Sunday, August 26, 2012

Intoxication


Grown up in a very traditional family in Varanasi and surrounded by more orthodox society means that you will have very strong views about all kind of intoxication whether its alcohol, Marijuana or any other objects. The primary reason for whole society being so paranoid about intoxicating object is their addictive power and the witch grip that you can't jettison.

After passing my whole teen age and most of 20s time without serious giving any thoughts about alcohol and marijuana and I have suddenly fall in love with magic of intoxication. To be more precise I am not addicted to any object yet I find a illusive pleasure that gives you but for short time though. Well the primary reason behind denying any kind of intoxicating object was their short lives magic and inability to dilute whole environment at least in my case.

However, living and spending quit a lot of time alone now days I have started exploring various avenues experimentation for intoxicating objects. After denying it for almost three decades I finally embraced it and eventually like it. Let me put it in that way that intoxication at least helps you to create a beautiful illusion around you and it may not last a long though. But in case if it helps you to get to sleep I think it serves the purpose.


Thursday, September 29, 2011

The illusive life


The beginning

Since long time I have been questioning the basis of life, why do we born or die? If eventually I have to die then why I do need to born? Is it necessary to complete the life death cycle? Whatever country of society you live most answers to this question will come from religious side. Most commonly used explanation being God sent us to go our job, then the question who is god and why does he bother to do so? if you keep asking such questions you may get some illusive answers, however, beyond a point even your grandmother will say "kid now its time for you to sleep talk to you tomorrow!" There could be many reasons behind why does she wants you to sleep at that point of discussion the reason could be either she does not wants you to you realize that what all she is inculcating to you is a fake thing or she believes that you are too young to understand these subtle things.

Many things we end up doing that we are not suppose to do or we do not understand why we are doing. Such as getting into school and learning different subject the answer is simple and straight forward you need to learn how to live in the civilization where you are born. The basic building block to live in civilization are language, science and the social aspect of it.

Things go good till the point you adhere to the rules written in your society and the biggest point you really enjoy doing so and you are successful, at least by your definition, and have a happy life , by your definition. Why did I mentioned "by definition" as these things are different for everyone. So what if you are left behind? you are neither successful nor happy. And may be due to some reason you are questioning too much and not getting any convincing answers. There could be another case where you likes and dislikes are not aligned with the standards likes/dislikes. This inverse like/dislike condition is well accepted in western democracy, however, still in major part of the world it's not well accepted and at times people do succumb to express their true orientation or opinion.

Beginning of complexity : Life Goals

The society has created its rules for what is good/bad and what is material/real/illusion. As you are born you are always told to have some purpose of your life, however, by far no one seems to have a convincing answer of "purpose of life". The question been bouncing between material goals and illusive goals. What are these ? By theory the material or real things are those that you could achieve and illusion being a set of imagination that you are not able to achieve in your small life span or may be yet to achieve. So the definition of real and illusion is again relative there is no fixed rules to guide it. For a common man becoming president of the country may be illusion or dreaming to be a rich could also be an illusion. However, in fact the the moment you achieve a particular set goal you live it for a moment it becomes reality but on next moment you setup next goal. Hence in practice you attain the reality for a short span of your life and you keep targeting for next goal in your life. Hence in practice what we think as reality or real is not "Real". Its like running behind a carrot tied to your head and you know that you will never get that. So what is purpose of our life? some relationship? is it some goal? our own life? or we are running till death?

Is life is all about transitioning from one illusive state to another? Are we running for water in desert till we die fooled by mirage ?

Relationship : The first illusion

We build up relationships the day we get a secure place in mothers womb. So many people waiting outside the womb to welcome you and establish relationships. It starts from your mother, father, sibling, family members and never ends till you meet you ultimate destiny death! Some may disagree with me on that destiny part but I am convinced that death is our final destiny no matter what you do.

I would call the relationship to be an very illusive thing as its not eternal, yet poets try to show it as eternal, however, it does not survive the death. People forget you after death. Even if you are a great leader your direct relationship does not last for ever rather its your influence and your followers that keeps the flame alive. So for all practical purpose we could say that the relationship is not eternal. Another fact about relationship is that when it is there you can't imagine your life without the relationship, however, when it goes away you adjust yourself accordingly hence relationship is not the one thing for which you are living for because if one relationship dies you establish another.

The most complex form of relationship could be love relationship between a man and women. This Love is one of most complex illusions that a human mind can feel. It is the sweet yet bitter, its soft yet lethal; I will not go into more adjectives as this feeling has already been glamorized by generations of poets and intellects and I may not be able to describe it further. The strange thing about this is whenever you feel it you find something new that you never read or heard of. Even if you feel it multiple times every time feeling will be completely different ,however, some of the symptoms may be the same such as intensity and depth. Some people chose to die for this relationship, however, most manage to cope up with it while alive but still you can only detach yourself from its tangling feeling once you are dead.


The only reality the mystical death

Disclaimer: I do not indent to promote/support suicide or Euthanasia. It's just my opinion and it may not be correct its just a discussion and open for debate if you don't like please comment. By the way Life is beautiful not sure about death.

Death the most common and the ultimate truth of life and perhaps no one seems to love it. If you see the definition of death in Wikipedia you will find that "Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or intentional trauma resulting in terminal injury". So practically death is more of a biological phenomena. Then why all religions have created so many stories about death? Almost all religion has some or the other story regarding death, and relating sometimes it with rebirth and many other theories those are yet to be proved.

Another question looms in my head is why do we fear death? why can't we fantasize it? If I ask someone about his aim and goal in life I will get lot of answers, however, no one seems to include the real answer! the real goal/aim or our life its death! Why a new life in the world is considered good? We celebrate when someone is born in our life and we mourn if someone is dead, why not the other way? Why you are considered pessimist if you talk positive about death? I find it to be more optimist and mature.

Goodness of death

Death brings so many good things that a new life can never. Death does good for the world, environment and for the person who dies. If an animal dies one death one less population one less consumer and one less polluter and at the same time death brings so much of joy to the person who dies. And if a plant dies it brings food for other plants and animals. It ends all pains and all feelings and it sets you from all remorse, happiness and it takes you to bliss and sense of joy that is never ending. So the question is if something is so good and noble why does it been tagged as unhappy or unwarranted? The answer is society, the family! In human society the death certainly creates a situation of grief among the family/society near to you or who have some way of dependency on you; the dependency need not to be an financial it could be emotional bonding. So all bad theories of death has been created by people who have never died! how could be term something and tell so much about one phenomena that no one in the world has experienced? Such an irony! I could easily co-relate it with definition of God! no one has personally met a god however, we have so many stories about the God! And here comes to best or perhaps the funniest part where two unknown things join! The connection of God with death!

Why do we fear it

The fear for death has been inculcated or perhaps inbuilt in all living organism. Any living organism tries best to keep alive and the power behind that motive is yet to be answered! Once medical science gets this answer there may not be any death. Let's keep apart the biological power that keeps up alive and rather focus on the social power that kept us fearing the death all our life. You will surprise to learn that the inherent selfish nature of human being has given birth to this fear theory. Man does everything for himself. It really does not matter what kind of man you are. If you are helping others you are doing so because you want to feel good about it. So we do everything whatever makes us feel good knowingly or unknowingly. From here the theory of whatever makes us feel good should be loved and whatever makes us feel bad either should be hated or feared. Although the death brings so much good about the person of is dying, it was termed to be bad as the Man survived by the death does not feel good about it.

The ultimate freedom

Death sometimes symbolizes end of something. However, in reality it's not the end of life it's beginning of freedom. In modern world we talk a lot about freedom but do we have freedom from life? do we have freedom from joy, sorrow, good , evil? All our life we struggle to find the freedom from various feelings. Basically everyone wants attain a the state of joy or bliss; the complete concept of spirituality is based on the fact that if you follow the spiritual path you are guaranteed to get to the state of joy. Millions of theories are there to tell you the path or ways to reach or experience the ultimate truth. Some even claim to have experienced the ultimate truth, however, non of their theory seems to be quite convincing. The very first question arises what do they mean by "the truth"? Is everything else is false in the real world? or they are tagging a completely "false" experience as truth so that people keep following them. I am not sure though, it looks more of a selling point rather than being some "real truth".

Most spiritual leader repetitively state that death is the real truth, then why do they preach to live? They say that birth and death is just a cycle and we need to follow? it raised another question to our concept of freedom. Do we have freedom to break that cycle? or chose at which end of the cycle we want to stay put. Some say that living life your own way is the true freedom, however, are we really free even during living our own life? we are more entangled by subtle feelings and desires that most of the time we don't know where they are taking us. We born and start the rat race till the end and what is the end? its death! So eventually from the day we born the end goal of all of us is to die. Then why to fear that very feeling? Life is anyways going to ditch us one day death is the ultimate truth that will remain forever, death is eternal not the life. If that is the case then why you don't have to right to die?



Monday, August 8, 2011

Am I a critic?

While finding questions about my life, sometimes I stop by and think the very basic question about myself. Who I am? Am I a critic? or just reasonable. I tend to argue that I am a reasonable rather than being a critic. Is that my fault? wherever I go, whatever I see I tend to discover the dark side of it. Whether it's city or a culture or a society. Is my personality has overwhelming darker shed? perhaps it's just the way I am.

I feel complete when I am alone, and feel lonely when I am in crowd. In the party I feel like sitting calm and on silence I like to enjoy. I feel more creative when I am depressed and I lost complete sense of that when I am happy. I have often tried to find somberness in happy moments. As young boy I used to fantasize failure and losing everything. However, with time those sad fantasies have gone but the question remains were they some physiological disorder or just a hidden side of mine some theories say unconscious mind.

As I am growing older I am almost asking more and more question almost about everything. It may be very common questions yet I didn't find the answer. During course of questions I find everything around me is futile! hello! I am not going spiritual where people talk about material and non-material thing. Perhaps this is completely different topic to discuss later.

I would still defend myself that I am not a critic I am just rational and that's where the problem begins. I tend to defend both sides of my argument and that's how it gets complicated at least for me. I don't know from where this stupid observation stigma has got inside me that keeps me bugging all the time. Almost all living and non-living things I do observe and try to figure out why it is like this and how? For some people it may be simple, however, when I ask the question about existence of anything it sounds like a rebellion. Hello! I am not a rebellion either.

One day I was hiking a small hill at Gatineau park near Ottawa, the hiking trail had some stairs like structure. One fellow hiker said someone has put lots of efforts to create a patch suddenly next fellow hiker said that someone is God! I could not resist I replied it was not good it was just nature. Alas! someone got a fire said so you are an atheist? I said no! then you must be a naturalist I said may be, however, I am not sure. Basically I am yet to identify what I believe and I don't.

My problem does not stop here, it take another turn when I can't see the clear demarcation of good vs bad. I just see the good is so bad as bad and Bad is as good as good. At the same time I am not saying that good is bad and bad is good! however, I am saying that good is half bad and bad is half good. To me there is nothing good bad or right wrong rather its all relative and they are inculcated to us from the very beginning say from our childhood. Especially in a closed cultured society such as contemporary India where we have too many do's and don't's. That's how the very first corruption starts at the mind. The moment your don't's out numbers your do's you become outcast from the society/family. This is also true about other western community too though less.

Though I have lots of problem, yet the society do has the similar problems. People talk about good but they like the taste of bad/wrong! The newspaper's revenue get exponential jump if anything bad happens around the world. Some school of thought say that people are concerned about their fellow brothers! oh! no it's not the fellow brother it's spicy taste of the bad! People like to see bad around them but not with them.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

The questions of life

Dilemmas in life...where to do, where to go and what I want from my life?, often eats up our head. Sometimes we just avoid these questions in a fear that they may eat up whole life and sometimes, however, they may are worthy. Still wandering don't know whether am I taking my life? or just life taking me? Decision taken in past appears wrong. The decisions were wrong or I was wrong? Or it was something else? Whatever may the reason, I am still very much confused as I was. But I was never like this because earlier I never used to think I always used to do. I was so happy, life was going wonderful eg my school days, college days and initial years of Mumbai days. The problem started since I learn to think. Then some person came into my life, Mr Rao, he started compelling me to think and discuss these basic questions about life. Earlier I though It's stupid, sooner I realized its the toughest question of my life. Although, his motivational talks were went to increase my office work productivity, but a rebel was born within. Which started questioning the basics of my life. Whether earlier spent 22 years were of any use? Or it was just a homosapian's life who had just crossed his adolescent period.Nothing was unexpected, Studies in the same school where my forefather's had studied, followed the same path; becoming an Engineer like my father and it got boost from the contemporary trend in the city ie Go become an Engineer, somehow.

All my 4 years of engineering drained out when Mr Rao asked why did you do the engineering? Honestly I didn't have the answer and I still don't have the answer, however, I answered him something just to avoid further questions, but he never stopped. And his further questions took aways all my coolness in my life and the way I was going to carry out my life, guess what?, I was going to start preparation for MBA :-)Because when alone, I started these questions to myself. And somehow I got an answer, that I am not meant for MBA!

then later I realized neither I am meant for these IT industry business.

Months and years went, and somehow I realized I would be better off with some career which involves people around me ie I should go social somehow. Being an idle and coward I never tool firm steps to cater these needs of myself. I a way to finding myself, I had started the journey but didn't know the ways and what my goal is. Sometimes it looked fame, money and love.

Having started the journey and being a person with not much will power, I always got confused about my pleasure and passion, interest and inclination, ways and means. For past 3 years I have been shifting my goals, trying everything coming underway. In a search of changing my career I gave all exams from CAT, BANKs to defense SSB to IAS. Everywhere result was same, failure. Every time failed, I understood the mistakes learnt the lesson but forgot them on next few days.


And side ways, my love missions were going on! And again the result was the same, failure. I heard people making statements like I have got habit of learning, I can say that I have got habit of failing but not of failing forward. Failing forward is a concept where a person learns critical points of one failure and make the learning as key to success. Because if you keep learning from mistakes of your owns, learning will never stop but you will never be success.

So, its my story of failure and I am continuing it till date. The common thing which I have found in all my actions are
1. I never stopped trying
2. I never gave my 100%.
On first look the second point may look my weakness, but its something which gives me energy to try again something, how? I always think what if "I had given my 100%". however, till now I have not been able to give my 100% to any of activities in my life from studies, exams, relationships and responsibilities.

Today with nothing in my hand, I accept all my faults and decisions which must have hurt others badly. And believe, someday somehow somewhere in some of my action, I will be able to give my 100% and from that day I success journey will start. But I still don't know when that time will start? May be today? tomorrow? After 10/20/50 years? or never. But my hope for my accomplishment will never fade away.