Notes To Myself : - We Lie To Ourselves

Everything in this world comes with a price tag. We buy & get sold everyday on different prices, not compulsorily in the form of currency. The price varies in different forms, happening some time to be love, some time selfishness. I never considered this barter trade to be wrong. The wrongful in my eyes is the lie that we tell ourselves daily.

We start our day by performing the daily ritual of chanting in our minds that whatever we are, whoever we are, however we are, we are right. This illusionary righteousness that captures our persona makes us miles apart from what we truly are.

I have seen people in my life who are submerged in this so completely that they have actually forgotten who they are. I have met people claiming that they always speak truth, funnily this is one of their many lies. I have met people claiming to be living life on their condition, funnily this isn't true a single time as far as I have seen them living. Once I have been told of a boy's blog by a mutual friend that since the start of his blogging activity some two years ago he has vowed to himself that whatever he will enter into his blog will be perfectly true. Perfectly true ? I read his whole blog & I didn't found a single trace of truth other than his personal memoirs. Putting entries of memoirs into blog is truth ? I happened to talk to him once on the phone & found that he is still adamant on his vow.

We do something else & put ourselves in some other way in front of this world. George Bernard Shaw writes that all autobiographies are false. This indeed is a truth. How can we dare write truth about ourselves. Mostly we want respect for those things which even we dislike most in ourselves.

We talk about honesty & all the time we are dishonest. We talk about love & we have never lived a single moment in love other than falling in love with the opposite sex.

I don't consider myself apart from this category. I am too a dishonest person. I lie whenever I am on the verge of defending my secerts. May existence grant me courage.

Essays On India :- (A) (1) India & Freedom

I am not quite sure whether the sun rays touched the soil of India on the dawn of August 15th 1947 with compliments but I am sure that every face in this ancient land woke up with a smile. It was the day when India, after years of wait, was free. Nehru’s tryst with destiny speech few hours before must have brought a sense of pride, which had lost thousands of years ago when the Macedonian feet leaded by Alexander crushed the miserable Indian soil. Since then India opened its arms to embrace all the invaders most of them though inundated themselves in the land of brown people. Freedom & power brings responsibility were Nehru’s word on the eve of India’s independence. We were free, we were to be responsible. But it should be left on the time frame that has to set by the historians that how India fought its way for being free. Freedom, the word which meant the world for us, should be ace bench mark. Were we really free then? Are we really free now? If the answer to both the questions are in affirmative then what was Rabindra Nath Tagore’s heaven of freedom in which he wanted his country to awake (Where the mind is without fear, Gitanjali). I don’t consider myself in any position to contradict the Nobel-Laureate. If freedom was only meant political then it made no difference at all to any common man. They were ruled by whites & now will be ruled by browns.

India has never been a country rather it has been a school of thought, a land which witnessed standing aloof & untouched the rise & fall of human civilizations across the world. India, indeed has been a journey commencing & concluding into infinite. It has always been a perfect balance between Adiguru Shankar Acharya’s beliefs of materialistic world being illusionary & Charvak’s claim of realism lying in the outer world. It is a land where the mind of people vary so diametrically within few miles that one can get confused of his whereabouts. But these variable thoughts made the base for the narrow walls between the common man. The blessing became the curse. In remedy of it India started looking towards its past & boasted it of being a golden age. For India, there was no golden age. Nikos Kazantzakis’s Alexis Zorba took a quantum leap & became a vulnerable mixture of De Sade & Von Sacher Mascho. The religion which reached a pinnacle in this country became a perfect example of suppression of people on the name of it. The freedom itself became the bondage. This can be best put in the words of Rabindra Nath Tagore “bearing the cost of music instrument & not knowing its use is the tragedy of life’s deafness”.

Freedom in every sense means immunity from all the bondages regardless of it being political, intellectual or spiritual. C.G Jung’s remark about addiction in every kind being bad is quite true not only to a single man but also mobs, parties & nations. But the ironical part of humanity is this that we try to engulf ourselves with all such thoughts in end make us slaves. India, I find every reason, to believe became the slaves of its own in the first place. We, the people of India are still fighting on such issues that as if we living in a Paleolithic age.

Essays On India :- (A)(2) Once a king now a pauper

The farthest memory that I could recollect from my childhood of being told about India was that this country was once a “golden bird” (Sone Ki Chidiya). It was a wealthy nation once & poverty was nowhere. Plato’s utopian concept is commonly known here as “Satyug”, the golden age where no lived hand to mouth & truth prevailed everywhere. The contemporary India that stands in front us today presents an entirely opposite picture. In mythological terms we are right now living in Kalyug, the age of darkness where sins & insanities are at their extreme. As far as mythology is concerned this giant leap was inevitable & a part of the changing cycle. As far as logic is concerned we strangled ourselves in order to decay into a rotten & malodorous society.

Why this happened to one of the most ancient society in the world?
India always looked towards the religion for every solution. Religion in India maintained a very narrow verdict regarding the material world. Adi Shankara traveled all across the country, debating with priests of various sects, preaching his “Advaita” philosophy in which the material world is considered as an illusion & the inner world sole truth. His victory in debates all over India made him one of the most prestigious saint of all time, at least in India. He revived the Hinduism which was badly affected by Buddhism & Jainism. Hinduism once again became the prime factor in Indian mindset. Shankara’s philosophy “Jagat Mithya Brahma Satya” (World is an illusion, God is truth) became the common philosophy all across the nation. This led to a disaster. India turned itself away from the materialistic world. Every thing was to be renounced. “Sanyaas” reached at its pinnacle. If the world is an illusion then all the material things became useless. Karl Marx, in west, took the opposite turn. He claimed the spiritual affairs useless, terming the religion as the opium of mass. Matter, he considered the sole base of humanity. He was the western version of Charvaka, though penetrating deeper into the human mindset.

Life as such cannot be monotonous. Newton’s third law of motion “To every action there is an equal & opposite reaction” can also be put simply that if one end of a thing is true other end too is bound to be true. If the world according to Adi Shankara is an illusion then the God must also be an illusion. Like wise if according to Marx the God is false then the matter also must be false. If one pole of a magnet bears magnetism the other pole is bound to be magnetic yet in opposite nature. Both bear the same property equally & in opposite nature. But there lies a point exactly situated between both of them which is netural yet bears the property of both poles. If I put this into the words of Soren Kirkegaard’s Either/Or (though he may not agree) then Either God & world both are true in nature Or both are false. Adi Shankara or Marx cannot be accepted separately.

The monochrome life-style of India in which the material world is considered to be useless led India to poverty. Nearly 1/3 rd people of the society which comprises of 1/6 th of humanity are living hand to mouth. This was the fruits of the seeds that were sown centuries ago.
A few days back while sipping coffee in a coffee bar I heard a poor man shouting in the counter for his wages that was being denied by the manager. He was shouting at the top of his voice for mere Rs 40. Some college students sitting next to my table started making fun of him. The poor man didn’t left until he got his money. For majority of Indians few rupees have become the matter of life & death. The poor man, for me at least, is the result of all the stupid philosophies that India followed.

The society which was once a king now has become a pauper. Still the time is in our hand. The India which I dream of is rich not only from outside but also from inside. It is neither Carl Jung’s extrovert nor introvert personality traits but instead an ambivert.. India should be a perfect balance of matter & spirit. Adi shankar in its totality will bring nothing more than poverty & Marx in its totality will make us nothing more than a machine.
India has to decide.

Notes To Myself : Freedom Within Walls

I've always found myself surrounded by situation where I remain aloof from the people meant to be with me for the whole life. This situation inevitably forced upon me for a simple reason of my constant guard of my self-prestige. I do not blame any one else as such since everyone of us made in manner that we are bound to act differently. As far as I see, nobody in this world is wrong, by most, they can be uninformed. Uninformed of the fact that the other is & being uninformed does not makes anyone at the wrong end.

Trying to be fixated, I would add that we are after all human beings which makes us susceptible of making errors. To err is human.

Prima facie, freedom never comes in cheap. I had fought all my life to maintain this freedom some time with my near ones, some time with myself. I always hated any imposed ideology as it was never mine nor I had cultivated it. In fact I am allergic to any kind of ideology. This made me to wage into an unannounced war. I've reacted some time sharply & some time silently in a feat to defend my self. Later on, I got used to it & now I enjoy when others try to school me in the ideology that they believe to be true unknowing of the fact that after all it's imposed.

Humorous Mark Twain writes in his auto biography one of the most golden words I ever came across. Regarding freedom he says that the only cost of freedom is loneliness. With the passage of time I found this to be correct. The more lonelier I got, the more free I was. But this loneliness does not mean the physical aloofness from the world that we live in. I don't what it was Twain but for me it simply is aloofness in total; mental, physical & spiritual. Funnily I experienced increasing attachment with the world with increasing aloofness. This may seem idiotic but it's not.

I live my life in my own temperament, trying my best to disallow it to stretch more than a single moment. Moment is the only life I live. Interestingly, others live to die, where as I live to live another moment.