Category: Self

  • I, the responsible

    …and the poor poor girl died earlier in the day I wrote this. Given the delay between my writing posts, and them getting published here, we should have collectively moved on from the issue by now, at least in terms of mind space and media space- mainstream as well as trending topics.

    Much, much has been written about the issue – the male/female/Indian/ NRI/feminist/opportunist/armchair activist/ weekend activist/ ‘I was there to protest’ perspective, and these were only some examples – slice and dice any way you like and you’d find a voice that spoke on behalf of the piece you carved. Like this.

    Much as I abhor what happened, I see it (rape) only as one symptom of the disease we all have – our own malformed sense of justice. Probably one of the worst symptoms, but not the only one. Injustice is injustice, and it varies by degrees only on the basis of our own perspectives of right and wrong. It happens everyday – talking on the mobile phone while driving/riding, fudging tax forms, making the maid plead for a salary raise, bribing a cop, drinking and driving because you have assured yourself that you are still in control… ask your conscience, you’ll come up with many more. No, I’m not really confusing it with breaking the law – here’s an example. Five hundred times you speak on the phone while driving and nothing happens, but nothing stops the five hundred and first time being the instance that maims someone for life, and leaving him/her bereft of limbs, and perhaps dignity. Ask that person which is a larger crime – what happened to him or a gang rape – the answer should not be surprising. Every action/inaction that affects the dignity of another person, that shows another person that one can get away with breaking the law, that walks the grey area between absolute right and wrong in however minute a way, is injustice in some form.  And in this daily, casual, personal #theekhai attitude to justice lie the seeds of every horrible act of injustice. Any kid watching this today and seeing the perpetrator walk away scot free will imagine he can get away with a bigger crime. And so it grows, and morphs into multi-thousand crore scams and gang rapes further down the chain. A bit like the broken windows theory.

    Granted that an elected government has among its duties the responsibility of ensuring the protection of its citizens. Should we protest if they do not? Of course, but that does not absolve me of my obligation, nor does it free me of the nagging thought that as a race, our notion of justice is based on convenience. Sometimes I wonder if the birth of laws in society was a response to the slow death of justice within human beings.

    So yes, I am the privileged who can update my Facebook status, and move on with my life. I am responsible and there’s nothing I can do about it. Before I casually judge others, I have to wonder if I have the moral authority to do so. After all, I only vary by degrees.

    (image via gaping void)

    until next time, </justice>

  • A picture to go with me

    Something in Mishi Saran’s ‘The Other Side of Light’ made me think of a visual that would accompany me on the final journey. I’m not really a painting kind of person, so it’d probably be a photograph.

    A photograph that captured my life in one still moment, or my soul itself. Something that was much more than a thousand words. Something that only I understood and could connect with, so its existence beyond my own would be meaningless.

    For now, I don’t think I have a photograph like that. Or perhaps each photo, when I look back at it, is as much the deserving one as another. Each one, a different me, real and alive at that point in time, reduced to memory soon as it is captured.

    until next time, transience

  • Posture child

    I guess that’s the reason why Calvin & Hobbes is so utterly loved by so many folks. Profound, timeless, universal truths expressed in such a unique way!

    I had never seen this one until recently. Why blame Instagram for filters? They existed long before anyway 🙂 I thought this strip found great application in all kinds of posturing from time immemorial, and especially so now – in the social media context, when everyone is a publisher. Over a period of time, I wonder how fast we would forget who we really are (if ever we come to know it or knew it) It would probably be irrelevant in the real-time era. We would be the statuses and photos and everything else we like and share every minute. After all, I’m no longer the person who wrote it anyway, and who’s to say the non posturing self is the real deal?

    until next time, impostor 🙂

  • A larger plan

    Most of everyone who knows me would agree that I am a compulsive planner. This habit has been reinforced on several occasions when I have been better prepared than others in situations. However, I also believe that it is quite a trade-off – between the safety of knowing in advance what to expect and the thrill and joy of leaving oneself open to an experience. The middle path is quite difficult to achieve in this case.

    That was why I was very intrigued by the phrase – Negative Capability – the willingness to embrace uncertainty, live with mystery, and make peace with ambiguity. From experience, it is forced upon us too. The best laid plans can go awry often because even the best of minds cannot sometimes envision every possible scenario. That’s not the only time I have been humbled by the limitations of the human mind. From something as simple as understanding what’s really going on in another person’s mind (not to mention my own understanding of my mind) even as they tell you things to larger questions on purpose and destiny, we’d be fools to think that we can know the mechanism of everything around us.

    But as humanity progresses, is there a tendency to convert everything to science, or a skill/process that anyone so inclined can master? As we discover more, I wonder if there is a collective ego that develops and one that says we can understand and control everything around us. As a race, are we becoming increasingly intolerant towards uncertainty?

    But as this post says, the idea that the current version of our mind is only one step in evolution is very compelling. I wonder if, by increasingly closing our mind to uncertainty, we are moving in a direction opposite the one that will help us solve the greatest puzzle of it all – why are we here?

    until next time, what’s your plan?

  • Plan C

    This post has been pending for a while, the date of publishing of the article that inspired the post is evidence enough. It is about people who leave their jobs to follow their passion, but instead of the success stories we are used to, it focuses on the difficulties on that path. Even if you’ve not taken that path already, it’s quite possible that you have contemplated it. It’s romantic – the freedom, being your own boss and doing the thing you like – Plan B. But it’s not easy, and it begins as early as even identifying one’s passion. (must read)

    Interestingly, NYT themselves had an article almost a year later that asked “What Work is Really For” and answered that with an Aristotle quote “we work to have leisure, on which happiness depends.” Though I didn’t know about this quote until recently, this is a perspective that I have often used to debate with people who say those who do not like their jobs should quit. There are many reasons why people don’t, and one of them is consciously making a choice to work (possibly on things they don’t enjoy) for the 2 days (and vacations) when they are able to spend their resources – money, effort and time – on things they enjoy.

    The reasons people don’t scale up those 2 days could be many, including the difficulties involved in the early stages of setting up, and then maintaining a positive balance – of money and life. Money is after all an essential resource. It buys things, it opens doors. But when your passion becomes your work and your principal source of money, does it feel the same? Or does it become a job?

    I liked the second NYT article also for its last 3 paragraphs. It addresses the money conundrum. It talks about how right from when we are born, we are taught to be consumers, thanks to capitalism, which though calls itself an open market where we have the freedom to buy is actually a system unto itself.  The choices are not really independent. It points out that education should be meant to make us self determining agents. True freedom requires that we take part in the market as fully formed agents, with life goals determined not by advertising campaigns but by our own experience of and reflection on the various possibilities of human fulfillment. But that’s not an easy path either. It calls for independent thinking and a subjective view of fulfillment and happiness. And that brings us to the familiar “to each his own”

    until next time, work it out 🙂

    Bonus Read: Six Rules to guide your career