Romance

I've often stated that I am not a die-hard romantic. I don't keep mementos, I don't get sentimental about places, possessions. I don't need  flowers, chocolate, candy, or sweet words. And fantasies and dreams have a way of coming crashing down around me. But events of the recent past have had me rethink the notion of romance and what it means to be a romantic. And here’s what I came up with:

The belief that everything has purpose, a larger meaning than the profane.

The sense of a story - one’s own. 

A state where everything is felt - deeply, consumingly, always.

Faith that things are meant to be; Or not.

Trust in goodness.

Hope for happiness; eternal optimism.

Lost causes and foolish quests; the strength to see them through

The Rant about Bleeding Hearts

A friend and I were ranting yesterday about all the privileged leftists with their corporate salaries, preaching equal distribution of wealth. Why don’t you queue up to spread yours around first? Quoting Che Guevara, wearing tattered clothes, and travelling like a hippie doesn’t make you a committed leftist. Oh and if you were to actually go live in one of the communist countries, they would ask you to shut the hell up. So please be thankful for the freedom you have, be critical of governments and policies by all means but do NOT go spouting ideologies that you don’t understand the first thing about and that you personally, would not want to live by if it meant giving up that little silver spoon sticking out of your mouth. 

The Altruism of Parenthood... or not

It's really quite amazing what centuries of social conditioning can achieve - forms of repression so insidious that you don't even spot the fallacy in the argument. I've been dealing with one such argument rather intensely for the last two years and then some more. I've decided today that I am going to write about it. Those who know me personally, know exactly what I am talking about. Those who don't, well, come along if you like speculating on human nature and social conditioning.

This black hole is called parenthood. We are taught, early in life, too early in fact, to revere parenthood. It is portrayed as the ultimate form of altruism. Whereas, genetically, it is the precise opposite. How often do you hear some form of "your parents sacrificed so much for you, you are inhuman if you aren't grateful and remain forever indebted to them"? And no. It is seldom so blatant. Such honest perversion of the truth cannot survive for very long without being spotted by enough people to get rid of it from society.

So, let me state my case. Parenthood is a SELFISH (bold, underline, italics, and whatever else it takes to emphasise that point). Profoundly so. It is driven by the desire of two individuals to propagate their genetic identity (it strikes me as I write this, that perhaps, that is why people with intense creative passions or famous people don't feel as strongly about parenthood. Their identity survives mortality in different ways). The benefit of child rearing is to ensure that the genes last long enough to get to the next generation and so on and so forth. I am assuming I don't have to explain why that survival is important?

So, no, you didn't do me a favour by bringing me into this world. I didn't ask you to. In case you don't realise, I didn't exist and I didn't have a choice in the matter. What about everything I did for you post that, you ask? Well, how much of a choice in any of that did you give me? How much of it was because you wanted me to study somewhere or take up some hobby to satisfy something within you - pride, a desire you didn't get to satisfy, an achievement that you value?

Hence, I don't buy it when you say you sacrificed your youth for me. You lived vicariously through me. You will live on through every subsequent generation. I don't blame you for it. But I am not grateful for it. Both of us benefit. Quid Pro Quo. So again I ask, where's the sacrifice?

And, lastly, you always had the choice to NOT have children - perfectly legitimate, no matter what anyone tells you. EVER. No one is duty-bound to reproduce. In this modern age, many of us don't feel that evolutionary pull to reproduce and guess what, that's okay. There are enough people on this planet for the human race to be getting along. And, besides, like I said before, who said having children was the only way to reach immortality? And again, everything you gave that child after birth was also your choice. That child never asked to be sent to x or y school. Likely that choice was made before the poor child even understood what school means.

Have children. But accept that YOU want them. Parenthood is a wonderful experience (though not a parent myself, I see enough close friends enjoying it to believe that it is wonderful). Don't make it a debt your child has to live under, never being free of guilt.

I'll tell you the things I am thankful to you for - all the times you left me to take my decisions and make my mistakes and bear the consequences thereof, all the times that you told me that my life was mine, not yours to pawn, all the times you told me to NOT think of you. Those are the things that have given value to my life and not the mere fact that you gave birth to me. Notice how none of these things involve YOU.

So yes, I am thankful. Not because you gave birth to me but because you recognise that my life is MINE despite the fact that you gave birth to me.

What is the value of this conditioning? Why would society bother with it, tacitly? For this is no conspiracy theory. I am willing to bet a good amount of money that this phenomenon did not exist in the primitive times when people popped off at the ripe young age of 40, often violently or suddenly. This conditioning answers a sociological need that appears only when people begin to live far beyond the age of physical fitness or productivity. It is further exacerbated by the disappearance of community living (nomadic societies were communal), where old age can be lonely and intimidating. A prolonged period of possible dependence towards the end of one's life is a daunting thought and for many children are an insurance policy against this.

The insecure are the ones that use this method of entitlement to ensure that their children don't abandon them. The secure, on the other hand, rely either solely on each other as a couple or trust the love that they and their children bear for each other that they will be taken care of without laying claim or entitlement or showing up at the door to collect a paycheck.

But understanding the problem is only one part of the solution. Yes, being aware of why we adopt some behaviour patterns will hopefully make us more aware individuals, better equipped to resist the temptation to take the easy way out. But the larger dialogue that we must have as a society is the provision that we must make for the aged both through the provision of facilities such as assisted living and social security as well as by educating the younger generation and changing the nature of conversation around old age.

Lastly, this is not an argument for or against multiple generations living together. It is merely a point of view on the oft-heard claim stated in the beginning. And yes, it is a bit of a rant for I feel passionately on the subject of entitlements.

Complete

The beginning and end are both great unknowns. The story is actually without either and only creates an illusion of completeness.

Heroines

In the books they are always beautiful or at least, the words used to describe them are.
In Life, we are short, tall, fat, thin, fair, dark, pretty, or ugly.
And we are all still the heroines of our own stories.

Impatience

Yesterday, last hour, a minute ago.

Everything was supposed to happen in the past.

Nothing for now.

Nothing for later.

We don't want to wait,

so we fight ourselves and everyone else;

flap about disconsolately; wonder about the meaning of life

Where are the fantasies of meandering,

when people want to begin with endpoints? 

Non memories of ecstatic moments,

a blur that ends in a sigh.

The future stretches ahead,

a large room filled with mementos and trophies.

What I am

I am a Sine Curve when I'd like very much to be a Tan Curve

PS: I never thought I'd use maths to describe myself. Those of you who know me, go have a good laugh at my expense.

Closer and farther

As I was checking out one of my favorite places on the Internet today, I came across this piece by Anais Nin:

The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of postponement, failed communications, failed communions. This thought has made me more and more attentive to all encounters. meetings, introductions, which might contain the seed of depth that might be carelessly overlooked. This feeling has become a rarity, and rarer every day now that we have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us. The dangerous time when mechanical voices, radios, telephones, take the place of human intimacies, and the concept of being in touch with millions brings a greater and greater poverty in intimacy and human vision.

↬ Anais Nin

Written in her diary in May 1946, she seems oddly prophetic to me. It resonates with something that I have been thinking off-late - that with the ability to communicate more, we actually end up communicating less. Recently, two of my very close friends, women who are very very dear to me, have moved away from Mumbai. One to Delhi and the other to the US. I consoled myself saying that they were not more than an email or chat away no matter what the physical distance. But the fact of it is that I haven't really written to them (or to anyone else over the years) or kept abreast with their news. Not in the way people did in letters (been reading some of that too!).

Maybe this is just me and then again maybe it isn't. I have written letters, and mightily long ones at that, when I had no other way of staying in touch. Just the sheer physical effort required, I think, makes one put in an equivalent amount of emotional effort as well. To make it count, in a way. Emails with their instantaneousness seem to lack some of that depth - at least for me, for now. I hope I can change some of that over a period of time.

Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance

India | International

"We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all, and the results is not just bad, it is ghastly."

Writing the post on this book has been postponed multiple times. First because I didn’t really know where to begin and then due to Murphy developing a sudden liking for me and my gadgets (scowl scowl scowl!).

But the technical snag is also serendipitous in a way because this is exactly where Pirsig starts his enquiry into the nature of knowledge, its acquisition and how we relate to the world. Pirsig begins his self proclaimed Chautauqua by talking about his travel companions’ discomfort with the very technology that makes their bike trip across the US possible. The specific case of John and Sylvia not wanting to know just what makes a motorbike tick (a very important skill according to the author when one is on a cross country trip through deserted backroads… and I would tend to agree with that) soon becomes a more generic pondering on the nature of knowledge.

As long as the need for food, clothing and shelter is dominant they will continue to work. But now that huge masses of people these needs no longer overwhelm everything else, the whole structure of reason, handed down to us from ancient times, is no longer adequate. It begins to be seen for what it really is – emotionally hollow, esthetically meaningless and spiritually empty. That, today, is where it is at, and will continue to be for a long time to come… I see people like John and Sylvia living lost and alienated from the whole rational structure of civilized life, looking for solutions outside that structure, but finding none that are really satisfactory for long.

With each discovery, Pirsig steps back, trying to arrive at the root of the problem. From our every day relationship with the world around us and the alienation that technology has brought, he moves on to how the education system plays a role in dividing knowing into dualistic, mutually exclusive yins and yangs creating our discomfort with a holistic, non-dualistic view of knowledge and the world around us.

… is the branch of mathematics known as the calculus, which every engineer uses today. Newton invented a new form of reason. He expanded reason to handle infinitesimal changes and I think what is needed now is a similar expansion of reason to handle technological ugliness. The trouble is that the expansion has to be made at the roots, not at the branches, and that’s what makes it hard to see.

Of an experiment conducted with a course he was teaching:

… the brighter, more serious students were the least desirous of grades, possibly because they were more interested in the subject matter of the course, whereas the dull or lazy students were the most desirous of grades, possibly because grades told them if they were getting by.

Pirsig then relates the quest of his alter ego for a unifying concept that brings together the dualities of the subjective and the objective. He recounts vividly, the uphill climb of trying to escape the dualistic though process as well as mode of expression that one has been long conditioned to.

Mountains like these and travellers in the mountains and events that happen to them here are found not only in Zen literature but in the tales of every major religion. The allegory of a physical mountain for the spiritual one that stands between each soul and its goal is an easy and natural one to make

As Pirsig and his son journey through the mountains and valleys together, the reader knows from the pace of their journey, the pace of the upcoming portion of the Chautauqua. Pirsig also gives encouragement to the reader to chug along with him, advices to go slow but steady to avoid burning out through the advice that he gives Chris on pacing himself through the climb to the top of the mountain. Advice that the reader would do well to take at this part of the book.

Pirsig's argument for the fundamental unity of knowledge (defined dualistically as subjective and objective or classical and romantic or art and science) draws extensively from the oriental – Zen, Hinduism, Khayyam’s Rubaiyat – and the Occidental – Plato, Socrates, the Sophists, Aristotle, Kant, Hume. There is a particular section that reminded me directly of the cornerstone of the Hindu notion of detachment and the Bhagvad Gita:

This inner peace of mind occurs on three levels of understanding. Physical quietness seems the easiest to achieve, although there are levels and levels of this too… Mental quietness, in which one has no wandering thoughts at all, seems more difficult, but can be achieved. But value quietness, in which one has no wandering desires at all but simply performs the acts of his life without desire, that seems the hardest.

He argues that quality, or a sense of value, is the central unifying theme and that while this quality cannot be defined, each of us is equipped to recognize it. That it is because of this underlying quality that science and art essentiallyfeed off each other (In the first part of this video, visual artist Kelli Anderson talks about her two loves - Physics and music). ↬ visual news

Pirsig’s Schizophrenia (Pirsig and Phaedrus) to me was also essential to understanding the difficulty, the near impossibility of stepping out of established ways of thinking (especially for a mind conditioned to think dualistically) and near insanity that it could drive one to. I love the fact that the story of the road trip is almost an analogue, an allegory to the philosophical Chautauqua that is the main purpose of the book.

This is a book that is worth a slow thoughtful read and then many multiple reads thereafter. My biggest take away from this first reading is to not be restrained in my thinking by the formal processes and ways in which we acquire knowledge and to know that there are deep relations even between things that my seem un-related.

My copy of the book also looks much thumbed after this single reading and I must add that I am glad I bought this book and did not borrow it. Reading this book, I've discovered the joy in marking and post-it-ing books!

On War

Moments like these absolve the needs dividing men.
Whatever caught and brought and kept them here
Is lost: and for a while they join a terrible equality,
Are virtuous, self-sacrificing, free:
And so insidious is this liberty 
That those surviving it will bear 
An even greater servitude to its root:
Believing they were whole, while they were brave;
That they were rich, because their loot was great;
That war was meaningful, because they lost their friends.


-- From War Music by Christopher Logue | International | India |

To think or not to think

We live in age of self-reflection, analysing every aspect of our work, micro-commentating on our own lives online, reading articles urging us to ponder what makes us happy. Much of this may be worthwhile, but we also need to put thinking in its place. Djokovic’s return was both the culmination of his life’s effort and an expression of careless joy. It kinda worked. 

ᔥ Intelligent life 

We are often told not to be worry warts - and for good reason too. As this article from Intelligent Life magazine points out, thinking or rather over thinking hampers the decision making power of the brain. David Eagelman also makes a case of intuitive decision making, based on prior learning or experience.

It is perhaps, then not a surprise that hyper connectivity, the constant need or pressure to articulate with language what may be going on in our minds is leading to an increasingly cynical and pessimistic generation. A generation that finds it difficult to simply "be". As we become slaves to logic, we are losing touch with a much more important tool to living - our emotions and intuition - that take thought leaps based on information that we already know. 

'

Past present future

Down a long winding road I met you when I was not expecting to meet anyone. I even tried to shake you off. You persisted. And here you are.

I search the nights for your hand now... to walk with the waves crashing in the backdrop, a little ice chilling our throats in the balmy summer.

It's been a long time since I looked closely at you. I no longer need to look to see. We know every line, every frown, every smile. Each wrinkle is a memory along that long winding road.

I don't like the word "Compromise"

I was reading something I wrote, as part of an essay competition, when I was in the ninth grade. The competition had asked us to explain a quote out of The Fountainhead, one of my favourite books (all Ayn Rand critics, please hold your horses... this post is not about her or the book). The crux of the essay was the issue of compromise.

Reading that essay today, I would like to add a subtext. Life is not about NOT making compromises. It is about not thinking of compromise as sacrifice. And there's a very subtle but important difference here. When we make a compromise, whether for the sake of "long term benefit" or "peace in the house" or because it seems like the "best" alternative available, it tends to be accompanied by a fit of self pity. As though we've given up on something or been forced to do so against our wishes. But I think a compromise made willingly, voluntarily is just a choice made in favour of one value over another, the happiness of a loved one over buying the latest gadget in town for example.

I think it's important to understand this distinction because interpreting compromise as sacrifice (by the way, I don't believe in the general notion of sacrifice for the same reason as above. I do think it's impossible to knowingly make a decision that causes harm to oneself without any proportionate gain) makes our relationships ugly and murky. The most common sentence uttered in a fight between two people is "I've given up so much for you" and it multifarious variations. We'd probably be better off if we understood it simply as choice without the undercurrents of self pity that the word compromise brings.

The Paradox called Love

... love involves (tragically, incorrigibly, but also beautifully) a desire for something that continuously transforms. Love is painful because we want the object of love to change and stay the same, love is a desire and a fiction that animates our greatest pleasures and our most profound sufferings. Love hold us to this life, keeps us faithful to it. Yet nothing can save us from our ultimate reentry into oblivion - the point at which no amount of consciousness or desire can preserve identity or the energies that we once called our own.

-- By David LaRocca in the afterword to Schematics: A Love Story.

I found this quote at Brain pickings

Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is the first book of a trilogy. The story is set in an uncertain time in the future in what is now North America and in the book, the country of Panem.

Panem consists of a Capitol surrounded by 12 districts. Each year, to remind the districts of the consequences of rebellion against the Capitol, the Capitol holds the hunger games. Each district is required to send one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to participate in the games. To win the Hunger games the participants must eliminate each other within an artificially created environment known as "The Arena" till only one of them is alive. The Games are televised and broadcast across the country as a show of the Capitol's power over the districts. In its setting and premise the book is highly reminiscent of  Battle Royale, the Japanese movie. There too rebellious adolescents are kept in place by a fight to the death.

The Hunger Games begins in district 12, the poorest of the districts with Katniss Everdeen volunteering to take her 12 year old sister's place in the Hunger Games. As a thriller Hunger Games scores full points. There are enough moments, nicely interspersed to keep you flipping the pages, enough to make me want to complete the trilogy.

As an exploration of war and its effects on freedom and morality it falls short. I would have liked to see Katniss make a few more tough choices. The book circumvents tough choices in fairytale fashion with the Capitol relenting almost too easily. Personal conflict is almost absent as Katniss hardly faces a dilemma that calls for her morals, actions or choices into question. What would she have done if it came to her survival vs. that of a friend? Would she value her life more than a past kindness? Would she consciously rebel against the Capitol and the powers that be? There is no choice that Katniss is called on to make that compels the reader to evaluate the ethics of war, dictatorship and rebellion; choices whose consequences are unpalatable for Katniss and the reader.

While there is promise of retaliation by the Capitol in the other two books of the series, I do wish this one had examined the personal choices that people make in situations of extreme stress with a little more depth.

A P.S to the Post: After reading the other two books, I think the only key character who represents the personal crisis that is created by war, dictatorship and rebellion is Gale. At the very end of the tale, it is his choices that are worth thinking about. I wonder if he would have played the Hunger Games differently as opposed to Katniss or Peeta. Sure would have made for an even more engrossing read.

In a P.S that is longer than it should be, I should also say that I think the ancillary characters add much more meat to the story than do the protagonists. They represent the entire spectrum of choices that people must make in situations where Peace is not an option.

The meaning of modernity

Mom was here recently and we were having one of our long winding, jumping from here to there, no end in sight discussions and the topic came around to one of the things that almost always crop up - the tradition vs. modernity dichotomy and what it really means to be modern. Is modernity only about blindly abandoning your tradition/culture? All around me I see  two extreme patterns. One is an endorsement of everything western and the abandon of everything Indian. The other is a fanatical endorsement of everything Indian and ancient and a denouncement of everything western as decadent and morally bankrupt. What I see very little of is questioning. What I see very little of is true progressiveness and a critical thinking.

To my mind, the blind adoption of an alien culture is a sign of capitulation to hegemony and not a sign of modernity or progressiveness. Modernity, the way I see it, is the ability to evaluate what values are important irrespective of their origin; to be able to use all the access to information and exposure to different cultures that we have to our advantage and find a balance that guides our choices and our behaviour through life.

At the same time, unquestioning obedience to one's own culture, at a time when life and society are completely different from the circumstances in which the culture and its practices originated, does lead to a situation where one's values are often impractical to follow or implement.

What is important, then, is to understand the larger purpose that a culture and a value system serves in preserving a civilization. Value systems are an ordering influence, a compass to align individual behaviours to be non-conflicting. They encompass broad values that determine the direction that a society or civilization takes, its attitudes towards production, distribution and consumption, its notions of right and wrong, of justice. It comes not with the legal sanction of the station but the moral sanction of the people who chose to follow it.

In that larger abstract framework, modernity lies not in the blind adoption of a system based on its origins but in the ability to recognize values that are universal, that benefit humanity beyond national borders and that provide support and direction in times of tension, dilemmas and choice.

Questions, questions, questions

The simplicity of Krishna's argument, and the utter difficulty of practising it, always stuns me. Krishna, through out the Gita, makes a very simple point - Do what you must, what the situation demands (from a larger cosmic point of view) unfettered by personal desire, power, lust, envy, anger, fear, vengance or any other emotion. Do it out of love he says. Not the love that is personal and exclusive, but love that is as large as life and all inclusive. Only then are you acting in favour of the cosmic balance of the universe.

It is this same principle that allows Krishna to manipulate and break the rules of righteous war, to dupe the Kauravas at every stage of the battle, allowing the Pandavas to win. Yet, at the end of the war, the Pandavas have done Krishna's bidding without understanding his purpose (with the possible exception of Yudhishtra who is the only Pandava who enters heaven).

Yet, as an individual, when I think about anything, it is hard to view a situation free of personal prejudice. How does one, at any point, determine whether a course of action is being undertaken because that is truly what the situation demands or because there is a subconscious desire for a particular outcome that one has not been able to identify yet? When do you know that you have peeled back all layers of prejudice and conditioning and desire? How does one calculate the merits and demerits of a situation without taking into account the gain or loss (happiness or sorrow) that one is expecting from it?

Yet another reading of a retelling of the Mahabharat and I only have more questions. Still more questions and no answers at all (that in itself is perhaps, a good thing).

PS: I do recommend everyone to read at least a couple of retellings of the Mahabharat. The retellings themselves are an exercise in understanding perspective and points of view. Some of the ones I've read are:

1. Mahasamar (Narendra Kohli): This one is in Hindi and was recommended by a friend who knows the epic better than anyone else I know!
2. Palace of Illusions (Chitra Banerji Divakaruni): The Mahabharata told from Draupadi's perspective, the woman who is the pivot of the plot of the Mahabharata.
3. Mahabharata retold by C Rajagopalachari: This one was my first, perhaps the simplest, as the tale would be told to a child.
4. Difficulty of being good (Gurcharan Das): This is not a direct retelling of the Mahabharata but an analysis of its characters and plot, the lessons that can be drawn from it and the continuing relevance of the epic in present times.
5. Jaya (Devdutt Pattanaik): This is one I just finished. It is a simple retelling but what I love about it is the little side stories and the notes at the end of each chapter pointing out the moral, sociological and political debates and setting the historical context of vedic lifestyle for the reader. It brings out both the context that created the Mahabharata as well as the underpinning values that make it eternally relevant. 

All of these books are available in India on http://www.flipkart.com and http://www.indiaplaza.in

At this point, I am regretting not knowing to read a vernacular language such as Tamil. Would love to read a folk retelling of the epic!

Is religion really a matter of private practice?

Okay today's my day for writing on religion. And I really didn't want to include this in the previous post. So here we go.

There's an age old argument with respect to religious practices and the public space. It's an argument that's constantly brought up by those who do not condone or appreciate public displays of religion (i.e., processions, public pujas, dancing on the roads, so on and so forth). I have to be honest here and count myself amongst those who have regularly used the argument in criticizing the nuisance that a public display of religion causes (PDR let's call it). It goes thus: Religion is a personal thing. Why, oh why can't people practice it within the confines of their homes? Why do they have to bring into the public domain like this, disrupting our lives and causing a nuisance?


I was thinking about this while I was writing the previous post and I realized, there is NOTHING private or personal about religion. There never was. Since the beginning of human civilization, religion has always been social, practiced by groups and used as a tool for exercising power and ordering the group/society.

Most ancient religions (and the ancient roots of modern ones) started as an attempt to come to terms with forces of nature that, at the time, were beyond rational comprehension. As science, evolved to explain those, religion took on the role of higher and higher levels of abstraction, representing causality that we were at a loss of words to explain. From forces of nature to creation, religion has tried to explain all that the science of the day does not have an answer for. It is not coincidence that the first scientists were men and women of religion (across societies).

As religion became more abstract and more and more a matter of belief as opposed to the quest for knowledge, it evolved yet another purpose alongside - that of a tool to create social order and discipline. And so emerged rituals.

Religions, from the time that each of them acquired a critical mass of followers, have always been a tool for co-opting dissent, a way to give legitimacy to power, rule and inequality; a pressure valve to ensure that an essentially unequal society does not collapse into anarchy due to discontent. After all, God's will is a more palatable explanation that survival of the fittest.
So no, religion cannot be practiced in privacy (Spirituality yes. Religion no.)

Whenever I think about religion, I always run around wondering why they engender so much conflict? Especially if one takes a sanctimonious view of religion, the conflict seems to be contradictory and paradoxical to the basic premise of there being a higher good. But see religion, as a tool of power and there are two answers to that question of conflict that I can see (there are probably many more than two).

First, religions have become like higher level individuals, fighting for space and other resources with no meta-religion to order them.

Second, religion is a convenient way of not taking political responsibility for developmental and economic inequality. The rise of Hindutva is a good example. Blame the unemployment of Hindu youth on reservations given to minority communities (never mind the statistical fact that in a country composed of 84% Hindus, the majority of unemployed are likely to be Hindus as well) as opposed to having an informed conversation on the faulty model of economic development that led to burgeoning public sector debt and the absence of a robust, profit oriented private sector to create wealth. (Personal disclaimer: I am not a supporter of the reservation policy of the Indian Government. But the argument against reservations is a different one and I don't want to confuse issues here. For the purpose of how religion is used to abdicate political and democratic responsibility, this example is an eminently suitable one.)


The highly political nature of religion is something, we in our daily lives, never come to realise. We confuse, all to easily, our personal value systems with a society's religious beliefs. The fact that we consider religion to be personal is what endows it with the immense political power that it exercises in the world today. So maybe one answer is to see religion like any other political ideology?

Interactive Voice Response

My friend and I were talking on friday when we came up with this utterly ridiculous line of conversation:

He: Imagine if we could actually call God!
I: We'd get an IVR system
He: Ha! And what would that sound like?
I: For Muslim, press 1
   For Christian, press 2
   For Jew, press 3
   For Buddhist, press 4
   For Hindu, press 5 for further options
   For Confuscian, press 6
   For atheist, press 7
   For I'm feeling lucky, press 0 and talk to the available God.
He: What are the further options under Hindu?
I: For Ram, press 1
   For Krishna, press 2
   For Ganesha, press 3
   If you are a premium subscriber, press 4 to speak directly to Vishnu and press 5 to speak directly to Shiva
   If you have subscribed to our Female goddess service, press 6
   For I'm feeling lucky, press 0 and talk to one of 3 million Gods.
He: hehe
I: Ya, ridiculous isn't it?! How do we come up with these!

Organised religions are a bit like an IVR. We are all clamoring to talk to different operators in the same call center. Much like customer care, the answers are also the same. Why then do we fight?

The way we were meant to be

"God did not mean for us to be this way. If he had, he would have given us _________"

I've heard this refrain a million times and if you push the refrain enough, it always ends with the other person saying "yes, maybe we'd be better off in the caves, the way we were supposed to be." But I always do wonder why we as a species are the way we are.

Let me clarify what I mean here. Why are we, human, so different from other animals? In terms of sensory abilities and physical endurance, we are far far inferior to most high-order mammals. Most commonplace answers such as "language" and "learning and teaching" apply in great measures to other species as well. Why, then is it, that we alone moved out of our evolutionary beginnings as bi-pedal hunter gatherers?

The book I'm reading currently (I am a strange loop) throws some light on this. Our ability to create analogies and isomorphisms expands our ability to create, manipulate and extend things beyond their natural uses. To be able to use coal not only as fuel, but to be able to modify it and use it to create steel. Our capacity to process perceptions and to be able to reference things (from others of our species, written words, our own memories) allows us to move beyond that which we can directly experience. There IS a greater mental capacity that has enabled us to move beyond the caves and our intellect isn't a self-effacing fancy.

So my only answer to those with that refrain: Evolution (I prefer that word to God) may not have meant for us to be this way, but it certainly did not mean for us to be stuck in the caves. The way we are right now is a function of the countless choices made in every single moment not just by humans but by all of existence. We may have been something else but I very much doubt if we'd have been stuck in the caves for all eternity.