Now, like most belligerent people out there, wouldn’t one like to call oneself uncomplicated too? Technically, anyone could do so till it is proved otherwise. And there may not come a day for that too, since you’re the sole originator and user of the theory. They say, even serial killers think they are as innocent as babe’s.
Now wait a momen…….. did I say bayb? I can’t have!
No, no, not ‘babe’ babe, God forbid, that’s off limits in this context.
But it seems that there are differing opinions in their case too. Some say they are infinitesimally intelligent (So they can’t but be honest!) and some say they are just otherwise. I wouldn’t like to start a controversy here, I might get called a male chauvinist for all my good intentions, but even in those likeable specimens of humanity, it could be an inborn trait, like the color of one’s hair or skin or the eyes. It may have nothing to do with subjugating the fair race, that is, hopefully!
Coming back to the point, so why couldn’t one think oneself as honest, however improbable that might be? At least, it’s about our own idea of our self that we are talking of, we do not have to worry about copyrights in this case. Do we?
As an aside, let me assure you too, that it is not maintained here that people are mostly dishonest, it is only held that they are totally and dutifully so, and again, to themselves, the more optimistically so. May be it is the only way to suffer life, or more importantly it could be the only known method to keep your beans about you.
(That is, if you have any beans inside you. And, you know even from before saying this that I am an unabashed admirer of intellect.)
So, the thesis is that we can think whatever we like within. And no one would come and berate us about it, provided we do not publish what goes on the insides. Till such time we are safe, whatever the mind control experts say.
But sadly, life is a little more complicated than this. I am not saying it is unbelievably complex, unless we make it so. Other than the sad fact of our birth, and the sadder fact of our death, and the time spent in fear of death, there is nothing in it to be curious about. (Death is the only sure thing we have in life, don’t you think? Everything else is subject to doubt. Even our beloved might desert us brutally, but not our friend death. It is the most constant of all our companions. )
As one very intelligent man put it, “All we do is, we wake up, eat, execrate and sleep. That is all there to life. Some may imagine themselves to be something more. Well……
Yet life, as I said, is not as simple as one would like to have it. It is not as easy as death surely. Things go out of hand in it most of the time. You entrust something to someone and they do it only too well and land you in dire trouble. You blink and swallow the bitter pill and are seen as the dumbest of persons around.
You think its fate, there are such cute expressions in the human tool kit to keep you in equilibrium. Otherwise no one would come back from a terrible fall that they took.
You can take a look at this video here:This is what people call experience. All are supposed to learn from the mistakes they make in life. My father used to advise me to gather the lessons that life teaches. Being a total iconoclast I am still to learn any. But I am not too proud about it mind you.
But there are also intelligent people out there who like to see the life complicated. May be it gives them the zest to live.
I would like to congratulate them too for the inventiveness they have.
There are moments in our life when we feel something strongly without even knowing what or why it is. We might feel affinity to, or distance from, something or someone without obvious reasons .We might feel despair, or elation about something on other occasions, all without really knowing why they occur. May be some of you do not believe this and are quite certain that you have everything under your control. If so well and good, but the chances are, even well maintained minds would find it most difficult to do so in most situations.
Such is the vastness of data that is coming in to us at any point of time in our lives and such is the nature of their connections with things that occurred to us in the past. These connections may not be very clear at their superficial level. They may even be coded messages that we discover or imagine that we recovered from what we were experiencing. All this could be going on within us quite unawares.
This is not surprising considering that most of the sense data collected by us over the years lie submerged and even invisible to our consciousness. I am not taking you to the realm of psychological theories of Freud or Jung or others here. Their thoughts may have some bearing on the subject. Their systems might even be able to dissect our mind and uncover the roots of the feeling. Well then there is not much to discover for them in any situation except “libido” and the “archetypal” is there! I have often thought that both are saying the same things in different words.
Whatever that may be, the above musings were prompted by something I overheard this evening. One guy was confiding to another:
“Once I hate somebody I can’t change it. I hate him for life. So I am trying not to hate him now”
Either he is being very defensive and boastful or being totally truthful. Knowing the guy I tend to go by the first guess. This is a man people call ‘weak’ and one who is easily frightened. I have seen it happen on several occasions and had felt sorry for him too. He is presently surviving with the help of the considerate among his fellow beings. There is nothing wrong with such conditions and there could be any number of reasons why a person is strong and another one is weak. It may be constitutional or acquired and in both cases the person may not be able to help it.
My guess is that he was a victim of inner office politics where he was working last. There are certain types of vicious scum on earth who delights in seeing others suffer for no reason at all. Sadly these types of criminals thrive in an official set up. These are the guys who put the thoughts of murder into you and unknown to you. Intelligence and worldly wisdom would not save you in such environments.
Unless one has the thick skin of a rhinoceros and the idiotic belief in one’s own importance in the scheme of things, one would be in an unenviable situation and would have to suffer steadily in places like that. Probably our guy lacked those qualities and he was emotionally mutilated. There may have been nothing that he could do against them. He was totally unprepared for it seems to be.
If these criminal types have any fear at all that is about their personal well being, not that this is a foolproof counter strategy against them. Some are like sharks that tear off their bellies to eat it if it is cut. Some of these trash could be as insensitive as to not to think about their own safety too while they are on the hunt.
Yet, the moment you manage to instill some fear into them you can be sure of some respite from their onslaught. If they have any belief at all that is the belief that they have the right to go on living, you try to show them otherwise, then they might draw a little back.
But this is easily said than done. Our guy could not have done it. I think he was totally at sea about what was happening to him when he was there. He is still respectful of certain psychic thugs who were in his last office. He seems to have no clue that they brought him down.
Anyway I had tried my best to help him when others were trying to put him down. In his torpor he hasn’t realized it yet.
I wonder what brings on such attacks of panic that I see sometimes in him!
What a fall from the six systems of thought to the six fatal diseases!
Well that’s the Indian reality now. True, we never were much bothered about philosophy. Aberrations like philosophy happen in history of a people, you know there always will be strange guys in any community who worries about meaning of life and life after death and useless things like that. The more intelligent never bothers about them. They have other things to worry about. Like making a living and putting others down etc.
When these interesting and vital activities are out there who cares to spend time searching inside to find truth. In fact only the idle and the useless would even think of philosophy as an activity, barring the chairs of philosophy in the west that has made it into a specialization and a bread winner in the last century.
The sad fact is that now no one can claim to be a philosopher in the west unless one belongs to either a continental or analytical stream of philosophical approach and has concocted a theses one some subjects like “ the sado-masochistic tendency in Nietzsche’s Philosophy” ( Am I being too simplistic and too Freudian here? Okay then let it be about “The problematic of will to reason in Nietzsche’s philosophy”). The point is unless one has a PhD in something such; one has little right to call oneself a philosopher in the west. Sad it is!
Luckily every Indian can still talk on high philosophy when there is nothing else to do. We have been through testing times in history; we were the ‘subjects’ of too many invaders to become anything less than philosophical.
You see, when aliens dominate the land and rule one’s body and soul nothing is left but sweet philosophy to console one ( No, no, I am not talking of the aliens belonging to the ‘gray’ or ‘reptilian’ sort that is supposed to have bases on our globe, god forbid! These aliens were of human origin and were from other lands and other cultures. How words lose their original meanings and acquire new ones in the passage of time!).
It is ever so easy to blame Karma and fate than our own petty inside squabbles and weakness of character that made the foreign domination possible!
Well, we have another sort of invaders in our midst now. We are said to harbor six nice illnesses in our land. They have very sweet names too -Malaria, Chikungunya, Filariasis, Japanese Encephalitis, Leishmaniasis and Dengue fever. I am not sure if they are the six deadly ones but certain reports make me believe so. One consolation is that India is not alone in this. Climatic changes and the resulting bug mutations are making them more drug resistant and fatal.
We can’t stop nature from having it out with us for our sins can we?
People are taking vaccinations (whether they are effective or not) right and left, especially if they are planning to visit this blessed country. These vaccinations seem expensive and there are moans of “watchagonnado” from them too.
Hygiene – mental, physical, and of the environs seems to be the only way to remedy the situation. We can’t go back to the stone ages to get the nature right. If we limit the air pollution alone we could save eight million deaths in the next two decades the WHO says.
Well our suffering might be over before that according to the Mayan calendar. There are but a few months to 2012!
Lust is something we never fail to recognize. We can shut our eyes and call it by something else. But it’s a primordial ‘effluent’ that is knowable by its grasping insistence.
It can’t be denied. Nobody has done it till date.
It’s so tangible as to be nearest to our very being. Many have tried to drive one type of craving out by replacing another in its place. The sad thing is, most of them never know that the replacement is ineffective, since the thirst driving it, is a part of our right to be.
This hunger is there because there is something to crave for and everywhere there-is-something, it naturally generates lust- Because lust is world in its widest sense.
It appears in many guises in our lives and it involves most of our senses. May be the mind is the organ that lusts and not the others. The other organs might be playing second fiddle to the master tune played by the mind.
There is a theory that mind is everything.
Lust in a being is probably situated in the heart and mostly has no ‘sense’ to it. It doesn’t recognize the intellect and would have nothing to do with reason. Its domain is the irreconcilable desire for possession.
We often wonder how many forms this can take.
For example one gets curious about why people drink human blood. I am not talking of vampires here, yet there are at least a few people in the world who crave for blood and consume it.
And there is this report that a villager in India has been drawing blood from his wife with a syringe and ingesting it for the last two years or so. He is reported to be saying that it gives him strength. Such cases are not rare. Some people report such a craving in all cultures.
Well there are those who abhor, and delight in, and would not be judgmental about this practice. Some of those who criticize it point to the health hazard involved in it. They believe people can catch all sorts of fatal illnesses drinking blood. But there may be no scientific basis for this assumption since ingested blood has to survive the culturing of stomach acids to be a part of the body, barring in the instance where it comes into contact with a cut in our body and gets in the blood stream directly.
Apart from medical issues, why do people do that? Could there be psychological reasons for this behavior? There are certain instances where hired killers sprinkle the blood of their victims in their food before consuming it. What prompts them to do that?
It is hard to say. Some of us would like to consider it as a morbid state of mind and a sickness resulting from psychological problems.
The killer or the drinker of blood may think otherwise. They may say that there is life force in blood and they are absorbing it by ingesting it.
One also wonders why some god’s are gratified by a bloody sacrifice!
It may all be just lust in the end. The desire for possessing something we do not have or imagine that we do not have.
Noon it was. May be a bit towards the eventide, or may be a bit more nearer to the noon time. That didn’t matter. For the glare was noonish and that was enough…..
Hell.
What makes a time of day noon?
-Heat, intensity, vividness?
Whatever…………. one fails to recall.
This was noon. Of that one was sure. And of that the faces around me were sure.
None needed any watches. None needed any computation. None needed any consultation.
And too, none of us had taken our watches with us.
A watch is not nice, it’s a mechanical demon we strap on our wrist to dissect our mind into tiny pieces. It’s a drainer of energies, it’s a mean device that watches us with derision and is watched by us with fear.
Yes a watch is not nice. It plans events in advance for us and take our compliance for granted. It fragments our being to suit the social monster that stalks us all the time.
No, we need no watches on holidays.
We were at the sea shore and had taken a few dips in the lukewarm water. None of us were real swimmers. We have all been brought up in the shallow ponds at our villages where we swam with jumping frogs and slithering water snakes.
This was bliss to us.
What was undulating before us was something inexplicable and vast. It was might in motion. It was imagination on the move. It was a billion bosoms thirsting in a trillion sighs.
New to us this was.
Just now I was waist deep in water. And before that, the others were there, splashing about, jumping around, till they thought it was safer on shore.
The water caressed me with its thousand hands. Now like a baby pulling at my chest hair, now with large calloused palms rubbing me over so that the skin tingled. Now enveloping me in embraces that only in shuddering love I have met, now patting me on the head like some sane and wizened village elder, now grasping my elbow like a trusted friend, now with the warmth of a mothers bosom, now in the glee of a long met brother, now with the advances of lass in passion, now admonishing like a parent in anger………..
The sea was alone with me and it was playing with me.
When did the play stop and the time begin……..?
I still don’t know.
I am not particular about anything in life and most everything is permissible to me in this laughable existence we lead. But certain things affect me in a way that is almost biological. One of them is hearing somebody lie without any reason at all for it.
Now, we all lie, only the dumb and the retarded don’t do that. May be they can very well do without lying too, being protected by powers that is unknown and unintelligible to us. But that is not the case with others like our own poor selves. We have no one to protect us when we land in a soup and so we need to lie to save our asses sometimes. This ‘saving the asses’ might not even be necessary in that particular situation. But we don’t know that, we haven’t been blessed with the foresight and clairvoyant ability to see what is in store for us in the future.
With meager available data we normally take this plunge and lie bare faced. It saves our skin some of the time, but it might land us in some trouble on other occasions. But this is a risk we are willing to take and probably that is worth taking too. Even the mighty do that on occasions and have been doing from time immemorial…….
You see, you and her are doing something very privet and the tiny tot wakes up and starts to cry.
“Don’t kill my mummy, please daddy, don’t kill my mummy”
Well you have no intention of killing her. You rather intend to enliven her somewhat and you have been hard at work at it for sometime too. You are pretty heated up and a bit breathless and nothing other than stars and dull specks of light is visible to your inner eye.
The mom starts to laugh and you accompany her with a helpless and pitiful hraw hraw hrrr and try to slide off her inconspicuously. This is difficult at the best of times and you are no acrobat.
The tiny tot is immediately put at ease by its mom’s laugh and dries its eyes to scramble on to the bed without heeding you and looking crossly and suspiciously at you.
You wonder, from where the thing gets all this possessiveness. It’s not from you; you are a giver, even when there are no takers.
The mother tries to sooth the tiny tot by murmuring “it’s nothing my darling”
“But what were you doing?” It enquires.
“Well mommy had difficulty in breathing and papa was trying to breathe in to help me “The mother is whispering with a mischievous look at you.
“Now you are alright? “ The tiny tot is concerned. It can’t imagine a life without mommy.
“Yes my dear, now that you are with me, mommy can’t but be alright, isn’t it so my jewel?”
“Yes I will help you” It clasps her with all its might. You enviously look on.
The point is we all lie, even without intending to do so. You wouldn’t go and say to the kid that:
“You know pet, we were just trying to make more things like you to pester us all through our lives” Even if you feel like saying it -Whatever the sex educationists say.
No, you don’t do that. That is not done and we can’t help lying at those moments.
But when people intentionally lie to gain some selfish ends I feel it very raw in my bones.
I don’t just dislike it, I totally hate it.
Mostly the cold comes armed with claws of iron and it's silent and cunning. It stealthily buries itself inside chinks of wooden walls and floors and pounces on you unawares.
Smooth is its operation. Stalking us through the stunted hilly terrain into our dens and circling us down like some do to an animal hunted down on the sly.
It clamps its freezing pincers on where it matters- the heart and suddenly the center become porous. Icy air passes through the portals to inside and out. The heart then becomes a honeycomb filled with something frigid and gaseous.
Gotcha!............It murmur's.
And then comes that dumb laugh with its mean and clinking teeth.
But you are not dumb, you were expecting the onslaught and have covered yourselves in woolen sweaters and mufflers. You may not fancy room heaters. But you have beefed up your defenses. Still the cold is cunning. It keeps in the shadows and strangely has become demure. In your sleep, when the cap or muffler slips from your ears, it starts licking your ears lasciviously. It has suddenly turned amorous.......!
More about our fencing match later.
So, how are you guys!
Still at whatever you were doing before I guess? It’s not bad, you know, doing the same things ad infinitum. I do it all the time, never become reformed. In fact some sages say that’s what’s we have been doing from the time immemorial
Anyway it’s great you know, being persistent and not giving up. Methinks that’s how the mankind discovered a lot of things, not to say ‘invented’ some others.
Sadly, I have not been very inventive in my life. I lack the genius for it. I am the guy who used the word ‘technology’ doggedly without seeking a replacement for it in my most famous post till date. I now shudder at the usage. You can search my site for the post. It’s hilarious. Not that it felt hilarious at the time of writing it and also when certain very lucid and intelligent souls criticized it. I must admit that it felt terrible.
I actually cried a bit!
Well as we get on in years we become less sensitive and less ‘imaginative’. So I can now safely look at the post and not cry for my imperfections. It’s not my imperfections per se I know, it’s my lack of skills in authorship (but then I have never been very skilful in anything as you should know by the way I ‘pen’ my words).
Honestly, it’s some gargantuan ship, this authorship. I can never be a sailor in it let alone its master. I have stopped trying even for the post of a cook in it if it’s any consolation to you.
Still, even a person like me has a few things to say now and then. And in my country everybody supposedly has the right to freedom of expression. They say “we gave it to ourselves” and they are trying hard to take it away too. Anyway one likes hearing one’s own voice sometimes! One has to check whether the sound box is working alright.
Well that’s about it for this time.
