him and his eyes. "Fool twice over!" So saying he wagged his pipe in front of my glum and glaring face. My eyes this time glinted back at him though. A sharp glint, and a twinkle flashed through. He smiled again, and with a laconic, "Excellent!" -“poofh”, he disappeared.
And this was the funny incident. The nugget Holmes threw in my way was that "maybe, just maybe, after all is said and done I do remember." Albeit, unlike Holmes I don't consciously remember to forget the things that I don't care to or need to remember.
Of course, it's only now that I say 'maybe'. What flooded into me in those seconds is that through my lifetimes I've probably decided that there are certain things that I won't and can't forget. That I won't forget how brutal I've been somewhere, sometime; that I won't forget about the blood, gore, and violence that I've engaged in sometime somewhere; that I won't forget the essence of the human spirit...even if I'm yet to understand it; that I won't forget that no idea, no invention, no discovery is inherently good or evil or bad; that I won't forget that given a choice between remembering bits of 'real' information and the ability to understand connections - I will pray that I have the latter, no matter how rudimentary or how basic my skills are at the second enterprise (Both would have been great...but what can I do); that I won't forget that any 'glorious' ideal can lead to bloodshed when it's seen as 'set in stone'; that I won't forget that real freedom is sacred, and that all life is sacred.... and much more. But the 'more' I'll leave for another day.
And that's what it was....the incident - the funny thing. I know it's my imagination. I know there's a part of me, which says that I'm just 'using' the 'incident' to justify the sickly health of my memory.
Nonetheless...there's a part of me which says," Ah, but I do remember what I need to and forget the things that I can afford to forget, at least for the nonce."
16 March 2008
Early days in January....
Early January 2008
There isn’t much to write about. The wind is howling outside and I’m sitting in the warmth. My imagination lies to waste and the heavy dregs of a depressive stupor are wafting through my mind. There is nowhere to go. Nowhere to run away. There is nowhere I want to go anymore. Even the mindless or the mindful thought or desire of death has long abandoned me. My mind has run dry. The thoughts about life and living occupy me no longer. The thoughts about the thrills of reaching a super-conscious level of awareness don’t excite me much. Death troubles me – acts of wanton killing, brutality, violence, bloodshed horrify me and hold me in their vicious grip. Yet I was no different as a child and I have done not much to make the world any better than it was before I arrived. The fact that we humans might either execute ourselves within seconds with a mindless nuclear war or through painful decades (or maybe a couple of centuries) by killing what’s left of our environment bothers me somewhat yet not enough evidently. I don’t take to the roads in protest nor do I strategize meaningful plans so that we may save ourselves and our planet. Poverty, hunger, violations of what should be inalienable rights make me feel desperate at times and uselessly helpless at other moments.
And so I wake up another day and yet another. Brushing my teeth and going through the motions. What difference does it make, I wonder? And I’ve been asking the same question ever since I can remember. But still the answers elude me. I’ve been a natural theist, an ardent atheist, an agnostic and then once again a believer. Yet even God is silent. And I haven’t found anyone else who can give me an answer. And I want an answer ‘pat’. Articulate, intelligible and easily applicable. No finger pointing to the moon, no one hand clapping, please. No zen tricks. What difference does it make, pray I ask, if the world does go up in smoke, if humans do wipe each other out, if people die miserable deaths, (leave alone innocent animals since we still haven’t been able to take care of our own species), if one race wipes out the other, if we kill our planet while we remain embroiled in meaningless pontification about climate change or natural resource depletion? The planet has gone through periods of extinction. And then through some scientific, metaphysical, mysterious quirk and quark of fate – life came back again. Yes, sure if at the end of the day we do wipe ourselves out we can have the satisfaction of nodding our heads sagely and saying that we were no better than the rather dimwitted dinosaurs.
…I agree that we seem to be a rather grotesque race of beings. Fighting, killing, plundering - yet capable of producing works of such rare beauty and grace that one feels blessed. Most of us seem to lead life along the peak of the normal curve. Humdrum, dreary lives broken up by no great joys or sorrows nor euphoria or grace. Yet others lead the lives of your veritable obese fish in a very small pond and imagine or maybe really believe that they are God’s gift to human beings. That’s all very fine, I say. Let them lead their lives and I’ll lead mine. But wait. The thoughts criss-cross. I know I must make a difference. I know there is something that we’re missing. I don’t know what I will do or bring but there is something I have to do in this lifetime. (Of course I don't know whether these are the empty thoughts of a madman..er...madgoat in my case). But then there is another problem...for the life of me I can’t get any reasonable or rational answer of why I should care or even, since I still “claim” to care and desperately want to make some difference what I should do about it. What is my role on the planet? Or is that nothing but mindless arrogance once again? A day ago, was it or a week – I asked and the old answer boomed back for the nth time “What do you want?” – Well that’s not an answer now, is it. That’s a question. The thing is I know what I want to do although I don’t even know whether that would make an ounce of difference. Yet lately I find excuses never to do it.
Yesterday, I met a student of mine after a long time. He’s one of my favourite students. We had a long conversation and at one point in the midst of our twisting rambles he said, “…and one needs to remind one’s self every morning about what’s important. It’s so easy to forget…” and I knew and know exactly what he meant. Following one’s dreams. It’s so cliched. Knowing what one has to do. Knowing what one must do. Knowing what one wants to do and then doing it no matter what the odds are of ever “making” it. These take an immense amount of courage. And probably even more than courage at times it takes focused discipline, concentration, boundless energy and a patient mind. I’m wondering now whether we all innately know what we must do with our lives. I know, of course that there are no guarantees. There are three Van Gogh prints in our house. One is where I can see it, two of them I can see in my mind. He’s made a difference in my life. He didn’t know that when he was painting that a century or so later an Indian sitting in the mid-west of the U.S would feel strangely buoyant and more hopeful about life after seeing one of his prints. He lived and died miserably with no fame, no money and probably no happy sex, leave alone love.
Yet what is this circle then that I keep travelling around? My bouts with insanity have been reduced to morbid bouts of paranoia, and nothing else. No further illumination after the first three or four rather bizarre, frightful, yet interesting stints. I have no interesting dreams when I’m sleeping, I don’t have many curious or interesting thoughts or new thoughts when I’m awake, I’ve lived so long in my head and taken an aloof pride in projecting myself as an introvert for so long that now my tongue gets tied in knots with my throat and teeth and brain when I do try to speak, and if that were not enough – I’ve just lately started noticing that I’ve started getting these frightfully angry or nagging or frivolous thoughts for at least 5 of the 8 hours that I’m awake and my brain in functioning. I’m angry, depressed, or strangely melancholic most of the time, and seem to be retrograding at some alarming rate into levels of such airyheadedness that it disgusts me when I notice.
And then there is the matter of memory loss. A serious problem when you can’t sensibly narrate the story of a book you read barely a month ago.I have realised with an increasing sense of dismay and quiet and sometimes not-so-quiet horror that my memory has gone completely haywire. I simply cannot remember facts, figures, quotes or lyrics anymore. The only way I remember the names of the people I read about is if I come across their names more than twenty times. I do remember incidents and people and contexts pretty well – some of which happened more than a couple of decades ago – but other than that (and some books that I read most likely at the same time), I’m losing my memory or whatever’s left of it. Yet that is a losing battle. I don’t know whether it is because I don’t concentrate or whether I’m bored but even that cannot be the whole story. For I don’t even remember things that I want to remember or things that I read because I want to read them. No, even my losing memory – although it horrifies me is not what is sending me into an increasing state of numbness, deeper dejection, not to mention horror.
Yet let’s leave all that for a moment. I’ve been realising with a rising panic that there is a deadly listlessness that’s slowly choking me. It’s the listlessness and mental laziness that drives otherwise pretty bright folks into the realms of passive non-existence. Now sure, if one is happy being there – there’s nothing wrong with that. I believe it’s better to be a passive survivor than to be an idiotic rabid mealy mouthed ‘doer’ who spouts the politically correct rhetoric but has not one ounce of human sensitivity or grace. Yet what has started haunting me lately is that the one ability that I imagined I had is turning out to be nothing but a figment of my imagination!
I cannot play any musical instrument, I cannot sing, my dancing scares my friends, I cannot paint or sketch, I cannot play any sport at a competitive level (although I strongly believe that I could have won many a Gold Medal for the 100 metre sprint, if I’d started training early enough), and I can’t seriously believe that being an academician in some little castle up the hill is going to make an ounce of difference to me or anyone else. In any case, the very thought of it makes me want to stuff a sock down my throat and gag myself (why? Maybe I’ll write about this some other day).
It’s my inability to string together sentences and make an interesting tale out of them that’s sucking the living daylights out of me. It’s my inability to write funny lines, poignant lines, evocative descriptions and thematically centred arguments. One of the things that make me happy, that make a difference to me – and really this is quite personal – is writing. The other things that make me happy will be something that I’ll write about some other time. But for now this is it. I love writing. I’d take it up as a profession if I could. At least that’s what I’ve always most vociferously and most brashly claimed in private and in my conversations with the walls and an imaginary friend. In some moments with some rare (real) individuals I’ve even confessed that this is what I want to do. That being a writer is who and what I want to be, above all else (what good does that do?...Who knows!).
But then here’s the twist. I always say that – but then what do I have to show for it? Nothing. I have no short stories that I can whip out. I have no essays. I have no reviews. I have no poems. And then here’s the further twist. When I’ve tried sitting down on some odd days to write something, anything – maybe a short story that’ll go to places that I don’t go, maybe about a character whom I’d like to meet, maybe about an incident which becomes something other than what it was becoming....Can’t think of a story line. Can’t think of a description. Can’t see anything about the character. Oh. Okay. That’s fine. Let’s write something about “real” things and real people. Let’s write about the hiking trip in –23C. Hmmm. Too long. Too short. Too strained. Too constipated. Too incomplete. Okay then. Let’s try writing on “desire leads to suffering”. My mind drew a complete blank there. No stars. No catherine wheels. No sparks. Nothing. A deathly silence.
…Okay. Okay. I admit it. I’ve been running away. There’s been a 'readymade story'. There’ve been images. There has been a 'dammed' stream of consciousness. A story that has been chasing me for close to a decade now. I just have to spin and weave and wait and watch and wait some more. And sweat. Bleed some. Maybe, maybe not. But then I’m being chased, and I don’t know where I’m going to be if I start running! I wonder whether “m going to squeak like some pipsqueak of a firecracker and then whimper and pop out of existence even before arrival. I wonder what’s likely to happen if ‘it’ doesn’t read the way it’s supposed to; if it doesn’t flow the way it’s supposed to, if it doesn’t blend and melt and dance the way it’s meant to. The way I can feel it – it lives, breathes, walks, wakes up and moves inside me (and I can happily ‘imagine’ that the story is ‘all there’). It has a vibrancy which is so brilliant yet fragile that I worry myself to death that it might disappear if I touch it. I sense it. I did…and now it’s gone. I don’t know anymore. I’ve been too scared out of my wits to touch it again.
…For one day when I tried writing there was such a load of tripe that dripped out of my hobgoblin of a dotpen that I stopped in disgust, horror and fear (note: it was the pen’s ‘fault’…). I wasn’t trying to write 'it' all this while because that is precisely what I was scared off. Here I hear about writers who later go on to say that stories and lines and sentences and characters come to them fully formed and they write it out with a flourish. There’s nothing of that that’s happening with me. I see images. I sense what I do. Lines nor sentences come to me. Nothing that I dream of when I’m asleep tells me what I’m supposed to write. So finally after being arrogantly convinced that I could write the whole thing any time I wanted to because it just needed to be written, I spewed such rare garbage on paper that I haven’t gotten back to what I wrote. I don’t remember exactly when I made my first attempt.
…Whenever it was – what has alarmed me over the course of the weeks is that I’m slowly but surely degenerating into some turnipy vegetable with not much going on in the bonehead but with not even enough to express on paper. And trust me when I say this I have never had a problem writing pages and pages for no one but myself with pretty much nothing going on in my immediate world. Yet these are truly dark times for me. Lately, I’ve been nagging the one person who has put up with my mad bouts, my desperate bouts, my cheerful bouts, my flaky bouts. The one person who puts up with me every single day and night. The one person who really does not expect much from me apart from my being there or here. I don’t even know why he wants me around as a physical presence but I guess I’ll never stop wondering about that – no matter how long or short a time I’m with him hereafter. But the worst thing is that I’m nagging him inside my head. I’m becoming one of those lazy, despicable and bored ‘silliwomen’ who do nothing but crib all the time for no reason and therefore when they do have a point nobody wants to know about it because it’s covered up in too much stink. The silly, frivolous, whining women whom I could beat with a stick! Who are passive-aggressive and cannot think because they have nothing to think about…
These are indeed frightening developments and the scary thing is that these thoughts – the nagging and the whining thoughts have been coming not from me. Not from the 'me-I-know'. Not the me-that-I-know-I-am. I’m quite sure about this because they are exceptionally random just now. They come from the outside much like little seemingly innocuous viruses and they keep up their prattle until I swat them away. If you’ve ever tried meditating, you’ll know what I mean. All the same the boredom that has come in with those nonsensical naggings and the irritation eventually gave way to an absolute horror that I could think such things (note the ‘I’), and slowly into evil almost passive acceptance. The horror has returned now. So hopefully the cycle will be reverted and I shan’t have those nasty thoughts anymore. ‘The poor me’ thoughts or the ‘hrrmphh’ thoughts. The rest of them are way too evil for me to even pen down. At least for the nonce.
And all this because I’ve been running away. I know I have work to attend to. The everyday work that brings me my bread, eggs, coffee and cigarettes ) reverse order of importance). And not being one of those ardent, madly prolific writers I must earn my daily bread. I need certain material comforts of life, and in order to write I must have certain basics. At least I need them. Yet I realise something for the umpteenth time and very consciously that when I do not write for long bouts of time I become quite nasty. Inside outside – I become mangy and rotten and quite despicable. It doesn’t matter what I write. Sometimes it does. But that’s for later. I must bring my ramblings to a close for today. Tomorrow, I shall continue. Be more focussed and aware and more alive. Thank you God.
......I’m pleased to report that things have turned for the better…and there will be more comprehensible posts in the future….
16th March 2008
There isn’t much to write about. The wind is howling outside and I’m sitting in the warmth. My imagination lies to waste and the heavy dregs of a depressive stupor are wafting through my mind. There is nowhere to go. Nowhere to run away. There is nowhere I want to go anymore. Even the mindless or the mindful thought or desire of death has long abandoned me. My mind has run dry. The thoughts about life and living occupy me no longer. The thoughts about the thrills of reaching a super-conscious level of awareness don’t excite me much. Death troubles me – acts of wanton killing, brutality, violence, bloodshed horrify me and hold me in their vicious grip. Yet I was no different as a child and I have done not much to make the world any better than it was before I arrived. The fact that we humans might either execute ourselves within seconds with a mindless nuclear war or through painful decades (or maybe a couple of centuries) by killing what’s left of our environment bothers me somewhat yet not enough evidently. I don’t take to the roads in protest nor do I strategize meaningful plans so that we may save ourselves and our planet. Poverty, hunger, violations of what should be inalienable rights make me feel desperate at times and uselessly helpless at other moments.
And so I wake up another day and yet another. Brushing my teeth and going through the motions. What difference does it make, I wonder? And I’ve been asking the same question ever since I can remember. But still the answers elude me. I’ve been a natural theist, an ardent atheist, an agnostic and then once again a believer. Yet even God is silent. And I haven’t found anyone else who can give me an answer. And I want an answer ‘pat’. Articulate, intelligible and easily applicable. No finger pointing to the moon, no one hand clapping, please. No zen tricks. What difference does it make, pray I ask, if the world does go up in smoke, if humans do wipe each other out, if people die miserable deaths, (leave alone innocent animals since we still haven’t been able to take care of our own species), if one race wipes out the other, if we kill our planet while we remain embroiled in meaningless pontification about climate change or natural resource depletion? The planet has gone through periods of extinction. And then through some scientific, metaphysical, mysterious quirk and quark of fate – life came back again. Yes, sure if at the end of the day we do wipe ourselves out we can have the satisfaction of nodding our heads sagely and saying that we were no better than the rather dimwitted dinosaurs.
…I agree that we seem to be a rather grotesque race of beings. Fighting, killing, plundering - yet capable of producing works of such rare beauty and grace that one feels blessed. Most of us seem to lead life along the peak of the normal curve. Humdrum, dreary lives broken up by no great joys or sorrows nor euphoria or grace. Yet others lead the lives of your veritable obese fish in a very small pond and imagine or maybe really believe that they are God’s gift to human beings. That’s all very fine, I say. Let them lead their lives and I’ll lead mine. But wait. The thoughts criss-cross. I know I must make a difference. I know there is something that we’re missing. I don’t know what I will do or bring but there is something I have to do in this lifetime. (Of course I don't know whether these are the empty thoughts of a madman..er...madgoat in my case). But then there is another problem...for the life of me I can’t get any reasonable or rational answer of why I should care or even, since I still “claim” to care and desperately want to make some difference what I should do about it. What is my role on the planet? Or is that nothing but mindless arrogance once again? A day ago, was it or a week – I asked and the old answer boomed back for the nth time “What do you want?” – Well that’s not an answer now, is it. That’s a question. The thing is I know what I want to do although I don’t even know whether that would make an ounce of difference. Yet lately I find excuses never to do it.
Yesterday, I met a student of mine after a long time. He’s one of my favourite students. We had a long conversation and at one point in the midst of our twisting rambles he said, “…and one needs to remind one’s self every morning about what’s important. It’s so easy to forget…” and I knew and know exactly what he meant. Following one’s dreams. It’s so cliched. Knowing what one has to do. Knowing what one must do. Knowing what one wants to do and then doing it no matter what the odds are of ever “making” it. These take an immense amount of courage. And probably even more than courage at times it takes focused discipline, concentration, boundless energy and a patient mind. I’m wondering now whether we all innately know what we must do with our lives. I know, of course that there are no guarantees. There are three Van Gogh prints in our house. One is where I can see it, two of them I can see in my mind. He’s made a difference in my life. He didn’t know that when he was painting that a century or so later an Indian sitting in the mid-west of the U.S would feel strangely buoyant and more hopeful about life after seeing one of his prints. He lived and died miserably with no fame, no money and probably no happy sex, leave alone love.
Yet what is this circle then that I keep travelling around? My bouts with insanity have been reduced to morbid bouts of paranoia, and nothing else. No further illumination after the first three or four rather bizarre, frightful, yet interesting stints. I have no interesting dreams when I’m sleeping, I don’t have many curious or interesting thoughts or new thoughts when I’m awake, I’ve lived so long in my head and taken an aloof pride in projecting myself as an introvert for so long that now my tongue gets tied in knots with my throat and teeth and brain when I do try to speak, and if that were not enough – I’ve just lately started noticing that I’ve started getting these frightfully angry or nagging or frivolous thoughts for at least 5 of the 8 hours that I’m awake and my brain in functioning. I’m angry, depressed, or strangely melancholic most of the time, and seem to be retrograding at some alarming rate into levels of such airyheadedness that it disgusts me when I notice.
And then there is the matter of memory loss. A serious problem when you can’t sensibly narrate the story of a book you read barely a month ago.I have realised with an increasing sense of dismay and quiet and sometimes not-so-quiet horror that my memory has gone completely haywire. I simply cannot remember facts, figures, quotes or lyrics anymore. The only way I remember the names of the people I read about is if I come across their names more than twenty times. I do remember incidents and people and contexts pretty well – some of which happened more than a couple of decades ago – but other than that (and some books that I read most likely at the same time), I’m losing my memory or whatever’s left of it. Yet that is a losing battle. I don’t know whether it is because I don’t concentrate or whether I’m bored but even that cannot be the whole story. For I don’t even remember things that I want to remember or things that I read because I want to read them. No, even my losing memory – although it horrifies me is not what is sending me into an increasing state of numbness, deeper dejection, not to mention horror.
Yet let’s leave all that for a moment. I’ve been realising with a rising panic that there is a deadly listlessness that’s slowly choking me. It’s the listlessness and mental laziness that drives otherwise pretty bright folks into the realms of passive non-existence. Now sure, if one is happy being there – there’s nothing wrong with that. I believe it’s better to be a passive survivor than to be an idiotic rabid mealy mouthed ‘doer’ who spouts the politically correct rhetoric but has not one ounce of human sensitivity or grace. Yet what has started haunting me lately is that the one ability that I imagined I had is turning out to be nothing but a figment of my imagination!
I cannot play any musical instrument, I cannot sing, my dancing scares my friends, I cannot paint or sketch, I cannot play any sport at a competitive level (although I strongly believe that I could have won many a Gold Medal for the 100 metre sprint, if I’d started training early enough), and I can’t seriously believe that being an academician in some little castle up the hill is going to make an ounce of difference to me or anyone else. In any case, the very thought of it makes me want to stuff a sock down my throat and gag myself (why? Maybe I’ll write about this some other day).
It’s my inability to string together sentences and make an interesting tale out of them that’s sucking the living daylights out of me. It’s my inability to write funny lines, poignant lines, evocative descriptions and thematically centred arguments. One of the things that make me happy, that make a difference to me – and really this is quite personal – is writing. The other things that make me happy will be something that I’ll write about some other time. But for now this is it. I love writing. I’d take it up as a profession if I could. At least that’s what I’ve always most vociferously and most brashly claimed in private and in my conversations with the walls and an imaginary friend. In some moments with some rare (real) individuals I’ve even confessed that this is what I want to do. That being a writer is who and what I want to be, above all else (what good does that do?...Who knows!).
But then here’s the twist. I always say that – but then what do I have to show for it? Nothing. I have no short stories that I can whip out. I have no essays. I have no reviews. I have no poems. And then here’s the further twist. When I’ve tried sitting down on some odd days to write something, anything – maybe a short story that’ll go to places that I don’t go, maybe about a character whom I’d like to meet, maybe about an incident which becomes something other than what it was becoming....Can’t think of a story line. Can’t think of a description. Can’t see anything about the character. Oh. Okay. That’s fine. Let’s write something about “real” things and real people. Let’s write about the hiking trip in –23C. Hmmm. Too long. Too short. Too strained. Too constipated. Too incomplete. Okay then. Let’s try writing on “desire leads to suffering”. My mind drew a complete blank there. No stars. No catherine wheels. No sparks. Nothing. A deathly silence.
…Okay. Okay. I admit it. I’ve been running away. There’s been a 'readymade story'. There’ve been images. There has been a 'dammed' stream of consciousness. A story that has been chasing me for close to a decade now. I just have to spin and weave and wait and watch and wait some more. And sweat. Bleed some. Maybe, maybe not. But then I’m being chased, and I don’t know where I’m going to be if I start running! I wonder whether “m going to squeak like some pipsqueak of a firecracker and then whimper and pop out of existence even before arrival. I wonder what’s likely to happen if ‘it’ doesn’t read the way it’s supposed to; if it doesn’t flow the way it’s supposed to, if it doesn’t blend and melt and dance the way it’s meant to. The way I can feel it – it lives, breathes, walks, wakes up and moves inside me (and I can happily ‘imagine’ that the story is ‘all there’). It has a vibrancy which is so brilliant yet fragile that I worry myself to death that it might disappear if I touch it. I sense it. I did…and now it’s gone. I don’t know anymore. I’ve been too scared out of my wits to touch it again.
…For one day when I tried writing there was such a load of tripe that dripped out of my hobgoblin of a dotpen that I stopped in disgust, horror and fear (note: it was the pen’s ‘fault’…). I wasn’t trying to write 'it' all this while because that is precisely what I was scared off. Here I hear about writers who later go on to say that stories and lines and sentences and characters come to them fully formed and they write it out with a flourish. There’s nothing of that that’s happening with me. I see images. I sense what I do. Lines nor sentences come to me. Nothing that I dream of when I’m asleep tells me what I’m supposed to write. So finally after being arrogantly convinced that I could write the whole thing any time I wanted to because it just needed to be written, I spewed such rare garbage on paper that I haven’t gotten back to what I wrote. I don’t remember exactly when I made my first attempt.
…Whenever it was – what has alarmed me over the course of the weeks is that I’m slowly but surely degenerating into some turnipy vegetable with not much going on in the bonehead but with not even enough to express on paper. And trust me when I say this I have never had a problem writing pages and pages for no one but myself with pretty much nothing going on in my immediate world. Yet these are truly dark times for me. Lately, I’ve been nagging the one person who has put up with my mad bouts, my desperate bouts, my cheerful bouts, my flaky bouts. The one person who puts up with me every single day and night. The one person who really does not expect much from me apart from my being there or here. I don’t even know why he wants me around as a physical presence but I guess I’ll never stop wondering about that – no matter how long or short a time I’m with him hereafter. But the worst thing is that I’m nagging him inside my head. I’m becoming one of those lazy, despicable and bored ‘silliwomen’ who do nothing but crib all the time for no reason and therefore when they do have a point nobody wants to know about it because it’s covered up in too much stink. The silly, frivolous, whining women whom I could beat with a stick! Who are passive-aggressive and cannot think because they have nothing to think about…
These are indeed frightening developments and the scary thing is that these thoughts – the nagging and the whining thoughts have been coming not from me. Not from the 'me-I-know'. Not the me-that-I-know-I-am. I’m quite sure about this because they are exceptionally random just now. They come from the outside much like little seemingly innocuous viruses and they keep up their prattle until I swat them away. If you’ve ever tried meditating, you’ll know what I mean. All the same the boredom that has come in with those nonsensical naggings and the irritation eventually gave way to an absolute horror that I could think such things (note the ‘I’), and slowly into evil almost passive acceptance. The horror has returned now. So hopefully the cycle will be reverted and I shan’t have those nasty thoughts anymore. ‘The poor me’ thoughts or the ‘hrrmphh’ thoughts. The rest of them are way too evil for me to even pen down. At least for the nonce.
And all this because I’ve been running away. I know I have work to attend to. The everyday work that brings me my bread, eggs, coffee and cigarettes ) reverse order of importance). And not being one of those ardent, madly prolific writers I must earn my daily bread. I need certain material comforts of life, and in order to write I must have certain basics. At least I need them. Yet I realise something for the umpteenth time and very consciously that when I do not write for long bouts of time I become quite nasty. Inside outside – I become mangy and rotten and quite despicable. It doesn’t matter what I write. Sometimes it does. But that’s for later. I must bring my ramblings to a close for today. Tomorrow, I shall continue. Be more focussed and aware and more alive. Thank you God.
......I’m pleased to report that things have turned for the better…and there will be more comprehensible posts in the future….
16th March 2008
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