Category: Society & Culture

  • One of an unkind 😐

    We met an acquaintance when we’d gone for a movie last weekend. During the interval, he bought two large  colas – one for him and his wife, and one for us. For reasons I considered valid (only one of which was that I considered the thing addictive and didn’t want to tempt myself at the beginning of the summer) I had to say no – a thanks but.. polite no at first to a curt no finally. When the movie ended, he walked out, one cola stilled clutched, and a sheepish smile thrown at us. I felt very uncomfortable, more so because I didn’t really know him and didn’t explain to him why i said no. I had, with my silence, rebuffed, what was a nice gesture from him.

    I hurried back to catch ‘Boston Legal’, and it was as though the cosmos wanted to rub it in. One of the cases under trial in the episode was that of a sorority expelling a member because she was socially awkward. The interesting part was that lawyers on both sides were essentially very nice people…. with personality disorders. Jerry, who appears on behalf of the sorority president has Asperger syndrome, and uses another personality to overcome his awkwardness and Clarence, who appears for the defendant, has multiple personalities, each of which is a defense against more aggressive people. Though I supported the member – Marcie Cooper, who I felt was wronged, I found Jerry’s closing extremely touching

    College is also about preparing students for the outside world. Last time I checked, it’s pretty tough out there. There’s the old adage, “Nice guys finish last.” There’s some truth to that. I happen to know opposing counsel is a fundamentally kind man. Sensitive. He chose to exploit my Asperger’s syndrome to win this case.

    My very best friend, a lawyer I had a case against not too long ago, he, too, exploited my Asperger’s. He’s a very good man, who opted for cruelty as a strategy.

    If Marcie Cooper comes out of this experience thinking that people can be cruel—even the kind, sensitive
    ones—if she’s learned that she will be judged not simply on merit, or the content of her character, but on how she looks and socializes with others, she’s gotten an education, one that will serve her in life. This is a free society. People get to choose their friends, clubs get to choose their members. Sometimes it’s very ugly and unfair. That’s . . . life.

    And I could imagine how the kind sensitive ones could be cruel. Perhaps its the result of a majority of humanity taking advantage of their kindness and sensitivity, or being insensitive to it, or trampling their kind acts and emotions in the races they run, or laughing at what would be deemed their idiocy.

    And I wondered- in educating children for life, will parents have enough time and patience for teaching their children the importance of being humane, while still instilling in them the smartness that would enable them to know when someone takes advantage of them? Or will they choose the easy way out and teach them to be rude, to unfairly demand, to snatch by might irrespective of right? And create a race of inhuman beings who wouldn’t spare a thought for those who are perhaps not as strong as them – physically, emotionally or in terms of social skills.

    I’m no angel, but i try to prevent my own unkindness. I usually ask myself “how would I feel in the other person’s shoes”, but there are some situations when for some reason, I cannot adhere to my own rule. I feel very guilty on such occasions, because I feel that through that act I might have started a chain. Someday soon, I hope to make it up to that acquaintance, for I am sorry. I truly am.

    until next time, transactions in kind

  • Lost Universes

    Sometime back, I got an email forward – A Violinist in the Metro, about the world famous musician Joshua Bell, who, in 45 minutes, played 6 Bach pieces, with a violin worth $3.5 million, at a metro station in Washington, and collected $32 for the effort. A couple of days back, he had sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats had averaged $100. The incident was a social experiment by Washington Post to check out whether we perceive beauty in a commonplace environment and whether we stop to appreciate it. The findings are a testament of the fast paced life we live, and the things we miss out on.

    But a few other facts in this incident interested me. For one, the crowd segment that paid the most attention to the musician were children. Their parents had to forcibly tug them away. Even if we are cynical and claim that its just curiosity, and not an appreciation of music, I still wonder about our life graph, and the part where we lose our innate curiosity. And its not just curiosity, its innocence, its a lot of other things that we lose on the way.

    When I meet friends from school or college, I sense they’ve changed, and so have I. Attitudes,mindsets, behaviour, all transforming themselves according to the experiences that life throws at us. And because of this, I am not able to relate to them the way I used to at an earlier point in time. A part of me that is perhaps lost forever. Even if I tried to re create it, it would be resisted by the current me.

    The other portion in the incident that interested me was that after the performance, there was no applause or recognition. People just moved on, oblivious to the phenomenon they didn’t perceive. I wonder if Joshua Bell was disappointed. Perhaps, if you’re a musician of that caliber, you would have passed the stage where you needed a stamp of approval. Or is he just like me? An unconfident performer of life, who looks around apologetically if he has upset any balance. Perhaps if i could perform like a carefree child, I could get back the curiosity and the other things that I’ve lost.

    This stream of consciousness reminded me of something I’d read about in the novel Space – a space shuttle’s flight. As it ascends into space, at different levels it discards different parts, parts that were useful to get it to that point, but useless after they’ve served this utility. And after completing the mission that it was sent for, it blazes a path back through the atmosphere, burning all except its core. It lands in a place far away from the place of its origin, and time has passed while all this is happening. In a strange way, it reminded me of the way lives are lived – at massive speeds, too fast to notice the beauty of the vast expanses of space around, to achieve something which is relevant only in a very small context, burning up with the hope that all that is being done is worthwhile, and perhaps in a lost, melancholic way, deciding that since anyway the life is to be lived, might as well live it with a mission, however inadequate it seems.

    until next time, touchdown

  • Forsake

    And sometimes, in the strangest of places, you find food for thought. ‘The Peddler of Soaps’ by Anand Kurian, which I had expected to give me only some entertainment, and not points to ponder, did the former quite well, and tucked away in a page, a paragraph that provided the latter too.

    Because a group is always a compromise, an intellectual or an ethical compromise. And a compromise always involves the lowest common denominator

    I thought about it a bit, and found that I agreed. And it doesn’t even have to be a group. It can even be two individuals, and can involve any of the relationships we have with each other. Friendship, marriage, relatives, professional groups and so on.

    While in the case of close relationships, we might tend to agree with each other most of the time, there are several times when we reach a compromise, sometimes with the other person, but mostly with ourselves, for the sake of the relationship, and the value we attach to it. In fact this value is also the factor that makes us compromise in casual relationships, and larger groups, in which case, the value is perhaps social acceptance.

    Sometimes we forget these compromises, and at other times, they have a long shelf life, like open sores that never go away, as though to remind us that there was a choice, and a different decision might have led to the fulfillment of what we were meant to be. I wonder, by these compromises, do we forsake ourselves?

    until next time, for the sake of….

  • Religiously following….

    I’ve always maintained that even religion should have a shelf life. This comes from a belief that religions were created at different times, basis the prevalent culture, accommodating the scenarios- natural and human created, and lifestyles in those times. The teachings were aimed at a more meaningful existence for fellow human beings, considering their existence then. Religion is a function of time and times.

    However, we seem to have held on to the words, more than the spirit, and thus perhaps failed to internalise the messages that are built into the texts. That could be the reason for the strife around us.

    Does a new time warrant a new religion? I don’t think so. In times when the mass shrinks and the individual and customisation rises, perhaps the opium of the masses needs to be re-looked at too.  I think spirituality and the connection to a higher force is a deeply personal thing, and should not be subject to the constraints of a religion. It should come from within rather than without, and I think such an understanding might lead to better lessons with a much longer shelf life. These lessons would make us better human beings, with a deeper understanding and compassion for everything around us, and therefore make the world a better place.

    Religion is not the path to salvation. A life lived with a better understanding of the spirit of the messages in it, could be. What say you?

    until next time, keep the faith

  • Something in common

    A few weeks back, I read a book called ‘Patna Roughcut’. Its one of those nice little books that reminded me of ‘The Wonder Years’, except that this one is non linear even in terms of narrators (not just narrative). While it is set in Patna and Delhi, I could identify a lot of the stuff – something I described in my short review as “you know you were a kid in india in the 80’s ” moments.

    A few days later, I had a conversation with someone on GTalk, about Thums Up and Frooti and all those drinks that existed in the 80’s and 90s, some of which, like Gold Spot and Sprint don’t even exist now, except in our memories. I realised that inspite of the vast distance between us, in terms of geography, we had a few culture icons that transcended it. That includes consumer items like those soft drinks, ads like Surf-Lalitaji, Lijjat Papad, Rasna, serials like Humlog, Mr.Yogi, Buniyaad, books – Amar Chitra Katha and Indrajal and many other things.(if you have been reading this blog post 2005, you might like to read that post, its one that’s very close to my heart)

    I wonder whether there’s an inverse proportion between the maturing of a country/economy and the common memory of generations. I can imagine the earliest generation of our free country, who had a bond – they’d rejoiced on Aug 15th, 1947 and then watched, or sometimes, suffered, the horrors of partition. Later generations who could associate with Jawaharlal Nehru’s socialist monuments (from dams to PSUs), the assassination of Indira Gandhi and where they were when they heard it, the triumph of a cricket world cup, and for us liberalisation and a new economy that changed everything forever.

    And while we have an SRK, a Tendulkar, a Dhoni, perhaps even a Vishwananathan Anand that binds us, in essence we’ve boiled down to Bollywood and Cricket as our icon providers. Everything else pales in comparison, and is at best, a regional influence. A single DD channel doesn’t find a place now even in our favourites, and the same goes for brands across categories. Sometimes I wonder, when the post 2000 generation is all grown up, whether they’ll only be able to relate to those whom they’ve known through some earlier association, like a school or college, and relate only because of those shared memories. Are they missing out on a large collective consciousness, one in which even this generation can relate to someone of their own age, simply because they’ve grown up in the same era? Maybe there are icons that I know nothing of, after all I belong to an earlier set. 🙂

    until next time, nostalgia trips 🙂