This is a rehash of my post in tamil:
When trouble strikes our personal lives - we have to take action. Life leaves us no other choice.
However, in the common lives we share (societal and environmental), any common issue is promptly ignored (in India this is 100% true). Throw into the mix incompetent or careless officials, you have a truly vegetating atmosphere. Normally, we do one of the things
- We learn to live tolerating the mess
- We seethe with anger, then move on with our lives
- We rot with the rotting mess
You can see this in multiple facets - traffic signals, irresponsible police work and what not. A negligible few (not so negligible in impact, as I learnt recently) learn to live without worsening the problems and do their bit to clean up. But this will work only if a sustainable mass takes this approach, and is the true long term solution. The rare few go down to the roots and clean up a problem completely.
I witnessed an example recently of Ramesh. The water in his mansion stay area was contaminated with fecal matter to the tune of 36%. I still cannot believe this percentage and the fact that the owner did nothing to address this. His account of how he faced so many hurdles over the past ten months overcoming abuse from police, the owner and finally rectified the issue is present in the following blog posts of his. He has even posted recordings of "police inquiry" and "water inspector inquiry" in his blog.
In spite of reading all this, I am in doubt if we can pursue the same course of action with the same courage and determination that he has. Perhaps, that is what separates people in quality!
1) The true face of Tamil Nadu police
2) A success from the side of Dharma
Monday, August 31, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Sublimation of Sensitivity
I remember a scene from the Tamil movie Bheema.
The hero is a brute, who grows up fighting. Until, as usual, he falls in love. So he calls his roommate one morning and points to a flower.
He tells him - "See that?"
His room mate shrugs - "A flower has blossomed"
He tells his room mate - "A flower has blossomed" (hope you got the emphasis and the change in context)
Essentially, he has been living his live in one way. Until the feeling of love changes the way he looks at things that appeared mundane earlier.
At scale zero - a person butchers through life. Everything and everyone is a means to his end. Driving forces are power, food and sex.
Some where in the middle - the threshold changes. The person appreciates somethings for what they really are, but a lot of other things still remain out of grasp. Here, still the goal is to fulfill his end of things, but through subtler means - knowledge, ambition.
At scale infinity - a person is blissed out just by the sheer perception of his existence.
Unless we are at scale zero, which is very low probability, we should be able to realize that these sensitivities can be sublimated. And higher up we go, more work needs to be done and more fulfilling the experiences are.
In general, our effort should be to grasp the highest sensitivity we can imagine - or have experienced once and have fallen back for whatever reasons. The higher we go, the more vistas that open up. I don't think there is any other meaningful way to live!
The hero is a brute, who grows up fighting. Until, as usual, he falls in love. So he calls his roommate one morning and points to a flower.
He tells him - "See that?"
His room mate shrugs - "A flower has blossomed"
He tells his room mate - "A flower has blossomed" (hope you got the emphasis and the change in context)
Essentially, he has been living his live in one way. Until the feeling of love changes the way he looks at things that appeared mundane earlier.
At scale zero - a person butchers through life. Everything and everyone is a means to his end. Driving forces are power, food and sex.
Some where in the middle - the threshold changes. The person appreciates somethings for what they really are, but a lot of other things still remain out of grasp. Here, still the goal is to fulfill his end of things, but through subtler means - knowledge, ambition.
At scale infinity - a person is blissed out just by the sheer perception of his existence.
Unless we are at scale zero, which is very low probability, we should be able to realize that these sensitivities can be sublimated. And higher up we go, more work needs to be done and more fulfilling the experiences are.
In general, our effort should be to grasp the highest sensitivity we can imagine - or have experienced once and have fallen back for whatever reasons. The higher we go, the more vistas that open up. I don't think there is any other meaningful way to live!
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Building a climate of trust
I was travelling on my 2-wheeler last night (~3AM), when a man asked me for a lift. I didn't stop.
There was no thinking involved. It was an impulse decision. But the impulse is a by product of so much that happened before. Especially, stories I heard about muggings that happened in Bangalore. Systematically, they had broken down a simple act of helping another person by making use of the feeling in itself*.
Anyway, my post was not to provide an excuse of why I did not stop my vehicle. Accounting for 80-20 probability (80 being, the man really needed a lift), I could have stopped the vehicle. But after I passed on, I felt very sad at what transpired.
So my question is, what can we do to rebuild this trust between two human beings. Especially when it costs close to nothing to help another? If I review the kind of things that are doubt prone today, it is mind boggling:
- If someone asks to watch over their bags where they step out for a moment
- If someone offers some food or snacks on the bus or train out of genuine friendliness
- If someone asks for a lift on the road
- If someone asks for five rupees to get a bus ticket back home
Can we undo the damage and bring back a trusting environment? Or beyond repair?
* - In Bangalore, they used to mug people by posing as a desperate bystander needing help. The courteous ones who stopped got mugged. Then as news spread, people started to not stop. So, the muggers enlisted a woman to stop the car. It is much harder to not stop when a desperate woman is asking for help in the night. Then, the courteous ones got mugged again. Today, no one stops. So, a really needy person owing to whatever circumstances is bound to be ignored at night.
There was no thinking involved. It was an impulse decision. But the impulse is a by product of so much that happened before. Especially, stories I heard about muggings that happened in Bangalore. Systematically, they had broken down a simple act of helping another person by making use of the feeling in itself*.
Anyway, my post was not to provide an excuse of why I did not stop my vehicle. Accounting for 80-20 probability (80 being, the man really needed a lift), I could have stopped the vehicle. But after I passed on, I felt very sad at what transpired.
So my question is, what can we do to rebuild this trust between two human beings. Especially when it costs close to nothing to help another? If I review the kind of things that are doubt prone today, it is mind boggling:
- If someone asks to watch over their bags where they step out for a moment
- If someone offers some food or snacks on the bus or train out of genuine friendliness
- If someone asks for a lift on the road
- If someone asks for five rupees to get a bus ticket back home
Can we undo the damage and bring back a trusting environment? Or beyond repair?
* - In Bangalore, they used to mug people by posing as a desperate bystander needing help. The courteous ones who stopped got mugged. Then as news spread, people started to not stop. So, the muggers enlisted a woman to stop the car. It is much harder to not stop when a desperate woman is asking for help in the night. Then, the courteous ones got mugged again. Today, no one stops. So, a really needy person owing to whatever circumstances is bound to be ignored at night.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Inside Job
A scene in Training Day:
A few thugs hold the barrel of a gun on Ethan Hawke's face. This is the kind of gun, if used on the fingers, would rip them off completely. Needless to say, Ethan Hawke is terrified to the core. But as twist of fate would have it, or his good karma (he earlier saves one of the thugs' cousin sister from danger), he comes out of it.
But the episode changes his stance totally. He walks into a very hostile neighborhood with a new found calm and does what he is supposed to do. That NDE (near death experience) mutates him completely into a new plane. However, technically, nothing much changed on the outside (a few thugs pointed a gun at him and let him go). It is just that, the incident broke some limitation inside him.
In spirituality, they say everything is an inside job. So much to the extent that it includes everything we perceive through the senses, that we think is outside, down to what we experience and how we respond. So, can we make whatever changes we need to make within us without outside help?
Eventually, the change will happen only on the inside. But we certainly can make good use of available outside help - which is essentially every life situation we face everyday!
A few thugs hold the barrel of a gun on Ethan Hawke's face. This is the kind of gun, if used on the fingers, would rip them off completely. Needless to say, Ethan Hawke is terrified to the core. But as twist of fate would have it, or his good karma (he earlier saves one of the thugs' cousin sister from danger), he comes out of it.
But the episode changes his stance totally. He walks into a very hostile neighborhood with a new found calm and does what he is supposed to do. That NDE (near death experience) mutates him completely into a new plane. However, technically, nothing much changed on the outside (a few thugs pointed a gun at him and let him go). It is just that, the incident broke some limitation inside him.
In spirituality, they say everything is an inside job. So much to the extent that it includes everything we perceive through the senses, that we think is outside, down to what we experience and how we respond. So, can we make whatever changes we need to make within us without outside help?
Eventually, the change will happen only on the inside. But we certainly can make good use of available outside help - which is essentially every life situation we face everyday!
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