The curl of a year

The year for me seems to have travelled from September 2015 to September 2016. Given the way my mind works – that doesn’t seem off or abnormal but it does seem queer even to me that the mind can create odd realities of its own. Or does it? The past month feels like it has been an interim period. It feels like it was a this-worldly bardo during Durga Pujo: a period of introspecting, looking back, understanding or trying to understand; a period of looking at what I did wrong or what I can do right in the coming round, reconnoitering the possibilities out-there and a period of praying for a mind expansion which makes the universe conspire to work with me. I can’t say that this bardo has been as grand as the one in winter 2010-2011 before it blew up partly in my face or the one in winter-spring 2002 that turned out to be a dream within greyness and opened into a golden experience by Fall or a couple of other ones…; of course all my past bardos, I can see led to one final point of realisation. This was a particularly non-hallucinating bardo for the most part with a few streaks of unmistakable colour and very quiet bits of insight in between the lonely pits and dungeons. But I was expecting the state back in the middle of the year, so this time, at least, I can’t say it was unexpected.

I have no 5 minute miracle wand. Deluded or not – I am convinced I have my failsafe guide. What is to be? The old year feels like it is over. I have memories I cherish – a few of which I even wrote about on the blog – ones that I wouldn’t give up, including a burst of workshops in Spring, warm conversations in the external world, which made me feel that all was becoming right in my world and even while the scratching fingers, inside my mind, showed me an empty expanse in terms of workshops for the future months. My scratching fingers are not always right in predicting gloomy futures but in this one they were right, which doesn’t make me feel any better. I had been travelling a fair bit through the year but that simmered down when the organisation with which I work on projects started going through changes of its own. But there were still times of delight post Spring and despite the scratchy fingers too which made me believe that maybe I wasn’t born to endless night – some of those times now feel like they happened to somebody else.

In the age of the internet, it is true that one will find an answer to any question that one might type into the google box or about a topic of interest. Pupu said, among other things, that there’s a movie liner which says, ‘you can find anything from how to make a baby to how to make a bomb, on-line’. Whether the answer is likely to satisfy one or makes sense or proves to be useful in some form or manner is another question. I would be the last person to be against the internet, email, blogger and even youtube, for which I have my own reasons. On the other hand, I am quite firmly with the Dalai Lama on the fact that we have more and more marvelous means of communication but have nothing meaningful to communicate. Where there is meaningful communication, however, the internet has been a boon for the likes of me who neither have the ability to go gaga over every new bit of technology for communication that comes into town nor wish to go back to the time of carrier pigeons. I remember a few of the scenes from the film ‘Mona Lisa Smile’; one of them being a young woman who is desperately trying to be happy by showing off her husband’s novel purchases of which she is the proud owner – a washing machine and dryer. Now it has become phones, apps, the social media…and more and more gadgets and selfies.

The only reason I catapulted and bought a smartphone this year was because my best friend first coaxed me, goaded me and then when I still gave excuses and reasons – he threatened to buy me one. It is a useful gadget certainly; it helps me find the way through this city to places I have never been and it has helped me earlier on in the year to get to places in unfamiliar cities for appointments or meetings. It helped me book an Ola cab too, in July, on one marvellous morning. A week ago, I told somebody that she could check the projected fare ride for Ola on her phone and she called me ‘tech savvy’! I even bought and got an A/C fixed this year. I sometimes look at it happily, being reminded of some particularly fine memories or sometimes glare at it – poor thing – while grumbling (and for an utterly bizarre reason).

I have never been a Marxist and I’m almost grinning as I write this but my point is that with my views well and truly beaten and tempered, I can well see that there is nothing inherently bad or wrong in technology or in making money or even shopping for material items or discarding old technologies for the new but it goes back to why one is involved in the same. I don’t think my views about this nugget have changed in the last 14 years. But Fimh says a ‘haha’ to me and I have to shake my head for I am reminded of my batty beliefs from some years ago: imagining that the knowledge of the presence of the reality of thought-communion at a worldwide scale would usher in a new age of consciousness.

I have been on the net more often over these last couple of months and especially during the long Pujo break, thanks to Suvro da who insisted I get broadband cable instead of using a ‘silly’ dongle. And it’s not been a waste at all, I think, despite my inner and often adamant railings and even plain mute wonderings against and about the obsession over technological marvels in our present-day world. I even managed to have two consecutive Skype chats and not with my imaginary friend for one thing – and all because I got broadband cable. Normally, I was reflecting, my net habits had stayed more or less the same (with all factors remaining constant? – which they didn’t) through a decade. Along with my daily ritual and sometimes regular and sometimes not-regular communication over the net, I watched movies and read on-line in the US when I could afford to and now I have watched some TV series, longish youtube videos, read all kinds of stuff on self, creativity, sexuality, mindfulness, memory, meditation, self-hypnosis, karma, past-life regression and stock market trading, and I got hooked onto yoga and pilates all over again via some youtube videos and stuck to a daily mixed ritual of my own. The yoga has not done the good like it did in expanding my mind one Spring  quite some Springs ago and all of a sudden when I needed it badly. It even led to receiving a clear sign from the external world. Back then I practiced from what is called a book and had attended a few classes with a matter-of-fact teacher who told me that I should practice on my own and she told me quite firmly that I didn’t need to come to the class. This time, I’m hoping that the yoga is at least benefitting my body if in some invisible way but the mind expansion and the ‘lighter feeling of being’ that I was looking for and even looking forward to have not transpired as yet – sadly enough. But then I did still receive the sign - so there's something to smile widely over, for now!

I have been thinking too, recently, that by certain individuals, people and communities I would be seen as a crackpot or an insane woman or at best sick or obsessed or useless. Strangely enough, I don’t think I had ever processed this bit. I have certainly been called all those things at various points in my life, and not always without reason and not always by people I don’t care about (Come to think of it, in an earlier age I might have even be seen as a witch, I guess, which seems more interesting in a way; I certainly have some of the right attributes for being branded as one!) But I would not argue against the names or the same because the individual calling me the same has not always been wrong. I have not been entirely right – which would have made me a marvelous messiah, of sorts, by now, or at least, gloriously successful by worldly standards or something else. The years I have gone through across the past 20 years weren’t always productive and they haven’t always been beautiful and enchanting and while I am sure that I have gathered riches beyond compare – from worldly standards, I do come across as rather poor and/or abnormal…

Before I start counting or recounting my experiences here – let me move over to a few other matters. While practicing some very good yoga videos, I noticed with a wry raise of an eyebrow and an inner grumbling that all the best yoga videos are made by North Americans. Why is that? Also, I noticed that for every general self-help video or random article which supports a point of view – there is always another which espouses the opposite. The opposed voices on the net do not all come from the same source, and they don’t belong to one who takes count of the ‘fluid many-sided nature of reality’, and so I wasn’t expecting any miracles. But I wanted to see what was out-there, for multiple reasons. If someone is talking about the importance of clear goals, another person will say that it’s not goals but the ‘systems’ (process) which are (is) important. For someone who says ‘follow your passion’, someone else will say ‘find something to do which is socially worthwhile’ or ‘find your market’ or ‘create a demand’. If someone says ‘you are what you think’, there will be someone who says, ‘you are not your thoughts’. For someone who says, you are powerful and can accomplish anything you set your mind to, there will be a cautionary voice piping in saying you must accept certain conditions for what they are, and a voice of some psychiatrist saying that to think that you are powerful and to believe that you can do something great could actually mean you have bi-polar disorder. For the very reasonable voice which says, ‘do not let anyone else define who you are’, there will be voices in unison saying that success, happiness and bliss can never be experienced alone. For someone who sings, that there is always visible beauty and love around us in the external everyday world, there will be someone – meaning my own self saying ‘gah’. For someone who says ‘stick on’ because that’s the only way to accomplish something even if things don’t work the way you want or wish them to, there will be yet another reasonable voice saying that there is nothing good about a flat period of rejection and failure – so, ‘move on’. For someone who says let go of all desires, there will be someone who says that desires – all desires – make us human while The Buddha's voice rings around my ears with his, ‘desire leads to suffering’ and my Fimh, many years ago, pointed out to me that the very 'root of life is in desire'. For a Dumbledore who says, “Of course it’s happening in your head, but why on earth should that mean it’s not real?’ – but let me stop right there.

I could go on with the list of opposed ideas that I have found on the net just across the last month and more, and it can be confusing – even if they don’t necessarily sound wrong or absurd or silly all the time. It reminded me of Eliot’s bit on the wisdom we have lost in knowledge and the knowledge we have lost in information and that was quite some time ago. It also provided me with objective proof that I’m certainly not ‘la-la, gushy-mushy’ biased when I am biased or ‘obsessed’. Personally, I think while remembering what one has read and/or heard or seen and felt – one has to judge the context of where one is placed, look at one’s own experiences, examine one’s own motives and consider the significance of what one is intent on achieving and pray a prayer. I have never seen anything noble or glorious about being a failure. From the perspective of plain reason, I can quietly accept that the joys, delight, bliss, adventure and perfect experiences that life potentially offers will not be granted to a single human life (maybe that’s why imagination and the inner world become over-active and one’s Fimh speaks?) and maybe many questions are answered in the hereafter and many unspoken of joys are experienced there too – but the intention in this world is to win in some crucial rounds and on very clear grounds, after beating certain odds which seem unfathomable and inscrutable. To me, it almost feels sometimes as though God is playing a bizarre prank – but then I cannot believe that God would play a malicious prank…

Occasionally, I find myself loudly arguing over Shakespeare’s bit about nothing being good or bad – only thinking makes it so. Yet Rumi’s line about meeting in a field beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing also strikes a chord somewhere deep down. 

Fate and Faith

I sometimes am compelled to wonder over some matters of life, which cannot be understood or explained by reason. That could be a long list because life as whole on this planet, life-chances, the experience of living life, happenings and incidents and accidents, encounters, feelings, responses and interpretations do not work like gravity, lunar and solar eclipses or because of some immediate, observable cause and effect relationship. I remember from many years ago, when I was once wondering about reason, my best friend had shot off the quote to me about reason being like a drunk on horseback; you prop him up from one side and he slips off the other. Maybe if human civilization flourishes – human beings will one day, with more conscious and co-operative intent explore and find other ways to tap into the great mysteries of the mind, world, life and the beyond. In my early twenties, I never got consistent, unequivocal answers for all that which lies beyond reason or out of the boundaries of reason. I was instead propelled into another direction and one which was very much in-this-world, for the most part. This allowed me to let some of those other matters alone. ‘Those other matters’ do not refer only to spirits, the supernatural and suchlike. I explored those matters as well, at 21. But before I start scratching my head over all the uncanny, inexplicable or humorous (if seen from one angle, I think) shots from life, let me write about the matters of faith, meaning, purpose and fate that have returned to my head.

I can’t say how old I was exactly when I first felt that beyond the general meaninglessness of everydayness, life has a meaning and where one’s purpose is attached to that meaning. I felt this in a general way but more so, in a very individualized way. I had doubts too – for what really explained why people were born where they were? Across the past decade and more – I see meaning, purpose and sense criss-crossing. But without karma, I cannot see how the other three factors can criss-cross.

Through my school years, I did not even know what karma was. But I could see that girls who came from similar backgrounds – did not turn out to be very similar in terms of thoughts, views, intelligence, likes, dislikes, sensitivity and what they considered to be important. Two, maybe, at a stretch, three stood out sharply in their reading habits, levels of intelligence, memory, powers of articulation, levels of General Knowledge and awareness of current affairs. They were also the ones who used to top the examinations. One girl could sing outstandingly well, another was excellent at track and field competitions, a couple of girls could sketch and paint very well. Then there were girls who had remarkable memories for remembering almost every line in the textbooks and they scored very high marks but that was about all they did. I fell in none of the categories. I am very much aware of what intelligence looks like, enjoy reading about it and I am still interested in the exceptional human mind but that is as far as I shall speak on the subject. On the other hand, I didn’t care two hoots about marks. I was oblivious to it to the point of idiocy. I felt fine when I got high marks and I wasn’t particularly happy about failing in various subjects – but I could never equate life as being the summation of marks. I didn’t see anything wrong about what I felt. If anything, across the last two decades of my life – I actually feel vindicated in being an idiot about this. On the other hand, I used to feel delighted to the point of idiocy when we won in basketball or kho-kho or we won some inter-class prize for the best one-act play or received an ovation even if we didn’t always win the prize. I’m not really sure how to explain this. I have mulishly stayed away from anything group-related for ages unless I’m planning or conducting different group games and team activities for the workshops, which I enjoy doing.

The matter of making choices in life and what influences the choices we make could fill a library. But at a basic level, the way I have understood it – choice-making often depends upon the choices that are available, visible and one’s awareness of what is out-there. Secondly, it depends upon whether one sees oneself as being capable or having an ability or some value in a particular area. The third is abiding interest. This very basic combination often directs and drives one towards building a life of meaning and purpose. The fourth which relates to one’s character – with its eccentricities and personality – is a combination of perseverance, tenacity and belief. The fifth and sixth are serendipity and faith. The seventh, I would say is Karma. From another angle, if one considers the ‘compartments’ of life – one can see that life falls into the compartments of work, relationships, inner-world and hobbies/interests.

I know that even if one chances upon the meaning of one’s life in however a fuzzy or plain barmy way early on by one’s early twenties – things don’t become beautiful overnight and stay that way ever after. But there is a break. There is a distinct before and after moment that one can clearly point out to: when life began to make sense. One might then consider oneself to be the luckiest and most blessed person alive until the matter of actually living out one’s purpose turns out to be a far more jumbled and muddled affair than one could have imagined. There are rapid ups and downs, plateaus, grey lonely flatlands and distant peaks covered in mist. As one proceeds along the path with the bursts of meaning, one sees that the meaning of life leads to more questions for which one doesn’t have answers. But, I have found out time and time again that if one holds on and stays true to one’s course, the meaning, sense and the answers to various kinds of questions that perplex one are revealed in layers if not in a linear manner.

One cannot always control the outcomes or correctly predict as to what will happen even when one is on course and consciously knows one is on course. The outcomes along the path are good, bad, beastly and beautiful. I never advocate abandoning reason. A lot of life is based upon the principle of reason. Yet the bad, meaningless, dragging and horrid patches or their opposite – the delight, radiant patches, beauty and the best experiences which make life worth living cannot be explained by reason alone.

The process related to finding one’s meaning and staying on course towards one’s purpose is most likely different for different human beings. I do know that by finding and being anchored to one’s meaning and purpose in life, one is unimaginably better off than one would have been otherwise. It might not be anybody’s else’s meaning and it might not seem very reasonable to believe in it but to find one’s meaning and purpose are practically the first steps towards conscious living. It is not that finding one’s meaning makes living pain-free. But the meaning is not something that I would trade for any pain-free existence.  And the strange thing about meaning and purpose is that as life goes on, there are often layers that are revealed. One can feel when one is on the path, and keenly, and more than once why the Buddha left the world with his four Noble Truths even when one tries to rail against it. One is then reminded of writings and conversations (which make one wonder and keep the faith) although one has forgotten almost all of what one had read for decades in college and university courses.

All that said, maintaining faith and ‘moving on’ is something I have been a colossal failure at during certain periods and points in my life. But I have been resolute about maintaining my faith in one aspect even when I couldn’t move on. By my mid-thirties, I was donkey enough to believe that I had passed my final test on the matter of faith. As far as my experience goes, it’s easier to keep the faith when the path is not as dark and grey as the path from years and moments which one can remember at will. Indeed when there is a particular hurdle crossed or a mini work-mission accomplished or when one knows one hasn’t been abandoned – one’s faith is rekindled. People of unshakeable faith will tell me that I simply do not know what faith is; for what is so great about keeping the faith when they going looks good or better than what it had? I quite honestly do not have any response to that.

I don’t know whether faith can move mountains and I don’t even want to move mountains any more; moving around in the mountains one day and with happiness would be a miracle enough. And I can’t help but hope that keeping the faith as one walks on through the maze of fate allows one to fulfill one’s purpose that one has set for oneself. 

Spring 2016

Life is strange, and it’s strange and unpredictable in an unpredictable and beautiful way not too often – but it does happen, and one can cherish the same and hold that life very close. I'm looking about my room as I write. 

Spring arrived over the days leading to the weekend of Saraswati Pujo, which still comes across like bits from a dream.

I was wondering a bit about things from the past.

• Every Spring, and barring a few years, since the time I was 21 and then 22 I used to feel a weird, abnormal and unreal surge of the absolute promise of life making absolute sense. There was, during those periods, a lot of activity within the mind, strange connections formed from God-knows-where, a tumult of ideas would incessantly explode in the mind and within whatever it is that I happen to be and I used to feel that I had chanced upon the meaning of being human and experienced a profound love. I’d merrily or not so merrily gabble with Fimh in unbroken conversations which spanned days and nights till my inevitable plummet. Much of it was most likely the firings of a lonely and abnormal mind which probably created a reality of its own and could not distinguish between the real and the forking paths of fantasy and the imagination; I can’t say that I really know for sure whether God and Lucifer get together for a tête-à-tête when either God or maybe even Lucifer is feeling lonely. But all of it was not a delusion – so I feel and two decades down the line.

• While putting together batches of power point slides, I’ve been reminded again of my one and only video-making experience almost exactly a couple of years ago with The Beatles song ‘Here comes the sun’…there wasn’t much sun that year.

• For ten years when I was staying in the West I had two hobbies, which built into three once I had enough savings and very quickly (which didn’t matter much later because the savings didn’t fulfill the purpose for which it was being saved even though it did come to my use). Reading books from the school and public libraries, going to the river and then buying books by the dozen. I know I didn’t read enough or read anywhere as much as somebody else but I did read a bit and forgot a lot of what I read. I considered this recently and in my objective manner: I don’t miss anything from the past in terms of material items and places and things but sometimes I absent-mindedly go to search for a book in the evening or am reminded of a book which I think is on the shelf – and it isn’t. Then I grin for I am reminded that when many girls and boys, women and men around me were spending money on gadgets, clothes, shoes, cosmetics and stuff of that order – I had, if even once in a while, felt an indescribable and even  smug delight for buying books. I used to survey my four shelves and would feel like a collector and a surrogate-keeper of books; books which I had collected and books which I was safe-keeping until they were posted or delivered some time with smiles on both sides. I couldn’t get any of the books back with me. All my bitty savings would have been spent on shipping the four shelves of books.

• Visiting the river was another thing I did through the ten years. On some random eves, I almost miss water bodies in this city, where I can go and sit. In this regard and in no other I think I am a little like Thoreau. I would like a pond of my own. Once every couple of months, I even think of buying a little zen water fountain. I could go and visit the holy river but that seems too much of a detour and I tell myself that it’s much too far away and that that same amount of time could be spent on activities which can bear fruit and blossom before too late. The famous lake is fairly close but one unfortunate evening, a pack of dogs decided to take offense at me (or maybe they were barking happily on seeing me but I rather doubt it) and I know I moved faster than the dogs. I can’t remember whether it was the last year or the year before. I ran faster than a dog when I was a little over 8 years old and on two occasions, and even if I didn’t break out into a sprint three decades later – I moved fast. Maybe I really should have trained for that Olympic 100 metres gold medal? But 'with all factors remaining constant', I’d have still aimed at doing these workshops though after winning that gold...I did sit near a spot of water on a smooth stump of a tree, about a week ago. A gardener gently chided me when I sat there on Monday late afternoon for a wee bit while chomping on a chicken butter fry and having absolutely divine memories and rather inexplicable memories run through my head and even ghostly memories, and the gardener didn’t seem too terribly displeased when I told him that I wouldn’t disrupt his plants and small trees.

• This article, which Suvro da sent me to read some weeks ago made me write a long and rather rambling essay. I won’t go through the points about jargon and atomization here. But to take some points: I was reminded how intensely and miserably I had started questioning the value of the social sciences or the humanities myself and for the second time in my life, about ten years ago. I found my lost compass and anchor when and where I did.The problem, I used to think when I was in academe myself, is that a majority of formal social scientists seem to think that talking about values or morals or too much talk about inculcating or nurturing meaningful values is non-scientific. And that is also because I think that not too many people have very clear ideas themselves about what their own values are or why. The last time a social psychologist actually talked of self-transcendence or self-actualization or self and identity as complex wholes was in the early 20^th century. After that a majority of social psychologists in the latter parts of the 20^th and through the 21^st century decided that those were not matters that deserved attention and that it was on the whole all airy-fairy stuff or non-measurable and therefore unimportant. It was far more important to study the significance between childhood obesity and self-esteem or conduct an nth study on some aspect of race or gender or class (something that Dr. Cole mentions too in his article). Dr. Cole in his article doesn’t come out clearly and say exactly why and how the humanities are useful to individuals. Personally, I think the social sciences and humanities share a similarity in their essence. First, they do not teach one how to fix a broken appliance or to build a bridge or send a rocket to space or to produce HYV seeds or to find the causes of diseases in humans or animals or to build a gadget that can detect gravitational waves from more than a billion years ago or to understand how nature, sentient and non-sentient life-forms work at a scientific level. Secondly, they do not and are not in a position to propose laws about humans or about nature (even in the sciences for that matter, Darwin’s contribution is known still as a theory – while Newton’s Law still holds good unless we enter the realm of sub-atomic particles and I should be the last person to enter that scientific territory). Thirdly, to state what the humanities and social sciences do and borrowing from Schumacher’s distinction between convergent and divergent issues – the way I see it, the humanities and social sciences deal with divergent issues. Here, no quick fixes are available. Applied science can tell us how to make a gun or a bomb – it does not tell us whether and when we should use either. Science can tell us how cancer or a particular disease spreads. It tells us how to treat a disease. It does not say much on how we must and should take care of individuals carrying a disease (or why some diseases and the individuals carrying the abnormalities are stigmatized). Applied science can tell us how to build dams and different kinds of dams and generate hydro-electric power – it stays quiet for the most part about matters concerning human relocation and the means of recompensing those who are asked to leave their homes and land. Applied science can even tell us the most efficient way to kill a human or an animal – but does it have much to say about the moral act of killing? Applied science can help us devise faster and more efficient ways of travelling and communicating – it has very little to say on how faster and more efficient leads to more substance and meaning or genuine feelings being generated. Applied science can come up with various gadgets that make housework and other chores physically less demanding – does it have much to say about what I should do with the extra time that I now have? That is where the humanities and the social sciences matter or should matter. There are more reasons of course. Far more than I have listed and individuals of a different and much higher order have elaborated and written and talked about the importance of the sciences, humanities and the social sciences and what matter in the ‘making of genuine civilizations’. And when I think of these disciplines mattering – I cannot help but think of the truly great and it’s not PhDs and certificates which make for the truly great. 

• I was looking at one random diary from 1996 and I was very unimpressed with my range of thoughts and expression. Much of it is boring. But I found a couple of humorous bits with one letter/diary entry addressed to no other than God and where I tried to wheedle Him into granting me a favour. The first of them is right after the First Paper in Sociology of the Part I examinations (incidentally I got the University highest in that paper, which had one topic dealing with ‘human freedom and determinism’) where I’d been bellowing about a miserable exam-taking experience, “…[I couldn’t] even remember the words I wanted to use or remember! My mind was just enveloped in a dense fog (now that bit does sound familiar still, sadly enough) and I was struggling with things that I never had to worry about before. What’s the use of going on like this? Oh heck! How does it matter anymore? – Why did it have to happen now? – all I wanted to do was to get through one more [exam] and then another and another, I guess. And then what? – Get a great job, a fat paycheque, a car and my dream-house. That’s all. I don’t want anything else from life. Dammit! If only there was one single thing where I could be the best. Perhaps there is – only problem is that I’ve got to find it. Cheerlessly yours…”

• It’s odd which memories are preserved. Last week I was reminded of the bits that I actually remember from Aranyak and one bit is where Satyacharan raises the question of improvement versus happiness. Unnati could mean self-improvement or possibly success. Satyacharan is quite clear about what he thinks matters more. He says it’s always happiness that should matter. People who obsess too much about improvement lose their way, become blunt and forget to be happy. He’s talking of course of people who are motivated by purely material indicators of success as ends in themselves. But it got me thinking of another connection. I’ve felt that if one can improve oneself so as to make another individual happy then one might chance upon and discover an incomparable happiness and even bliss. It sort of feels like chasing the golden deer...