156 Monday Musings: God for the Young

156 Monday Musings: God for the Young

Some conversations can lead to blogs, this is one of those.

As a parent myself and as an observer of parenting, i have witnessed many ways in which hobbies and habits are attempted to be inculcated in the young ones by excited and overzealous parents. There are two extremes in parenting - the "the child will figure things out- and i should keep away" types and at the other end is the "i need to know everything-i will control everything" (i think the term in vogue is helicopter parenting). Most fall in between. The object of intervention could be anything - dance, poetry, dramatics, painting, sports so on and so forth.

The two areas that i do not see much focus during parenting is 'managing money' and 'developing a religious/spiritual consciousness' - its the later that will be my focus today.

Religion and its true pursuit, spirituality, which come along with their myriad definitions, connotations and worldviews is not on the menu of 'things to do' for the child development, either because this subject is too overwhelming to an average adult, or he/she does not find it important enough. The belief probably is that this is an adult subject and the child will find his bearing on the religion he follows or the God he believes in on his own as he grows up.

If we believe history, then religion makes adults do strange things - from wars to persecution, from intolerance to bigotry, many wrongs have been committed in the name of some religion or some God. But does religion do any good to a child or an adolescent or better still, can it do any good to a growing up child?

I believe that developing and helping the child build a relationship with God based on conversation and not reverence can do a world of good to her. Taking the child to community place of worship, making her a part of community rituals of all kind and talking through those rituals make her develop a sense of community, which in this case may be of a limited kind as it is based on only shared faith/religion, but will go a long way in teaching her the merits of community life, which will come in handy when she does find the wisdom to belong to some community based on her free choice. Too many adults live the lives of a loner, may be because no one taught them to belong. Belonging takes courage, conviction and practice. 

Experiencing places of worship and a conversation with a supreme power can be a good surrogate to teach the distinction of good and bad, right and wrong to an early mind, which at this stage is not ready to make that distinction based only on virtues like objectivity, rationality, ethics and principles. God or the idea of God becomes an anchor, to which the young rudderless mind can hold on to in times when she is unable to understand the vagaries and unpredictability of the world around her. This anchor and the relationship with God, however must be built and based on conversations and not purely on reverence, as it most often than not is the reality. God can be a friend for the young soul, to look for direction, for guidance and company to talk to, rather than a power that only punishes the offenders of the rules set by elders. 

This is not the end of it however. All this while we must also provide the child enough sense of inquiry, enough sense of curiosity and most importantly enough sense of independent thinking, so that as she grows up she can question everything that we would have taught her, even the notion of God - and should she then conclude that God did not exist, or He was not worth the fuss, or all this brohuha about the right and wrong is a cartload of crap, then by all means allow her to conclude so. 

An atheist based on inquiry and intellect is better than a believer without discovery. God can be a good rudder for the young. 

Guru

Monday Musings 155: My experiments with the TV.

Monday Musings 155: My experiments with the TV.

Do not be led astray with the title, i have no intention to experiment with the various shades of truth that the other Gandhi ever did. One of the modern day truth is the TV and going by its ubiquitous presence and a vice like grip on the modern day life, i had always wondered, what would it be like to have no TV in life - and there in lies the tale!

I changed cities close to a month ago and i decided to take the leap of faith by ripping off the umbilical chord with which the TV is linked to our lives, called the set top box or the cable. So its been a month that the cacophonous presence of the idiot box does not hang in my humble abode. These days has been like the days in the rehabilitation center so to speak, cleansing the body and the soul of the last drop of an addiction, that begins with harmless experiment, but ends up asking for more and more. That is how the addiction to TV begins - watching a few programs here and there, aimless surfing of channels without a time limit, program hopping so that one knows broadly something about everything, but not everything about something, an echo of mediocrity symptomatic of our lives these days. 

I would love to do a psychological study of creating a typology of people basis the programs they watch and the way they watch them. In his mind the viewer is sophisticated and intellectual and believes he watches only Discovery, History and Bloomberg - in reality that is only a rare viewership if at all, and the bulk of viewing is purely psychedelic, voyeuristic, vicarious, dramatic and sensational, whether in the kind of news, serials, or the reality programs watched. The viewer could be any of the following.

The escapist - one who watches reality programs that he wont do or cant do, but always wanted to do. The cheap thrills, the artificial excitement, the fake suspense is his staple. 

The dramatist - one who believes that life is lived in a hyperbole, conversations must be peppered by punchlines and there are no families who go to work (because most of them are either having and affair, marrying, divorcing or remarrying, scheming or being schemed against)

The drifter - who watches the same thing many times over, or the same news in 5 different channels in a kind of stupor that only addiction can create

The lonely - one who does not care what is only the TV, as long as something is playing, preferably at loud volume, that fills the vacuum of inactivity or a meaningful pursuit or a worthwhile interest in his life

The armchair sportsman - one whose notion of a physical activity is changing channels on the remote, or going to the loo during breaks but will watch everything from the T-20 to the latest Kabaddi match and to add insult to injury will have an expert opinion on everything about the sport.

Coming back to a month without the TV around, the initial days you experience something amiss in life, a yawning gap that is inexplicable but thunderous. The silence in the home is deafening before it is irritating- the only noise is family talking to each other, something that you are not used to. There is genuine time available with everyone and in the first few days no one knows what to do with it. The child is discovering books, activity, park et al because she needs all the sources to kill time that has suddenly available. The spouses can easily find 15 minutes anytime to do the chit chat that is the hallmark of domestication, without having to wait the day to end, otherwise a post-dinner-TV chore, by which time in any case they were too tired for any  conversation. 
TV is an addiction because it consumes you without your participation - one can watch it for hours completely disengaged and it wont notice or take offence. But other pursuits like reading or jogging or gyming requires engagement, it asks for your involvement and efforts. In the absence of TV, precious bandwidth gets released from life that can be then be channelized. 

In the past i have asked so many about not having a TV at home and each time i was told that it would be hard on the child. I guess, its harder on the adult who never takes the plunge.

For those who still have a TV, enjoy watching.

Guru

154 Monday Musings: Good-byes

154 Monday Musings: Good-byes

Good-byes can mean so many things. Good-byes often come along with some kind of discontinuity, a departure from the usual, a shift from how things are or have been. Good-byes mean separation, distancing, moving away, sometimes permanently. Humankind generally does not like good-byes. All of us are comfortable with certain kind of departures and discontinuities and uncomfortable with other kinds of good-byes. Often the enormity of good-bye is determined by the number of discontinuities it will cause and the number of relationships it will distance us from and what do those relationships mean to us. Adults find good-byes more traumatic because with increasing age they have less and less left to offer to new ones, so a good-bye for them is like an investment gone bad. Their own emotional poverty scares them when its time to say good-bye.  

How does one deal with good-byes? Each one of us has built a certain threshold to good-byes called the good-bye tolerance and a good-bye response mechanism over the lives we have lived. Good-bye tolerance indicates how much of the strain caused by the good-bye are you able to take in your stride. Do good-byes disturb you generally? Does the prospect of going away, separation, and realizing that the presence of people around you, that you had got so used to, almost to the point of believing it to be a permanent presence, causes something to churn inside you - or are you comfortable with the thought. Do you lose sleep and are generally irritated by that thought in an otherwise perfect life? The amiss is inexplicable, the void is undescribable, the vacuum is like a footsore, not fatal but reminding you of an imperfection at every step - the only difference that its an heartsore and not a footsore!!

The good-bye response mechanism is the methods we chose or have practiced to perfection to deal with those changes that come along with good-byes. Some immerse themselves in other pursuits with a vengeance to take their mind away from the turmoil unleashed by the good-bye. Others shut themselves out - withdraw into themselves and try to make themselves 'vulnerability proof'. Some will deny, others will resign. Some will curse, others will squeal. Some will be quiet others will be vocal. Some will express others will hold.  

I have wondered what goes on in the mind and heart of the person undergoing a good-bye. Does he feel the heaviness in his solar plexus, the dryness in his throat, the dullness of his senses, the bottomlessness in his mind, the numbness in his thoughts, the abyss in his heart? Do adults feel the same as adolescents even if they retain the bravado and the aura of self control? Does the calm, the certainty around the eventuality make the feeling of unease any less significant? Finally do you express or do you still remain in control. Adulthood is such a strange business.

I stand at the cusp - the point where one journey ends and the next one begins. There is the burden of a good-bye at this moment that i have to bear. There is a burden of attachment, likings, fondness, respect, awe - and may be a strange concoction of all of the above, which some call love. As i bid good-bye to so many, i want to say to them " I leave behind a part of me with you - hold it with you and i take with me a part of you that i will hold dear". I have said good-byes too many times in life and i tell myself they don't matter and they don't bother me much. I guess i try too hard to tell myself that and betray my  feelings.

Good Bye.

153 Monday Musings: Doing things differently and more

153 Monday Musings: Doing things differently and more

Shiv Khera brought this to the popular consciousness by declaring that winners did not do different things, but did it differently. I shall not get into whether this describes complete truth or a slice of it, instead i shall recount an instance that caught my fancy recently that bears some  testimony to the above maxim.

We all travel by airlines and listen to the inflight demonstration of safety instructions with ennui and ill concealed disinterest. I would be very surprised if even a frequent flyer will be able to discern the difference between the instructions of any two airlines. The monotone of most announcers and their own apparent lack of conviction in what they are speaking does not help either. It is amidst this banality and undifferentiated mediocrity, one cannot help but notice the script of the IndiGo airlines during their in flight instruction. No wonder they currently rule the skies today and are the largest domestic carrier today. A classic case of doing things differently and benefiting from it. 

The IndiGo announcer would among other things speak about the various languages that the crew speak on that give day. They would also comment that they knew that most of flyers would be disinterested to listen to them that we should still listen to them for our safety. 

What amazes me is not that their script is different from others because of all the elements of the flying experience of an airline, the nature, quality and delivery of the inflight safety instruction is not a differentiator or even a determinant of customer satisfaction. It is precisely for its inherent mundane-ness and a very low pecking order of importance that makes IndiGo's effort to be different even there makes it so notice worthy. 

My lesson goes a bit deeper than 'being different' - be different even when and where people do not expect you to be. Differentiation, the classical strategic concept applied to organisations, products or people has some obvious indicators. The world expects you to be different at the obvious levels. The question is, can we be, retain and sustain 'being different' at levels that no one expects us to be - levels where no one would notice except our own quality consciousness, our own sense of dedication. Probably one reaches that stage when you are not being different for being different sake, but when you create value from being different. Its not showmanship or brownies that you are accumulating, but delivering credible value.

Finally a word of caution - have something different before you claim it or else it will the case of the famous Maggi Hot and Sweet tomato sauce - its been more than a decade that i am searching for what is so 'different' in it - i guess even Javed Jaffri is still searching.

Guru

152 Monday Musings: Two and a half seconds in 100 years

152 Monday Musings: Two and a half seconds in 100 years

This is probably the longest journey mankind has ever undertaken. In times of instant gratification and quick fixes, this is a humbling reminder that great journeys are often those that take time. If one looks at the world records held for the most important race in the sporting world, one which crowns the winner as the fastest human being in the universe, the 100m men race and traces its timings across the last 100 years, one would be left gasping at the enormity of a simple and small number.

The list of winners and timings vary basis various sources, but according to one source,   (source:http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0106405.html) one Thomas Burke ran the race in 12 seconds in 1896 and lets begin to trace this journey from there. Many other sprinters pushed the boundries and the celebrated US runner Jessie Owens knocked off a cool one and a half seconds and clocked 10.3 seconds in the year 1936, a good 40 years later than Burke. The 10 second barrier was broken in 1968 by James Hines who clocked 9.90 seconds. It has taken the next 60 plus years to push the envelope by another half a second, when Usain Bolt clocked 9.62 seconds a few days back. So the arc of time has travelled more than a hundred years to make progress worth 2 seconds and a bit more. Read it again and let the enormity of it seep in - 100 long years and a progress of just 2 seconds. It cannot get any more overwhelming or grander than this. No other figure with its innate 'tiny-ness' has been so impactful in the history of human progress. It tells us so much about us, our pursuits, and our relentlessness - and it also, if we bother to apply it, puts so many things in perspective.

It tells us that real progress takes time, really long, and frustratingly long period of time. It also tells us that many people will come together and push thier boundries a tad fraction of a second more than the last one and in doing so will push the history of the species an inch forward. The future will stand tall only on the shoulders of the past. It tells us that the agonising wait is so much worth it. It tells us that some times real progress is imperceptible to the naked eye and to really appreciate this try imagining the duration of 2 seconds - its equal to blinking of the eye!!. It tells us the virtues of being at the job and chipping of the rock painstakingly before the statue in it reveals itself.

The story of these two seconds tell us to take a hard look at the growing importance of speed in many aspects of our pursuits today and forces us to question the contemporary wisdom on quick fixes and overnight success. Swiftness is a virtue but not always. This might be counterintuitive to the ways of the world today, but there is enough evidence in the natural world to indicate the virtues of slow progress. All natural processes take a certain time - like procreation, blooming of flowers, ripening of fruits so on and so forth. Anything less than that time is considered unnatural and yields a result which is sub optimal and in most cases abnormal, dysfunctional, and bitter. 

Kabeer says

Dheere dheere re mana, dheere sab kuch hoye

maali seenche sau ghada, ritu aaye phal hoye

(Things take time; Even you water many times, the fruit will bloom only when its time for it do so)

Guru

Monday Musings 151 - We must have a plan

Monday Musings 151 - We must have a plan

"Life is what happens to you while you were busy  making other plans" -John Lennon

We must have a plan - thats the refrain one hears so often. I have dished that advise on many unsuspecting victims many a times. I am an ardent believer of having one all the time. In fact come to think of it, I have more than one all the time, given how in myriad ways the cookie crumbles these days.  

A plan gives things an element of certainty, a feeling, howsoever fragile and pseudo it might be, of being in control. The plan is the anchor in choppy waters, that may or may not suffice when time does come to test it, but till that time at least, it gives a warm feeling of comfort and surety.

 What can be more endearing and warm than to exactly know how things are going to unfold, events are going to pan out, stages are going to unravel, even if it means in the eye of your mind. In all probability their unfolding in the realms of imagination is more joyous than in reality - for in reality they unravel only once, but in the eye of your imagination it does over and over again. Think of all your 'plans' so far, some of which at this date may be referred to as childhood fantasies or adolescent wishful thinking, but which at that time certainly qualified as plans, and fulfilled or not, they still have the capacity to make you smile and give you that warm feeling. One must have plans.

One must have plans and one must not take them seriously. One must believe in them, one must have faith in them, the way one believes in God or has faith in the 'goodness of the world', but one should not be naive enough to be carried away by their certainty. A belief in God should not take away our eye from the devil; a faith in the need to be good should not make us oblivious of the fact that evil exists as much or more. One should make plans and one must be aware of their fragility.

Much as this paradox is difficult to be retained in one head without becoming insane, there are moments when the 'glass must break', if only to keep your rendezvous with reality. It’s almost akin to why a child must be exposed to all kinds of illness during childhood in mild forms so that the body recognizes the need to build immunity against that and much larger illnesses. Small plan must go awry so that we prepare for larger plans going awry. One must have plans and some of them must not fructify.

Can you discern your plan blooming or going to dogs in slow motion? It’s as difficult as watching a flower bloom - you can figure out that the flower has bloomed, but you cannot discern its each step. The bloom is the proof or the disaster.

Imagine how would it be to be able to watch a plan bloom and a plan go bust, but in slow motion. You can do it only if you are a hell of an observer. You must have the heart of angels, the courage of gladiators and the eye of a sage.

Its great fun. 

Guru 

Monday Musings 150- Monday Musings is five.

Monday Musings 150- Monday Musings is five.

Monday musings turns five on 9th of July. I would not have remembered this, had an old colleague not called up recently to inform me. It is certianly a personal milestone that is significant for me, although i am acutely aware that for most it should hardly matter. Here are some of the reflections of an ameteur's attempts at creative writing.

I started writing short pieces in English only when i was well past thirty. English was not my first language for the first thirty years - actually it was practically not my language at all for the first twenty years or so. Hence, the attempt to write in it was simultaneously an act of courage and a leap of faith. The first few steps were very tentative and clouds of self doubt always loomed large. A lot of us write for pleasure and for self consumption or at best share it with a close circle of friends, but writing for public consumption, where there is always a risk of an adverse comment or a barb or a critique, is a different kettle of fish. I was however daunted more by the prospect of discipline, of having to churn out a piece monday after monday. As one would see, that five years and a 150 Monday Musing's later, the success on that count is roughly 60% ie i have been able to churn out a Monday musing 60% of the mondays thus far. I think i have done good by my initial projections.

I have realised in these five years that writing is both an act of craft and an act of discipline and the latter is more difficult than the former. The Genius may look for an act of inspiration to be able to put together a piece, an event, a strand of a thought, a motivation so sublime that its expression will be nothing short of a masterpiece. More often than not however, a lot of observations are wasted, triggers are let unattended, which could have been tales worth telling. I forget more triggers than i remember. I realise if i do not attend to them then and there, the moment is lost. Its difficult, nay impossible to remember it later, much as one tries to struggle with memory or conciousness, a pursuit as futile as remembering last nights dream - you know its there somewhere, vague and hazy but cannot describe it. I regret not nurturing those triggers. I lament the loss of Monday Musings that could have been.

There are times when you feel strongly about something but the expression eludes you. Even as you finish the piece there is a residue than rattles inside you, that is the only proof that you have not justice to the thought or the subject. You have not completed the story and only you know it.

The harshest comment that i have ever recieved about Monday Musings from someone who has followed it closely for quite some time now, is that it is not someone who is living the subject. It appears to the reader that i am not a participant to the drama that i am writing about, i am just a bystander, an observer who is passive and has no stakes in the story. Fair point and accepted.

An imperfection about my writings that i am acutely aware is the singular lack of diversity of subjects. I seem to be writing more and more about the same things. My reportaire is limited or may be i am scared to venture into the unkown. I plan to change that in the coming five years.

As i look back for five years of writing, however intermittent it has been, i feel satisfied and hopeful, because i have managed to sustain it longer than i had estimated. I feel thankful to those who have followed my musings whenever they could, even though they had options of reading more gifted and accomplished writers. If the first five years are any indications, i have all the reasons to look forward to the next five. May they be more purposeful and intense.

Guru