Category: Flawsophy

  • Autonomy.. or not?

    Much as filmmakers love to claim that there’s no formula, sequels happen. And when I see sequels completely spoiling the memory of the original (in this case, the Malayalam movie August 15, whose first edition ‘August 1’ released in 1988 was a scene by scene lift from Forsyth’s awesome “The Day of the Jackal”), I wonder if this approach is just the greed to milk the most out of a franchise or just the lure of a safe template. In the case of movies, it’s probably more the greed.

    But I realise that the latter goes not just for movies, but many decisions in individual lives as well – from where we go for a dine-out to the travel plans we make, and many other preferences that somehow seem to get a life of their own and run on auto pilot after sometime.

    The auto-pilot mode is quite comfortable really, especially if you’re not aware of it. The problem, I think, arises when templates are followed but expectations are not met. That’s when the questioning begins, and ‘awareness’ begins to dawn. Then, unless you allow yourself to fall back, it becomes an itch you can’t scratch away.

    And you see the mask you unwittingly made for yourself slowly slipping, and then begins that terrible phase when you realise that there’s nothing to hold it up and nothing to take its place.

    until next time, mask charades

  • Sight, Insight

    One Saturday, when we were getting out of Forum Mall, we noticed a trio fumbling around the entrance barrier ropes. Turned out they were blind and had no idea how to get out. With two loud events happening there, I guess their requests for help might not have been heard. We managed to get them out and in less than a minute, I learned how hard it must be for them to navigate- from steps to people in a rush, everything was a potential obstruction/hazard.

    When we left them, I felt guilty, wondering how they’d reach their home/next destinations, and how I’d let my plans for the evening take precedence over the help I could’ve done them. I was also quite frustrated at the seeming injustice of it all. It didn’t help that I like perfect systems, which have a reason for being the way they are. D said that in the volunteering work she does, they are advised not to bond beyond a certain point with the people they work with. Apparently, when they get attached, it becomes difficult for both parties.

    The next week, for the third time, this book “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” resisted my advances. It’s not the first one, nor is it going to be the last that just stayed on the shelf and mocked my attempts to establish some contact. But it definitely had been around the longest so far.

    The signature says we bought it on a Gandhi Jayanti day in 2004. This time I got to about a third of it before I was completely fatigued. Perhaps it’s do with my inability to read multiple books simultaneously or the lure of the unread ones staring at me from the bookshelf, but I just couldn’t go on. It did give me a few interesting insights on life, death, transience etc, before we parted ways. In case it isn’t obvious, I quite hate not finishing books.

    Letting go of things is never easy, though the difficulty varies as per the ‘thing’ under consideration. And yet, we do manage to let go. Sometimes by choice and sometimes slowly moving on without even realising (like the death of someone dear). But it doesn’t come easy as a practice – it either takes an iron will or is an unconscious act. The middle path slips from the grasp easily, such is the wiring of the mind. Perhaps, when I finish the book, I will understand how, and will be able to let go of books, blind people and a fancy dinner with the same ease and understanding.

    until next time, in the dark..

  • Creature Comforts

    By sheer coincidence, the only two Stephen King books I’ve read are “Under the Dome” and Needful Things. They’re separated by a decade and a half (publication) and so, I was surprised to see a massive similarity in the themes – strange things happening in a town and then the focus shifts to human transactions, motivations and the good/evil within us. In the earlier book, it was a new shop and its proprietor  that played havoc, in the later one, it’s an indestructible dome.

    When I discussed this with a few friends, I was told that this was not surprising and there were more books with that broad theme, and many authors repeated their themes regularly. These authors and their books are bestsellers too, which means a lot of people like this arrangement?

    I have vaguely sensed this in music too – from MLTR to Bon Jovi to Bryan Adams to (even sometimes) Rahman, there seems to be a basic tune which is rendered differently at different times and released as a new track, and it sells. Which does make me wonder if even in these so-called hobbies, many of us have become creatures of habit, just like most other spheres of life – including food, people and so on. Comforts are easy that way, keeps the mind away from thinking. Of course, it could be subjective, and you could be on autopilot on some things, and not on others.

    Meanwhile, all this is not to say that others, who are always pushing themselves out of the zone, can get all judgmental about it, but I do wonder whether its a conscious decision to stick to a comfort zone, an inability to break out of it, or not even realising you’re in one. Etymologically, ‘comfort’ means ‘make someone stronger’, but by building that fort around the self, do we become stronger or weaker in the face of life?

    until next time, comfort knocks

  • This too shall pass…

    Not a simple subject, but he’d been reading up, and even writing about it. Though he hadn’t completely internalised it, he felt he was beginning to understand. But the actuality of ‘transience’ hit him when his computer crashed. Photos, notes, accumulated over 7 years. Gone! Data recovery attempts failed. He too was yet to recover.

    until next time, 8 years of blogging

    P.S. A good time to realise that at some point, this too shall pause 🙂

  • Books and Labels

    Not sure if a lot of people do this, but sometimes I ‘drag’ my reading. Not because the book is boring, but just because I want it to go on for some more time. 🙂

    The last recipient of this treatment was Pico Iyer’s “The Lady and the Monk”, which is part travelogue, part human journey, part Zen primer, part romance and possibly several other things too. I think this book will come up many times in this blog in future too, because it gave me multiple feed (foods didn’t sound right) for thought.

    Among other things, it has left me with a great interest for the Zen school of Buddhism. I have started looking for more information on that. Meanwhile, in the book was this guy who had a seemingly simplistic approach to ‘labeling’ things – ‘necessary’, ‘useful’ and ‘useless’. When I think about the things I own/ am passionate about/ spend a lot of time on, and try to categorise it on those labels, it gives tremendous perspective, and I wonder if applying these labels regularly and mindfully would make me more, or less human. Try it out 🙂

    until next time, non zens?