Society and You

                                     

   

                              Imagine an overnight journey in a bus between two cities. Let’s say the bus has a capacity of hundred. Everyone boards the bus and settles comfortably in their seats. The temperature of the air condition is perfect, the seats have enough cushion and the quilts are good. As the bus starts, the attendant of the bus plays a movie in the TV set at the front end of the bus. Some people are thrilled about it and watch the movie with eyes wide open, some people are partly occupied in their own worlds and give an occasional glance at the movie to amuse themselves, some people are piqued as the sound is so loud that it doesn’t let them relax or talk something important on phones or concentrate on their official work which they need to make ready for the next morning. But since it’s business as usual in buses they ignore it and continue with their works normally hoping the movie to get over soon. The movie continues and people involve in the movie at different levels. When a comedy scene plays out, some laugh hysterically, some muffle their laughs, some don’t give a damn. After a two and half hour journey the movie finally ends. The people who didn’t want it take a sigh of relief and some more people also feel relieved since it’s about time to sleep. After a brief gap, to the surprise of many the attendant plays another movie. This time it is another gross comedy. Now around twenty people in the bus still crave for the movie and they are all ready to gobble it. Eighty people don’t want the movie. They feel playing movie at this point of time is not appropriate as people have to sleep and go back to their routines the next morning. Twenty of them are seriously frustrated and are seething in anger. Another twenty are confused as they have doubts in their mind that playing a second movie might also be business as usual in buses. Remaining forty don’t bother much as they have their iPods and ear covers to muffle the disturbance. They just look away and pull the quilts over their faces. Everyone feels that majority of the people in the bus do not want the movie but they don’t want to stand up and ask the movie to be stopped. They have their defense mechanisms and tolerance mechanisms. They feel they can just ignore the movie in the comfort of air condition, cushy seats and soft quilts and amuse themselves with their phones and iPods. They feel the movie is for only two and half hours again and they can sleep after that. The movie plays that night with eighty people twisting and squirming in their seats. The impatience and anger of the eighty people does not meet. All of them let their impatience and anger die a slow death in them. The collective good of the people in the bus doesn’t matter to any of them. They are fairly comfortable in the cocoons they built up around them. They just want to get over with it and get back to their lives where they can live on their own terms. 

                                             Isn’t this the current state of our society and so called democracy? There can be many parallels drawn. We all must be concerned at some level about the collective good of the society. But have we ever taken the pain of standing up and speaking against the irrational stuff that’s going on around us? Aren't we hurting our own selves by being silent? Is paying taxes alone enough to show our responsibility for this society? I feel instead of paying taxes in the form of money, if every one could pay a tax of concern  to the society out of the concern we have for ourselves and our families, society would be much better off. If everyone in this world decides to live lives in their own comfort zones, would we be enjoying the same luxuries that we are enjoying now? In a generation of people whose eyes are invariably hooked to the screens of their tablets, ears are plugged by the ear phones and minds are in search of individual comforts, can we ever look at the unpleasantness around us, listen to the cries of the people around us and do something about it? Remember if you ever speak up, like those eighty people in the bus there would be thousands of people who will add their voices and join their hands to drive the bad out of the society.

Night

It engulfs your mind and it awakes your senses.

It spills the seeds of desire and dispels the reality.

It teases the evil in you and mocks your morals.

It builds illusions and breaks your will.

It pulls you deep inside and sells your soul.


Don't get entrapped in its spell my friend,

for the first ray of sun crumbles all of it it down

and you will wake up to the scars it left on you.


I feel, in a quite generic sense,

Day and Night are like the good and bad company in one's life.

Embrace the freshness of the early mornings, brightness of the noons, serenity of the sunsets and fight the illusions of  the nights.

The Unprivileged

                                                    

                                                   It was roughly around fifteen years ago. I was in my sixth standard. My father is a hostel welfare officer, whose job is to essentially manage a government hostel. Government hostels majorly have students from the economically backward sections of the society. These are the students from small, remote villages who cannot afford a living in the towns where they come to study. My father was the in-charge of such a hostel with 100 odd students in which one boy stood out. He was a short, stout and dark skinned boy from a small village who was sincere in studies and polite in manners. He looked neat for a student from government hostel. He wore old but clean clothes and used to neatly comb his overly oiled hair. He smelled like coconut oil. He had the hand-writing of an artist. Also, he used to sing folk songs exceptionally well. Whenever he sang those folk songs explaining the beauty of the villages and the songs with revolutionary undercurrents in his loud, coarse tone, it aroused emotions in everyone who listened. The tragic songs that he sang brought tears to the eyes of listeners. He had a cheerful and heartfelt smile on his face whenever he greeted people. My father liked him and asked him to study at our home in the evenings. We studied under the same roof, sitting beside each other, gossiping and playing most of the time. Whenever there was a power cut in the evenings, everyone in our house gathered at a place and it was time for his song. A year passed like that and he became part of our everyday life. One day he got news from his village that his father got paralyzed. His father, who is an agricultural laborer, who is the sole earner in his family went to work in the fields that day and had a paralysis attack. This boy rushed home and did not return for a while. We later got to know that his father would not recover from paralysis in near future and things got very tragic in the coming days. He is the only boy in his family and he suddenly had his father, mother and two younger sisters to take care of. After some time, it became pretty clear that this boy had no other option but to work and earn money to look after his family. He left to Hyderabad to work in a hotel as a waiter. Around the same time I had to leave my hometown to join a residential school in Hyderabad. Even though he was in touch with my parents as he saved his money with my parents, I could not meet him after that for a few years. He saved every penny that he earned. In six years of time he did the marriage of both his sisters while taking care of his mother and father.

                                          

                                      After a long gap of six years, I met him on a few occasions; once in graduation, once while I was working after graduation and pretty recently after I got into my new job. Not once could I ask him how he was doing looking straight into his eyes. I could not, because his eyes spoke volumes. They spoke about ordeal that he had been through. They spoke about the promising boy that he was a fifteen years ago.  They spoke about the dreams that he had to kill in the bud. They spoke about the lost opportunity and inequality in this society. His smile was no longer cheerful or heartfelt. I don’t know if he ever sang a song again in his life after he joined as a waiter. I don’t know how he had suppressed his love for books. Many uncomfortable questions bothered me every time I met him. He could have been in my place if not for the financial status of his family. I could have been on the other side, if I was not fortunate enough to have born in a well off family. I simply could not stand the difference that money has created between us.  He is married and has two kids when we recently met..  He is still struggling to have a decent living. I wonder if anything in this world can bring back on to his face that priceless smile that he had long back.

                                  I know he is just one among the millions of poor our country has. Their stories are unheard of. They have dreams like everyone and they must be waiting for an equal opportunity in the face of financial distress. I have made up my mind to give at least 1% of my salary to one such person in need. I feel, we cannot wallow in the asymmetry of the society. I know for most of us working, we would still be better off without that 1% of our salary. We can still watch movies, we can still buy gadgets for ourselves, we can have food in expensive restaurants, we can still see places around the world. But the person on the other side will never be able to do any of these things in his life, without that 1% of our salary.

Mind and Mechanics

                                        

      

                                        Physics was my favorite subject long time back, before I had to say good bye to it. Physics, like every other science talks about the pattern of behavior of things. Particularly it theorizes the pattern of physical behavior of matter. Somehow, I managed to clearly understand this pattern and hence immediately became fond of it and good at it. There is a state called "stable equilibrium" in mechanics which explains, for example, the state of a Ping-Pong ball kept in a semi spherical bowl or more simply speaking the state of a pendulum at rest. This is a stable equilibrium because if one displaces the Ping-Pong ball in the bowl or the pendulum at rest and leaves them, after some swirling and swinging both will come back to rest in the same position. No matter how much you displace the objects in stable equilibrium, they have a tendency to revert to their original position. Similarly atoms and molecules have a way of organizing themselves into the most stable configuration. After observing myself and people around me for a long time I have found this is true with human beings too. Like chemical compounds and objects in stable equilibrium, I feel our minds too like to come back to a state of equilibrium. This equilibrium is different for different people and one is at peace with himself and surroundings in this state of equilibrium.

                                        Exploring the outside world or learning new things (curiosity), looking inward, having deep thoughts or introspecting (introversion), wanting to be engaged with a big group of people, socializing (extroversion),  the feeling not to think too much, pleasure oneself, relax and appease the senses(Hedonism).. etc are some of the tendencies in human beings. There are many more such tendencies which come into play in human minds in different combinations and different degrees. By mental equilibrium, I mean this combination of different tendencies in one’s mind. An outright introvert can only be at peace with himself when he is alone, thinking about his actions, engaging in deep thoughts or sharing something close to his heart with a close friend etc. Similarly people with different tendencies are at ease with themselves when they have the freedom to act according their tendencies. If one asks an introvert to involve in a loud group conversation which is utterly pointless, he has to strain himself, exert a lot of energy to come out of his equilibrium and go into a new mode.  Similarly an extrovert will be at extreme unease when left alone and asked to enjoy something pleasant on his own. He enjoys talking and that gives him positive energy. The curiosity of an inquisitive person doesn’t die even if you anesthetize him. Even if we try to change our behavioral tendencies, we eventually fall back into our natural equilibrium without realizing. I feel no tendency is bad or good in absolute sense. They can only be good or bad based on whether they are helping oneself to achieve one’s desired goal or not.

                                        

                                         Recently I went on a weekend trip to Lonavala with a bunch of people from office. Majority of them are hyper-active people who could enjoy chitchatting for hours on matters that could seem silly to a 3^rd standard student. They kept pulling my leg about being aloof and silent most of the time. I wondered at their inability to understand a personality type. In spite of the energy that they exhibited through the trip and the fun and humor in their conversations which made me smile thousand times, my best moments on the trip were the ones when I got up in the morning and sat in the balcony looking at the distant mountains, thinking deeply, enjoying the nature from my bungalow.

                                          So, the whole point of my observation is not that one has to accept his weaknesses as one can’t do much about it. I would say there is no weakness at all in the way our minds are designed. One has to choose ones calling by understanding his tendencies. Just like the way every compound on this earth has a unique property and use, we can choose to do something that suits us in a unique way, where the mind does not spend too much energy moving from its equilibrium. This is also to sensitize people regarding different personality types and appreciate the people the way they are. Remember, the best in us comes out when we are least strained.