It’s Okay Not to Feel Happy

We live in have a penchant for laughter. Comedy is serious business. We pay large sums to people who make us laugh and it is not difficult to find stand up comedians who are billionaires. You have only to look at the likes of Zakir Khan who sells almost ten thousand tickets a month, with each ticket costing two to five hundred rupees and Kapil Sharma whose net worth shot up to Rs 400 Crores in a matter of few years. If that does not startle you, Netflix, who is channeling large sums to capture the comedy market globally, paid $100 million to get on board John Seinfield of “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” fame.

Like all of us, I too love to laugh. I laugh heartily at good jokes and I enjoy the comedy shows on the idiot box. Nevertheless, a comedian, a joker or a clown never fails to remind me of a story I read long time back. The story goes like this:

A man goes to a psychiatrist for treatment of extreme despair and sorrow. The psychiatrist suggests that he go and watch the performance of the renowned clown who happened to be in town. “But doctor,” the unfortunate man replies, “I am that clown.”

The story may be true or of questionable authenticity, but it never fails to remind me of the preconceived notions about laughter and sorrow that our society holds on to. The Hindi movie, Mera Naam Joker only helped to keep the sentiment and the process alive in my psyche.

Human existence is tragedy and comedy ; we live them at the same time. Laughter and sadness are interdependent – a symbiotic connection where each benefits from the other. The sad clown is a prototype of a performer who makes everyone happy but himself/herself. Long time back, Khalil Gibran wrote, “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.” We laugh when we fail and we cry out of joy.

However, as emotions go, laughter is familiar while sadness, genuine sadness is rare. Ponder a bit and think how many moments of unfeigned sadness do you have in the course of a day? At the same, we remember the last time we were sad but the same is not true about laughter. Melancholy is like autumn, it just happens. It is neither mean, nor a negative thing. It is that time when for one reason or the other we are absorbed in thoughtful sorrow. Laughter happens all the time.

Like laughter, melancholy is what makes us human. Melancholy, as Victor Hugo wrote, is “the happiness of being sad.”

Live Life First Hand

Deep down, there is always a choice between being popular and being honest. What will you choose? For that matter, which have you been choosing all along?

The human mind is strange. It is inclined to comfort itself with demands that are mischievous at best and wicked at worst. Whenever it is feeling low, it seeks hideouts in destiny, karma, god and soul. When that does not work, it seeks other refuges such as junk food, alcohol and sex.

For a moment, I want you to think about this: are you living life first hand?

More often than not, you will find that you are making choices based on ideas and concepts battered into our heads by parents, society, movies, teachers and books. You do that without applying your mind, without checking trustworthiness of an idea/concept.

The reality is that we want an easier way out and in the process choose the option that is popular and not necessarily the one that is honest. A striking example is belief in god.

Admittedly, it is popular to believe in god and you have been made to believe that there is a ‘will and goal outside the human sphere’. You start believing in god simply because your parents and everyone around you believe in him. Chances are you did not apply your mind to it.

You were taught Einstein’s theory of general relativity in college and you study it religiously because you know you may have to answer questions about it in your exams. Do you even apply your mind when the same scientist says, “It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously.”

Do you even bother listen to him when he say, “A man’s ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary”.

Do you ever give it a thought that despite being at the highest level of life on earth, you show in very poor light when you feel “restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death”.

Fact is that belief in god is a popular and the easier choice: you do not want to exercise the honest but unpopular option. The popular choice of belief in god, soul, destiny and karma provides you a protective screen through which you see yourself and the world. If you refuse to believe in them, you will see that you are left only with yourself and the world and you have to see both as they are – the protective screen of those beliefs is no longer there. You do not want to let go of that protection. You choose to live life second hand.

To live life first hand, you need to make honest choices based on your personal experiences.

You learn from experiences. Learning is different from knowing. Learning marks the end of belief. Belief means that you have closed your mind to new ideas, new concepts. Disbelief too does the same to you. The mind can look only when it is free of belief/disbelief. When you shed your beliefs and disbeliefs, your questions acquire an entirely different meaning and prepare you to find honest answers.

That is when you are ready to choose the honest options.

पूछो मत मैं क्या कुछ करता रहता हूँ

मत पूछो मैं क्या कुछ कर लेता हूँ

तुम बिन।

शाल में बुने धागों की उलझी लड़ियों में प्रेम खोज लेता हूँ

सागर किनारे श्वेत लहरों में काले घने केश खोज लेता हूँ

अकेला, एकांत में भी तुम्हारे कांधे का सहारा खोज लेता हूँ

कण्ठ के नीचे संजोयी तुम्हारी विकलता खोज लेता हूँ

पर्वतीय सन्ध्या में वसंत रजनी खोज लेता हूँ 

बरसती शरद चांदनी अंजुरी भर भर पी लेता हूँ

भरी दोपहरी के सुनहले प्रकाश में नभ के बदलते रंग देख लेता हूँ,

मत पूछो मैं क्या कुछ कर लेता हूँ

तुम बिन।

सब कर लेता हूँ, पर न जाने क्यूँ, 

जब स्मृति के अथाह गर्त में उलझ जाता हूँ 

तब कुछ भी नहीं कर पाता हूँ, 

मत पूछो तब क्या कुछ नहीं करता रहता हूँ

तुम बिन। 

True Freedom is a Myth

Freedom comes at a cost and the level of your freedom is directly proportionate to the cost you are prepared to pay for it. You may ask what total freedom is and what the cost is.

You are not free until you free yourself from entrenched concepts, perceptions and ideas that were pounded into you since childhood. You do not achieve total freedom until you are free from ingrained prejudices and beliefs that became difficult to change simply because you were told something and you did not apply your mind, did not ask questions and accepted them as true.

Accepting things to be true without asking questions can be dangerous. Take the example of present day India. A liberal, pluralistic and secular democracy is turning into a ‘religiously driven’ fascist state because citizens are accepting ideas antithetical to the country’s Constitution without asking questions. The keyword here is ‘religiously driven’ as in driven by the force of religion.  

That, for you, is the power of religion and the danger of not asking questions.

Another thing that we accept without asking questions is religion itself. Why is it that the religiosity offered by priesthood of any religion is meant only for you, you alone, and not the priesthood. How many of us ask that question? Religion exists only because the powerful find it useful in yoking you.

There is a famous quote of Seneca, the Younger.

“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

What is the cost that you must pay to attain true freedom?

Revisit all the ‘entrenched concepts, perceptions’ and your ‘prejudices and beliefs’ and ask questions before you accept them to be true.

For a moment, just for a moment, suspend your belief in destiny, karma and god. You will suddenly realize your deepest fears that you have been hiding all your life behind these beliefs. It may signal the beginning of deep misery but it may lead you to true freedom. How many among us will be ready to pay that type of cost for true freedom?  Whether you want to pay it be truly free depends entirely on you and you alone.

Believed Fantasies

We humans are bombarded with so much reality that the onslaught is much more than the body can withstand and we need to escape from it. We seek refuge in all sorts of things. Hobbies, over eating, pastimes and most of all fantasies are how we attempt to discharge accumulated tensions of daily life. We fantasise about invincibility, play violent video games, watch sports and do all sort of things to vent anxiety.

Fantasies are imaginary scenarios that we consciously or unconsciously play out in our heads. Fantasies are a form of escapism. Fantasies serve a psychological purpose but they are not reality.

God, religion, karma and freedom are the four most believed adult fantasies.

No matter how elevated a status you want to give to it, religion has been termed by many as a form of escapism. Remember Karl Marx and his accusations of Christians being escapists and that religion is the opium of the masses. There is a lot of truth in it though.

A significant majority of humanity involves itself in religious pursuits and rituals simply in order to have some time on daily or weekly basis away from the harsh realities of daily life. Going places in search for some sort of an experience, listening to someone’s soothing lectures that make them feel better, spending hours in temples are indeed a case that religion is just another exercise in casual escapism.    

What is religion after all?

• If it is a moral code of conduct, then all we need to do is develop a value system.
• If it is hallowed belief, it is better served by purifying one’s inner self.
• If it is a belief in or a puzzle of supernatural power, it is better to understand the laws of nature.

Without fear, there is no faith. Without fear, there is no need for god. Thus, to give further credence to the concept of god, man created devil. The devil convinced us that there is a god, that there is a purpose to life and finally the devil played the biggest trick – he convinced us that the devil is in anything other than man’s mind itself.

Just give it a serious thought.

This reminds me of a famous quote of Swami Vivekananda.

“You will be nearer to heaven playing football than studying the Bhagavad-Gita.”

The sage said this to a young sickly looking boy who wanted to acquire spirituality by studying the Bhagavad-Gita. He was driving home the point that the boy would do better to improve his health first in order to assimilate the message of the scripture/s and translate it into his life.

Existence is reality. God is fiction.

We exist because we exist: it is not our doing. God and religion are our productions. That is why there are gods and gods and gods. Everyone creates his or her own god or accepts an old belief based on their needs, suffering and expectations.

Many gods but there is only one existence.

Our actions become our personal ‘religion’. Inaction or acceptance of shared or communal experiences as the gospel truth is simply indulging in escapism.

God is one lie that has given rise to so many more lies. Religions, churches, temples and other religious entities keep on pouring lies upon lies in order to protect one lie.  If you refuse to believe in god, soul and destiny, you will see that you are left with only yourself and the world. Then, you will see yourself and the world as they are and not through the prism of these beliefs.

God may be a great consolation but he is not a cure. God and religion are believed fantasies, which a vast majority of humanity believe to be true.

It is necessary that we face reality or we will be doomed, individually as well as a species. At the same time, it is unrealistic to pretend that we humans can ever be very realistic.

We need to confront reality by making intelligent guesses as to what is right and true. At the same time, we also need to understand that the opposite is not wrong or shameful but a fantasy. Fantasies are a normal part of our interior world. The better we are at distinguishing fantasy from reality, the more accomplished we become in indulging in fantasy for safe and efficient management of anxiety in our lives.  

Life is Simple and Sorrow is Sweet

The Contrarian Me

This is in continuation of what I wrote a month ago.

One of the many lessons that I have learnt from life is that other people’s shoes never fit  – one has to traverse life’s journeys in one’s own shoes.

The world is full of contrarians holding differing opinions. I am probably one of them.  It is hard for me to accept a shared or communal experience as a fact without doubting it. I am fascinated by the opposite view, regardless of it being the unpopular view.

That’s not the cynic in me speaking. I generally see the bright side of things. It is just that I must, simply must, articulate the ‘other’ view even if I end up not agreeing with it. It is a risk that I take of being labelled as a negativist but I am okay with that.

Feeding Stray Dogs

Do you see people feeding stray dogs on the roads? I see a whole lot of them in my town but I do not see the generosity, empathy, compassion the way everyone else around me does. Instead, I think that these people must love dogs more than the elderly and children. Doesn’t feeding stray dogs increase the possibility of their being bitten by stray dogs and get rabies.

Couldn’t these dedicated dog-lovers show their canine love in a better way such as working to strengthen an existing SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) organisation in their town or start a new one? There used to be an SGPCA facility at a prominent location in my town, check here to see what it is today. So much for their love for dogs.

Life is Complicated

No, it is not. In fact, it is simple.

Our intellectual abilities distinguish us from other animals that lead to unique behaviours such as production of personal embellishments, language, art and music, and the performance of religious rituals. Yet, we humans are strange creatures. Despite high level of human intelligence, we create problems and entangle ourselves in them. We spend sleepless nights trying to find solutions and once solved, we create another set of problems.

At the basic level, life is just you, the environment, and your interaction with it. For living a simple life, the only person we need to understand is ourselves but we fail miserably because all the time we keep changing ourselves. We can learn the essence of life by paying attention to small things around us but we fail to do even that and end up complicating our lives.

Life is not complicated, we are.

 

Day & Night

Day and daylight is associated with positivity, night and darkness with negativity. A new day, a new dawn, they say, is a harbinger of a new era, a call to get up and a chance to change everything. Night is generally perceived as a symbol of inactivity and darkness is described as uncanny, fearful and ominous.  

I see it in another way.  I think darkness has as much, if not more, to offer as daylight.

Daylight yells and restricts contemplation. The night is silent and listens.

People tend to talk about outer things in bright daylight. Take the same two people away from daylight to a dimly lit room or near the glow of firelight and it changes their thoughts and conversations – talks will be subjective, no arguments and long pauses– they will listen and talk about inner feelings. 

No, there is no negativity in darkness: you only need to look at it differently.

Live in the Present Moment

Every other guru, mentor, guide, counselor, teacher and coach wants us to live in the present moment. They say, the past is gone, forget it.  Why do they not add that remembering the past is equally important and necessary?   

Can you really forget the past? Your past is your history and you learn from it. 

I want to store my past in my memory.  I want to recall it when it suits me and come back in the present when I want to. I do not want to forget my past. There are times when I want to remember those beautiful sweet moments that I spent alone or with someone and like Wordsworth, dance with the daffodils.

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

Sometimes, I also want to remember the sad moments of the past and shed a tear for a loved one. I also want to enjoy the present, live in the moment and all that the guru says.

Now what is wrong with that? Why don’t they tell you that?

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

All of us want a life of joy to the extent that we would rather wear a mask and feign happiness even when we are sad deep inside.

“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.”  ­­­­

… Khalil Gibran

Give it a thought.

I think we all need to understand the finer nuances of sorrow to be able to respect it.

Happiness is like a shallow pool in which you can play joyfully and splash around but only for a while. Happiness is ephemeral. Sorrow is like the heavenly ocean in which I can drown holding hands. Sorrow clings; it washes away shame and guilt and leaves you more assured with greater sense of self-worth, it touches the soul and teaches one to free others.

In the same poem, Khali Gibran goes on to say that, joy and sorrow are inseparable.

“Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”

Moments of sorrow are bound to resurface in times of adversity. Those are the moments when eyes get wet and happiness seems like a distant dream. Do you think that can be prevented? Can you? Can anyone?

You need to be ‘empty’ as Khalil Gibran puts it, to be “standstill and balanced”. Or be of steady wisdom, a concept explained in Hindu scriptures as स्थित-प्रज्ञ . Unless you achieve that high stage of consciousness, you are doomed to suffer pain every now and then, which is bound resurface somehow or the other. If you are unable to attain equanimity you have to accept, or rather respect, pain and sorrow as such.  

The search (don’t miss the emphasis) for happiness is futile. You are downright dishonest to yourself and others if you keep going after it.

Ludo and Life

The other day I was watching Ludo on Netflix. There were, at least for me, two takeaways from the movie. One is about one of my favourite topics – ­ sin and virtue. You can read my views on subject here and in Hindi here. However, I want to write today about what it says about life – ‘life is like the board game, Ludo’. Think about it.

Let us take each feature of the game at a time.

Before I proceed, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of my daughter, Shiwani for some of the analogies in this article.

Ludo starts with four tokens of same colour in their respective yards and you keep rolling the dice until a six is scored.

The yard in this case is our house. The wait for a six score on the dice is the time we must spend under the protection of parents/family until we are old enough to move out in the world on our own.

Out in the field, tokens are vulnerable and liable to be captured by the opponent/s tokens if they land on them, unless they are on one of the ‘safe squares’ or on the home column, en route to the final goal. Safety from capture is also insured if two of your tokens are on the same square.

Is it not akin to the time you go out on your own in the world outside? Carrying your dreams and all that they mean to you, and you are as eager as the Ludo’s token to reach your destination/goal. Away from the protective umbrella of your parents/family, you are also as vulnerable as the poor single token on the Ludo. You seek safe shelters provided by friends/family and partners just like the tokens, on your way to your goal in life.

Eventually, there is a crowd of tokens on the board. You may choose to be aggressive and move a token to follow an opponent’s token in order to capture and send it back to its yard. Alternately, you may choose to play safe and ignore them and remain focussed only on moving your tokens safely to home. Making pairs of your tokens in order to block the other movement of opponents’ tokens or trying to move the pairs together in order to avoid capture are some of the choices before you.

Compare this with real life. I would equate this with the opportunities that life presents before us. Just as we do not control the score of the dice, we have no control over the challenges and/or opportunities that life throws at us.  In real life too, we have the option of trying to reach the top by trampling on our competitors/colleagues or to ignore them and do our own thing to achieve our goals. The support system of friends/family that we have in real life is like the fellow tokens that you use to make pairs for safety from predatory opponents.

Once you reach the home column on the Ludo board, you are only steps away from the final destination and safe from predatory attacks.

The final destination is your life’s goal, the dreams that you want to come true. When you are about to achieve your life’s goal, when you are almost there you are safe because instead of predation, you see a surge in followers.  

How you play the Ludo game depends largely on the score of the dice, which is not in your control. You must move a token and do not have the option to pass.

I would spare a thought and equate this aspect of Ludo with the fact of life that our actions depend upon factors not under our control. The roll of the dice is more or less similar to our prescribed or perceived duties. How we act or respond to situations depends on our sensitivities and predispositions, which are primarily not under control but contingent to familial environment, upbringing, genetics, heredity, etc. All that is in our control in real life is the choices we make for meeting challenges or grabbing opportunities. We also do not have the luxury of remaining inactive – inaction is not an option in life. We must act this way or that way.  

Ludo is a simple game, which does not require great skills. The irony however is that we spend a lifetime thinking that life is like a game of chess, which requires acquisition of skills and knowledge that will help us win. Do knowledge and intellectual ability guarantee success? Do they always help us succeed in life? Success is in being yourself, being what you are, and not becoming someone else. And what you are depends upon the score that inherited traits, circumstances, environment and upbringing roll of your dice.

Life in India of 60s

Middle class households in small towns of India

As a child, you must have heard elders talk about good old days. In a sense, there really were good days. However, life was not that simple or comfortable as elders are prone to tell their children.

We live in an era of technology where every other person is busy on his/her Smartphone. This is an era where you are able to communicate with friends and family instantly. I grew up in the era of snail mail and long distance calls that one would book and wait for hours. If it did not mature until midnight, one had to rebook. If you wanted to jump the queue, you had to book a lightening call, the cost of which was prohibitive.

Sweetmeats made of milk were banned during simmers.

Manufacturers could not sell even one bag of cement unless the buyer had a permit issued by the government.

One could not carry wheat and rice from one state to another even for personal consumption.

That, however, was a trailer to catch your attention. Let me start from the beginning, literally.

Childbirth was at home, usually the home of the would-be mother’s parents, with a midwife aiding in the delivery of babies. I still remember the name of the English woman who was the most popular midwife in my town, Ms Davison.  It was only in the seventies when people started consulting gynecologists and hospitals. There were all sorts of myths for predicting the gender of new life growing in a mother’s womb. My mother gave birth to twins in 1957 in a hospital only because her pregnancy was problematic. I remember going to the hospital with my brothers to see the twins. On return our grandmother ‘purified’ us with Ganges water because hospitals were considered ‘unclean’.

Food was prepared over coal burning traditional earthen braziers, angithi. Our domestic help would light it up every evening and after dinner let it burn slowly all night. Early morning he would put more coals and get it ready for breakfast and lunch. I remember he would use charcoal (only a little bit as it was expensive but caught fire quickly) and then put the cheaper fossil fuel coal. It was a smoky affair but only until there was moisture in the coals. This continued for quite some time even after kerosene-burning stoves became popular. As kids, we would all gather in the kitchen for breakfast, Sunday lunches and dinners. It was always fresh food and no leftovers. Once the kerosene stoves pushed the braziers out, chapattis never tasted the same. 

The era of refrigerators hadn’t arrived. Dad had designed an icebox, which was a big wooden box with a perforated aluminum shelf on which was placed a huge ice slab. On days when there was no school, we kids would go to the ice factory to get our daily supply of ice on the family’s horse driven open coach. I remember we were required to pre-book to ensure uninterrupted supply of ice.  The icebox was an innovative contraption that dad’s friends would come to see and probably get one made for them also. It worked well, ensured supply of cold water, and prevented butter from melting in summers.

By early sixties India had started manufacturing refrigerators. There was no dealer in Amritsar that sold refrigerators and dad ordered one from the Allwyn (the first Indian refrigerator brand) dealer in Chandigarh to be delivered to us. It’s another matter that we had to place it on the ground floor because no one was sure whether it was to be plugged in a 15AMP or a 5AMP socket. The only 15AMP socket was on ground floor and the kitchen was on the third floor, all of fifty-eight steps. 

Come winters and it was time for homemade sweets that mom would make with great effort. Besan barfi made from gram flour and pinni from split gram lentil. The aroma of gram floor being cooked in desi ghee would sweep across all five floors. So much so, on returning from school I would come to know at the ground floor entrance that it was being cooked on the third floor.

 Apart from movies, the only source available for entertainment was radio. You have to see those bulky radios to believe them. Solid-state technology had not arrived and radios had small bulb-like tubes plugged into sockets. We had small Murphy Radio with a black ebonite body. It was past its prime as the plug and socket connection would often get loose and stop working. We had to slap the poor thing to get the transmission going on again. Another problem with radios of those days was the fan. Those days we had DC fans, which, when switched on would cause disturbance in the radio’s audio –­ something like tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk. If you wanted to hear properly what was being said or played, you had to switch off the fan. That made listening to cricket commentary a big pain.  

If you had friends, you had them either living near you or you had to be content with interacting with them during school hours. Not everyone had a telephone. Getting a telephone, just like scooters, when they arrived in late sixties, was one big hell of a problem. One had to book them in advance and wait for years, yes years, for your turn. In fact, there was a thriving black market (that is what the grey market was known as those days), with a Vespa scooter selling for more than double the listed price. A rented accommodation with a telephone connection fetched a higher price than the one without it. You had to rely on your bicycle. Motorcycles were rare.

It was something to be proud of if a friend or relative returned from abroad and gifted a lipstick. As late as 1974, when we were blessed with a daughter, a friend of my wife gifted her baby stuff that she had brought from Thailand. We had never such stuff before. We wouldn’t tire of talking about the dresses, milk bottle, bibs, even the fancy nappy pin.   

Despite all this, no one complained because everyone accepted it as normal routine life. Maybe, it was because there were many other aspects that balanced the hardships.

Despite responsibilities, parents still had time for their children. Joint families were a norm rather than an exception. Joint families not only provided a strong support system, it also made parenting easier. There was always an aunt or an uncle to take care. Sons were expected to live with parents and take care of them.

You were expected to be obedient to elders. You disobeyed elders at a huge risk to you and your future. Obedience and sacrifice were sacred words. So was respect of elders. You were expected to sacrifice your happiness for the larger good of the family.

The norm was that parents arranged marriages of their children. Finding your own partner was not encouraged. So much so, if a son or daughter did succeed in getting parental approval, the parents would do all they could to deny that it was a ‘love marriage.’ Children who were in love with someone had no option if parents did not agree. We did hear of elopements and suicides but very rarely. It is anybody’s guess how ironical forced and bereft of love marriages would have been – husband in your arms and lover in dreams: an untouched soul in a highly used (abused?) body. Still, out of helplessness or say, out of lack of options or arrival of children or whatever, marriages were overtly happy and lasted for a lifetime. Divorces were unheard of also never an option.

All said and done, life may have been simple for us then, if we look at it in comparison to what life is today, the one stark reality that comes and hits you, is that it was anything but independent. At least, that was the case in middle class households of small towns of North India. We did not have too many options. Somehow, things were decided for us by our elders/parents under the pretense that they knew better. If you wanted a life of your own liking, you better had someone in the family to argue your case. Otherwise, you had either to plead or rebel. Exercising either of the two may sound easy today. It wasn’t easy for kids who lived in that era.

Dreams Too Carry a Sword in Hand

Dedicated to all those who could not gather courage and get out of their comfort zones to pursue their dreams.

What are dreams? What are they made of?

Depends upon the types of dreams we are talking about – the mental images that appear while we are asleep or the imaginative thoughts that we indulge in while awake.

The dreams that we see while asleep are like bubbles in water, they are here now and gone now. The other types of dreams are long lasting, sometimes lasting a lifetime. They are what you really want to do. As Albert Einstein said, never give up on your dreams.

Dreams that we see while awake are not bubbles in water, they are there to stay. Nevertheless, we humans are strange creatures. We often fail to realize that dreams have their own power and   keep on playing with bubbles; weave a web around them, create complications and get entangled in them.

“Never give up on what you really want to do. The person with big dreams is more powerful than one with all the facts.”

I can give you another quote. This time from the poet, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar and depend upon a poet to give an entirely different dimension to an idea.

बाण ही होते विचारों के नहीं केवल,

स्वप्न के भी हाथ में तलवार होती है।

Not only thoughts have arrows,

Dreams too carry a sword in hand..

Realise the power of your dreams. Stop treating dreams as bubbles or water. Remember that there is fire too – fire that melts iron and builds foundations of your dreams.

Believe in your dreams. No matter what your dreams are, believe them to be valid. Success and failures in life are two sides of the same coin and it depends upon you to choose which side you want to look at. Failures are learning experiences. Treat failures as a plateau to rest: organize your thoughts all over again, and get ready to try all over again.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
– Samuel Beckett

No one was ever able to cross by sitting at the riverbank. To reach the other shore you need to take the plunge first and swim. Not starting is worse than failure. A minute is enough to change the course of your life. Decide now and it doesn’t matter which path you choose to reach the top: once you reach there, all will appear the same.

We Do What We Have To Do

A book was published in the thirties, Chitralekha, in which the author, Bhagwati Charan Verma, depicts in story form the concept sin and virtue, as discussed in the Upanishads. The story is about a Guru who sends his two disciples to two of his old disciples to gain knowledge of sin and virtue. One is a rich feudal lord involved in the enjoyment of material possessions, wine and women, and the other is a yogi who has attained a high level of spiritual insight.

As the story progresses, the disciple who serves the feudal lord is surprised at the change he sees in his master veering towards renunciation , despite his luxurious lifestyle and love for the courtesan, Chitralekha. The yogi, on the other hand, despite his spiritual insight, develops a desire for the courtesan to the extent that he resorts to lying. On their return, both disciples narrate their experiences to their Guru.

The Guru then tells them:

‘There is no sin and virtue in the world. It is only another name given to difference of opinion. We do not commit sins or do we do something virtuous, we do what we have do.’

The novel highlighted social undertones that classify sin and virtue, a concept hitherto generally discussed only in Hindu scriptures.

Concept of Sin and Virtue

The conception of sin and virtue is a byproduct of the evolution of societies. Initially, rules and laws were framed when the need arose to control anarchy in primal societies. Rules/laws that were to be forbidden and banned were labeled as sin and the ones allowed were labeled as virtues.

The Gita, which is in a way a synthesis of the Hindu philosophy and socio-spiritual thought, gives sin and virtue a twist and links it with duty. Based on your profession, actions that were necessary for natural living were classified as virtues. Similarly, failure to act as per one’s designated duty is termed as a sin. In fact, this is the essence of Krishna’s lecture to Arjun when he urges him to fight, meaning that if he had not performed his duty as a warrior, his inaction would be considered as as a sin.

This is not only a simple and clear-cut classification but it also strengthens the thesis that labeling of sins and virtues is primarily based on the manner in which societies evolve.

In Reality

While the religious sanctity of sins and virtues remains almost universal, the same, however, cannot be said about what actually happens in reality. The reality is that the definition of sin and virtue, more often than not, changes according to individual needs and convenience.

The human mind is a complex mechanism. It has an uncanny tendency of inventing fresh set of rules to suit the situation at hand. There is often a very subtle difference between right and wrong. More often than not, a predisposed intellect will carve a new path somewhere in between — rules that suit the need of the hour. Righteousness is oftentimes sacrificed at the altar of monetary benefit and desire. If I may be allowed to generalize, our rules and desires are different for times when we are happy from those when we are unhappy. Depending on circumstances, we tend to act according to our dispositions and find logic to justify it too.

It is mainly because of this that no sins are listed in Hindu scriptures. There is no judge, not even god. You are your own judge. Unless you pardon yourself, your sins are unpardonable. It may sound easy, but it is not.

Coming back to what the Guru in the story said, the scope of sin and virtue is embodied in their being in harmony with our needs. The universality of sin and virtue is a myth, which humanity uses to protect its interests. The worldly reality is that ‘we do what we have to do.’