Celebrating Indifference

Today is 2nd October - another one of those national holidays. I had written the following on the 15th of August this year, but did not get a chance to post it. It talks about the need to more actively engage ourselves in public life. Alas, not much has changed since then. Rather, my doubts have further been confirmed through a series of personal experiences. Almost as a supplement to my reading 'The Great Indian Middle Class' by Pavan Varma, a book that very interestingly documents the development of this seemingly ubiquitous feature of contemporary India and the dillemas it faces, small incidents with friends at home have seemed to demonstrate the inherent callousness towards, even shirking away from, a responsible public life. Rather than trivialise a larger thesis, personal experiences only suggest that what is true for societies is true for individuals, or even the converse. There is not only ignorance, but also a desire to remain so. Perhaps, the real roots of despair about the state of the nation do not lie in the inactivity of public authorities, but in willing slothfulness of our own selves. I don't write of my recent experiences here, I will later on. But this should provide something to reflect on - may be help us see the little things that we unknowingly do everyday that only indicate that we are too happy getting on with our own narrow lives. A beginning thought owing to the day - We revere our leaders enough to only revere them. 

62 years on from 1947, we have enough reasons to rejoice. So we must make it a point to celebrate, and celebrate the moment of our independence with both gusto and grace. This, however, must not be an excuse to shy away from the purpose of celebration. Rather, it must be a motivation for us to contemplate as to why do we celebrate? Celebrations are a manifestation of happiness, an expression of the view that we are grateful for what we have. But does that not push us enough to at least give a second thought to why should we be grateful?

If we like to remember and exult in something that happened years ago, it is only because at that time we had hoped that the achievement will help us realise our dreams. ‘At the stroke of the midnight hour’ 62 years ago, India ‘woke up to a new dawn’ only with the expectation of a new day. That is why we celebrated then, that is why we must celebrate now. But do we really have a new day? In my view, we are partly clouded at 10 am. Nonetheless, we all hate to let moments of celebrations slip away because we want that extra holiday. Well, there is something, then, that we need to do to compensate for that holiday: we need to make sure that we have some legitimacy in taking a day off. If that does not happen, then we are a shallow people, and we will not like to be known as a shallow people.

If this day brings to our minds the memory of great men who laid down their lives to build what they sought to, then we must seek inspiration from them. If we take this day off so that we may remember them and pay homage to them, then, it is obligatory on our part to emulate them, or at least make an effort to do so and make humble beginnings. If we do not do so, we do not respect them; instead, we mock their efforts and legacy.

I watched ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ with my family a few days back. There was severe dismay at the way India was presented in the movie. ‘What business does a foreigner have giving a derogatory picture of our land to the world?’ ‘And are we not an emerging giant? Oh, right, maybe it’s just jealousy.’ Such a reaction is scary. It is a kind of complacency that shrouds reason and turns meaningful patriotism into a sort snobbish jingoism. Or is it something more than complacency, something closer to despair? When gory pictures of deplorable slum-living appeared on the screen, young cousins were asked to look away. There was disgust and disbelief. An effort was made to make ourselves believe that such a thing existed ‘only in the movies’. And such a reaction is dangerous. Envisioning a free India, Nehru once said that “as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over”. We are far from this. In a diverse and unequal setting like India we at least want some degree of mutual empathy between its people. Instead of fostering this, we are willingly trying to be indifferent to reality so that it does not byte. We are unknowingly cultivating in our social psyche a ‘culture of apathy’. And this will clearly not do for us because deliberate inaction on the part of those who are conscious of a problem is tantamount to deleterious action on the part of the wrongdoers.

I do not contend that we all be saints. We could just be ordinary people, with all our material and personal pursuits, but at least with a conscience. And this conscience should prove to be basis enough for us to indulge in public affairs. All that I contend is that it is a feasible human possibility to get public and private lives to coexist because they always did in our land, and still do but only in an ever shrinking measure. Sadly, when the need for this renaissance is more than ever, we seem to too unwilling to make a definitive start towards being active participants in civil society. If we could set a moment apart to think about problems, ponder over their solutions and based on that make a small move somewhere – only if each one of us could individually act in our own small capacities rather than just crib – it would stir the soup. Gandhiji said that we must be the change that we want to see. Let us not be the change, let us restrain our ambitions in the public sphere, but at least we could harbour dreams to have that change some day. And the dreams would be strong enough to mobilise the latent effort. But to dream those dreams, we cannot turn our backs on reality but will have to face it – for it is only if we face reality that we will be able to empathise with those who have the worst of it, and empathy is where it all starts. So let us make these small beginnings, each one of us, and try and explore the roots and the consequences of what we so innocuously celebrate each year, try and make sense of our independence.

In saying all this, I am not trying to be idealistic. I’m just trying to be a little hopeful. And perhaps being hopeful is terribly difficult for all of us, because being hopeful entails some bit of commitment to effort on each of our parts, or else it starts to stink of hypocrisy and guilt. And we do not like to be outwardly hypocritical, nor do we wish to unravel upon ourselves any form of self induced guilt. However, much to our convenience, we love our lethargic lives and comfortable sleep. So let’s get all of this together, get on with our own little private affairs, and continue to revel in despair.

A journey too well known...

Often little snippets of life, forlorn instances mirror the way life plays itself out. This is a brief account of a train journey between Dehradun and Delhi that happened to me a few days back. It is a well known route. Early morning, the ‘Janshatabdi’ pulls out of the sleepy but frantic station scene at Dehradun to pass through the forested hillocks(getting scantier by the day) and human settlements (growing rapidly each night) of Rajaji National Park. This opens out into the farmlands and urban dwellings of the plains. Each time, the scene outside and the scene inside offer a prospect to romanticise and reflect. This is a live account of these scenes and ponderings – written as and when they were perceived.

Look out of the window of your second class compartment. It takes a while for your eyes to get used to the rickety swaying of the train. As the train pulls out, the stagnant smell of the night, of dirty toilets and rusting window panes, is replaced by a soft morning odour of melting raindrops. It’s always a nice start, early in the morning.

There are other people too, with their own ways, yawning, stretching, some just out of bed, and others ready for a heady day. You look around for company, prospecting from the very start. You’re not always lucky though. So you turn away once again and look out. It is not your first time. You know what is in store – the broad dimensions of the journey. The city that is moving out will soon merge into the forest, only to be intermittently intercepted by the small settlements. They weren’t there earlier, they are here now. There are, nonetheless, gapes to be filled in – the finer strokes in the outline. So there is a fair bit of expectation – chance gets it fair bit, sometimes a little more also. In the relative solitude, for the train is still half empty, an odd glimpse of a chital excites the eye. The excitement isn’t long-lived. At the next station the train fills up. You hope for good companionship. But the thing you hate the most, bad luck, tirelessly follows you. You accept it, and try and make the best out of it. You think of a pick-up line (though it’s not really the best thing to think of when your co-passenger happens to be a belligerent old couple). You are just trying to invent a smile for your face when they set off a fight over their baggage with another passenger. A smirk escapes your lips. You needn’t worry though; others will have their chance at you.

A young man passes by. He has a book in hand – The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. It is the journey that matters. Suddenly the train comes to an irritating halt. You get the idea that it’s the elephants crossing. Sadly, you’ve left the jungle behind and are in the middle of a mango orchard. No elephants in a mango orchard! It starts getting humid in the compartment. You just start hating the Indian Railway.

The train moves after a while. The landscape changes. The planted fields are full of water. It is just after the first monsoon rains. You look out for peacocks but there aren’t any. You’ll have to do with egrets. There is considerable excitement among the egrets. They vigorously jerk their heads off and on in the water clogged paddy. You recall that every time you travelled this way these birds used to be completely white. You wonder why their heads are yellow. May be they aren’t the same birds. Putting up a brave face, one of them comes daringly close to the train and fumbles, trips and falls in a funny manner. It must have been nervous. The egrets get boring too.

The sun starts swimming faster through the clouds. Was the rain just an illusion? May be the sun is too. Shades of white play on your arm that rests against the window. The paddy needs both, the sun and the rain, you reflect.

You get your bag out and fish out a book. Reading makes you drowsy so you look out again. It’s a little cloudy and you feel good. And you see more than egrets this time, sparrows, crows, drongos, treepies, swallows – all too common but they still look nice. And then you get your moment to romanticise – yesterdays, today and tomorrow, all quietly mingle into a steady stream of thought. You think of the evenings you have spent on this route before, when going home. The same poplar trees look a shade dimmer; the sun seems to be turning redder. You think of the days gone by – things you wish to remember and things that you cannot forget. You sail into the future – conjuring dreams that change every second, adjusting the finer detail, raising the bar a little higher each time. A song escapes your lips – you don’t know the lyrics too well, though at times it is the music you lose track of.

The constant rocking is lulling you to a nice sleep as a gentle breeze picks up. You lose touch with everything around you for the next two hours. A sudden jerk wakes you up. You groan a little as your back aches because of the crooked posture you slept in. But it’s always fun sleeping in the train so you forgive yourself for the backache.

The ride is about to end. You pull down your bags and take steer them down the thin aisle to the exit doors. It is humid and you’re sweating. The open doors blow in gushes of air. It helps. The station can be seen in the distance and the train slows down. You pick your bags up ready to jump off as the halt is a short one.

The destination is just the start of another journey.

On naming this blog...

What’s in a name? Two things: one, a sense of purpose. A name indicates what the item at hand deals with, its characteristics, something that defines it in its entirety and brings out its individual traits. It is solely concerned with describing what is inherent, almost denoting the spiritual identity of the object. Two, a name helps the outer world connect to the thing that has been named – a relatively more material pursuit. The name leads to the immediate attraction – catching the eye – and subsequently becomes a link in the channel of communication. So a name completes the being – both sides of its world, the inner and the outer. It was this thought that went into naming this one – of dichotomy and diversity.

I love life; at times, I hate it too. We all do. Over time, I have managed some insight into this phenomenon. In fact, this phenomenon itself is an example of a wider experience that seems to set the stage for everything that happens to us as individuals and, collectively, as a society; an experience that is the very cause of this alternation. The experience is persistent – it gives us the options, helps us make the choices and regenerates itself once those choices are made. It is a circular constellation that always holds us in its grasp – almost feeding onto itself and growing bigger each time. It is the experience of dichotomy in life – a two-mindedness, a duality that accosts us at every turn, every milestone, every speed breaker. There is the pervasive existence of the other – the ego and the alter-ego, the spiritual and the material, symbiosis and competition, the past and the future. It does not end. We remain rather oblivious of this duality when it is possible to manage both the opposing forces at the same time, to hold them together consensually. However, it becomes more than apparent when we fail to do so. The economics of it is simple: scare resources lead to the inevitability of tradeoffs. There is an objective to be maximised under certain constraints, but in reality the constraints are dynamic and keeps changing. (While this forms the basis of ‘rational behaviour’, it can at times drive one to the peak of ‘irrationality’ – although in slightly differentiated implications of the term ‘rational’). The dichotomy perhaps can be elaborated as a something that makes everyday a balancing act between faith and temptation. Faith – a value judgement of one stand being better than the other – and temptation – an attraction towards the other – constantly interact against each other. Faith may be determined by upbringing, by instruction, by personal reactions to circumstances (usually based on the previous two) as also (though only in desperate situations) by the lack of options. Similarly, temptation is also guided by internal factors and externalities. It might be that circumstances push us into disbelieving in our faith. Or, it might just be that we wish to experiment with something else for reasons of variation and newness. The first issue lies with the ‘tug-of-war’ between faith and temptation that makes following a single path very difficult. However it is important to realise that even if we let faith go for the temptation, the second issue arises in that faith reverses to become the new temptation, for the older temptation has taken its place.

It is this double layered configuration that makes life separate from mere existence. It gives life its vitality – always keeping one on his feet, pushing them to make choices and shape their lives – and makes it enjoyable. Nonetheless, this switching from one end to the other may involve pain, suffering, inconvenience and monetary losses – things that may be clubbed under the idea of ‘transition costs’. So the switching, continually or even once tires people out, leading to despair, and makes them hate life (at times). Nonetheless, it is something that makes it interesting.

The dichotomy also leads to another idea that again makes life very remarkable – diversity. Because the dichotomy results in people making different choices over a varying range of issues, the cumulative result is much more than a simple on-off button. It encapsulates a variety of mixes and matches, each individual choosing his appropriate bundle. The diversity is thus unavoidable, as well as exciting. There are two lessons here though, one leading from the other. First, as diversity is inevitable, we must learn to both respect and manage it. Second, to respect and manage it, we must first appreciate the underlying dichotomy.

This blog seeks to detail dichotomy and diversity, often in approaches that will differ and may not directly display either of the notions. However, they will form the colours in palette that will be used to paint the ultimate picture. It may be sheer experience or rigorous analysis, but it always displays an underplay of the two forces. Hope it gives the reader as much insight into things, as it gives me!