Saint of Lost Causes – 1

“There is always the speech.”
“The speech? Seriosuly? A speech.”
“Yes. It’s your inauguration speech. It is customary for all new entrants to make a speech. A sort of entry acceptance.”
“You do know I am mortally afraid of making speeches, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t use the word mortally.”
“Let’s talk reality and not semantics.”
“You will have to make a speech and that’s a reality.”

And she went away, just like she had come: out of no where. Although I was still not sure. Why a speech? You just move on and go in. Not that you have a choice but what’s it about speech? I thought it was some kind of a joke because it was known that I was really afraid of public speaking. I couldn’t even say a nervous ‘Hi’ to a crowd of ten or more from a high rise platform via a mic let alone address countless people from the dais. But the finality in her tone made it clear to me: I will have to give a speech if I wanted to get in. Otherwise they would leave me hanging for God knows how much time. So I embarked upon a journey down my experiences, memories and thoughts to get some material for the act. On normal occassions I could have googled a good speech but this was not a normal occasion. It was special, besides, I had a feeling that even Google did not index pages with the speeches for occassions like this one.

Life moves on…

It’s that day again. Two years ago today at roughly the time of this post a sweeper in the faculty building of IIT Kanpur saw the end of a dream. My friend Swapnil had died. We had an exam that day. I remember it, Chemistry (CHM201). He never came to give that exam. He simply left us.

After his death, there were discussions. Why did he do it? Why students do this? What should be done to curb this? Was it even a suicide? And the like. That however didn’t matter much because neither did anything happen and nor did it do (not that it was possible) to Swapnil. Media however had a fields day: another way to have a go on the IIT system – how it sucked and was inappropriate and all.

I had imagined today that day. How we will all move on and forget him…a closed chapter in our lives or may be an omitted one. That I suppose is the way of the world. We all will graduate, pass out, live our lives and then wither. He however will always be young bikka, always in the second year. How much do I hate him!!

It didn’t sink in somehow at that time that he will not be there to return home and enjoy the day with his family and then come back here to miss them. To be the part of jokes, classes and things. To accompany me on Pushpak Express. To give me notes and information about lectures. To pester me with doubts. To take my lab-reports. To answer those scraps on Orkut. To accept that testimonial I wrote for him…to make more out of the moments together. He robbed us of himself.

But now I see it, it doesn’t matter much to most of the people. His parents, yes; other family members, may be, but others…well most of us are happy today that end-sems have ended and worried that placements are coming. We are busy playing games on computers, watching movies and TV shows, playing cricket, celebrating achievements, having treats in restaurants, roaming around happily or preparing for the life which is yet to come.

After his death, at a Hall function, the Hall President of Hostel Two (Satti at that time) requested DOSA to light an Agarbatti at a hand made portrait of Bikka. This was our idea of remembering him and praying for him. DOSA did that but later he said very angrily that he wasn’t ready for this and he or the Wardens, I don’t know, said that the act was done as if Bikka were a Martyr and were furious about it.

He was a weak person for those we believed he committed suicide. For us he was just a friend whom we used to tease whenever we got a chance and he would just smile at that…always. He wasn’t a Martyr. Why do you need to be a martyr to be remembered?

I just buzzed a few friends, common or otherwise, about the fact that he died today and the replies were:

1. Not the date though. Chalo Chalein MT.

[On saying that this was the date:] Yaad nahi thi mujhe. Hmm…I really don’t know what to say. I hope he finds peace. Chalo MT chalein. Ho aaye kya?

2. Hmm [and then fifteen minutes later he buzzes again and:] Indian, Indian, what did you die for? Indian says, nothing at all.

[I ask him what the hell he means. He says:] Nothin’…the futility of death…of someone ‘they’ don’t care.

[I ask him who are 'they' and he says:] Anyone…the society maybe…the authorities in this case. How long has it been?

[I remind him that it's been two years.] Two years? Okay…

3. Ohh! Any thing happening? Kuchh ho raha hai ? [He means something to remember him. And on further chat:] Kaun yaad rakhta hia yaar?

[I say then that life moves on et cetera, he agrees and...]

Khair, sone jaa raha hia kya? Lakshya dekhni ho to aaja.

4. Is it a question or reminder? Saw it on your status…to yaad aaya [I had put it on my status: Life moves on...but still...miss you Swapnil ]

[He wants a book: What do you care what other people think? by Richard Feynman and so just after the above:] Book mili? [I tell him no, so:]

5. Haan yaar. I saw your status message… was just thinking about it.

[I tell him that I couldn't help but buzz and he says:]

Haan yaar. I am sorry, I was late to respond. I was in toilet, but thinking about him.

[And with this guy I had a chat for half an hour in which we discussed a case of attempted suicide in our batch and then discussed medical complications with a girl in our batch and the fact that the former had actually sent an SMS to latter before the attempt.]

6. Kya be placement chal rahi hai and tu aisi khabar suna raha hai.

[I tell him that it's no more a khabar. He says:] I mean Yaadein. [ I apologise and close the chat window]

7. Aise yaad nahi tha, but now I do.

[Then he sends me his latest story about his two crushes and:] You got to read it now and feedback chahiye fir. Though I know you will enjoy reading it kyunki tujhe dono ke baare mein sab pata hai.

[He puts a smiley. I start reading the story transferred via Google Talk. It has an Emily Dickinson poem to start with. I read her name: Emily Dick-in-son...and so I am already enjoying reading it.]

Life moves on, that’s why it is called life. It’s dynamic, ever changing. It has no place for the dead or the static. It flows and takes things in the direction it wants. The static things, the rocks in the way, they just get eroded – memories fade away. And there is no escaping this fact. There’s no life without accepting this. So I guess the people above, they are doing the right thing. Bikka is a person of the past. I am not saying that one should remember him always and be sad all the time. But somehow, still, in my heart, I feel bad. Should we forget someone this soon? Should we move on? What should we do? Or do we even need to do something, anything? And I feel as if I am writing this post and kept that status message just to show that I remembered him when I was pouring nicotine in my burnt out body at MT and was looking back at my life. Fuck!

Light was brighter and the flowers more fragrant when you were around Bikka. This was what I had written then, this is what I am writing today too. Rest in peace. Amen!

Arvind.

PS: After posting here, I buzzed Kavi and had this chat. I am not saying it cleared my mind but Kavi did say something that ringed a bell…

_________________

Arvind: Bikka died today

remember?

Sent at 8:45 AM on Friday

Kaviraj: ohh

dont remember

and that’s bad

we all shud remember

Arvind: haan shayad

pata nahi

life has moved on

Kaviraj: oh yaar

Arvind: I am confused

I am feleing [read feeling] bad and confused

nashta kar liya?

Kaviraj: matlab…kuchh karna chahiye shayad

haan

kar liya

Arvind: k

Kaviraj: sun

aaj hi hai na

??

Arvind: haan man

Sent at 8:49 AM on Friday

Kaviraj: at least we can put some status mssg

Arvind: yaar

maine lagaya tha

but

Kaviraj: or we all shud put the same

Arvind: fir laga jaise me show off kar raha hoon

bahut bura laga

that he was our friend

Kaviraj: na na

Arvind: and that he died

Kaviraj: thode time ke liye to lagana hi chahiye

Arvind: it si somethig [read is something] for us and us alone

but then

I dunno man

I am confused

may be as solidarity yes

but I will not ask anyone else to do so

just this: Bikke…rest in peace?

or what

i dunno

Kaviraj: dont be confused….it’s not good to forget someone so soon…

Arvind: yeah man

was just writing this on my blog

couldn’t help

Kaviraj: hmm

Arvind: you should read what replies I got from some of the people I told this about

but they have moved on

can’t blame them

Kaviraj: if i were dead and i was watching you all….i’d like you all to remember me once on this day

Arvind:

so what do we put?

Sent at 8:52 AM on Friday

Kaviraj: you are good at that part

i’ll copy it

Sent at 8:54 AM on Friday

Arvind: le

yahi samajh aaya

yahi pehle bhi likha tha

Kaviraj: ok

sahi hai

Arvind: chal yaar

so raha me

Kaviraj: ok

Arvind: man dukh gaya

bye

Kaviraj: sleep tight

Sent at 9:03 AM on Friday

Kaviraj: wet dreams

Arvind:

yeah
_________________

Life moves on…

Jonah and the silver watch

“Please father, please let me have a look at it. Please let me have it just this once.” Jonah pleaded to his father.

 Jonah had seen it with father ever since he came to sense. He dearly wanted to have a look at it. But his father knew there was more to it than just having a look.

“Jonah I know what you will do to it once I give it to you. You will render it useless.”

“NO father I promise, I will not break it. It will be as good as new. Please give me this once and I promise there will be nothing wrong.Please father, please.”

And father got lost in the innocent blue of Jonah’s almond eyes.

“Okay you can have it but do not break it. Do whatever you want to but I want it back, in the same form as I am giving it to you.”

“Thank you father,” said Jonah and put his arms round his father’s waist.

Father stroked Jonah’s hair and handed him what he wanted. It was an early christmas for Jonah. For moments and moments together he just looked at it, marvelling at the beauty and the shimmer of it.

“This is boring,” said Rose, his friend.

“Then you can go,” said Jonah, his eyes still marvelling it.

“Okay then. Sit here with it, I am going.” And Rose left.

As soon as she went, Jonah closed the door. He started doing what he actually intended to and what father feared.

“I will take it apart, look at the inside and join it again. Father won’t even know.”

Jonah took it apart, carefully collected each part and observed each of them. After much observation and thinking he started to assemble it again. But, given the child in him, he failed to do so. Father was sure to get angry… ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Why am I telling this story? I am telling this story because I think human way of understanding things or atleast trying to do so is in many ways similar to what Jonah did. For long, we have been following a reductionist approach in many fields and in solving our problems. Be it physics, life sciences, business, psychology or problems of ecological, social, political and economic nature, in most of these things all we do is to break things up into more manageable, simpler pieces. It is a useful method. Seeing that it has yielded results till now, the method has a value to it. But as our understanding goes ever so deep and as the world progresses, we need much more than reducing things. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle. What we have done till now in most of the cases is that we have taken individual parts and we have done a helluva lot study on them without giving much thought to what I think is the Bigger Picture, the whole puzzle itself. With our progress the things that effect us are becoming increasingly interwoven or let me correct myself : things are now being revealed to be increasingly interwoven. It is no longer a good idea to break down things and analyze them and putting the fullstop. We are in a period of transition where our understanding is shifting from simple linear ideas to lateral and non-linear phenomena and no such system can be understood through reductionism. Indeed nobody can deny specialization but we do need to have a look, may be crude but still, a look over the entire picture. A look to how the pieces connect. A look on their interrelationship and their relationship to the complete whole we try to understand. And this approach is needed in almost all the walks of life. The idea is not new. It was always there. It developed almost parallel to reductionism, ever since Kanada propunded the theory of Anu. The hindu philosophy has had a firm history of holism. The Gestalt psychologist propounded the same theory with reference to the human mind. The debate of whole and parts has been a long standing issue in philosophy and elsewhere. The Gestalts appeal a lot. Especially the whole idea of emergence with reference to figur-ground perception phenomenon. For example, look at the  picture at the beginning of this post. The dog here ( hope you are able to see it ) is not identified by first identifying its parts and then inferring the dog from the component parts. Instead the dog is perceived as a whole, all at once. This is in line with what I want to suggest here. The individual parts of dog do not make sense here if the problem concerns an understanding of the dog. You may identify the components but if you want to see the dog, you need to realise in the back of your mind the relationship between the individual parts; the configuration. The phenomenon is called Emergence in Gestalt Psychology. What I want to suggest is the same age old stand against reductionism : The sum of parts do not make the whole. Whole is not merely a sum of parts. Whole is larger the the sum total of the perceptions of its parts. It is the parts plus the configuration. What we are missing out is the configurational properties. We know the whole anatomy of human body. Given parts of human body however, can we make a human? The configuration is missing. One might go as far as suggesting that this is what the whole concept of soul, atman or mind is. I will not enter into the discussion of what the configuration is. My point is made.

To be continued

Dreams

Chase your own dreams… 

Your dreams are the only thing that you shall ever truly own. You are a unique person and your goals and dreams must be your own. So chase your own dreams and not the dreams of other people. Don’t just do a thing because all the other bozos are doing it. Have your own reasons.

…and break them

Break your dreams. Now what does that mean? There are two ways to break a dream: Number One – surrender it to reality and Two – make it a reality. Go for the second option, make them reality. Walt Disney once said, “If you can dream it, you can do it.”  So dream it and do it.

–

 

Prologue – The Ocean’s call

The beach is a beautiful place. I often go there just before sunset and watch the sun going down in the ocean. I watch the waves rising and falling down crashing on rocks that lie albeit removed from the beach. I watch the people enjoying the ocean, roaming around as milling crowd or sometimes alone. They lie in the sun, enjoying the warmth or go near the waves for ocean’s cool feel with the wind touching their faces. They talk, shout, sing, play, run, laugh and cry. And I watch them. I see young boys and girls making sand castles, their joy when the castle is built and the tears when the ocean takes back what it gives to the shore. I see several people going into the ocean, riding the waves and the idea seems ludicrous.  

Every time I go there, the ocean beckons me. It calls me. But I never dive in. Some say that a person should take the plunge at least once while the others tell me not to go. They are afraid of the ocean and they haven’t taken a plunge. I am confused. Should I go in? Something holds me back. The fear of drowning, the thought of people waiting back home for me or is it just that the fear of other people has pervaded me?  I don’t know and I just stand on the beach. I let the waves wash my feet as I see the sun moving towards the horizon. I like that touch and from that I imagine what treasures the ocean has. And I contemplate what it means to take a plunge. But I never dive in and I don’t know what it’s like to ride the waves, to be free as the wind. I don’t know, what it is…to be. 

 But the ocean has never stopped from trying to convince me.  It’s as if it knows that someday I would shed the fear and embrace the waves. In that hope, it keeps giving the call. Only I haven’t answered as of yet. Something holds me back. But soon the sun will go down the horizon. The tide will recede and the ocean would be too far out. Should I dive in? What if I drown and those waiting for me never find out? But what if I come back with shells and pearls? I will never know that until I take my chances. Should I take my chances?

–

Inspired by Sabya. He does the same in lesser words and a better way.

On Sex

Just a thought. What follows is what I believe. The reader may not agree with it and may think it is too far fetched. It might be but to me it is bliss.

What is sex? A sensual, exciting way for reproduction. Or is it something more than that or may be something entirely different? When a child is in the womb, it gets nutrition through the umbilical cord. It is the tube that connects foetus to placenta and consists one or two arteries and a vein. It is not made up of ordinary skin or connective tissue and there are NO nerves in the chord. It might be that there is no sensation for the foetus except in the form of nutrition that reaches through the umbilical cord. Isn’t it a bit like samadhi? No sensation of the world but still sentient. It is the highest state defined by Yog, the state of joy as I mentioned in the post On Joy . What I mean to say is that the baby is in such a state within the womb. The state of joy.When a child is born, it cries. But does it do that in the womb? I think the answer is : NO. Why is child birth so difficult? I think the basic reason might be the reluctance to separate. The reluctance from abandoning the communion which the baby in the mother’s womb represents. That there can be a unity more profound than this is an idea inconceivable to me. It is this reason that many species follow what is called the Lotus Birth wherein the umbilical cord is not clamped and cut but is allowed to disconnect by itself. See the spiritual implications. Why destroy what might be the most joyful moments in one’s life?

This communion is felt by the mother as well. That she can conceive a soul and that she is the creator herself is the greatest work ever done. To BE is the greatest miracle of all. She is the manifestation of this miracle.

Now why am I discussing these things. This post was meant to be about sex. The dots connect. Here’s how :

Sex might be a man’s search for his mother or the joy he had when he was being conceived. Free from sensation yet sentient, the highest state of all. It is the drive to find that communion again. To be one, to lose himself. The same drive, in the sense of unity applies to women but there might be more in store for them.For women, it is the manifestation of her ability to create life, a manifestation of the greatest miracle of all : to BE. The drive to use the power bestowed to her. When a child is born, not only is the child born – the mother is also born. Before that she was an ordinary woman; through the birth she becomes the mother. And a mother is totally different from a woman : her whole existence becomes qualitatively different. Osho said this and I think this drive to a qualitatively different existence is what sex is for a woman.

I know it is too far fetched and too premature seeing that I myself have not had any sex. Nor can I be expected to have it soon. I think even those who have had it never thought about it this way but it certainly is the path to the sex sanctified. To me it can’t be something which is just a biological mechanism of a race’s survival. The idea of self realisation through it somehow appeals to me.The post has some of my own thoughts plus inputs from a Reiki session I attended.