The unsolvable problems…

These days my mind is preoccupied by one thought, or rather one question.
What do you do when you are the biggest obstacle in the happiness of your dearest people? What do you do when there is no right choice - when life is messy, twisted and confusing? Who gives up their happiness when everyone cannot be happy with the same choice? Philosophers have thought that "greatest good" is a good thing to strive for… but is chronic sorrow for one better than acute sorrow for many?
Can these questions of justice, happiness, fairness ever be really resolved?

I meander through these questions weighed by a sense of guilt and sadness unable to make the choices because I am hopeful that the future will change the circumstances. But who knows what the future brings? I try to train myself for a future where the people I care most for will not longer be there and I will be faced with a burden of guilt. A guilt for not doing everything I could to ensure their happiness. I weigh my responsibilities to me with my responsibilities to others. Who wins in the end and who loses?

We all seem to be losers in this zero sum game where only the future seems to have all the answers.

Reflections within and without....

Relationships come in many different flavors and there is no denying that but even in the closest of my friendships, one difference I have always noted is the extent of 'privacy or space' we have afforded each other. I have some relationships that are based on this tacit, implicit acceptance of each other - where words are often insufficient and superfluous. We know how much we care and we let it be. We don't question, proclaim, pick and choose words - we just are. 

And then there are other relationships where there is an abundance of words, where arguments are dissected, hashed out, said aloud, as are reconciliations. Where saying everything, somehow holds the key to being close and staying together. Words are a big part of these relationships and my ineptitude with them often works to my disadvantage. 

I have learnt and grown with both these kind of friendships. While the former was my refuge on days when I did not want to talk and there are many like that. The latter, were the ones that pulled me out of my cocoon and helped me externalize my angst and frustrations - and I have had plenty of those too. 

In my reflections on these two kinds of relationships, I have found a state of ambivalence to both modes of operation and yet I exhibit a preference to holding onto my thoughts, my own state of mind, my own feelings about things - up till the point where there is no ambiguity about what the events are actually going to be. And yet, over the years, my friends have cajoled me into emptying my mind to an extent that, now, I find venting out to them a relief. But this is always a game of thresholds for me because to me - on an ideological level, talking seems futile, while reflections and musings seem to hold the key to most problems. 

Incomprehensible as it may seem to most - this worked the best for me... 

This dilemma about my preferred mode of operation has lingered with me long enough so that I recognized shades of it in the article from New Yorker when I came across it today. My idea of self, the foundations of my relationships, my need for words and my complete ineptitude with them at times, all resonate deeply with this conflict between our private, inner self and our need to connect. 

At that point, I just had to share it here... 

After all, most reading is a process of uncovering someone else's work in finding better words to describe your thoughts... 

Here are some excerpts from the article that seemed most pertinent to me but the whole of it is beautifully written. 

Woolf often conceives of life this way: as a gift that you’ve been given, which you must hold onto and treasure but never open. Opening it would dispel the atmosphere, ruin the radiance—and the radiance of life is what makes it worth living. It’s hard to say just what holding onto life without looking at it might mean; that’s one of the puzzles of her books. But it has something to do with preserving life’s mystery; with leaving certain things undescribed, unspecified, and unknown; with savoring certain emotions, such as curiosity, surprise, desire, and anticipation. It depends on an intensified sense of life’s preciousness and fragility, and on a Heisenberg-like notion that, when it comes to our most abstract and spiritual intuitions, looking too closely changes what we feel. It has to do, in other words, with a kind of inner privacy, by means of which you shield yourself not just from others’ prying eyes, but from your own. Call it an artist’s sense of privacy.

“The compensation of growing old,” he thinks, is that “the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained—at last!—the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,—the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it around, slowly, in the light.” By learning to leave your inner life alone, you learn to cultivate and appreciate it.

And you gain another, strangely spiritual power: the power to regard yourself abstractly. Instead of getting lost in the details of your life, you hold onto the feelings, the patterns, the tones. You learn to treasure those aspects of life without communicating them, and without ruining them, for yourself, by analyzing them too much.

And you gain another, strangely spiritual power: the power to regard yourself abstractly. Instead of getting lost in the details of your life, you hold onto the feelings, the patterns, the tones. You learn to treasure those aspects of life without communicating them, and without ruining them, for yourself, by analyzing them too much. Woolf suggests that those treasured feelings might be the source of charisma: when Peter, seeing Clarissa at her party, asks himself, “What is this terror? what is this ecstasy? … What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?,” the answer might be that it’s Clarissa’s radiance, never seen directly, but burning through. Clarissa, meanwhile, lets her spiritual intuitions lift her a little above the moment. Wandering through her lamp-lit garden, she sees her party guests: “She didn’t know their names, but friends she knew they were, friends without names, songs without words, always the best.” That’s the power of artist’s privacy. It preserves the melodies otherwise drowned out by words, stories, information.

“Sharing” is, in fact, the opposite of what we do: like one of Woolf’s hostesses, we rehearse a limited openness so that we can feel the solidity of our own private selves.

Every now and then, too, you come across some artwork that expresses Woolf’s sensibility in an altogether different idiom, refreshing it. Since I first stumbled across it a few years ago, I’ve watched Lucinda Williams’s 1989 performance of “Side of the Road” hundreds of times. The song is built around a simple metaphor: Williams is driving down the road with a loved one, and happy to be driving. Still, she wants to pull over to the side of the road and stand there by herself. “I want to know you’re there, but I want to be alone,” she sings.

If only for a minute or two, I want to see what it feels like to be without you. 

I want to know the touch of my own skin
Against the sun, against the wind.
I walked out in a field, the grass was high, it brushed against my legs.
I just stood and looked out at the open space, and a farmhouse out a ways.
And I wondered about the people who lived in it,
And I wondered if they were happy and content.
Were there children, and a man and a wife?
Did she love him and take her hair down at night?

If I stray away too far from you, don’t go and try to find me.
It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, it doesn’t mean I
won’t come back and stay beside you.
It only means I need a little time
To follow that unbroken line,
To a place where the wild things grow,
To a place where I used to always go.

From an entirely different angle, Williams has captured the same idea that we find in Woolf’s novels: that there is no final, satisfying way to balance our need to be known with our need to be alone. The balance is always uncertain and provisional; it’s always a matter of dissatisfaction, give-and-take, and sacrifice. Because an artist’s privacy is a state of mind, rather than a matter of law, there are no rules to help us master it. It’s up to each of us to balance the risks and rewards—to trade, in right proportion, loneliness for freedom, explicability for mystery, and the knowable for the unknown within ourselves.

VIRGINIA WOOLF’S IDEA OF PRIVACY
POSTED BY JOSHUA ROTHMAN

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/joshuarothman/2014/07/virginia-woolf-idea-of-privacy.html?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=facebook&mbid=social_facebook 

Roll of the dice...

There are hundreds of billions stars in our galaxy and then there are billions of galaxies in the known visible universe. The unknown that envelopes us stretches the very limits of our imagination.

Life, as it is today, evolved millions of years ago, from an oceanic soup, on one blue planet among an infinity of planets. The blue planet happened to be located at just the right distance and with just the right conditions for those early molecules to arise and interact. Life, that began with a roll of the dice, from the collisions and fusion of molecules over billions of years, has finally found its way to me - in a way that no one could have predicted or imagined.

And as a testament to those very unseemly probabilities, I stand here today, pondering on the nature of probabilities and life itself. Life evolved in a world that is driven by probabilities, in a universe that is being ripped apart by the forces of entropy.

I am nothing but another roll of that mysterious dice - a random product when one of the many millions of sperms found its way to this one particular egg, to set forth on a journey that culminated in me. I could not have been here today but for those sheer twists of fate and those random acts of probability that allowed two very different people separated by hundreds of miles to come together and build a life.

I could have been one of those twenty percent of pregnancies that result in a miscarriage. I could have also been among the three percent of children who are born with abnormal chromosomes - destined for a life different from the rest of us. I could have been one of the thousands of accident victims on the streets of Delhi. I could have been one among the millions of people who cannot read an alphabet. I could have been one of the thousands of girls who are forced to drop out of school. I could have been one of the seventy-four percent of people who give up education after a graduation; but instead, I am one of the one percent who complete a graduate program. I could have been a part of any of these statistics. I could have been one of the millions of women trafficked, burnt, assaulted - but instead, I am here, alive, aware and independent.

As part of my work, I try and answer the questions of why, how, when and what, but after a while, my very existence makes me believe in that elusive hope that is buried in probability. My very existence is mired in improbability and hope.

I am a statistic - just another number but its a good roll of dice that brought me here.

I have cribbed and complained, ranted and raged about every misfortune that I have encountered on the way - and it has not been easy, but once in a while, when I pause to look at what could have been - I feel like I was dealt a good hand.

But how much of our life is shaped by these random occurrences and how much is shaped by us - as people? Am I just a ripple in the fabric of time, just being carried forward passively by this billion-years old explosion or am I more than that - an agent of change?

People are a product of their times - from Hitler to Columbus to Einstein - we are all shaped by the times we live in and yet, we contribute to shaping it. It is a two-way street, it seems, but then why do I feel so powerless sometimes?

Why is it that my choice at home or in the grocery store or at work doesn't seem to have as much impact as it should?

Can my choices influence the world I am living in or am I just another number in the 7 billion?

Just another statistic, a blimp in that fabric of space and time... Are we mere puppets in the bigger scheme of things or can individuals really make a difference? And if we can't - should we just give up and wait passively?

What are the choices that I, as an individual am faced with and can any of them be responsible and right? Is buying electronics laced with conflict minerals responsible? Most would say, No. But does my giving up on technology have an impact? Does my not buying diamonds stop the trade in blood diamonds? Does my giving up on meat or avocados at the grocery store lead to better lives half-way across the planet or country? Does my buying quinoa starve the andean farmers or does my not buying quinoa starve them? 

Where does my responsibility to me, begin and end?

Where does my responsibility to the world, begin and end?

Should we as people not show moral outrage at Marius the giraffe or at the children in Syria because we can't do anything about it? Or should we just limit our actions to the occasional outrage in the media and nothing more?

Are our actions determined by morals or by the markets? Some think that the markets sanitize all these deals? Do you, because i don't?

But how much should we worry about these choices? About electricity. About water. About recycling. About food wastage. Is an individual equally powerless in all these arenas?

If yes, then are we merely prolonging our inevitable collapse and should we just give up sooner than later? Can we ever make the right choices considering we know so little of the global forces and the local problems? Does our burgeoning knowledge and awareness of these multi-faceted problems make our lives and decisions - simpler or more complex?

Can my choices influence the world I am living in or am I just yet another powerless, ever-shrinking number in the exploding 7 billion?

Am I just another statistic, a blimp in the fabric of space and time - another roll of the dice...?

Z

Z is that strange kind of a stranger for me - someone who you've known for a long time but never quite understood. I call her Z because she was like that odd letter in the English alphabet - rare, strong, firm (almost rigid) and impossible to ignore. She could be loud and sharp at times but at others she could soothe you with her gentle humming presence. 

Z could be Zoe, Zeenat or Zainab. She could be anyone she chose to be and she is everything I ever want to be. She is beautiful. Not pretty, unlike her name, which is both beautiful and pretty, but for the purposes of our story, she remains Z. The strong, rough edged, and rare voice. A singular voice that cannot be ignored or marginalized - not because she is loud and crass; but because Z, has that quality about her. She is not fussy or adamant but she would not compromise too much on her few principles in life - you can see that in her. She cannot be ignored, people remember her even after meeting her once. She jokingly says, 'people remember the best and the worst looking faces... and she knows she is not one of the best looking ones'.

But I know that is not entirely true because Z is a beautiful person. Her beauty lies not in the face though. It shines through her eyes and bears down through her smile. Her eyes wander constantly, almost as if they are searching for something. She doesn't care about appearances and she doesn't care about the world. Her people are her world and that's all that mattered. Z was full of dreams - life was never enough for her. This restless greed endeared her to me. She was always on the look out - for knowledge, for skills, for experiences - for life, in all its glory. She would race after things, demanding more from herself and from life.

She likes her people - I can tell from the way her eyes look back wistfully when she talks of friends and family. And yet, nothing quite thwarted her like people. She always had trouble understanding people around her who spent their time gingerly navigating the world by looking for the least consequential and controversial subjects to talk about. Z did not care for diplomacy or lack of opinions; she liked discussing controversial subjects and threading them to the bare-bones. She liked digging through the muck and the fluff to arrive at that one kernel of (almost always) gray truth. It left her wanting for more clarity but it was better than just accepting what someone else told her. She was led by intuition and logic but never by blind faith.

Unlike me, who had developed this patina of resigned tolerance, Z also expected the world from people. She sincerely believed that everyone had the potential for great things and that all they lacked was an opportunity. She held up men and women to a higher standard - of honesty, of fairness, of empathy, of justice, of rational and open thought.

There was this element of flickering hope that you could see in her despite the many jolts and stumbles - a hope that was often wounded but never quite destroyed. 

But despite the many disappointments, Z was not tempered by them. 

Unlike me, she didn't change her expectations or learn to be careful and cautious. Much to my puzzlement, she did not even want to. She managed to view the world untainted, with an openness and an eagerness that astounded me. He ideas were remained utopian despite her frustrations with their practicality. Me, on the other hand, had been made brutally aware of the practical world and its strange motivations. Unlike Z, I would often curl into a ball and avoid problems. I would pick the battles I wanted to fight and I would compromise. But Z, unlike me, was unwavering as she faced every battle head-on. 

Z was tough on the outside and yet she was fragile because the world left its deepest impressions on her. She could brave a storm when she needed to but it only left her ravaged and wounded. She would passionately rage through them, burn herself out and get hurt. There would be days when all she wanted was to be with herself and her few people. The world would have let her down then - yet another time. And then she would come back again with that same undying hope. 

People say it is foolish to not learn from your mistakes - sometimes, I think it is also brave. It takes courage to not paint the world in broad strokes, to be patient and open to the universe, instead of locking yourself in that cycle of fear, retrenchment and regret. 

Z is brave - unlike any one else I had ever known and she paid the price for it - every day. 

Ironically her strength lay in her vulnerability. And yet over the years, even as I have scolded her and chided her for her naiveté, I have wished for some of that. For that ability to welcome everyday in this world, like yet another unopened gift. She is not yet bitter or heart broken or cynical. She has held on to her innocence, joy and her faith in people. 

Z is that strange kind of a stranger for me. She is a part of me, I do not understand yet. 

Seeking misery...

We do the strangest of things to get through bad days but hunting for more misery is the most twisted of them all.

I can understand trying to forget it, running away from it, drowning it - in pills or alcohol - but, no. This involves actively looking for misery. Who in their sane mind would do that?

I do it every now and then, in one of these carefully nuanced moments, when life seems to be getting to that point when every step forward is two steps backward. When every force seems to be a drag to overcome. Suddenly the rules of forward momentum, friction and inertia don't make so much sense, because no matter how much effort you put, there is no net movement. It feels like trying to pull a wagon-load of misery on an oil-spill. The harder you try, the harder you fall. The less you try, the less things change.

That is when I go trolling through other people's memoirs - books, movies, blogs, stories. Anything and everything. Anything that opens the lives of these perfect strangers' to me - in their own voice. And I look for these oil-spill moments in their life. Their miseries and struggles seem to numb my own pain. It helps me wallow in the depths of someone else's misery for a while only to come back and find my own pool a little less shallow.

It doesn't hurt a whole lot less but there is comfort in knowing there are others out there. It also makes me see the flicker of light at the end of the long, dark tunnel - through my cloudy, foggy eyes. If they managed to get out their oil-spill, maybe I will too. If I held on just a little longer. If I just tried something a little different. If the dice rolls a little differently this time.

Perhaps, all is not lost. And perhaps even if it is, there is a new beginning to be made.


Thank God, we can’t see the future because if we could “we’d never get out of bed.”

August: Osage County 

Samsara - a personal journey around the world...

I have always acknowledged the power of visual imagery.
And despite my preparedness for it, I am overwhelmed and pretty much reduced to melancholy as I watch these hauntingly beautiful snapshots - shot over a period of 4 years - from 25 countries around the world.

That is Samsara for you!
Art through visual snapshots that transports you to some of the most spectacular places on earth within a span of ninety minutes. And yet, it is not a travelogue or documentary or even a story. It makes you find the words for the story even as it compels you to make the story. 

Samsara is only what you make out of it - left to your own means. Some could just appreciate the cinematography and camera angles while some others could be struck down by a sense of despair, gloom and hopelessness - as one stands witness to humanity gnawing through its very own foundations. As much as I hate to use the word, Samsara to me, IS a spiritual journey. It is a personal journey even though it traces the past, present and perhaps the future of the rest of humanity. 

As I sat in a darkened room, watching these images streaming by, accompanied by nothing but hauntingly appropriate music in the background, my only thought was - "Imagine if some aliens from another galaxy or if our future generations, after an apocalypse like event, were to watch this to try and understand the world as it exists today:
What would they think? That we drove ourself to extinction and that we were a weird and extremely social herd of men and women who couldn't/wouldn't/didn't think!!!"

That is what Samsara is. A brutally honest and yet spell-bindingly beautiful portrait of us, as a people, a race and a community. It is us, as we exist, today, in at least 25 countries around the world. 

Samsara is art - not because of the stunning images shot on 75 mm film - that makes it rather special too; but Samsara is art because it doesn't tell you what to think. It floods you with these diverse images and leaves you to make sense of it. I left disappointed and disillusioned by everything I saw. Maybe you will not.  Maybe you will manage to see the human ability to survive and thrive despite the odds. Or maybe you will be consumed by a sense of despair stronger than mine. Nonetheless, it is a journey I will strongly recommend.

There are images that you see and then there are stories that you build 

Stories of: (Spoiler alert!!!)

Regimented battalions of hundreds of thousands of men, working like machines repeating the same task over and over, and over - until the world's end - only to get their two square meals. 

Imagine an army of perfectly sculpted, identical looking, pretty but unthinking women - trying to fit the stereotypes of the world. 

Imagine ghost cities and towns - abandoned, destroyed by natural disasters with names of their own. Disasters that left behind nothing but a haunting presence of all that was and could have been. 

A world where tiny, multi-storyed, one room shanties are built with corrugated tin pieces glued together and tied by ropes - threatening to collapse at a moments notice - all in the shadow of giant, multi-storey, apartment complexes that are furnished with swimming pools, gardens and other amenities. 

A world where animals are bred only to be consumed by the select few who can afford. Where life is dismembered, packaged and sold faster than it can be grown. Where life is sometimes just food. 

Where history from hundreds of years stands witness to the atrocities of the present. Where nature unleashes its fury every now and then but human will always strives to overcome it. 

When men are united by the name of an unseen god and by a book of prayers than by the plight of a fellow human. Where men and women, live in fear - trained and ready to fight/kill at a moments' notice.  A world where borders are made in stone and sand and yet they are strong enough to separate people of the same kind.

A world where body art continues to make statements - of power, culture, and individuality - in the oldest of tribes to the youngest of civilizations. 

Where creation with meticulous labour and exquisite attention to detail is only the first step towards destruction - a symbolic, cyclical ritual that we, as a race, seem to initiate everywhere. 

A world whose lungs are fast being choked with the overwhelming amounts of garbage generated everyday. A world which looks gloriously beautiful and hideously ugly - both at the same time - through the eyes of the unspeaking, unflinching camera. 

A world where the cities buzz through the day and are glittering by the night; in hues of red, orange and gold - looking quite vulgar and expensive.

Battling homogeneity...

The world is shrinking and there is no denying that.

But the world is also becoming more homogeneous and averse to differences. People are becoming the same the world over and we are becoming less and less able to talk of differences. Differences of gender, race, culture are nationality are being trivialized and even being ignored. Even talking of them seems to make one a racist or a chauvinist these days. No! I am not espousing the millions of racist or chauvinist people living all around us. I am not saying that people should be discriminated against one way or another. No!

But this post is meant for the rest of the world. The world that is so determined to be impartial, fair and politically correct - that they deny the very existence of differences. Differences between races, people, genders and social strata. 

This is a theme that has been recurrent in my thoughts, ever since a popular science writer once told us in class that when writing about women scientists one must avoid reference to their gender and simply focus on their work. But even today - almost two years since then - when I read of the Finkbeiner rule that is espoused by many science writers, I can't help but disagree. I am not saying that writers should focus on merely the gender and judge people or their work in that one dimension.

No!

But I do think, we should learn to write the whole story without any prejudice and at the same time give due respect to the person, his/her origins, character, gender and his/her story. After all, it is these things that make us who we are. Every individual is a sum of these and many other parts and these factors play a role in shaping our thought processes and formulating our decisions. Then why should we deny these differences? 

People are different.
Just because we are flooded with genomic scale data that tells us that we are 99% similar to chimps, we should not develop this perception that all men and women are similar. No. In fact, science today is grappling with the understanding of how the diversity is generated.
People are different.
Caucasians, Asians, Africans - we are all different - genetically, culturally, socially. And these are important differences. People's attitudes, priorities, choices, interests and thought processes are a summation of these and many other factors.
They are different in obvious ways - in ways that are imprinted in our genes. And these differences don't mean inferiority or superiority.
But then, instead of accepting and respecting these differences, I find it strange that the world is promoting homogenization of the world and its people. And by limiting the perception of an individual to any one dimension - we only limit our understanding of them.

I do not advocate trivializing a woman scientist to just a woman. Certainly not!
But at the same time, the "woman" part of that "woman-scientist" is not excess baggage. It tells you a lot about the journey and the story.
Women today are caught in this time-warp of sorts where they have been unable to completely break away from their traditional roles and at the same time they have successfully taken on newer roles at home and in the society. In many ways they have moved a lot faster and the rest of the world just couldn't keep up with them.

The challenges that people face in the world, because of their race, gender or background should not be brushed under the carpet. Coming from a developing country. Coming without any training in english. Being a woman. Being a man. Having a family. These are all factors that affect you and there is no reason to emphasize one versus the other.
What is needed however, is to develop an attitude in the people where such details are taken for what they are, in a non-prejudicial, perhaps even an inspirational way. What is needed is not the nullification of individuality but the open acceptance of individuality and the differences that come with it! We need to make people embrace differences again - without innately associating any value with them!!

Equality does not come from homogeneity.

It comes from appreciating the differences and from learning to value them. After  all, the best things in life are like the rainbow and they arise from the differences built into them.