Tag Archives: Thoughts

Full of Emptiness (Taken off from @parmeshs’s column)

07 Saturday Apr 2012

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I recently read Parmesh Shahani’s (Editor-at-Large, Verve Magazine) latest column in Verve Magazine’s April 2012 issue. He speaks about Kenya Hara’s (Japanese creative director of global brand Muji, writer, professor) recent visit to India and his talk at the Godrej India Culture Lab.

“Empty does not mean simple…. Empty is about the possibility of being filled. It is about alternatives, about potentiality.”

I think in any consumerist culture, you tend to fill voids, spaces and minds with a lot of junk. Particularly in a socially-networked world, you are not only filling your mind with things that interest you, but also things that appear to happen to and interest everyone else you know. In much the way that if your walls are not free to host that work of art you may find along the way, or your home is cluttered with so much stuff that you can barely find your way to the door, our minds tend to be filled – all the time. From the moment we wake to right before we sleep, we are unable to declutter our minds. If there is no space to think, then how will we ever become creators or visionaries?

Empty spaces and empty minds are not valued in developing cultures – because there is a greed to own, consume, buy, fill – to prove that one has arrived. That one exists. It may very well be true that one exists when there is nothing to prove or display. The very void that scares us, gives us the chance to grow. It is about time we distanced ourselves from consuming, and gave our minds a chance to breathe.

Baby levellers

22 Friday Apr 2011

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To save time, we chose, on the spur of the moment, to go to the local park nearby instead of our country club. By we, I mean hubby, baby and I. As we got out of our chauffeur-driven car, assembled our one-touch baby travel system in front of curious eyes and strolled into the park, I could see what a picture we made. Designer shades, sundress, chi-chi baby outfit…it felt incongruous among the many who strolled along people-watching by the sea. As I reached forward to wipe some baby drool, I looked up and met the eyes of a simple, sari-clad lower-middle-class lady, who was resting her feet on a nearby park bench. She had a baby tucked into the crook of her arm.

There would be many differences between the upbringing of that child and mine, largely material in nature – those of opportunities. And yet they looked peaceful. Flashback to a conversation with a few new mothers, who spoke in feverish agony about the sorry state of schools in the city – the horrendous situation of demand and supply, where their kids may not make it to the best schools, may have to do with second tier and even then wheedle their way in. How different is life for a person with means and one without? Both often need to snatch opportunities and push to get in – just to different places. One believes that the best is a basic right, the other hopes that somewhere along the way a better life may appear.

What is a better life? A bigger classroom, a fancy school bus, a posh car, smarter teachers? Life itself is a great teacher and sometimes, we forget the most basic of lessons. We are all born with the right to live. How we choose to live is a complex twist of fate, luck and opportunity. Motherhood can’t be that different across the board – every baby will poop, cry and laugh while learning to crawl. Possibly one will poop in the comfort of Pampers and soft linen and soundless air conditioning. But at the end of the day, each process remains the same. Their self-worth should be independent of the quality of their lives, rather should depend upon their desire to be someone.

Can the two be separated? Aren’t we constantly defining ourselves by our ability to attract wealth and power and the symbols of such derivates? I believe a society’s material image emerges from the “best” that we want to give our children. We believe that a fluffy eiderdown will make a better person or human being when maybe a hard bed is what is required. (I don’t mean that one should make a child suffer the rigours of life when there is no need to.) The fancy trappings are – if we admit it – for ourselves. To make ourselves feel better about being parents. In our desire to provide the best, we often create the worst. A society of weakening self-worth. All children need love, affection and food. The rest is – as the word states – immaterial.

iManage iNDIA

08 Friday Apr 2011

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Our democracy has given us the ability to make so many choices – a few decades ago, we chose to leave for better opportunities elsewhere, recently we choose to return because of plum prospects in India. But whenever we have to choose to be alert citizens, we choose the easy road – the road of oblivion, escapism and feigned ignorance. Even worse – something I am guilty of, too – cynicism and haplessness.

When an elderly man decides to fast, we tweet. When scams are exposed, we update our status in horror. When our status quo is breached we respond with anger, criticism even shock, but no solutions.

We, the urban intelligentsia, have found no way out, and have preferred to let the zoo animals that are our bureaucrats and politicians rule roost while we hatch eggs – shaking our intellectual manes over the evils at fine soirées.

We may #tweetforwickets in a strong show of national spirit, we may cry in emotional joy at national wins, but we make no move to change what’s wrong.

It’s true, the answers are often not with us, there needs to be a collective consciousness that decides to take no more sh*t. Everytime there is someone who inspires us, or something that appalls us, we make a stir, think about a rising, and then, in one collective motion, sit our asses right back into our plush la-z-boy recliners.

It’s unfortunate that we have the option to leave, or the money to ignore the crap that goes on in our backyard, or the cynicism to empty every full glass – because the moment we run out of our options, we may be fasting like good man Anna Hazare for our future, as our men steal every morsel from our homes.

Gandhi fasted for independence, its a shame that 60+ years hence, a man has to fast merely to get a bill noticed in parliament. Elle Woods would be charmed. Tsunamis may be hitting the Pacific, but it is the wasteland of Indian inaction that requires attention.

Lack of Will

18 Friday Mar 2011

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Possibly one of the more unacceptable human failings is a lack of will power. To deal with what life has to offer, one needs a strong will — and when I encounter a weak mind, I am filled with a deep sense of regret, frustration and even annoyance at a life, moment and time wasted.

The very fact that your emotions, desires and wants – even habits — overpower your better sense and mind points to a flagging spirit and not much steadiness in the soul.

What prevents us from fighting the battle to better ourselves, to control ourselves? Possibly nothing more than our own self. I believe we often lack the courage, conviction and self-belief to make us who we can be and remain stranded as who we are – floating aimlessly and limply along a mire of weakening self-worth.

We invent reasons for being such, turn a deaf ear to those who try to help us, and basically put up a wall against change. Because it means giving up whom we have got accustomed to being. We believe that staying so will give us greater joy than changing. That change implies giving pleasurable things up. What we fail to realize is that it means being proud of whom we can be — replacing the weak, irascible spirit with an infinitely positive one.

Those who wish not to – or can’t – change, are ones who appear to be listening, but never do, who have a ‘but…’ ready at every instance, whose glass is always half empty, coz they can’t stop drinking from it.

Present Perfect

05 Wednesday Jan 2011

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Most of us spend our time waiting for exceptional moments to find us – whether it is in the act of doing nothing and whiling time away or in the the act of doing – staying busy for most part. We don’t make an effort to actually do something memorable or exceptional, we don’t look at moments in our day as those that define us. Taking pleasure in small things, may be considered being sentimental – but isn’t that what separates man from machine, man from animal? The fact that our brain is constantly connecting dots to emote, to create a myriad different emotions and feelings which lead to experiences and new thoughts and discoveries. As the days roll by, sometimes it helps to take a step back and discover the power of the present – the only way to move forward.

Sometimes, tomorrow isn’t another day.

04 Saturday Dec 2010

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Somehow the wonder of a new life is deeply offset by the news of a sudden, unexpected, accidental death – of a person who has not yet lived his life in full, who has a long way of dynamism to go, who has shared his dreams, thoughts, ambitions with the world and is a book with many empty pages. I look at my newborn child next to me, with a world of dynamism lying ahead and I think about the acquaintance lost, he who had a world of dynamism still planned, unfulfilled lying ahead of him. He didn’t know the end was tomorrow – his last tweet was, ‘And tomorrow is another day…’ There is remorse in loss, there is relief that the loss is not your own, there is a hollow pang for those whose loss it is to bear, there is a fear of having to ever face such a loss, there is trepidation over how in the world his family would come to terms with this loss…. Death in it’s uncertain, unpredictable and ruthless form is a tough act to deal with – and as you walk through life, you realise that embracing life means accepting death.

Socially Inept to Social King: Facebook, a result of Zuckerberg’s personality

07 Sunday Nov 2010

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There is an interesting connection between building a revolutionary, globally popular social networking site – even making the term ‘social network’ a huge catch phrase, when you are a socially inept person. Not that you don’t have social skills – that might be an overstatement from a person who doesn’t know Mark Zuckerberg at all, but based on the possibly opinionated and one-sided movie The Social Network (and the book Accidental Billionaries) – but rather, a person who never quite fits in. What is clear, from various popular accounts, including that of friends who have met him in person, is that he’s not exactly a people person. In much the tradition of geeks (Sean Parker being an exception?), Zuckerberg prefers his own company, intelligence, a computer and the company of like-minded others rather than mingle with regular civilians.

Whatever may be his motivation, what is hugely interesting is the irony in the situation that someone who isn’t at ease in the company of others, creates a space where people can easily form social connections. Or maybe there isn’t any irony there, it is merely an organic growth. When you realize that you may need a shield to stalk people, make friends and be a social voyeur, you realize that there is a very strong space to fill – a void in the lives of many people. How many people are cool? How many people actually fit in? Barely any. But there are millions others who are looking for a platform to interact, fit in and hang out. And a platform that doesn’t even require effort – just sit in your pajamas at home and do so.

Zuckerberg was filling a gap that was hugely missing from people’s lives, which would have arrived sooner or later on the Internet – it was just his time, place and ability to jump on the idea, recognizing it’s importance. While the Winklevoss twins may have understood the implication, they were still building something exclusive and ivy league – had they even managed to get the site going their way, they would never have had the vision of a socially inept person to make Facebook what it is, because they would probably have missed the point about what’s missing in everyone’s life, which Zuckerberg would inevitably keep stumbling upon, recognizing it from his own life. For instance, if someone came up to the Winklevosses and asked them about a girl in their class, they would respond naturally with an answer about the girl in their class, getting the scoop – they wouldn’t think about it the way Zuckerberg would – as a great way to have a ‘relationship status’ update online, because Zuckerberg wouldn’t be likely to be in on the relationships of people in his class, but with Facebook he – and others like him – could.

The ‘uncool’ Zuckerberg made the coolest thing to hit the Internet, making himself the ‘coolest’ person to know in the bargain. Whether things went down in the history of Facebook the way it is portrayed in the book/ film, and whether the people are as portrayed in the book/ film is left to be seen or speculated, but what remains true is that Facebook is what it is, because Zuckerberg is who he is.

There is no “I” in Teamwork…

25 Monday Oct 2010

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It’s an observation I picked up from Twitter – that teamwork doesn’t have an “i”. And while that’s simple to understand, it means the making or breaking of a country. Sounds monumental? It is. Let’s start with what triggered this thought. Actor Imran Khan’s column in HT today (see excerpt below) on teamwork in movies and my catching Raajneeti on TV last night.

Imran Khan talks about how movies are made by teams, even if they are temporary, they are loyal:
“I wanted to talk about how we all come together for a few months, work till we fall down from exhaustion and then go our separate ways. You see, most people never realise just how much teamwork plays a part in what we do. An actor could be giving the performance of a lifetime, but if the cameraman doesn’t capture it correctly, nobody will ever see it. Each and every shot depends upon each and every person from each and every department doing exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment. It’s stressful and demanding… but it also creates a kind of bond that few other things can. For example, as I sit and write this, there is a game of cricket underway. The actors, director, ADs and light boys are all taking turns batting and bowling, and there is no hierarchy. Or, when we’ve been shooting for hours and it’s past lunch time, no one complains, because we’re all in it together. Nobody starts eating until everyone has broken for lunch.

The fate of a film can never be predicted; it may do well, it may disappear without a trace. I’ve seen both happen. But that can’t change the way we approach our work. We still have to give it everything we have, and we still have to come together and work as a team. And that’s reflected in the term for an entire cast and crew of a film; it’s called a unit.” (Full column here.)

On the other hand, there is politics, where there are teams and more teams and even more teams that spend their time bickering, playing games, manipulating and buying each other out. While some people thought Raajneeti was a bit extreme, I find it quite a relevant movie of the time – where politics today is not what the Greeks intended it to be when they coined the term.

Ref: Wikipedia: “Politics (from Greek πολιτικος, [politikós]: «citizen», «civilian»), is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to behavior within civil governments, but politics has been observed in other group interactions, including corporate, academic, and religious institutions. It consists of ‘social relations involving authority or power’ and refers to the regulation of a political unit, and to the methods and tactics used to formulate and apply policy.”

What is the problem with our country, or many other countries today? Is it really what we learnt in civics and political science and sociology, the things we rattle off, the terms that NRIs sit back in their la-z-boys and shake their heads over while munching betel nuts? Corruption, over-population, illiteracy…these are the buzz words. Yes, these problem exist, and yes, there are important issues that need to be solved for our country to move forward. But is this the real problem at the very foundation of our issues? I think not, I think it is a genuine lack of team spirit. We don’t think like one nation, one people. Whether it is because of religion, caste, money, social structure or an age-old belief in hierarchy…or even just survival of the fittest (because we’ve had to survive to make it here – fight to get anywhere), it has made us individualistic. At the very most, we may include our family in our concerns, but that is also getting few and far between and we find ourselves largely driven by selfish concerns. Some of our wealthiest people do not contribute to charity, rather build towering monuments to denote their status. Recently, while visiting the Jai Vakeel school for the mentally challenged, I learned that the government hasn’t paid salaries there in four months. So even when something good is being done, they can’t simply cough up the change to keep it going, but they can pocket the change from CWG and other big projects. While lining one’s pockets, can’t one at the very least ensure that some good comes of some of the tax payers’ money?

Another quote popularised on Twitter, “Indians are privately smart and publicly dumb” – is exactly the same thing, we don’t believe in treating our country like our own. The streets are not ours, we can trash them. The public loos are not in our house, we can leave them filthy. The movie theatre isn’t our own, we can mess it up with food and drink. Publicly, we notoriously behave like pigs in a pigsty, and yet, we follow stringent hygiene and cleaning rules in our homes – remove your shoes before coming in, they will track germs from the outside in! Is it that we believe that someone else will take care of our mess? Is it simply because we don’t care enough about anyone else that it doesn’t matter?

The reason we admire sports so much is that as humans we crave bonding and togetherness – and there are very few places that show mutual respect and warmth for other humans than in teams that come together for a common cause. I admire the film industry – despite their bickering and issues and camps, a group of people come together and work hard to make a film – even if they never see each other again once it’s complete, they gave it their unselfish best when required. In fact, the movie Chak De is a metaphor for Indian society – we are too mentally segregated to think like one, and when we do, we can possibly reach heights we have never considered possible.

Why can’t we as social citizens do that? Why must we treat other people as “others” and not a part of our own team, own country, own race? Why can’t we think like “we” rather than “I”? If we were to, everything would be very different. A simple shift in perspective would make a huge difference in thought and a huge difference in where we are as a race or nation.

Short-sightedness – where we can’t see beyond our own noses and houses, is what makes us an ultimately selfish race. And this is the root of the trouble – global warming, social evils, unhappiness all boils down to being able to think as a bigger identity than oneself. Can we be bigger than we think we want to be?

 

What’s Wrong With Anjaana Anjaani?

21 Thursday Oct 2010

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I had great expectations from Anjaana Anjaani – based on the phenomenal music and energy during the promos and videos. With the reviews sounding disappointing, I still went to watch it out of sheer curiosity and I came back wondering what it is that Indian film audiences want in a movie. Agreed, the premise of the movie was about suicide, but there are hardly any dark elements in the film, except for when PC actually tries to kill herself, and is nearly successful. The film technically is slick – good camera work, nice styling and locales, power-packed performance from Priyanka Chopra (PC) and a very credible performance from Ranbir Kapoor, who one has to admit, can definitely act. He lived the role, though possibly with less zest than PC simply because of the nature of their onscreen characters. The dialogues are good for most part, some even quite crisp, and the story at least has a different premise, which is more than what we can say for the other generic love stories being made lately. In fact, it’s grim premise has genuine resonance with a contemporary youth – they tend to go into depths over love or money, and finding meaning in their lives becomes a lost cause. And finding that meaning when living out what they believe are their last days, with the person they least expect to, is existential in it’s execution. Were this to have been a Hollywood film, the same multiplex audience would have probably accepted it as a different kind of chick-flick and watched it. In Indian cinema, it is rejected in concept. There were parts that were slow and dragged, but that can be expected from any film. Overall though, I thought it worked – more than many of the big-banner love stories of this year – and yet it fared under expectations. I’m truly at a loss to figure out what it is that people found lacking in the film, especially when people go to watch movies like Housefull and Golmaal etc. I believe the Indian audiences demand sheer drama in romance, or mindless humour. Actually, it still remains a mystery to see why certain films work and others don’t. I’m curious to see the fate of Jhootha Hi Sahi – Abbas Tyrewala’s next, after Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na, which I felt was a small big film. A simple premise, filled with so much promise and character. Easily a film watchable multiple times, particularly because of the freshness of the casting and the sharp editing. Does Abbas manage it again, without Aamir?

The Ritual of Being Ritualistic

13 Monday Sep 2010

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Something very cool happened this year, possibly the only cool thing about religious events. On Sept 11, 2010, Ganesh Utsav, the Jain festival and Eid all fell on the same day. Of course there was mayhem in the city in terms of noise, traffic and chaos, and there were enough nostalgic elements in the city that found it “so lovely” that bright celebrations were sparking all over. However, the point is that special days can be one and the same, they can be celebrated differently, but we lay too much importance on the rituals surrounding the festivals rather than the point of the festival. Fasting, doing ‘darshan’, breaking the fasts, wishing people, it keeps people busy and makes them feel good about being busy in the religious way, but it really leads them nowhere. What changes from one month, one week or one day to the next?

Here are two examples of ritualistic followings which I know from close observation. All the other followings, world-over, are equally ritualistic in their own way and all boil down to the same conclusion.

Ganesh Chaturthi
You bring a Ganpati murti (idol) home, most often decorated in toxic colours and invite people over to take blessings, leave money behind that gets distributed amongst undeserving priests or among street children who use it for drugs and alcohol, immerse the idol in the already toxic water after a lot of banging and singing on the street, creating massive amounts of noise pollution that will probably even deafen the Gods.
– The soft muted music that was to bring one closer to the divine in terms of shlokas and words with meaning, have been replaced by loud DJ-driven music that play the latest techno and raucous bollywood hits, where youngsters get together and dance inebriated on the streets, blocking traffic and hassling all the people in the neighborhood.
– There are neighborhood collections of donations – not for improving society, but to provide funds for the DJ, alcohol, trucks and idol-trappings.
– The colours, paint and glitter used on the idols is killing our marine life, and even though it is on an idol of worship, it doesn’t miraculously save our marine life and water. It enters our eco system and poisons us.
– During these house visits to take blessings – it becomes a means for social gathering, where people attempt to be on their best behavior, but people being people end up discussing the most inane things in front of their revered idol. Such as gossip about other people and needling those with opinions.
– While the idol is at home, one must abstain from non-veg food, alcohol etc in its vicinity. There are those so addicted to these items that they can’t wait for the idol to leave and be immersed, so that they can go back to their daily drink.
– We use offerings to the idol as a means of eating anything – sweets are offered to the idol (apparently rich sweetmeats please the Gods – wasn’t that just a ruse for priests to make away with these sweetmeats?) and that becomes ‘prasad’ – blessed by the Gods and that can be and should be consumed by people generously.
– In the homes, as there is increasing staff problems during this festival (most of the staff leaves to go to their home town to celebrate), war breaks out at home because these sweetmeats MUST be made at all costs to ensure that the right offering is done.
– Most of the staff, who struggle to make ends meet, borrow money to buy expensive idols and celebrate this festival as a means to please the Gods. They have yet, in all these years, not got any form of deliverance; but the quest continues. They will leave a cushy job that doesn’t allow them to take full leave during Ganesh Chaturthi, even if it leaves them jobless and in debt.

While the sentiment and faith is indeed strong and full of conviction, to what end is this being done? Are they leading a better life (not materialistically, but morally)? Does it tell them that there is a way to the divine, and it should be followed with a desire to do good, less harm and a genuine improvement of the soul? Or is it merely a way to party in the name of religion?

 

The Jain Paryushan
Jainism is a way of life – a strict means to leading an austere and controlled existence, which is supposed to be devoid of unnecessary trappings of religious rituals. The result of the influence of Hinduism into the sects of Jainism and the growth of the Jains as a moneyed class of people, has lead to a strong dilution of the original principles and made it chance for Jains to carry a ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude. In this week, called Paryushan, Jains practice abstinence – from certain foods and if possible, fast as well. It is a means to build the will power of the mind and to control the body’s urges towards baser instincts by solidifying the mind’s role in the decision-making. While in concept it works, it has led to many people doing this half-heartedly, because they have been cajoled into doing so by family. There is no desire to withhold for a greater purpose of mental peace, rather do it to prove to the other that they weren’t ‘bad’. There is no whole-heartedness in this desire. While Jains believe in stringent non-violence, they follow the principles according to their convenience: don’t eat garlic, potatoes and onions (because as underground roots they contain more living organisms than those growing above the surface), but appear to be unconcerned by silk and leather goods, where one silk sari kills multiple silk worms. During their festival, it becomes mandatory for others to visit those who have fasted, making it a mad rush on the one morning from one ‘parna’ to another. These parnas where the fastee breaks his/her fast with some very simple food, becomes taxing to the household as they need to take care of the fastee and provide for food for the visitors. In certain families there appears to be a display of wealth in the lines of a wedding ceremony, with jewelry and clothes et al. Austerity and control over material desires anyone? During the week, as the fasts continue, the evenings are given up to religious discourses, where you listen to a priest talk about why these things are important, being a better person and leading a better life. Maybe the hunger deadens the brain cells, but the people who attend these discourses, look absorbed by the ideas and often find themselves in meaningless material pursuits a few days later – the kind that involve fighting over money within the family. The week over, people wish each other ‘Micchami Dukkadam’ which means if I have hurt you in any way in the past, please forgive me. This universal ‘Sorry’ makes everything okay and allows people – a nice ‘get out of jail free’ card – to go back to their ways until the next year’s apology. And the week over, people rush out in hordes to every restaurant and eat to their heart’s content. Abstinence, abstinence.

Every religion and festival leads to the same thing: leading a better, more moral life and being a good person. At the end of the day, all the rituals do is misguide us into thinking we are becoming better merely by performing them, but until we change from the inside out, we remain shallow and hollow and fake. These are just external trappings that do not fix attitudes and mind-sets, rather give people excuses to be whoever they like, whilst making it okay by performing these rituals. The ritualization of religion – the strongest example being Hinduism and all its varied sects and facets, has mired people into believing that rituals will take one towards a better life, towards deliverance. Rituals are like drugs – they have a feel-good factor associated with them, which make you think you’re feeling good, but actually lead you deeper into the mire of a material world from which you can’t escape. The more you do it, the more you are afraid of what life will become when you stop doing it. The more you do it, the more your mind gets weakened, gripping the rituals as a means to a better end, not being able to do without.

If we snapped out of the weakness of relying on rituals to make us feel like better people or to prove to the world that we are better people, and actually became better people – through our actions, inactions, thoughts, words, beliefs and societal and civic duties, we wouldn’t need religious rituals, just a simple philosophy on leading a better life. And life would become better – for everyone around. Rituals don’t fix the crime problem or over population, or poverty or illiteracy or unemployment or environmental degeneration or terrorism….rituals simply add to the list of mankind’s problems. If we are more humane and less ritualistic material beings, these problems would start solving themselves. That would please God a lot more than our worldly offerings.