An elder future

This post is a note to myself; an idea that struck me while I was reading up on the fundamentals of anthropology. The study of evolutionary sciences has showed us that we have traveled through space and time over a million years, beginning from a single cell and, in all probability, effectively hitting a veritable saturation point in the way we perceive the objects around us, animate or inanimate, and in the way we interpret their static or dynamic presence. Nature has always been a precursor when it came to the evolution of the structural definition of systems, and how we, as creators ourselves, could calculate and predict their various possible interactions while assuming that only certain behaviours were permissible. After all, we were and are the children of science and thus will grow up as every such child does. In this perspective, history is a lesson we write everyday just for your children and grandchildren to read about and learn. No, it is not an account of one’s experiences, for it is so only in the miniscule fraction of a second that immediately follows the experience itself. Once the cloud of our probabilistic future looms low and close, the memory of the experience itself becomes translated in our minds into a story of causality. We learn from experiences yes, but they are experiences no longer. It is but nature’s way of forcing the mind itself into succumbing to the forces of evolution.

While I was on this line of thought, I realised that our children, our grandchildren, our forthcoming generations all of them will then be open, in the distant future, to a history more comprehensive and detailed than the ones we have for ourselves now. Cause-effect relationships will not be short and frail threads each sporting an enigma at one end, but mighty ropes of jute that speak of eons of evolution of body and mind. The lessons we have learnt are manifested in the lessons we will come to live, but to a young man who will soon be witness to the sun engulfing our dear planet Earth, his history will have hoarded in him insurmountable mountains of knowledge. In this, I believe that evolution is not only an experience of the evolving, but also of those who serve to be the divine embryo of the causes of evolution itself. When we touch a hot flame, we learn not to touch it again: that is of the body. When we make a mistake and learn from it, we also stow away the relationship between cause and effect in our head: that is of the mind. But when we live and grow and reproduce, the nature that is the great container of all that we see and believe in whispers in our ears stories of the past and the lessons they teach. That is the beauty of this cosmos; the three dimensions along with time are what they are for a reason. For, if they had been anything else, our lives would hold no hope in the remedies of the future.

Longing Eyes, Pouring Rain

Imagine a dream. Imagine that you are free to pursue that dream. Imagine a world that imposes no constraints, no bonds, no chains of wrought iron that bind you down to the earth. Imagine you are part of that world, imagine you are free, and imagine you have only one dream. Would this be your Utopia? Or tell me, why would it not be? Is it not everyone’s dream? It is my dream, and I think that it should be everyone’s. Tonight, that dream is beckoning me. I dream that I stand in front of my class. I dream that one of my professors is asking me to promise the class that I will be a part of that class. That I will do what ever that class is asked to do. That I will not be different from any of them, and when they refer to the class, they refer to me, to you, to him, to her, to my friends, my enemies. I dream that I stand in front of such a class, and tell them of this dream. Would they understand? Would they understand what pursuing such a dream means? I think not. But, the class has not let me down. I have not let the class down by not being a part of it: the people around me mean so much to me. But all I can think of at the end of the day is that, am I any different? However, I know I am not. There is no individuality left in me. 

Our dreams, they say, are for us to dream. They make us do the same things, the same tasks. Again and again, till the work process becomes subconsciously triggered whenever I hear someone speak of it. They teach us the same lessons, but they say the difference lies in what part of the lesson we choose to learn. He learns the beginning, and he wants to pursue it till the end of his life. She learns the end, and she wants to pursue it till the end of her life. My friend learns everything, and he wants to do all of them for the rest of his life. They laud them, they clap every time such a dream is spoken. But why is that when I choose to learn nothing, they pity me? Isn’t not wanting to learn anything a lesson by itself? The world they paint in front of my eyes is not the world I want to belong to. My dream lies else where, and they choose not to recognise that dream. I don’t know why. They say they will involve my parents in such issues. Tell me, is that supposed to threaten? Because it doesn’t. Not one bit. And when I say I am only prone to laughing at such statements, they say I am mad. They say I am disoriented, and that I don’t where I am heading in life. Tell me, do choices exist that no one else has ever made? Because no one seems to recognise it. The only choices any one seems capable of recognising are the ones they have made, or the ones they have heard made. To dream is to lose hope in this world. It is not a perfect world, and now I know that it has never been. And a glowering fear inside of me dictates that I can never hope to be part of such a world.

When I stand in front of my class which such ideas in my mind, will they understand? I think that when I can, they should be able to. Unfortunately, they are not. Every where I turn, someone or the other has an explanation that reflects materialism. They fail to recognise that my happiness does, in fact, lie elsewhere. Again, the only choice they know exists is the one they could have made, would have made or should have made. A choice doesn’t exist that hasn’t already been made. What then is the meaning of a dream? I will always ask myself this. Perhaps one realises all of this only when one loses the grasp of a previous dream, a first dream. I question every corner, but they either hold on to a preconceived notion like a babe holds on to the finger of its mother a few days after birth, or they have already let go, surrendering their destiny to a stranger. There only remains a corner which I haven’t already asked these questions, but I don’t want to ask. Why? Because I am afraid of the answer the corner has in store for me. That corner is the small part of my mind I wish to leave open to explore. That is the kind of hope this world instills in me: a blind hope.

For the last time, imagine this: you are in a free world; that you are in a world that does not remind you of the ground; that you are in a world that does not remind you of your insecurities by asking you to remember that the sky is far, far away, and sometimes that it doesn’t even exist. Imagine you are a part of such a world. If this is the world you want to belong to, then ask yourself just one question: do you have it in you to sculpt such a world for yourself?   

Nostradamus and Mumbai: What's the connect?

NOSTRADAMUS & MUMBAI?!

Mabus plus tost alors mourra, viendra,
De gens & bestes vn horrible defaite:
Puis tout à coup la vengeance on verra,
Cent, main, faim quand courra la comete.

(Mabus then will soon die, there will come
A horrible undoing of people and animals:
At once vengeance one will see vengeance,
One hundred hands, thirst, famine, when the comet will run.)

Nostradamus’s controversial and hugely popular ‘Centuries’, containing his prophecies of the world events, has predicted the happening of a World War 3 from 2009 – 2012. The above lines are from ‘Centuries’, and the name ‘Mabus’, restricted to a single mention in C2-Q62, is the name of the Third Anti-Christ who is poised to rise in the near future. However, the the prophesy indicates that the advent of doomsday will come after the fall of ‘Mabus’.

‘Mabus’ is an anagram as well as a portmanteau of the names of many world leaders and important figures who have played significant roles in shaping the world to what it is today. Some of them include Al Musab Al Zarqawi, a terrorist of the Al Qaeda clan who was killed by a US laser guided bomb, Saddam Hussein, George Bush (father or son?), and most importantly, Barrack Hussein Obama himself.

Check this one out (obviously the invention of a fanatical conspiracy theorist!): Barrack + obaMA + US. Moving on, Obama’s right hand man happens to be one Raymond Edwin Mabus, a US political leader and businessman.

So what lies in the future for us?

If you’re a conspiracy theorist too, you might want to check this one out: john-cox.

An Ode To Hard Times

AN ODE TO HARD TIMES A friend is someone whom you can be your worst self to. This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for them. A few in number, but an army in its presence. Life, at this point of time for me, is raising its worst hoods – I have been intimidated by circumstance, abandoned by reason, guided by experience and sequestered by companionship. The reason I can find myself standing again is that I did what was necessary for me to move on, and for ever, it shall remain right in my mind and justified in my discretion that I behaved like that. These are some of the moments I will never come to regret, and the times will constitute an ode to hard times.

When you grow up in the face of many an atrocity inflicted on you – be it tangible or otherwise – you cannot always blame the perpetrators for it. After a certain period, you just come to think you are useless in creation and meaningless in purpose. Rooted it will all be in your deepest beliefs, for as much as you can fathom the reaches of the human mind, you cannot divulge from it its perception of the world. If the things I am doing have kept me going for a long time now, then don’t you agree there is no valid reason that I should stop doing them? Who are you, my friend, to ask me to come out of my shell when I think I am much better off than you are, or would have been in such times? But no. That is wrong. Whatever happens, life has to go on. And lying cowering inside some hollow beliefs is not what fills your life with your actions, your responsibilities, your duties, and your destinies. This blog entry of mine is just a communication that couldn’t have been held inside of me, my mind, because it also seems like a rhetoric that the world must hear. But after all, this is just an ode to hard times.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for troubles, mishaps, downfalls, embarrassments, hubris, misunderstandings, and more, for they have rooted me in the fundamentals beliefs of man, his expectations, and his misgivings more than anything else. It is never a matter to learn of these things as you grow up, but to experience them. And past such an experience, they will have seemed the greatest lessons of your life. Your parents, your loves, even your friends, will then seem overwhelmingly meaningful to you. And now is when you are a man. The doubts you will now begin to have will constitute more than just reason: they will begin to question your beliefs themselves because of the authority that maturity seems to give you. The life you live from this point onwards will be lived in full knowledge of the consequences of your actions, and the life you have lived will seem to constitute mistakes more than experiences. As for me, only time will tell if I am already a man. But since life as I have known it has changed, my past is just an ode to hard times.

And I am thankful for it all, and more than anything else, for the people who made me realise where I really stood in my life! Happy Thanksgiving!

The Greater Divide

When the state governs my way of living and the culture that douses my thoughts and shapes them into the actions I perform, it becomes my religion because it is my source of life . The life I come to establish for myself is done so according to my desires, but the objects of desire and the resources I have to attain them are both materialised in what the state can provide for its citizens. However, this is where the preaching ends; most people confuse this feeling for patriotism. Belief in your fellow brothers and sisters is patriotism – when you can rest assured that the nation that is now your home will always foster only the people who believe in themselves, and thereby imbue the soil of the earth with a belief in life, then you are a patriot. But when you adopt your society as more than a home, and even as a religion, then you are beyond patriotic. You are just a philosopher. The notion of the state developed from the government itself, which could govern only when a law was enforced, only when the belief, which is as strong as the weakest believer, in itself amongst its subjects could be planted. The lay man must not be allowed to rely on any other organisation other than that which he has elected; this notion is not because the state wants to restrict us with fear or force, but because then, the function of such an organisation becomes smoother and the restricted individuality you will come to assume later on will be manifested in your conformity to the state’s laws. But patriotism is independent of the state itself. It is a steadfast belief in the nation that houses its people. The difference between a patriot and a politician is observed in its most fundamental level here. A patriot will look towards his fellows for help in governing a nation, not a state. A politician has to begin from being a leader amidst his people and climb the political ladder until he can be the leader of a state. A patriot is not governed by laws because he does not conform to the state; and by virtue of being a patriot, he will need no laws to abide by as he is the ideal citizen. But a politician is a leader moulded by the laws he conforms to and abides by even as a citizen of the nation, and is therefore a son of the state.

Indian politics is governed by the 31 or so states it comprises of. At the time of independence, these states were carved out on the basis of the language of its peoples. Consequently, as each language represented different but similar cultures, the caste system in each state developed independent of each other. However, since these different systems encompassed people living in similar economic climates, they blossomed (if that) into an almost equal stage of complexity, intricacy and seepage down the strata of the society. When the people under a same national government are divided amongst themselves in the election of a local government, the politicians and their political parties must unite these people in order to secure a majority. This is where the FC (forward classes) and the BC (backward classes) come into the picture. The FC comprise of, primarily, Brahmins, and have been around for about 2,000 years. The BC have also been around for an equally long time, but they constitute a larger number of divisions of people. The BC can further be sub-divided as SC (scheduled castes), ST (scheduled tribes), etc. Therefore, in trying to establish a majority in the senate, the fractions of FC and BC voting in the elections play a very, very important role. The FC don’t trust the BC and vice versa, which is only natural given the history of each sect of people. I am from Tamil Nadu, a state in south India, and we have had a 69% allotment for BC in all our educational institutions for quite some time now. Whereas, the scanrio in the northern states is completely different. When the national government introduced a minimum 27% quota in the state-administered IITs and IIMs, there was a great uproar among the FC, who faced no such quota because they were all from urban backgrounds, and now had to concede part of their available seats to a group people who were now eligible for a first class teaching process just by virtue of their class.

Tell me this. What is a government to do when:

1. It finds it unable to channel sufficient funds for the education of the people of the backward classes. Now, I don’t think you can always blame a government of corruption just because the funds are vanishing into thin air every time they are announced. The villager will point at the local panchayat leader, who will point at the district MLA, and so on and so forth. If all you can do is point and shout, then you are not doing all you can.
2. The FC prevent the government from seeking a solution for this crisis by itself when it announces a 27% quota in the IITs and the IIMs. I agree the the quality of the students graduating from the institutes will also project a 27% chance of lowness.

By having so-so party the centre, we must not forget our duties while fighting for our rights at the same time. If you want the local or national government to uphold your rights, then you should expect the government to expect its citizens to fulfill their duties. I am not placing the blame on either of the sides here, but I am just asking both sides to consider their actions in the light of this dilemma. The election of a government is like electing your king, your sire, your leader. You cannot then all sit down and expect things to happen around you. If you want to protect the quality of the institution you are studying in, then you must make sure that all the people who want to seek admission there possess a certain quality themselves. We must not just seek answers to all the questions we have to ask. We must be in a position to answer them ourselves.

I have always believed the college as being an institution with importance equaling that of the primary schools. Primary schooling sows the seeds of knowledge in the child, whereas the college makes use of an education that has fermented this knowledge into a mature and applicable form. During the college days, the student will develop from being someone dependent on others to the one who is dependent on himself. At this point of time, everything around him or her will seem like a resource, and his or her productivity will see an exponential increase and decisions will come to be more informed. However, if he wishes to enter politics, it is considered an exception to the rule! But this fact can always find itself rooted in the requirement that the candidate for the local election has to be a man of the people. By this, I mean that he must have understood the actual problems that rock the nation as it were, and he must be able to, at least, circumnavigate around these problems if he can’t find a solution for them. And even amongst these problems, you can difference between those harassing the FC, and those, the BC. The BC won’t vote for an FC candidate and vice-versa. And since most of the FC have emigrated in search of better jobs, while the remaining lose faith in the local government by the second, the BC prevail in the end. When it is time for a re-election, the FC again lose faith in a government that has been run by the BC, and give up their chance to make a difference. The worst is when this cycle is called a vicious cycle!

This is no vicious cycle! It can be vicious if it spawns itself! What is there to spawn?! You spawn your own decline of faith! A government and all your people cannot be blamed for that! Even if you somehow lose hope in a government not run by people of your class, the right to vote is the most fundamental and most important of all! It is a right! You don’t fight for it! You don’t pay for it! And even if you believe in the division of people into classes and castes, it is not mandatory that your son has to believe in the same. Give the future generations a chance to make a difference. Even if you think there is no need for a difference, you must also know that their future is not yours to govern. The want to make a difference is not a mandate. It is, after all, an option. And your faith in your children can only be displayed in its fullest when you let them make their own decisions. When the FC and the BC stop thinking of each other as different people but people coming form different parts of the same nation, patriotism will be projected at its most glorious. And only a patriot will know what the nation needs, not a politician.