Category: Choices

  • All I have to do is dream…

    Yes. Quite liked the movie – Inception. Mostly because I found the concept  (dream incubation, lucid dreaming) interesting and because it forced me to pay attention. Sometimes, movies like that can be refreshing. Of course, it helped that the visuals were very watchable too, and the last shot added to the charm.

    For those who haven’t seen the movie, not to worry, the post only refers to it in terms of concept. At a very basic level, its about planting an idea (Inception) inside a person’s head. Only, he shouldn’t know it was planted by someone else, he should think it’s his idea.  In a world where a lot of people anyway falsely claim an idea as their own, you might wonder why this is interesting, but  ignore that for now. 🙂 Meanwhile, since the person needs to think its his idea, a basic version of the idea is planted in a dream state, in the subconscious.

    Like the movie maker has said about the end, its whatever you want it to be, so here goes. The other reason I liked the movie was because of the ‘life subtext” – the part that makes comparisons to The Matrix inevitable. I thought many acts of ‘Inception’ happen to us too, over a period of time – sometimes done by others, sometimes by ourselves – conditioning. And since we don’t really contemplate why we choose to do a certain thing/in a certain way, we end up thinking that what we’re doing is what we really want.

    Half my life
    Is in books’ written pages
    Lived and learned from fools and
    From sages
    You know it’s true
    All the things come back to you

    And just like how in the movie, the ‘projections’ (things and people used by a dream-architect to populate the dream world) turn hostile when the person detects an external presence in their sub conscious, in life, the problem starts when we suddenly realise the existence of the conditioning, and realise that perhaps, much time has been spent on chasing an ‘inception’.

    Every time that I look in the mirror
    All these lines on my face getting clearer
    The past is gone
    It went by, like dusk to dawn

    And yet, some would say that their lives have been made better by pursuing that one idea. So how do we really know? In the movie, the people who carry out ‘inception’ and the lower forms of the art (extraction) have a totem that helps them distinguish dreams from reality. I wonder if we have something comparable, but then, I wonder, if life would be as interesting as it is if I did have a spinning top or a rolling dice to give me a better grip on reality. 🙂

    until next time, deception 🙂

    Lyrics: Dream On, Aerosmith.

  • Mirror Images

    I came across this passage while reading Kiran Desai’s “The Inheritance of Loss”. The context is of a young girl, who, because of a new found romance suddenly becomes conscious of herself.

    “But how did she appear? She searched in the stainless-steel pots, in the polished gompa butter lamps, in the merchants’ vessels in the bazaar, in the images proffered by the spoons and knives on the dining table, in the green surface of the pond. Round and fat she was in the spoons, long and thin in the knives, pocked by insects and tiddlers in the pond; golden in one light, ashen in another; back then to the mirror; but the mirror, fickle as ever, showed one thing, then another and left her, as usual, without an answer.”

    I found that I could also identify with it in the context of our encounters with the social platforms around – Orkut, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn.. and how slowly the ‘Like’ and RTs seem to be defining the interactions and affecting even perceptions and understanding of the self. Its not as though people and comments never existed before, but the sheer mass of people we come into contact with, thanks to the social platforms is unprecedented. Through the conversations and responses, we see a bit of ourselves, a self colored by the other person’s perceptions. As the voices around us continue to increase, at some point, is there a danger of losing touch with what we really are? Yes, you could ignore or be selective, but then we’d just get back to an objectivity argument.

    “The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed.”

    I read that, thanks to @aanteadda‘s share on Twitter – an excellent take on the Ramayana,(do read it) and in a completely different context – that of dharma, it happened to arrive around the same place. Rama, having lived his entire life by what he considered his dharma, is distressed by what he must do with Sita after the end of the war with Ravana, irrespective of what he personally wants. The author thinks that this is Rama’s tragedy, and that of every person who lives by ‘impartial and abstract principles’, which don’t take into account ‘individuals as persons,’ and can’t see the difference between a situation and a personal situation’, and it can only lead to the destruction of the self.

    And so I wondered, whether its people, or a moral code that one follows, whatever dictates what we do, is there really a difference – between the reflections from others and ourselves? Is there one right answer for what should define us and the way we live. I think not.

    We must prioritise, I guess, based on what we think will give us happiness, and just like this neat article on addiction (the internet in particular) ends, “we will increasingly be defined by what we say no to”, all thanks to an abundance of choices, from within and without.

    until next time, you always have a choice, but do you always want a choice?

  • Coincide

    A friend of mine, Soubhagya, is an avid photographer, who, despite my best efforts, still shies away from running his own photoblog. So when he asked me to take part in a writing experiment, I thought it would be a relatively painless way of introducing him to blogging, and hopefully, he’ll like it enough to do it on his own. The idea’s pretty simple – he’s given me a couple of pictures he has shot recently, and wants me to write a few words on each. Here goes

    the face of money‘The face of money’ is what Soubhagya calls it.

    What’s my value? To a politician, I’m a vote that will help him in his quest for power. To my employer, I am a worker who gets paid for the job I do. To the places I eat out in, to the shops I buy things from, I am a source of revenue. To the people who care for me as an individual, these are perhaps not the parameters of calculating their value for me. It’s a different currency. So the question is complete only if I ask “What’s my value to …. ?”  Now, what if I were to pose the question to myself? Do I measure myself by my financial status, or the lack of it? Is it the ‘Likes’ on Facebook or the followers on Twitter? Or is it by the number of lives I have touched, in one way or another? Is it a combination? Is it what I deem as my potential? How much is that dependent on externalities? And doesn’t that change with time? Which brings me to..

    Burnt out ‘Burnt Out’

    Purpose. I have always been interested in the purpose of our lives. All life forms in general, and of course, specifically us, humans. Generally, at different stages in life, we get stuck with different routines, sometimes by choice, sometimes not – school, college, work and so on. There is a short term purpose to it all, so we rarely look for something beyond. By my definition, ‘purpose’ gives a meaning to what we do, something beyond the money that it brings in, something that really makes us happy just by doing it, as though we are destined to do it. One could rationalise and say that the money then becomes a tool to ‘buy’ the things that give happiness, but that’s arguable.. We prioritise according to our baggage, some are okay with trading an amazing weekend and regular holidays for mind numbing work, some wouldn’t be able to manage it at all, and there are tons of options in between. The candle reminds me of the passion that we bring into what we do, and I believe that depends on our approach to ‘purpose’. Burn brightly or be a shallow flame? In both cases, there is a finite lifetime in which it has to be done. For me, even the task of finding a purpose is a tough one. Whichever way one sees it, there is always the possibility of a burnout. Such is life. So burn you must, and light up the place as much as you can. 🙂

    until next time, wax eloquent 😉

    PS: Now split ‘coin-cide’ and you might figure out a new possibility

  • Ok, its alright with me…..

    As I walked towards the parking space to get the vehicle, the lion and the clown beckoned to me. While their masks sported plastic smiles, i could sense the beseeching look their eyes would have. It was almost the end of the day, and when I peeped inside as I walked past, I could find rows and rows of empty counters and mannequins and sales people with equally blank expressions. It wasn’t the first time I had seen this  shop and wondered how they managed to stay afloat. I see it whenever traffic gets held up in the junction. At the heart of the central business district, I am sure it must have seen better times, maybe a time before the malls and the big brands… what plans they must’ve made about sales and revenues and good times…wonder if it really matters now…

    As i rode home, I got stuck in one of those endless traffic snarls that is as characteristic of this city now as a by-two coffee in darshinis. As the honks became louder and tempers got frayed, I thought the ordeal would never end. But  suddenly, the traffic began to move slowly. As I turned a corner, literally and figuratively, I could see a little distance way, a civilian directing traffic. I would’ve thanked him, but by the time I got there, the traffic was moving briskly, and he had crossed the road and disappeared into a lane. I’m sure he wasn’t getting paid, and he didn’t have any plans other than to undo a few knots…

    I make plans… and you make plans.. some plans are better than others… sometimes I have to do what I have to do.. and sometimes, like the Joker, I’m a dog chasing cars, I wouldn’t know what to do if i caught one… but yet, more often than not, Krishna’s words in the Bhagvad Gita make sense. But one is attached – for fame, money, love, combinations of the above and a myriad other reasons.. it is never easy to be detached. I feel sorry for the shop even if they were greedy, and I am envious of the man who walked away after he did what he had to do..

    Plans.. there were things I thought I couldn’t do without, a few years back, a lifestyle which I didn’t want to alter,  I thought a way of living could be kept constant across time, but things change, for a few days I may have mourned, and then I moved on.. they make good nostalgia frames – time,  places, things, people.. they all have a role to play..if you told me then that I would be living without them at a later date, I’d have smiled at you, a knowing smile acknowledging your silliness. But yet, here I am, with a new set that I don’t think I can live without…

    Ok it’s alright with me some things are just meant to be
    it never comes easily and when it does i’m already gone
    i’m practically never still more likely to move until i end up alone at will
    my life continues inching along

    [Eric Hutchinson – Ok it’s alright with me]

    So i move along, and I reach a place and I wonder how it all started… And I realise that even the attachment I claim is such a flimsy piece of string, it unravels for a while, and then at some point, the memory gets cut off, and then perhaps I make up the rest in the image of how it should have started…

    I promise you, I have not changed the beginning of this post, this was an experiment of a thought stream, of giving up control, of not being a hostage to plans, but I  have to wonder, if I knew this was the way it would end, would I have started differently?

    until next time, post….life

    Note: I’d written this post a while back, and it was almost forgotten in ‘drafts’. Chanced upon it, and realised it made sense to publish it on the day before I leave this workplace. 8 years after i started working, I’m finally going to work… for me 🙂

  • Brood Mode

    [The title, while in context, is also a Hi to an old blog pal]

    The last week of November gave me a chance to engage in one of my favourite pastimes – people watching. No, I wasn’t stalking anyone, it was just that I got a chance to watch more and diverse masses (different occasions) of humanity than my regular outings.

    So gawk I did, at famed dancers, musicians and celebrities, at their tantrum-throwing best, egos in full display. I watched people standing in long queues, eager for a glimpse of them, so eager that they were ready to trample the folks ahead of them, or cheat the line. Even after they sat down, they changed chair locations and occupied empty aisles that had been kept for easier crowd movement, angering those behind. I also had an argument with a guy who had a differently abled child, clearly in no state to enjoy the show. He had a regular pass, but said the child’s condition warranted his family being shifted to the VIP class. He said he was from the army, and when I refused entry into the VIP class, he questioned my humanity. I bit back a comment about what business he had bringing that child to a  free entry event, which was bound to have unruly crowds, and how human he was while doing his duty at the border. I observed acquaintances at work taking advantage of the trust I had in them. In essence I watched a lot and learned a lot, again, on human behaviour, and myself.

    After I shared the last post with her, Mo had asked me why I was brooding these days. While I told her that I was reserving flippancy, wit and wordplay for the 140 character world 😀 , I thought she did have a point. A later conversation with Surekha gave me some insight, when we talked about social media and specifically Twitter. I had thought that the seeming transparency of that world would imply more fairness in our transactions, acknowledgment of other people’s efforts and a refinement in the way we deal with people. But no, the talkers still rule, popularity contests abound, and the meek still wait to inherit. These days I can hear some of them grumbling too. 🙂 On hindsight, this is the same mistake I’d made with blogging too. Something I thankfully corrected.

    What’s the connection? Expectations. Of others and from others. From the celebrities, from the people who came to see them, from acquaintances, from relationships on the web and so on. On how they ought to behave and interact. Expectations I set based on my concept of fairness. “It’s not about what I want, it’s about what’s fair!”, Harvey had said, in The Dark Knight. But while I try to be as objective as I can, there is a limit to that too. When the expectations are not met, I get judgmental, which is not something I like to do. Let’s just say I then don’t meet my expectations of myself. 🙂

    Earlier I used to be bitter about all this, and be rude to people, but now I just brood. I brood on how to get out of this cycle. How can I not expect, either from myself or from others, or ideally both. Does brooding help? No. Can I help it? No. Does that make me unhappy? No again, because like those processes that run in the background while I work on the computer, this is a question that’s being worked on too. 🙂  No, that doesn’t make it a pseud brood :p

    And every now and then, I am reminded of the words of Harvey Dent Two-Face (again), as he flips the coin, and I wonder about the truth in them “The world is cruel, and the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased. Unprejudiced. Fair.”

    until next time, happy Dent? 😉