thebengali.com

[19:36:12] tb: have posted some new bits on twitter.

[19:35:39] ds: I have joined it today.

[19:36:12] teebee: good

[19:36:17] Diess: But, some strange character has included himself/herself as my follower and posted strange messages.

[19:36:28] teebee: that’s normal. 

 [19:36:35] Diess: That is why I keep away from such websites.

[19:36:55] teebee: u have to understand twitter. [19:37:18] teebee: like u have to understand Facebook

[19:37:22] teebee: and LinkedIn.

[19:37:37] teebee: social media is changing the way people communicate.

[19:37:49] teebee: they are also changing the way people are accessing information.

[19:38:09] teebee: in turn, it has the potential to change the way we learn and think of learning.

[19:38:45] teebee: there are techies and product companies who are trying to combine social media and email, you know why?

[19:39:03] Diess: Why?

[19:40:43] teebee: email may be out sometime in the future as a popular means of communication.

[19:41:00] Diess: Hmm [19:41:29]

teebee: text messaging, and instant messaging (connecting to people real-time when online) is taking over. there are people who live on Facebook!

[19:41:54] Diess: Do you?

[19:41:58] teebee: nope.

[19:42:09] Diess: By choice or by lack of time?

[19:42:10] teebee: choice. but i am an aberration.

[19:42:19] Diess: Hmm

[19:42:36] teebee: u see i do not like interacting with people. i like solitude.

[19:43:17] Diess: But you have a dual nature.

[19:43:24] Diess: or character. [19:43:49] teebee: i have two facades, but the underlying nature is solitary

[19:44:19] Diess: That’s complex to understand.

[19:44:31] teebee: everybody has a dual nature. that is what leads to dilemma and bad decision making. or late decision making.

[19:45:20] teebee: two facades is logic. it lets me see both sides of the coin.

[19:46:27] teebee: i can step into both sides of an argument, understand and imbibe the logic and support each side with equal enthusiasm.

[19:46:40] Diess: Ha ha ha!

[19:46:47] teebee: some call it dual nature.

[19:46:56] Diess: Then, for you there is no absolute right/wrong.

[19:47:01] teebee: correct. right and wrong are man-made.

[19:47:24] Diess: Hmm

[19:47:34] teebee: and they are related to social norms of behavior;

[19:48:03] teebee: they are taught and reinforced by lore, legend, myth and religion.

[19:48:14] teebee: implemented by morals, laws, and ethics.

[19:49:04] teebee: and followed by the masses blindly, without any enquiry into their true nature or utility.

[19:49:14] teebee: which is why social reform is so difficult: it is deeply ingrained in culture.

[19:49:28] Diess: Hmm

[19:49:56] teebee: there is no right and wrong in the world. life, death, existence, sin, evil, good … these are all contextual.

[19:50:55] Diess: Hmm

[19:51:44] teebee: the greater the followers and wider the context (universal), the greater is the ‘truth’.

[19:52:08] Diess: Hmm

[19:53:49] teebee: so what do u thnk of right and wrong?

[19:54:08] Diess: It is very difficult for me to accept your point of view.

[19:54:28] teebee: i am asking about your view point. not asking u to counter my view point

[19:55:34] Diess: I will always have an opinion about any matter…

I have lived most of my life so far in a city. And I have lived most of my life so far among city people. And both – the city and the city-dweller – are dangerous. They are both full of themselves and do not have a vision of the world beyond the city and its life.

City life breeds homogeneity. It also cultivates social blindness. Cities give birth to intellectual illiterates, a kind of people who are educated to perform tasks that are necessary to survive in a city and to follow the template of behavior in all spheres of life as a city dweller.

If you are not a part of this phenomenon: mourn. Mourn because you will spend your life feeling frustrated with the lack of sensibility in those around you and angry because you have to conform to such behavior to get anywhere or get anything done.

If you are part of the city-life phenomenon: rejoice. Rejoice because you will hopefully die before you realize that your destiny was to be one of the marching ants that made up the vastness of the urban human mass and nothing else. If you do realize it before you die, fret not. Fret not because that is a noble cause with a difficult path. It is often difficult to tread a trodden path because the animal within us wants to break free.

About a month ago, my wife got this cheese spread from her weekly trip to the supermarket. A few days later, I found it looking sunny and cheerful on a sandwich for breakfast and a bite later, I knew it wasn’t for me: it was an Jalapeno-flavoured spread, the ‘Mexican Mirchi’ tag should have tipped us off. To keep up my recently found good health I have to abstain from such burning temptations and I have been doing a good job of keeping away from them.

Then, a month later, today to be precise, my wife informed me cheerfully: “I have got you a new plain cheese spread.”

“I will have bread and butter, I don’t really like cheese  spread … ” I said, watching as her sweet expression curdled, crustalised her exasperation and settled into a calm, silent and stormy look , the kind of look my friend Rohantonio would term as a “killer look”.
 
That’s pressure, my friend. That one look. And we face such pressure every day of our lives, taking paths that we don’t really intend to go down.

I love cheese. And I hate cheese spread. As simple a piece of communication as that eight years ago would have saved my wife endless trips to the super market trying to get that perfect cheese spread. (I’m not really sure if she herself likes cheese spread, hmm.)

And really, 14 out of 15 days, cheese spread doesn’t make my breakfast interesting, because 14 out of 15 days I don’t have bread for breakfast. And no, no matter how much money the dairy-product company spends on the advertising, cheese spread just doesn’t taste good on parathas, rotis and sundry other India breakfast foods.  

But my likes and dislikes do not encourage or discourage dairy product companies from employing more people in research and spending more time, money and effort (which they will recover from you and me), trying to raise revenues by creating more variations, varieties and options in flavours that excite a momentary taste and create entirely new lines of product space on the over-crowded shelf. That’s what they do and they should continue to do so.

The real question is: am I going to continuing eat cheese spread when I don’t really like it? And if yes, what does it say about my decison making process and can I really avoid looking for someone else to blame if I can’t say no when I mean no?

It’s a long, hard road to being who you are without making a conflict out of it, but the road must be travelled.

Days without incident: 0.

The evening sky as seen from Wakad, Pune, India; Photo: Sanjay Mukherjee

An angel swooped down,
Or was it a demon?
But in the clear blue sky
I could not tell.

A bit of sky, a whole of mountain, a deep blue sea and a boat: what else would one need for an adventure but an unstill mind?

If you ever get to Hong Kong, pay a visit to Mui Wo on Lantau Island .. and not just the touristy beach but really take a walk around.

So there’s this place, see? And it’s very much like where I want to be – all the time – but never am? And it looks exactly like my dreams have ever been all about? Except that, you never really go beyond the surface in your dreams, do you? I mean really dig deeeeeeeep into that top icing on the pineapple cake and discover that it’s actually just a cold slice of pizza with peanut sauce on top, layered with white sweet icing. Now you may like pizza and peanut sauce, but I don’t and so, it’s like a nightmare?

Anyway, so I am thinking going after your dreams isn’t really all that it’s made out to be? Unless you’ve really dreamt it through … and by the time you get through the first three thousand and two hundred dreams, and find the top 5 that are really good dreams to go for, you’d probably be like 60 maybe?

So I see the point of existence of people who don’t do anything, but just dream … makes more sense than working hard at something you were never sure of in the first place and then there was too much hardwork invested in it for you to let go and then what do you know – a decade’s gone by, the mortgage payments are halfway through, the kids are grown up (as much they want to anyway) and rock really starts sounding like rocks … yeah, I can finally see the wisdom in just sitting on that fence, letting your head stay on that colleage-day cloud and dreaming that big dream … and dreaming that big dream … and dreaming that big dream…

 I had seen Superman much before I ever read a comic, seen a sketch or come anywhere near a movie of the super hero. I knew of him, of him as Clark Kent, and of Louis Lane and of Krypton and Kryptonites and a host of other stuff about Superman.

Dedeng dedeng, dedeng, dedeng dedeng dedeng, dedeng deyydeng, dedeng dedeng… that by the way is the tune of Pink Panther in trombone. I could sing that tune and describe Pink Panther’s antics and see him in my mind’s eye, long before I ever came across the character in any work art. In fact, I knew that Peter Sellers’ was the only Inspector Clouseau ever possible.

I actually saw the first of the Pink Panther movies in the late 1990s, 20 years after I first imagined Inspetor Clouseau and the Pink Panther. Guess what? I knew the movie frame to frame. In fact, it was as if I had already seen the movie.

I actually saw Superman (Christopher Reeves) for the first time in 2003 or 2004 – more than 25 years after I first imagined him in my mind. And guess what? Yes, I knew the movie frame by frame … and there were some scenes which were missing but I found them later in Superman 2.

And how did I know these movies? It’s simple really. Abbas described them to me. Abbas, my best friend since Class 4, St Joseph’s High School, Juhu Church, Mumbai. In fact, Abbas was my eyes and ears to the world outside India. He had a VCR and access to movies and every time he saw one, he would describe it to me the next day in school at lunch and after school, waiting for the bus home. Abbas, who would bring me stamps from Bahrain and Kuwait and other Gulf countries … stamps which started my stamp collection, one which I still guard with a hawk eye. Abbas, who taught me the meaning of friendship and family and sharing.

Such was the power of his narration, that I remember the books, movies, and pictures he narrated to me, even today more than 30 years later. I grew up with a fantastic imagination and a certain ability to write narratives in different styles. By the time I became a journalist of any consequence, I had lost touch with Abbas out of own folly. And the person who had been with me all of my life, all through my ups and most of my downs, had never read any of the things I could write thanks in a good measure to his narratives.

I have been searching for him for the better part of the last 14 years. Hopefully, my exile will end soon and I will find him one day. Abbas, I miss you.

Ghosh, Deba, and Vineet in Ghosh's West Patel Nagar den, Delhi, 1986; Photo: Sanjay Mukherjee

I often look at this photograph and marvel at the fire in these young eyes, the sense of purpose, and the confidence of young, unbridled minds.

Priority

The purpose of my existence, mostly, has been to understand and articulate my thought process.

This has been so because I feel it is important for me to record my actions, and lay bare the perceptions, knowledge, attidue, and
motivations that have led to the actions.
When I look back, I can identify that the times when I have fallen from grace or fallen on tough times, it has been because I have abandoned reason and have deviated from my purpose, becoming instead obsessed with the importance of my self.

The decision-making process that leads to actions are based on the order of priority that my mind has drawn up. At different times in life, the priorities have been different and many conflicts have been associated with my incorrect perception of these priorities. 

At this point in time, I can identify the following as my priority (in order). I can also honestly acknowledge today that whenever the topmost priority has changed, it has always without fail led to a fall from grace.

Values.
Child(ren).
Wife.
Income.
Parents.
Sibling.
Family.
Friends.
Nation.
Job.
Business.
Me.

There is too much noise. Too much. Noise.

So how does one find the music? How does one find the words that mean life? How does one find the colours that distinguish life from death? How does one percieve the different shades within the same colour when there are a million colours jostling for attention?

How do I listen only to the voice that is God, nature, truth? How do I separate reality from my own reaction to it, even accepting that reality is relative? How do I rise above my human frailty?

The key lies in silence. Or contemplation in silence. When the mind is still, clarity emerges, sounds become notes; notes become movements, and tunes and music begins to emerge. When the mind is still, images lead to thoughts which shape words, fragments and sentences and concrete perception of ideas.

So I must go back to seeking silence. And the biggest impediment to this quest is my own voice, because it is my voice (my opinion) that is the biggest noise obstructing my ability to understand truth and reality.

The silence I seek is within.