The project of Uncertainty

It hangs in the air

Silent yet full

Full of hope, hopeless

Contradiction, paradox, oxymoron

Wonderful, anxious, sadistic, masochistic. 

Envious, precious, regretted, unsaid

Frightening, exhilarating, Fantasy, agony

Hell, heaven. 

A leap into the void

Landing on my feet, shattering my heart

Piecing it together, keeping it safe

Letting it out, exploring the beyond. 

Blacks, whites, greys

Caution, abandon, melting away, freezing hard

The illusion of hard walls, the softness of snow

Salty tears, brilliant smiles, mellow sunshine and harsh cold. 

Going away, coming back

Messy and magical, rules and bent lines.

The thing about climbing the ladder

You don't have to do everything but neither is your time your own.
You have more power but you can't be a control freak.
You could do it much better but you can't do it yourself.
It is easy to make changes but teaching takes time.

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.

A look in the mirror

I've been brought up on a diet of English and American Writing. I first read Indian writing in English in my late teens, loved some of it, found the rest quite pedestrian. But this is not about the quality of English or American or Indian writing.

As I make my first, tentative attempts at story telling, I've realised what this extremely western diet of literature has done to me. It's made me feel unnatural about using Indian names in my stories. At the same time, I feel false if I try to situate a story in any place but India. Do you see the dichotomy there?

More than the dichotomy though, I felt a gut wrenching sadness when I realised this. I like to think of myself as sufficiently over the colonial hangover. Of not looking up blindly to the west, of being sufficiently appreciative and proud of my culture. And here I am, fighting in my mind over what name sounds more attractive! This is what a lifetime of exposure can do to you. 

I am left with a sense of envy for authors like Murakami and Pamuk, who write in their own language and yet connect with audiences across the world.

Past Present

I was flipping through some of the earliest posts on this blog today morning and I note with sadness that most of them were better and more thoughtfully written than what I write here today.

One reason of course is that I was writing more, spending more time thinking about what I was writing here. I was also reading much more, because of my studies and otherwise as well. These days most of my time goes in thinking about the next excel sheet I need to fill and the next powerpoint presentation I need to write. And at the end of such days, while I read, I often don't have the mental energy to think deeply about what I read or to blog about it immediately

The other reason that I often consider for this possible shift is the fact when I started writing here, this blog was private, restricted access to a few people with whom I was very comfortable being 100% honest. A little more than a year down the line it became public. In the initial days days at least, this definitely impacted by writing. I became very careful about my choice of subjects... keeping them more generic, less personal. And I often wonder if that has affected the depth of what I write.

You see, I have never been comfortable with the thought of others reading my words. In fact, that's been my biggest stumbling block towards writing a story. I tie myself up in knots wondering what the reader may think when (s)he reads this or that line or what I may be inadvertently revealing about myself (I am intensely private and most people who know me complain that I don't get "up close and personal").

The combination of reasons 1 and 2 has not been good for my writing clearly. I have to start finding ways (maybe go back to a personal diary... from which I can post once I am ready to share something) to stem this deterioration in my writing before I become a completely hopeless and obnoxious writer.

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

Candles in the cake

Age is an interesting thing. We long for it, come to hesitate about it, come to terms with it, and finally fear it. As children we want to grow older so that we may participate in the mysterious and seemingly important world of adults. As we enter adulthood, we begin to feel distaste towards growing old too soon. The realisation strikes as we suddenly no longer desire to be in the shoes of those older to us. Envy of the college and school “kids” while our parents assure us that 25 years is by no means too old! But there comes a point when for a while we come to terms with our age and begin to enjoy it without longing to be younger or longing to be older.

Kundera puts this interestingly in Laughable Loves. “Age weighs heavily on me. But I don’t feel it so much as I see my son grow.”  The character finds the pain of her fading youth outweighed by the joy of watching her son attain manhood. Joy in children, in people apart from us makes the fear of old age and impending death recede till it seems almost unreal. A time when we are thankful for what we are for it makes possible the joy of creation and the joy of watching a child grow and take shape.

Over the last week, I read two books that explored parenthood, albeit briefly, and the idea of aging in their own twisted ways – Sula and Laughable Loves. I find the point that Hannah makes in Sula interesting and enigmatic – We love our children. That does not mean we like them. I wonder how many parents make that distinction. Do they even think in terms of liking their children? Or do they just love them because they are their children?  Is it necessary to distinguish in between liking and loving children? I wonder...

In Laughable Loves, two women explore how motherhood has, in the one case, made her comfortable with her age, and in the other case deprived her of the memory of her youth and forced her to age in mind as well as in body. The one finds joy in watching her son grow, the other has decided to make herself old for her son finds himself unable to love a young mother. Reading this, I realised that I’ve never really thought of my parents as being young or old. In my mind they haven’t aged in the 24 years that I have known them. Yes, my father now has more grey hair than he did when I was a baby but in my mind there is no concept of age where my parents or grandparents are concerned. They seem so constant. I find it as hard to imagine my parents in old age as I find it to imagine their youth.

I wonder how I feel about my own age. Sometimes I think I am still a child in many ways, the passing of the years not having done much. Sometimes, I feel the change. As the youngest in the family, I find it impossible to think of myself as old, but then the number of the candles on the cake increase every year. 

Indispensable

There's a piece of recitation I remember from my school days. It was titled The Indispensable Man. It went somewhat like this (I am not quoting exactly):

Whenever you are feeling important, take this simple test: Fill a bucket half full with water. Dip your hand in it, up to the wrist. You may splash about and shake the water. The hole that is left when you take your hand out is the measure of your indispensability.

Am sure you've figured the point that the piece above is trying to make. There was a point of time, I'll confess, when I believed the above to be largely true. I still believe it to be mostly true in the context of organisations and workplaces. After a brief period of adjustment, everyone WILL get on with things, and your office will continue to function without you. And no one will be happy or sad for all eternity.

On the personal front however, it is a much grey-er area. On the one hand yes, life does not stop and we learn to be happy and move on. So if it is about mere functionality, then yes, no one is indispensable. But then people are not about mere functionality (that's the domain of machines). When one does look a little deeper than mere functionality people do become indispensable. They are capable of causing lasting happiness or sadness to those they come in contact with. There is a warmth and comfort and sense of security that they do provide. And while someone else can provide some of that, no person is completely replaceable. There will always be something missing, a little void that only that person can fill. There will also be the happiness that only a person can provide.

Meaning

Have been reading a rather lot of some blogs lately. And here's a not so shocking thought that never ceases to surprise me: You can write with one meaning and the reader can derive completely another meaning from what you write and it is still as deep and as meaningful as you meant it to be. Every thing wraps around the things that bother each one of us and words take on meanings that we want them to take, say the things that we cannot find our own words for, and create meanings that will give us comfort and solace.

By the sea shore

Sitting on the shore, watching the relentless waves, I look around at the city I've come to love but not quite think of as home yet. I look at the millions who crowd every little crevice here, at the abandon and anonymity they find in being utterly public. I revel in the silence you can find only in the senseless and intelligible noise of the crowd. The complete solitude of being surrounded by strangers. Moments when honesty is easy, confessions are natural and fears melt with the setting sun.

I enjoy the serenity of utter chaos and confusion for it is not unlike the one in my mind as I ponder where to go from here.

I

To say "I love you" you have to first know how to say the I.

The above has always been one of my favourite quotes. In fact, I even had it scribbled on the wall in my hostel room in MICA. Yesterday, I found the same concept explained really beautifully in an article that someone gave me to read.

There are, the piece said, 3 relationships that define each of us as human beings:

1. Our relationship with ourself
2. Our relationship with others
3. Our relationship with spirituality/god

The first, one's relationship with oneself, is the fountainhead of all else. It is what defines how we see and react to the world. What you give yourself is what you can give to the rest of the world. Love yourself and you will love the world for what it is, hate yourself and you will only find fault with the world, accept yourself the way your are, with all your flaws, and you will find the capacity to accept others without finding fault with them. Love yourself and you will find the courage to make the choices that make you happy. Selfishness, in the deepest, innermost core of every human being is important to creating common good. Only when you want the good for yourself will you be able to want good for others too.

And while Rand maybe offensive to many (the quote is from The Fountainhead), I think the piece is above is what she truly meant when she advocated self interest above altruism. True good for others can spring only from wanting the good for yourself. And as I have discovered in the last few weeks, you cannot love another unless you love yourself. You can only admire, listen, compete, compare. But you can say I love you only when you say the I.

Truth

A friend posted a thought on telling the truth or rather questioning the necessity of telling the truth. And it is something I've been thinking about a fair bit over the last couple of weeks. I've tried making do with half truths and almost truths. Fact is beyond a point it just doesn't work. Not with the big things. Not when it affects so many people so deeply (yourself not the least). Deciding to tell the truth isn't easy either especially when it does not reflect to well on yourself (to put it mildly) and goes a long way in hurting a lot of people.

However, as those in advocacy of the truth would put it, there's no point whatsoever living with a Democles' sword hanging over one's head. It is the tougher choice to make at the moment. But only at the moment. It is by far the easier choice to make for life for when this time passes, one will be rid of it forever. One will be able to put behind and truly move on in life. There will come a time when we will all be happier for the things that are coming to pass now.

Manifestation

Two friends have now said the same thing to me: Your deepest desires manifest themselves even if you try really hard to push them under the carpet. You wish for something really badly and you send that energy out into the universe and it comes back to you. So be careful what you wish for.

I'd put it more optimistically: if you are sure of what you want, wish really hard for it. It'll find its way to your life. And then have the courage to recognise that it is what you wished for and don't turn it away just because it didn't come at the time or in the manner that you expected it to come in.

Ignorance is Bliss

Was having a conversation with my mom today on how all we "intellectual" and "thinking" people have done is to complicate our lives. She gave me the example of a second cousin of my dad's who just got married (she's just my age folks!) and was perfectly fine with whatever she had and without any fantastic notions of compatibility or romance or connect or whatever other hogwash that we come up with in the name of enlightenment, intellect, exposure blah blah blah...

Well, you see mommy, it is a double edged sword. You gave us books to read when we were little. We became the intelligent, broadminded little know-it-alls who were always the teacher's pet in school and got good grades. But along with that our imaginations also flew. We discovered thoughts and desires which we might not have chanced upon in our limited experience of the world. We learnt to look, question and re-examine everything. We learnt to want things and we learnt how we could get them. We got addicted to the joys of curiousity and the search for more.

Ignorance is bliss indeed but once you chose to think, you can't escape it. Neither can you escape the consequences of suspending or ignoring your thinking for a short period of time for it will always come back to you multiplied manifold.

Morals and Values

This post follows a little tweetcussion started by a dear friend on morals. Now that word usually puts me off a good deal. Let me try and explain why. Morals as I see them are injunctions imposed by society on those who are its members. They make a pronouncement on good vs. bad, acceptable vs. unacceptable and more yins and yangs on the same lines. Nothing really wrong with that on the face of it. Every society or group of people or community needs definitions of the acceptable and unacceptable. However, why morals to me have become problematic is that over the years, societies have forgotten why they have those morals in the first place. They have come to be blanket injunctions enforced by self appointed moral policemen (and women... no gender discrimination here). We have examples aplenty. Some of the more trivial ones have been contributed by politicians in our own country. They have enforced the morals of Indian society through vandalism, force and verbal harrangues. Ask any of them why Valentine's day is immoral and they don't have an answer.

Morals have also become, over the years, a convenient way to avoid making a difficult choice or taking responsibility. "I have better morals than that. I don't want to upset people" or "What will people think of me if I say or do such and such". And so in the name of morality, we keep quiet, do nothing, or do things that we do not want to do.

But then doesnt society need some standards? Aren't there things that are acceptable or unaccpetable? Doesn't society need to pronounce judgment to keep order? True, society does need to keep order. That, and convenience, is the whole point of society. Else we might as well be living solitary lives. But what society should be talking about is values and not morals.

To my mind the difference is essentially this: values are things that prompt us to think, help make choices and answer to that eternal larger "purpose of life" question. Morals tend to be action points: do this, don't do that. And there in arises the problem. Action points are always relative. They don't work for everyone and they are not always good or right or acceptable. Values, on the other hand, stand for things define attitudes that are beneficial to society and to individuals. For example, learning or knowledge would be a value. And it is a value that is applicable across societies and cultures and individuals. However, how one chooses to learn is entirely upto each individual. You cannot pass a moral injunction claiming the study of say medicine as the only true path to knowledge (sorry... nothing against the profession of medicine per se). Peace is a value. The moral injunction of not killing proceeds from that. But if I were to pass a blanket injunction saying "Do not kill" it would serve no purpose (for there are times when wars are justified. Hitler could hardly be allowed to go on a rampage in the name of a moral that says "Do not kill").

Values in that sense are more objective and it is from value that actions arise. I'll end with a lovely definition of good and evil that I came across when reading Shantaram. I am going to take the liberty of paraphrasing: anything that helps the universe move towards greater complexity and order is good. Anything that hinders that is evil. For the exact quote refer here. I think that's a great starting point to get thinking on how to define that ultimate set of yins and yangs centering around good and evil (such loaded words both!).

PS: this post is dedicated to all those people who have used more question marks than full stops in their conversations with me. You know who you all are. Love all of you. keep the questions coming... they make me feel very vibrantly alive.
Special mention: Cynduja for starting the tweetcussion and this post. :)

PPS: I don't know how articulate I've been above. Would welcome comments and a debate. If all of you agreed with me it would be boring. ;)

Dear Heart

Dear Heart, lie a little still for yet awhile. I know I haven’t let you speak much in the years passed but I hear you loud and clear now and I know I will find the courage to walk down the path you want me to. I don’t promise that it won’t hurt but I promise I won’t give up without a fight.

Understand, dear Heart, that I must clear up the mess of my mind before I can begin to give you the things you want. And yes, two years of my shutting you up have made you as impatient as ever (you were never particularly wont to waiting it out you know) but just a little while more and you can have your way with me.

I promise not to be the other seagulls of the flock and protect you with the convenience of food. I understand Jonathan now and that the pain in making that swooping dive will be well worth the ecstasy that it will bring someday.

Keep your voice up dear Heart, for in its impatience, despair and hope I shall find both myself and my courage. They say the mind is superior to the heart but I realise now that it is only so once it has accepted what the heart has to say and not by silencing it into submission. This dear Heart, I shall remember the next time I make a choice.

Wishes

Every night descends like a cloud

Bringing thoughts that lay long forgotten

Strange memories, unspoken desires

And a tear rolling gently down my cheek.

The day passes in conversations

As I search for hidden meanings

Signs perhaps that will tell me

What lies behind the clouds.

In this bright sunny land,

I wish for the warmth of winter.

I wish for my heart to lie still

To let me hear the voice of my mind.

Or maybe I wish for the courage

To walk alone on a cluttered path.

What I wish for most,

Is to know what I wish for

Sacrifice

Over the last couple of days, I've been having a conversation with a friend and with myself. And I am reminded of a scene from Atlas Shrugged (we've been talking about this book too!) where Dagny is standing with John and Fransisco in Fransisco's house in the valley. I'll not get into every line of that scene here (sorry to those who haven't read the book enough times to know what I am talking about). However, subsequently Dagny introspects about the nature of sacrifice in the context of human relationships (I think the idea of sacrifice with respect to material needs has a different connotation and different implications. Also they are take the form of trade offs since they are more measurable). This is essentially what I've been thinking about for sometime now.

I better appreciate now the nature of the dilemma she was contemplating and John was ostensibly facing. I can see where the temptations come from and why they are so tempting. Why it is sometimes easier to contemplate making the more "acceptable" choice knowing that one will hurt oneself in some measure, greater or lesser. I also realise that it is not easy to decide which choice is the sacrifice; that human relationships are not linear balance scales nor are they a fixed quantity where the sum of all relationships must always be the same. I don't know what choice I will make or when I will make it but at least I know what questions to ask myself this time around. And that I've found some measure of the courage it will take me to make either choice.