Putting Education to the Right Use

O Women! When will you get out of the inhibited classified diminutive and defined world of the four walls of home and the freedom therein! I have been following the repertoire of the saas-bahus for the last two weeks in ‘The Hindu’ and their frustration inherited and inventoried from centuries. Educated and rational enough as we are, don’t you think its time we talked about the freedom accorded to our sisters and mothers for stepping out of their home and exploring the world outside? Freedom and acceptability mean nothing if our thinking is still confined to a shell casted by the enforced will of the parents and in-laws; restrictions at work and restrictions to work; and the social inhibitions of letting the bird fly and discovering the unknown lands. 

Lucky enough to be born in democratic and progressive families, getting the best education, living in tinsel towns and considering ourselves erudite enough to write about the petty day-to-day juggles with the saas or the bahu, as the case may be; we often forget that there is a world beyond; where there is no freedom of education, no development of rational faculties and no realization, that as human beings, certain rights are accorded automatically and need not be approved by the others. About a month ago, I visited a temple. What I witnessed there has been etched in my memory and I can’t help thinking about that incident everyday. The so called ‘pandit ji’ was seated on a comfortable chair with a king-like air about himself overseeing the devotees and his wife distributing the ‘prasad’ to them. Suddenly his phone rang and probably, one of his acquaintances had called up to seek advice about some puja from his wife. With her hands smeared in oil and with prasad, she politely told her husband to tell the caller to wait for her to call-back after she will be done with the distribution of the prasad. Absolutely annoyed by the effrontery and audacity to deny taking the call, he shouted at her in front of everybody as she ran mopping her hands with her dupatta to take the call. I stood there speechless and stunned, absolutely clueless about how to react. As a student, I may know how to apply the laws of motion, gravitation, and electromagnetism;  or the formulae of differentiation, integration and co-ordinate geometry, to reach to the solution of a problem but that day I stood helpless thinking of which law shall I apply to improve the lot of women in this country. This is such a small incident but it speaks volume about the way women are treated in the dark cosmos of their homes.

The story doesn’t end there. Hundreds of years of suppression and containment have made women apathetic towards their own plight. They consider it a way of life and probably, a pay-off for the original sin. And it surprises me to see how uninterested and listless are women about the predicaments of their fellow sisters. Through my own experiences and those of my friends, I know how girls in general, try to avoid working under a lady advisor for their completely rigid and standoffish way of dealing with things. And we should understand that it builds up as a consequence of constant struggle at home and outside to conquer even minor goals in life.

What we need today is to give women enough room to breathe. We must educate them, more than how to read and write, about the ways to assert their rights and experience their free will.  All of our education is a waste of time, money and efforts if we are unable to bring a change in the lives of the oppressed lot. I guess, deliberations over the ways in which we, as women, can contribute to the cause of women, would be more useful than just opining our frustrations over the sorry state of affairs. 

Neglecting my Negligence

I have been keeping all my trinkets as a memoir of my guileless childhood, dragging it all the way with me; rather than ever thinking of disposing them off to the street children playing in my backyard. Fearful of the brunt of the mutilations this big-bad-going-worse world can inflict on my sensitivity, I thought to conserve the few ‘beautiful aspects of childhood’ I managed to save in ‘ME’. Unaware of the potential effects of my negligence towards those who strive without even a single square meal a day, I am mistakably happy and contended at my own callous disposition.

I would feel proud to be the saviour of the victims of merciless pogrom and terrorism, who grope in dark for a single, no matter how bleak, a ray of hope; but I am too busy to look at those unfortunate souls importuning for help. I have been witnessing the dreadful slaughter of a man’s most prized possession, his ego, when I see a pauper begging; but in search of my own comforts, I kept knocking out the questions my conscience kept uttering to me. I have been party to help encourage exploitation of small little waifs when I give my unspoken consent to those who employ children in mangy places to do some menial work. I endorse the opinion of those who eve-tease women, by overlooking the incident not to show my vulnerable hurt side. After all, I am too ordinary and decrepit an individual to make a difference to this dithering world. . (And may be that is the reason I consciously ignore to empathise with those in the hour of need).

In time, surely I’ll think.. surely, I’ll have some compunction, but right now, I am too entangled in this idée fixe of self! I would rather look wistfully at those ranking above me in the echelon of this material world, coveting on the luck ordained by others and thinking, how beautiful my life is, neglecting my negligence!

(No denying, in some corner of his heart, every other man in this world considers himself a victim of moral degeneration of the society that he finds difficult to sustain and a product of the perpetual strangulation of his principles to keep up with the progressing brutal times.

But amidst these sorry states of affairs, we tend to forget that somehow our negligence contributes a great deal to the society as a whole. )

The Inherent Virtue

Human beings have a limitless capacity to love. It is said that if there is one thing that keeps us going in life, it’s the hope. But if we boil down to the basic elements of this ‘hope’, we would know that it stems out of our innate capability to continue to accept eccentricities and beauty of various aspects of life, living and inanimate, and allowing them to consume some part of our attention, affection and life-energy.

We are continually bombarded with numerous objects carrying some energy for a mutually beneficial or a detrimental exchange. The last thing we are capable of is to unilaterally ignore all of them. We always live with some sense of what is called as ‘relative deprivation’ and look for those facets which can complete us from within. The diverse elements of life that we come across have a potential of bringing in a phase of ‘judgment’ where we tend either to assimilate or ignore them. In any case, our basic instinct towards those elements which seem to broaden our understanding of ourselves, and give us an experience of the idiosyncrasies and magnificence of life; is that of an embrace and assimilation. Its only when the mind reigns in, that we tend to ignore and move on. But there are even times, when on perceiving an object that inadvertently grabs our attention; we apprehend the depriving factors in us.

Life moves on the wheels of emotions. Either we control them or they control us. In either case, our motion on the path that we choose to traverse is made possible only because of mutual acceptance between us and the path. We slowly accept what is offered to us and look for newer avenues that the path has in store for us. The hope to achieve more and seek more keeps us in the state of fluidity which is somehow characterized by our limitless capacity to love (and assimilate).

How does this virtue help us reach our destination and whether we reach there at all, is for the time to show us…

The Drying River of Thought

No river flows perpetually with the same momentum and volume. Not even the river of thought. The longer the summers, the speedier is the process of drying up. And the flooding too, is as dangerous as the barrenness. The seasons of aridity do come in life. There are times when you would hate yourself for sitting idle but you would still resist breaking the monotony. Idleness may sometimes be necessary to recuperate us, while at the other times; it may just scorch the thought processes up.

Every one of us waits for a period of lull after the heavy down pouring of intensive work activities. Many a times our work demands solutions to intricate problems requiring deep analysis and application of principles from diverse fields of knowledge. In spite of all that, there is always a feeling that something is still to be accomplished, and that probably, is the desire to engross ourselves in something that is free from evaluation; something that doesn’t seek approval nor is affected by the feedback.

There are a few lucky people whose profession is an exact match of their passions. But somehow, finally, all of us end up doing what we had always wanted to do. Because sooner or later, we realize that ‘this’ is what we are born for. That may indeed be done without compromising with the professional success. I see so many people who are always up against any kind of moral degeneration; so many of them who would always invest resources to sponsor a poor child’s education or so many of them who would find time to plan a trip to travel to distant places. The point is, we must identify our core constructs, that which quintessentially make us who we are.

We must always keep flowing, and that, which keeps us in motion is something that prevents the river of thought from drying up. It may be unique for everybody but it leads us to the same destination!

Holding it Right

We, human beings, are energy systems. We accumulate lots from the world and hold them right into our conscious (or sub/un conscious, as Freud would say). The resultant vector of all these positive, negative and neutral accruals tends to propel us in a particular direction. Aren’t we the product of our socialization patterns!? At the same time, there exist various mechanisms of releasing the negative energies or putting the positive ones to good use (may be even vice-versa). In any case, the equilibrium needs to be maintained. The equilibrium that we seek to achieve, again, depends on the socialization we have been subjected to. Every action followed by the other is concatenated, making a chain of events called the life. The outcome of each act reinforces or fades our beliefs and prejudices and defines our living patterns.

The crux of the matter is that there needs to be a constant inflow and outflow of energies from our living system. Suppression and repression should never be the way of life. These two processes in particular, stuff us with unnecessary trash that rots inside us and starts getting manifested in our attitude towards life. There is always a dignified way of expressing anger, wrath, disgust, affection, love and expectations. Neglect may also be a way of repression. Every event in life should reach its logical end. We live life in phases, don’t we!? The unhappiest of them bear the deepest imprint on our psyche. After having gained experiences with life and having borrowed some wisdom along with it, we must certainly try to give ourselves some relief through a self driven mechanism of releasing the pent up feelings.

Most of the people in this world respect honesty. On the other hand, nobody is inherently inclined to bear grudges. The two factors when combined together, lead us to a conclusion, though not a definitive one, that, it is not difficult to find the ways of ‘peaceful co-existence’. There is enough room in the world to accommodate you and your feelings. Let the river flow charting out its own course.

How long and how well one holds and releases one’s summated energies is a clear reflection of one’s learning from life. I guess, recollection and reminiscence plays a vital role in the process. Lets experiment with life..while holding it right.

Finding Expression

Stay still. Motionless. If you ever try taking a refuge in the core of your essence and constructing an open field around yourself, help emotions effuse out to fill the ‘void’. Since the field is yours, you would never have to worry about your loss of control over yourself. Spreading yourself is one of the ways of accumulating more. And this accumulation works well in discerning the relative importance of different objects that happen to occupy various parts of the field in your imagination. And surprisingly, the entire process is so effortless that after getting back to consciousness, you would feel you always knew it. Sometimes, its difficult to comprehend the real world but you find yourself better placed in your environment in some altered state of consciousness.

Just happened to discuss with an enlightened soul about how mind reigns in over the heart and vice versa in the situations of life. But the point is should we really consider both in either-or category! Isn’t your mind a product of what you carry in your heart and your heart a creation of the thoughts in your mind? Are they really separable? Well sometimes they are.. between practicality and subjectivity, there is certainly a  separation! But since both constitute a part of ourselves, both work together to help us adjust better in our milieu.

Today we talk about emotional intelligence. Well, its all about managing your emotions so that they facilitate the decision making in different circumstances. But no one would disagree that it doesn’t come simply. And there can be no control until you know how the element in itself feels and what can be the consequences. I would say, that when one devolves oneself in every diminutive situation in life and loves to be transported with the feeling right from early life, the later years pass easily through because one gains enough maturity with time. The taste of life should come when you are most prepared to live it. Control should come when you start getting penalized for losing it.

Emotions are meant to be expressed, provided it is done at the right time and in the right manner. Never lend yourself to the one who is incapable of holding you and never feel for the one who is incapable of indulging as intensely as you do. Other than that, the world is yours…go, feel it!

The Bleeding Truth

If there is one thing that remains young forever and sticks with you for lifetime, it’s the ‘truth’. It lives and breathes new life into your existence once you accept it. It is that which accompanies you in the journey of your life and continues to tell the world that you once existed on this planet, even long after you have gone. 

Indian philosophy talks about soul and metaphysical aspects of life. Every person starts developing into a distinguishable form right from the prenatal period. There is a lot that differentiates us from each other. But there is one thing that remains indistinguishable forever and that is- your soul. Its same for everybody at all the times. Its remains as it was thousand years ago and as it will be thousand years from now. And it is this soul that contains our truth in itself. The more we distance ourselves from the truth, the more soulless we become. Corruption, for e.g., has its root in soullessness. 

No matter how hard we try, we cannot escape it. Our love, hatred, disgust, affection, fear and insecurity; all is lodged as truth in our soul. We may disguise them from the world but we can’t cloak ourselves with any façade to screen ourselves from these aspects of life. In fact, our discontentment with life is a direct outcome of our effort in trying to dodge these bullets pointing right towards the centre of our consciousness or shall I say, emanating right from the centre of our consciousness.. 

What remains salient in us is this truth..the sooner we accept it the better we become. It is indestructible and it can never be manipulated. What we manipulate is our behavior and attitude. But this manipulation never really changes us from within.

The Story of Silence

So much commotion around, so many hullabaloos: where and how do you hear the signal? I was told in my psychology classes that life is all about detecting the signals, however faint they may be, among the noises. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to reach to others. Sometimes distances too, become noises. Sometimes distances don’t just relate to the physical space between the two souls. Sometimes even two branches of the same tree fail to commune between each other..

Its tough to know when your time has arrived to speak up finally. The best that we can do is observe silently and wait for our moment, the right one, to come and touch us. In fact in the most overwhelming moments of our life, we had nothing to say. Some mystical warmth pervaded inside out and all we could do was to let the emotions flood us and drown us in their depth and momentum.

Many a times we try explaining things. Words hardly make a difference in such situations because no true relationship in life calls for explanations. The other times in fit of rage, we curse our own people and our own decisions. Words do make a difference then, they embitter the associations. The hardest thing to do in such times is to be silent and wait for the high tides to undergo a siesta. Its true that time heals; not only does it heal, it gives opportunities to comprehend the vacuum in you and know the people who can fill it.

Silence speaks a lot. In fact I believe, we must give silence a chance to speak for itself. The more it dominates the space between you and others, the more is the attraction and the more is the resistance to forgetfulness. Mind you, you never forget what you never said. And you never forget what you didn’t listen but you could hear clearly. Experience it and know how the intensity is directly proportional to the silence. Remember those moments of dejection when you sat in a dark corner and promised yourself something?! Or the time when a swiftly approaching force caught your attention and you knew that is what you always wanted to conquer and possess?! That is how your life changes..through the stories of silence!