Public Opinion and the Donkey

This post is a direct reply to Anju Gandhi' post here about the suffering people undergo in order to escape from the wrath of  'what will others think?

How I got over this syndrome is by reading a great story when i was a child.

A father and son were coming back from market after buying a donkey.

First they let the donkey walk beside them. One onlooker pointed out that they are crazy to not use the donkey to carry one of them.  Then the loving father put his son on top of the donkey and after walking some miles another person who came across said what a spoiled kid, children should not be pampered like this,  let the kid walk and learn the hardships of life.  So the humiliated father thought it’s better if he sits on the donkey.

After going some distance someone else pointed out to the father that he is stupid to not let the kid travel with him on the donkey. He pointed out that the donkey can carry them both. The father was ashamed why it never occurred to him. So he decided to carry the boy with him.

Half way home the donkey fell down and the father and son ended up carrying the donkey the rest of the way to home.

To those who listen to public opinion you will always have to carry your donkey sooner or later

The ‘Flat’ Life

I am not a lover of the apartment way of life. I want my children to have a little land around the house to chase butterflies and what not. But it seems like we human beings have no choice. Everywhere you look, the 'upwardly mobile’ people in cities are crammed into these tiny little shit holes (ignore the rich and affluent) we call an apartment. The term ‘bed space’ is slowly earning its reputation too.

Look at that woman just lying there. This was the picture that greeted me when I opened today’s news paper. The image moved me even before reading that the cause of her death (ya she is dead) was a terrible fall from her apartment (which is one among many in a building named Stephen court in Calcutta)  while she was trying to escape a fire. There is something very inhuman and pathetic about the way she lays on that street near to a tyre. Has it ever crossed the poor woman’s mind while she was walking past the same flower pots that one day I will lie here dead.

My mind was desperately searching for something to blame my helplessness as it’s the case in tragic situations. Should I blame the population of India? Should I blame the contractors for not installing a proper fire fighting system or even a fire escape? What’s the point in blaming an ignorant child in causing a fire when the parents should have been careful about not letting a child play with fire? What about those stupid but unavoidable phone calls while something was on the stove? Is the traffic in India responsible for the delay in the arrival of a fire fighting unit. Can I blame the common greed of people (you and I are very much part of it) which obliterated the affordable housing and forgot the greater good? Why do people believe that everything is good in the cities?

Maybe that nameless woman like me wanted to stay in a beautiful house with some land around it. What made her compromise? To earn more money in a city so she can buy a house later in her village? Did she live there so that her children can go to good schools? Maybe she was born in the city and used to the life in tall structures. 

Many people move to a flat in search of privacy. They prefer the closed environment of a flat to the prying eyes of curious neighbors in a village. It is a human predicament. When we are enjoying great health we feel like we don’t need anyone’s help. The neighbors can go to hell. But when we are in misery our selfish souls crave for company.

The most secure feature of a single or two storey house is that you can just run for your life in the event of a fire or earthquake. The chances for survival are relatively high. You don’t have to face or make that split second decision of whether you will survive if you jump from a fifth or seventh floor in the same situation.

However, apart from all these graphic images of people jumping through the windows into their deaths from flats, the same people will still flock to buy these apartments like flies attracted to the light of a lamp in darkness. I have only one piece of advice to all of them, your investment and life is always ‘up in the air’ buddy which can come anytime crashing down on you like it did for this poor woman.

why do people fear death?

A fellow blogger once asked me a question; why do people fear death?

Well I came up with this. (Thanks to carefully reading the three volumes of ‘Conversations with God’ by Neale Donald Walsch, for enlightenment)

Let’s go to the beginning. Let us assume that what ever existed in the beginning is god. Let’s say that this being had the conceptual knowledge about everything I mean everything. 

Example- You know in your mind how it feels like to stand under a tree in the morning with your eyes closed and suddenly a dew drop fell from one of the leaves and burst on the tip of your nose.

You can feel the sudden chill of the dew drop in your mind theoretically but what if you have no practical experience of such an event? How terrible that must be? Alas! you just stumbled upon the motivation for god to create us and everything around us. 

Since many scientists argue that matter cannot be created and simply be transformed (something can only come from something else) so what if this intelligent being the alpha divided itself into two (we have sacrifice here!) and one half burst into billions of small lights (souls ? or big bang? your pick) and eventually evolved into us. We are all part of god. That spark is inside all of us living and non living. Through us god is experiencing everything it knew the good and bad, the smile and tears, love, hate, sacrifice, joy, fear, happiness and the bliss of life.

All of us tick and live for this and nothing else. There is no heaven and hell. Those who are aware of this truth (the masters) understood that, when they die, that spark of god inside them will rejoin the other half of god completing their cycle or purpose. You can call this nirvana or bliss or heaven. These people knew their purpose of creation and they are not afraid to die. They knew what is inside them.

Those who simply can’t figure out this truth are the ones who are living in hell; these are the ones who are afraid of death. They will have to take a lot of lives to realize this truth. So we have re-births after rebirth till they find out this truth.

You and I are a walking, talking and thinking examples of the beauty of experience. Through us god is relishing this experience.

Electronic Emotions

 

(I hereby by acknowledge that I am not immune from the trends expressed in the following post, I am very much a part of it and I have had my share of it too)

“Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding...”  William Gibson -‘Neuromancer’ 1984

I was wondering how long will it take for the internet to reduce our senses into long forgotten artifacts. If the things shown in the movie “Surrogates” are indeed a glimpse into the future of how people go ‘online’ then that will not take long. If the pieces of forwarded garbage in my mail posing as wisdom and promises to evoke a smile from me are of any indication about our way of ‘keeping in touch’ then we are headed on the right track.

Heard the news recently about a Korean couple who ignored the hunger and cries of their first born to feed and nurture their online baby in a game. I think most of us are no different from them in ignoring. How many cries of love and attention from our family and physical friends are we ignoring in order to clarify the misunderstanding in the previous scrap or to show a lesson to that ignorant ‘faceless’ soul who dared to cross you in one of the discussion boards or forums.

When anonymity is the whispered alias of the web, Thanks to orkut & face book we now have proposals by ‘scrap’ and breakup messages on the ‘wall’ hardly a day or two apart. The wasteland of social networking is a place where gender reversals thrive and people are cheated and mocked on an hourly basis after pouring their hearts out to strangers. Mostly the victims are children or teenagers for whom it is beyond their understanding why a person should lie about or disguise their gender. 

I wonder if some of the online couples knew before hand that how their lover smells, then they would be in haste to steer clear from him or her. The online lovers are deprived of or don’t care about the fact that how much the sense of touch and smell plays a part in love. Speaking of which reminds me of a scene from this movie ‘Demolition Man’ where Stallone comes back from a ‘cryo’ prison after 36 years and learns that the old way of life is gone. And he soon makes an old fashioned pass at the beautiful Sandra Bullock. She rebukes him and tells him in a disgusted voice “do you mean the exchange of bodily fluids? Nah! we don’t do that anymore”. She tells him to come closer and hold her hand and he does. Some kind of electrical pulses pass between their minds which is, according to her, akin to sexual intercourse. After a moment Stallone withdraws his hand and declares that he would rather do it the old way or never do it at all. Let us pray things like this will remain in the far fetched imagination of a screenwriter. As I write this how many people will be jerking off in different corners of the world by looking at their lover’s nudity (willingly provided ignoring the fact that if it can be viewed it can be recorded) on web cam?

I couldn’t understand for the life of me what is the reasoning behind sending electronic flowers and gifts. Now that I think about it I would rather like to hear the voice once in a while or a just a pat on the shoulder will be much more helpful than all the mails with friendship messages. In apartment studios where people live alone it is quite possible that they don’t know who lives above or below them. Only during the event of an emergency that it dawns upon many people that they are not that faceless, painless entity online anymore.

The 'D' Formation of Mallus

An average malayali irrespective of gender, when viewed from the side looks like a capital ‘D’ letter from their neck to waist (I am not forgetting that there are exceptions, but this is dedicated to the D people).  Is it because of our disregard for health or is it because of our obsession with rice.  A rice eating stomach can be spotted from a long distance.

‘Fill it up three times a day’ seems to be our motto without knowing that our stomach has to expand in order to break down the large intake of food. From our child hood we Keralites are constantly reminded of filling our bellies to the brim. I have seen my shares of mallu moms (only in well to do families) feeding their kids till they literally choke on their own food.

The arrival of Hormones stuffed Broiler Chicken was like pouring gasoline into a wild fire. Now the kids in Kerala think that chickens come in only one color ‘white’.  Chic kings & pizza huts are springing up in our home land – all you junk loving people out there the kingdom of junk food is at hand rejoice!

Have you ever seen the look of contempt on the face of an average mallu when they see people who go for jogging or people who goes to the gym to stay fit?

I am not even touching the topic about the part booze play in all this. When I overhear people reminding others about how fat they are getting (no, over hearing and asking about overweight is still not considered rude in Kerala, for your information) I always hear the classic reply especially from alcoholics who caress their belly and says “oh give me one week, I will reduce in no time”

Content Torture

Have you ever been tortured by content generated for mass entertainment. Earlier it was the radio’s job. I am talking about the likely scenario of walking into a shop to buy something important all the while listening to the person or program you hate the most. Now with the onslaught of mass media and giant displays the torture has been given a whole new dimension.

Most of this torture occurs in hair saloons, gyms, and cafes where it is rude to tell them to switch the damn thing off where as in other places like shopping malls you have no control over what will assault your senses.

Another instance of the torture happens when you make a visit to a friend’s or relatives’ house and you are forced to watch that horrible reality show or that dreadful anchor, who doesn’t have a clue about what he/she is talking. One should rather grin and bear it than insult a relatives’ rather awful taste of entertainment

I believe a lot of people suffer silently through these kinds of tortures of intelligence and sense of humor every day. People are note aware that these kind of incompetent content are often made to fool the below average person and it deprives them of their valuable time and in some cases money (the horrific sms system in reality shows)

To some extent the internet is a blessing in which it taught people to choose what they want to see and hear. But still many torture spots are just waiting offline for you buddy.

Confessions of a movie theater fanatic

I don’t know if anyone else had these feelings about a movie theater. For me, it’s always the same, I love the theatres before the movie and I hate them after the movie regardless of the nature of the movie.

In India most of the theatres open their gates only half an hour before the screening of each show (refer opening scene in the movie ‘Mantrikam’). This is before the onslaught of multiplexes. So people have to wait for the theatres to open their gates, I have done my share of waiting too. Of course, there was reservation but I think normal people liked the anticipation and adventurous nature of obtaining a ticket. I think most of them enjoyed their sheer luck, I did. What happens when they open the gate is a battle of entertainment proportions with flip-flops flying, shirts tearing, hair pulling and shouts of ‘heave’ thrown in at some time. Balconies are expensive so one has to be as fit as an athlete to get into the queue for first class tickets for which there are no reservations. One peculiar nature of first class ticket counters are that in most theaters they are located at the end of a tunnel. So once you enter the tunnel with your fellow ‘shouting at the top of their lung’ queue mates, you are in. Don’t even think about going back. Leaving the queue is considered as cowardice. The sheer joy of coming through the other end of the tunnel victorious with tickets crumbled in my hand with some buttons on my shirt missing always gave me a boost than any energy drinks that most of the children are addicted to these days. Besides the smile and appreciation I see on my friend’s faces were well worth the effort.

It is when the movie (good or bad) is over and when people try to file out from the theater that I experience my deepest love for my home. I am always overcome by a panic to get to my home as fast as I can. I have tried many times to analyze the reason behind this obsession. One strong candidate is that maybe that’s when I realize the artificial and impersonal nature of the theater or else it is because of the selfish nature imprinted in every human being that when the movie is over the theater has nothing more to offer. I have noticed that most people come out of the theater with a blank face. It doesn’t matter if the movie is good or bad. All of them have a blank expression on their face. They don’t even stop to answer politely to a potential moviegoer who probes about the movie. I think all of them want to get back to their home as much as I would like to get to mine.

What happened to love?

What happened to love? Or at least the native form of it? It seems like nowadays people cannot stand going through the pain of all those different phases, the first eye contact, the first thought, the enthusiasm, the fear of rejection and finally! the sheer joy of conquering something which eluded you all the time. Well, no one is interested anymore, can’t blame them though. Look at the hype created about modern life, if you are not fast then you will be left behind. But nobody knows how fast you can afford to go without any mishap, because just like any new technology or invention there isn’t a generation to tell us how will we end up if we lead a ‘faster than light’ life. So the question is, are we happy? Or are we pretending to be happy. Just because everyone else is doing the same thing doesn’t mean that it’s the ‘coolest thing’ around. How many of us take a little time to slowdown and think, ‘hey! What am I really doing?

Coming back to love, how many of us are willing to tolerate the demands of a genuine relationship rather than having a dozen futile walks on the wild side. Harmless flirting leads to harmless relationships which will most often directly result in successful divorces or breakups of the ‘concerned’ parties. Where are we headed?

The sheer uncertainty of a romantic relationship has been discarded for the ‘lets get it over with’ attitude. Where did the romance go? The sweet old romance in which flowers and understanding played equally important parts. Did it take a backseat? Are people really petrified now about the pain that comes with lost love? Which is sweeter? The memory of lost love or the eternal wastelands of our heart, where it never rains. The former one has a real charm to it. Shakespeare has known it and wrote about it. In this era of corporate marriages and pseudo scholarships who has time to read a poet who portrayed human emotions and relationships with a magnifying glass