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 20th century. After that a majority of social psychologists in the latter parts of the 20th and through the 21st 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...
